Amidst this Centre-state tug of war, Alapan turned the tables by taking his due retirement on May 31 and refusing to join the central government on Monday, May 31, as desired by Delhi. Immediately following his resignation from the Indian Administrative Service, he was appointed by the CM Banerjee as the chief adviser to her government for a period of three years. However, the same evening, Alapan was issued a show-cause notice asking him to explain why he was not present at the PM review meeting.

Whatever be the final outcome of this Centre-state tussle involving some of the cornerstones of federalism under the Indian Constitution, Alapan Bandyopadhyay is a national figure now and his future is being monitored by the bureaucrats of all states at the moment. The battle may continue as the Centre seems determined to take on the former Bengal chief secretary for defying the central diktat.

I do not really know the present-day Alapan who belongs to the 1987 batch of IAS and has served Bengal in different positions in his 34 years of formal service till now, the latest being the position of the Chief Secretary.

I met a young Alapan in 1985 in Guwahati when I was the special correspondent of The Economic Times newspaper in charge of the Northeast. I arrived in January amidst the rising agitation by All Assam Students Union, also known as the Assam Movement. I was looking for other correspondents from Calcutta newspapers, and soon, I met Alapan who had joined the Guwahati office of Ananda Bazaar Patrika, reporting on the Assam movement which was of big interest to the Bengali readers of ABP.

My ET office at the centrally located Panbazar was quite spacious and I had decked it up with more chairs and tables so that a big adda could take place there. Soon, Seema Guha joined as the Times of India's correspondent in Guwahati, leaving The Telegraph for a better future, and we both shared the big room in our office, keeping many chairs free for our frequent visitors. Alapan, Seema and I became the three musketeers of sort, teenmurti, as we used to refer to our talkative troika. We started spending time at our Panbazar office over countless cups of tea, accompanied by muri, telebhaja and phuluri which used to come from the adjacent market. Soon, another bright young reporter, Aniruddha Mukherjee, joined our gang. Aniruddha was sent by the now-tainted-but-then-dashing editor, MJ Akbar, to fill in the place of Seema, who did a stellar reporting job during her tenure at The Telegraph.

I was staying at the Government Circuit House in a welcoming capacious room, a fabulous place on the banks of Brahmaputra. I felt this must be it to live like a VIP — good room, great view, fantastic friends! But the circuit house was available to journalists for only seven days at a stretch. So, I made arrangement with the manager that after the seventh day, for one day, I would stay at another place and the next day, I would be back at the CH. The manager was an amiable fellow with whom I had struck up a good rapport. He agreed and helped me to stay on for about three months with one-day break after every week.

Alapan used to stay in a ground-floor flat near my office in the market and that was perhaps his office-cum-residence. Since ET was a business daily, the brief given to me by the editor was that I should focus on mostly business stories and cover only important political developments. Alapan, on the other hand, was constantly chasing the political leaders and the AASU members and sending big stories to Ananda Bazaar Patrika. I would read his stories and find out how he had tried going into the depth of the issues at the heart of the Assam movement and, as a result, reported in a completely different manner, with a fusion of the journalistic crispiness and academic rigour. Only then I came to know that he was a topper from Calcutta University and was also preparing for the UPSC exams!

Alapan used to come to my place sometimes and we used to have gala sessions on the banks of the Brahmaputra discussing everything under the sun. In fact, I allowed him to apprise me about the history of Assam and its ethno-linguistic faultlines. Though he was much junior to me in age, I came to appreciate the fact that he was a veritable repository of knowledge in terms of the history of that region. Alapan's ABP pieces at that time on the different phases of Assam movement, along with his in-depth interviews with political and student leaders, were greatly appreciated by readers, among whom I counted myself as an earnest one.

Since I was looking after other NE states also, every month, I used to go to the sister states like Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. I recounted my experiences to Alapan and the others after every visit. We also discussed why NE people feel distant from the people like us, hailing from the plains. In fact, once I had an unusual experience at the office of the NE Council in Shillong. I was waiting to meet the secretary of the NE Council. I heard somebody asking me from inside the room, “From where?”The lady, who was perhaps a Mizo woman, then asked, “From India?” I was slightly taken aback by that question. My visiting card was with her. However, I was immediately called in by the secretary and we had detailed discussions about activities of the NE Council.

Later, while coming out, an official of the secretariat who was a Bengali, came to see me off. I asked him why the lady said that the visitor was an Indian. He said that among themselves, the Mizos and Nagas refer to the people from the plains as “Indians” but not in the offices. The official further said that Northeasterners were very angry with North Indians. The young students who would go to Delhi, Mumbai or other places in the north and west of India, would not be treated well. When they came back and told the stories of discrimination that they faced, resentment would get bitter among the locals. He said that the people from the plains, especially North India, never see the Northeasterners as equals.

Very soon, a number of companies in Assam contacted me as they all wanted their activities to be reflected in the Delhi edition of ET for drawing the central government’s attention. I had a hectic time attending a lot of press meets in the evening, followed by drinks and dinner. I got to know that our fellow Assamese journalists are also avid drinkers like Malayalee journalists. Many of them began visiting our ET office which was like an open house for the local press people. I do not remember whether Alapan was much of a drinker, but the two of us attended a number of press meets together. I had already met some of the big names of the Assam industry like Hem Barua of the Indian Tea Association.

One morning there was a call from the office of the Chief Minister Hiteswar Saikia. He invited me for a breakfast meeting two days later. I was excited because that was a crucial time. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was negotiating with the Assam movement leaders for a settlement and the CM was being sidelined. I went to his Dispur residence, but found out that it was a one-on-one meeting. There was no other press person. Saikia, who was not keeping well, explained to me his programmes for industrialization of Assam and what he had implemented. He wanted his version to be prominently displayed in Delhi edition of my paper. We then discussed about the Assam Accord talks. But he did not tell much. It seemed that he was reconciled to the Accord, which would bring big victory to the Assam movement agitators.

I left and the same day, I sent a lengthy story on this meeting focusing on his plans for Assam. This was prominently displayed in all the editions of ET. The next day, the CM office phoned me and thanked. Soon on August 15, 1985, the Assam Accord was announced by Rajiv Gandhi. It was clear to all of us that Saikia’s days will soon be over. Alapan wrote a number of pieces in the ABP at that time both before and after the Accord. The ABP copy used to come late at my office and some days I would read the paper only in the afternoon. I wrote a piece on the consequences of the Accord for ET but was not happy with it.

The next day after going to my Panbazar office, as usual, I rang up my wife in Calcutta, because she used to get all papers in the morning, including the Calcutta editions of ET and ABP. I generally looked to her reaction on the stories not only because I got both ET and ABP late, but also because she was my fiercest critic, absolutely brutal in her assessments. When I called home that day, she was in a fiery mood. “What rubbish have you written!? Just read what Alapan has written in the ABP!” I tried to explain that ET was not a general newspaper and one should not expect such detailed that Alapan could write for ABP. She got madder. “I am talking of quality, not length of the story! Read both when the papers come and try to write a better piece with a fresh perspective.” She kept the phone down without waiting to hear more from me.

Later in the day, once the papers came, I scanned all the pieces. I realised that she was absolutely right. I worked hard that day, talked to a number of political leaders and wrote a piece, a bit different, compared to my earlier one. Her scolding haunted me that day, but I told myself that even if I try, I would never be able to write like Alapan.

A few days later, I got a call from the Calcutta office that the management had selected me for bringing out an international feature on the Soviet Union and for that I would have to go back to Kolkata and start preparations. I left the next day for Calcutta and never got back to Guwahati again. I went in January 1986 for a month to Soviet Union and France, came back on January 30, submitted my resignation from ET on February 1 and joined the Hindustan Times in Delhi on March 1, 1986. The 20-page international feature on Soviet Union came out on March 17 when I was already working in HT. The international feature was a big success. I began my second journalistic tenure in Delhi, the city of refugees and migrants from all corners of India, and Assam, the Northeast became a distant memory. My links with Alapan also got lost in time, though being a journalist I kept track of Alapan’s steady rise in the Bengal bureaucracy.

Last month, I was shocked to see the news of the demise of Alapan’s brother, Anjan, whom I liked for his level-headed and incisive TV anchoring. He was only 56. He died of post-Covid complications. Since I have also just recovered from Covid along with all my family members, I felt terrible. Soon I read a beautiful tribute by Alapan to his brother in the Bengali daily Aaj Kal. Even in grief, Alapan’s writing was wonderful, bitter-sweet, a fitting tribute to his late journalist brother. The beautiful and sometimes wild days of Guwahati came rushing back to me. It was worth remembering. (IPA Service)