GOT AN IDEA? Speak up,” shouted a poster as I entered THE WEEK’s editorial office in January 1995. I had to report to Editor-in-Charge T.R. Gopalakrishnan, who was on the interview board that had sized me up a few months earlier. He was the one who asked the most number of questions, many of them related to the books I had read. Gopal, as I came to call him, was particularly interested in the one I was then reading, The Life and Times of Yukio Mishima. “What does the author say about Mishima’s concept of hara-kiri?” Gopal asked, and I launched into a monologue on how it was authentic, sincere and different from the western concept of suicide, which was full of falsehood and dishonesty. He patiently listened to my impetuous reply, and for some reason decided to hire me.
Maybe he was happy to see someone who read books. To say Gopal (he was also TRG to many of his friends and colleagues) was a voracious reader would be an understatement for those who knew him. There were two things that made sure I visited Gopal’s home frequently: the great filter coffee his wife Geetha made, and the vast collection of books, some arranged neatly, most piled up. Gopal’s favourite author was P.G. Wodehouse, and he was happy to loan Wodehouse books to anyone who cared to ask. His interests varied from science, space, astronomy, history, anthropology, culture and politics to business, sports and cinema. Naturally, he collected books from all these genres. Most important, he read them.
When he was about to leave Kochi for Bengaluru, where he breathed his last in the early hours of November 15, he invited me home and led me straight to his collection of books. In a corner was a traditional reclining chair I had helped him get so that he could relax with his books. “You can take whichever you want,” he said. The offer was later thrown open to other colleagues as well. When you go, you don’t take the books with you, you take the knowledge.
Thanks to his vast reading, he could hold forth on any subject in any company. What he could not get from his books, he pried out from reporters young and old. Many a time I have seen him trying to get the latest Bollywood gossip from the young beat reporter in after-meeting parties. The intent, I realised later, was not to feel nostalgic; Gopal, after cutting his teeth in journalism in Delhi with Motherland and the Hindustan Times, moved to Bombay as an assistant editor with the film magazine, Super, before shifting to the news tabloid, Current. Gopal wanted young colleagues to feel that he was approachable. The gossip sessions were also a platform to shape ideas, and open the eyes of the cubs to the real story behind the apparent story.
As much as he was open to fresh ideas, Gopal was equally open to new technology. Perhaps, his background as an engineering student at IIT, Kanpur, helped him in embracing the digital age. He never completed the course, he once told me, because his father T.V. Rajagopalan’s (a Delhi-based journalist from Therizhandur in present-day Mayiladuthurai district of Tamil Nadu) death meant that he had to start working to support the family. When THE WEEK became one of the first English newsweeklies from India to go digital, he worked tirelessly to make sure everything went right before Prince Philip inaugurated the e-edition in 1997. He made sure the newsroom and the designers had access to the latest technology, and the high cost at which the magazine acquired the latest was never a deterrent. Before email became popular in India, he tied up with the US-based Compuserve for ease of communication.
Gopal joined THE WEEK in 1983 as a deputy news editor, and became editor-in-charge five years later. By the time he retired in 2018, THE WEEK had become the leading news magazine in the country. He nurtured generations of journalists, and today they work in all parts of the world. He made sure that he maintained contacts with many of them, as a former colleague recently remarked. His wards admired him for the freedom he gave while on the job. He rarely interfered, or controlled the reporting or writing process, unless it was absolutely necessary. At the same time, he never suffered fools or those who shirked work.
Gopal was a cat with nine lives and more. His ability to bounce back surprised even his doctors. He suffered a massive heart attack in 1996 while attending a colleague’s wedding in Kollam, Kerala. His colleagues rushed him to a nearby hospital where an electric shock revived him. He was back in action a couple of months later, as if nothing had happened. As only he could.
Gopal loved to travel. Besides his frequent visits to major Indian cities for work, every year Geetha and Gopal would take a break during the year-end to travel the world. They would come back with a lot of chocolates and spirits for colleagues and memories and memorabilia for themselves. Geetha breathed her last in September. Gopal’s eternal journey started 72 days later at the age of 72.