Hugh Massingberd was the sort of person I would have loved knowing. Unfortunately, he died around Christmas last year, having lost his battle against cancer. In a funeral oration at the Kensal Green crematorium, the writer A N Wilson, described his departed friend as both "learned, and very clever"- a hugely agreeable combination: "His knowledge of the genealogy of the oldest families in Britain and in Ireland, and of the houses they had inhabited, was encyclopaedic. He had read War and Peace in Russian. He knew the names of every county cricketer for the past 50 years, every horse which had run at Cheltenham or Wincanton, every bit-part actress in every film, every West End play. He could quite literally recite Alan Bennett's plays by heart...Hugh used to say that his pleasure in going to the Oval to watch county cricket was enhanced by the knowledge that it was a waste of time."

Fortunately, Massingberd didn't also waste his formidable wealth of trivia on convivial lunches at the Travellers. He bequeathed them to posterity in the form of obituaries for The Daily Telegraph. Many of these were subsequently collated in book form and my bookshelf boasts some 10 volumes of well-thumbed celebrations of the lives of those who are no more.

As a journalist, Massingberd re-invented the obituaries page. At one time the tone was set by The Times which commemorated the lives of the already well-known, particularly the stalwarts of the Establishment-politicians, civil servants, generals, industrialists, bishops, et al. Massingberd enlarged the selection process by including those who were either interesting or had at some point achieved their five minutes of fame. He made no distinction between the noble and the blackguard, the famous and the infamous, and the conventional and the eccentric. Indeed, he erred on the side of the unusual.

A sample of those who made it to the obituaries page is revealing. There was Bob Crisp (born in Calcutta in 1911) who, it was said, "was 50 per cent genius, 40 per cent guts and 10 per cent glorious irresponsibility". A Test cricketer for South Africa, Crisp held the record for twice taking four wickets in four balls in first class cricket. Wounded during the landings in at Normandy, he was awarded the Military Cross. When he went to Buckingham Palace to receive it, the King inquired: "Has your bowling been affected?" "No Sire", came the reply, "I was hit in the head."

Then there was James Frere, the Bluemantle Pursuivant of Arms and Chester Herald in the Court of St James. Described as a "picaresque and eccentric character on the fringes of the old Establishment", Frere was "stationed closer to the throne than all but the Great Officers of State" during the 1953 Coronation. "He later claimed that he had stocked a nearby oak chest with cold duck, Perigord pie and black cherries in port wine, but could not gain access to them during the long ceremony." Frere's Who's Who entry proclaimed him, among other things, "a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Scriveners, Marchese de le Union, Knight Grand Cross of the Supreme Military Order of the Collar of St Agatha of Paterno". Needless to add, Frere remained gloriously "unmarried".

I immediately thought of Massingberd and his very English way of commemorating interesting lives on hearing of Russy Karanjia's death last Friday. Massingberd's obituary would have been so different from the fawning tributes to the editor of Blitz that appeared in the Indian newspapers. Maybe it's because we imagine that death is a process of purification.

I can't say that I knew Karanjia at all. The only occasion I came anywhere close to him was, of all places, at a BJP National Council meeting sometime in the early-1990s, just after the "disputed shrine" in Ayodhya came down. He was then well past his prime but his presence was nonetheless surprising. It was akin to spotting Arun Shourie amid the flurry of Red Flags at a May Day rally. The incongruity was farcical.

Karanjia had spent his entire journalistic career espousing "progressive" causes. Now, in the twilight of his life, his tabloid with its mandatory girlie picture and titillating ditty, had detected virtues in Hindu resurgence.

Those who knew and understood Karanjia weren't horrified. More a political entrepreneur than a journalist, this dapper Parsi from Bombay was accomplished in the art of grabbing every half-chance. He used his apparently "fearless" but scurrilous tabloid to settle scores and champion causes -some populist, others dubious. His posturing, it is said, was inextricably linked to what political scientists quaintly call "patronage".

Karanjia began Blitz in the 1940s as an endorsement of the British war effort and, of course, to fight Fascism. It was an expedient blend of the ignoble and the lofty, a characteristic hallmark of Karanjia. With Independence, he hitched his stars to Jawaharlal Nehru and his brand of socialism.

Blitz soon became the handmaiden of the pro-Soviet lobby. Apart from Nehru, its hero was the irascible V K Krishna Menon who fulminated against US imperialism and turned ordinance factories into producers of coffee percolators. The enemy, predictably, were the "reactionaries" in the Congress, notably Morarji Desai and S K Patil, the "rightist" parties, the Tata-Birla "monopolists" and the Jute Press.

When Indira Gandhi arrived, Karanjia backed her resolutely against the Syndicate. He committed himself to the Emergency and there was even a Blitz-sponsored hoarding in Delhi's Connaught Place proclaiming "The Leader is right; the future is bright." After 1977, he denounced Sanjay Gandhi and, much to his discomfiture, was snubbed by Indira on her return in 1980. This time his undeniable charm failed him.

It is curious that Blitz gradually lost its standing and relevance after the Nehru-Gandhi family gave Karanjia a wide berth. There may be innocent explanations but the intriguing coincidence prompts speculation over why Blitz succeeded in the first place.

At a time when the mainstream press was pretentiously stodgy, Blitz earned a reputation for unearthing scandals and sleaze. Like a good entrepreneur, Karanjia detected a journalistic vacuum and tried to fill it. Blitz unmasked Haridas Mundhra and took up cudgels on behalf of Commander Nanavati in that famous crime of passion trial. It built a reputation for speaking up for the hapless common man - an impression reinforced when it was sued by some of Bombay's moneyed big-wigs.

In industry circles, however, the image of the socialist crusader was greeted with widespread scepticism. For reasons that now seem distant, the spirit of investigative journalism in the high noon of socialism was expressed in the aphorism "A lakh to print; five lakhs to not print."

Fighting domestic battles was Karanjia's bread and butter. The jam came from his lavish endorsement of "progressive" regimes overseas. The Soviet Union was an all-time favourite and there are some passages in the Mitrokhin Archives which may explain why. To the socialist fatherland was added some very strange animals - the Shah of Iran, Colonel Gaddafi of Libya and Colonel Nasser of Egypt. Blitz's relationship with the Shah was particularly special and few believed it was based on faith in the White Revolution of the Pehlavis. When it came to global concerns, Karanjia believed in mutually exploitative relationships. He was the creator of the strategy that in today's media-speak is dubbed "private treaties."

Karanjia led a full and charmed life. He brought style and a splash of roguish colour to a profession of pompous pedants. He was Indian journalism's Harry Flashman. Massingberd would have loved him.

Courtesy: www.newindpress.com, February 09, 2008