Tribute to Gauri Lankesh: Gutted, she was my friend, conscience keeper
It was a Black Tuesday. The girl I knew for the last 35 years with that beautiful smile and that naughty twinkle in her eye was gone from our lives, I was told by a sobbing woman journalist friend across a long distance telephone call. I felt gutted.
Memories flooded in. I had known Gauri Lankesh since the early eighties when we all began our journalistic careers together in this Garden City. We were young, carefree and thought we could conquer the world. Our working environment gave us the space to think on those lines. The politics of the day too gave us the room to question things. It was a heady time to be a young journalist and we groomed ourselves in that free spirit. I remember Gauri as a committed and hardworking journalist and a fun loving person. She was always generous with her space, her family –some evenings would include a whole lot of us going to her place and listening to her father P Lankesh, Doc Gowda and others chatting to us about theatre, films, politics. Gauri always had time for friends…we had endless banter over authentic Kannada bisibelebath and good south Indian coffee. During the mango season we would go to their farmhouse to taste that year’s mango crop.
The carefree days ended somewhat when her father passed away and she had to take charge of his legacy – LankeshPatrike. It was also around the time the politics of India had begun to change with the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Gauri had clearly positioned herself on an anti- Hindutvaplatform. The first crises happened when they arrested her and put her in preventive custody when she tried to undertake a march with other activists against the saffron brigade on Baba BudenGiri in Chickmagalur in Karnataka.
I remember getting a call from another journalist friend saying Gauri was feeling unwell in jail. I immediately picked up the phone to the Principal Secretary of the then Congress Chief Minister S M Krishna and said if they did not release Gauri from jail , we journalists would sit in dharna outside Mr Krishna’s residence all night. Within five minutes I received a call saying “your friend is just walking out of jail!” That was still an era when the administration was responsive to journalists.
But as the years rolled by, events got more grim. Defamation cases against her piled high by BJP MLAs whom she tried to expose for corruption. She was also brutally trolled , as women journalists are.
On Tuesday she was returning home after doing what she has passionately committed herself to do – bring out the weekly edition of her paper – GauriLankeshPatrike. Only the most base act of cowardice that was on display outside her house that night,could have silenced that rebellious free spirited brave journalist who spoke up for what she believed in.
Journalists and civil society must relentlessly express solidarity for Gauri till her real assassins are brought to book and ensure that the guilty do not enjoy impunity.
Gauri’s last message to me was on the 90 children who died due to lack of oxygen in Gorakhpur…both of us had been affected by that and we connected once again on common concern.
Adieu my friend, Gauri, we will never forget the twinkle in your eye and your ability to speak truth to power. In the long scheme of life - you won, Gauri.. they lost.
Nupur Basu is a journalist and the author of the Velvet Revolution
