D Murali Journalist

It is the period of the lockdown and as I went back in time this week, I chanced upon something that was saddening. But as I unraveled the story over the next 24 hours, I began to salute the man whom I had known professionally for close to two decades. This story is about one who was ahead of time as a journalist and whose bold revolutionary tale hit road blocks mid way. Unmindful, he  resurfaced and has cheerfully survived the decade after. 
      
CA rank holder D Murali joined The Hindu’s new financial daily Business Line very early on in its journey in 1996 – within two years of the paper’s launch. A Chartered Accountant, he launched many new sections in the financial daily that by itself were new to financial journalism in the city – topics that were close to his heart at that time – Taxation, Accountancy and the like.

Very soon, his innovative thoughts got the better of him. He launched a section called ‘60 secs chief’, where the CEO of a firm had to answer questions that a reader could read in 60 seconds. It soon became a big hit with several CEOs featuring in it. He followed it up with several new sections (Number Crunch, Swati CA, Books2Byte and so on) that he anchored for many years.

It dawned on him that the views of the experts in the corporate world had to be captured and presented to the audience. That he saw as his role. 

Not often in the city was a company CEO invited to media houses for discussions. For long, it has been the practice of the writers to visit the CEO at his office and not the other way around. Murali wanted to break that myth. He wondered if the idea would work and if the CEOs  accept an invitation to his office for a chat on the company and the industry.

And thus was born a revolutionary idea and the result must have surprised Murali even beyond his wildest dreams for he ebegan to host one or more CEOs
at his desk at The Hindu Group’s headquarters in Madras each day of the year.

Companies ranged from the several decades old traditional firms to young new born start ups. Murali made it his definitive model. He video recorded the interviews and posted them online. It was disruptive. It was unheard of in the past.

When Sundaram Finance launched the mikeless Sunday Kutcheri in the Park, Murali was present early morning on Sundays to capture the presentation of the budding musical talent. Taking on this concept of events at the park, Murali experimented with the idea of ‘interviews at the park’ as his evening interviews moved to the park. He would meet personalities at the chess square of the Nageswara Rao Park, amidst the chirping birds and record their stories (https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/IT-is-a-critical-innovation-lever/article16481002.ece).

One day, this writer brought along N Madhavan, the business editor of The Hindustan Times to meet Murali at his office (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pfjfKkxFro). The interview left Madhavan stunned. He remarked that even in the North and the West (of India) such a concept had not been thought of. 

At press conferences, Murali brought his now famous tripod to shoot the CEO's address. Suddenly, in a matter of a few years, Murali had interview several 100s of CEOs and posted those online.

The visiting CEOs to his office increased manifold and that raised eyebrows amongst his colleagues. Following this, PR execs were rejected entry into his meetings!!!

During this period, Murali asked if this writer would be interested in co - authoring stories for the paper. And thus I came to write a number of joint stories with him for different sections of the paper in a very short period of time. The pace of the stories was mind boggling. But it was shortlived and came to an abrupt end. To date, this writer has not asked him the reason!!!

Through those early days of his innovative journalistic model in the 2000s, Murali was clear. He did not consider himself an expert. Repeatedly he told me this during the many professional interactions I had with him during his period with Business Line.  What he was looking for in his interactions with industry folks was for their thought leadership - among entrepreneurs, authors, and domain experts, across industry verticals. And he considered it his responsibility to showcase their insights through his stories.

Murali was not possessive about the personalities he met and threw that thought process out of the window and sent open invitations to his colleagues to join him for his daily meetings. Surprisingly, very few took up his offer. It was a case of missed opportunities.

And then on the morning of the Kutcheri in the Park in September 2012 (http://sundaykutcheri.blogspot.com/2012/09/sahana-presents-sunday-kutcheri.html), he broke the news to me at the Nageswara Rao Park that he was no more with BL. I did not ask him the reason then or his future plans.

As I now look back in the years following his exit, when he was present at the Sunday Kutcheri in the Park and the Sundaram Finance Mylapore Festival, I found no signs of remorse in him. For someone who interacted with him quite closely, professionally, I wonder now as to why I did not ask him the reason in those years (and for many years) that followed.

His video model continued uninterrupted and has gained momentum over the last decade. He has always been at his cheerful best. Sometimes, one finds him past 10 pm at the Marina walking to keep himself fit. To date, he has posted several thousand interviews and posts online ranging from corporate stories to Art, from Chamber stories to chats with the cab driver in the Himalayas. And he  continues to be a regular at the corporate briefings and elsewhere.

For a man so used to attending press briefings and seminars day in day out, this lockdown in 2020 should have been a dampener being stuck to the confines of his home. Not for Murali, for he has always found an innovative way to make life interesting for himself and useful for others. In the period of the lockdown, he has been creating educative video content for Sanskrit learners, via chanting of the Srimad Devi Bhagavata Mahapuranam (https://lnkd.in/fBiPVQA?trk=public-post_share-update_update-text) and Valmiki Ramayanam (https://lnkd.in/fHAe6DB?trk=public-post_share-update_update-text). Earlier he had created a similar educative video on Sundara Kandam (Ramayanam). Given the impact of the lockdown, Murali wonders if some of the big corporate seminars / events and even the press conferences would happen again anytime in the near future. He says ‘Doubtful’!!! And is of the view that both the corporates and the journalists will have to prepare themselves for a different model of interaction as they go forward into the life after Corona.

I did not ask him for several years on his reason to exit BL, especially as he seemed to be doing well churning out stories each day of the year for the paper. And then this month, quite accidentally during the lockdown, I landed up on his page and found a story (on his home page) that I had written with him for BL well over a decade ago and the story of his sudden, unforeseen exit from the paper.

In the hours and days that have passed since, I lay in shock, shaken reading through the sequence of events that led to his exit. And I went back and looked at some of my own blog stories I had written over the last decade on issues similar in philosophy to what he had brought up - a story that I posted at 3 am, a couple of hours after that dreadful night of January 16/17 2017 when the Adyapakas of Thiruvallikeni went slow on the Prabhandham as a way of protest against the priests (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2017/01/parthasarathy-koil-adyapakas-arrogance.html) and another story on how vested interests was destroying cricket in TN (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2020/01/tn-ranji-cricket-fall.html).

He tried to fight for a cause that he believed in strongly, unmindful of the consequences. Subsequent to his exit, in an audio address, he explains, beautifully, burning issues that should touch the hearts of each one of us and that we as humans should be concerned with. He posted the transcript (of his audio address) too in the Public Domain.

He said that his forced exit was abrupt because of a whistle-blowing exercise he had undertaken through a group email within the newspaper raising issues of gender and racial prejudice within the organisation.

One has to wonder as to why a man with 15 years in the firm had to send a mail to all the staffers.

And as I listened to the audio address presented in beautiful fluent English through the hot summer night in April this week (8 summers after the episode), I felt proud that a man who I had known and respected for many years had let go a high paying job on grounds of principle, and wondered as to how many would have it in us to take such a call in life.

In his audio address, he says his boss asked him something very inhuman and immoral “Why should you be agitated (about gender prejudice)? You are not a Malayali! You are not a woman!”  his boss told Murali all those years ago.

Alas, what a retrograde thinking! Murali said of this above comment in that audio address in 2013. “If this be our thinking, as Tamils, why should you be agitated with what happens to Biharis or Gujaratis? As Indians, why should you be worried about the atrocities in other countries? Should Asia be bothered about the crisis in Europe? Why at all should the Americans lose sleep over hunger in Africa?”

He says that there is a greater realisation now that the good of all is what is good for oneself “Health and development mean a lot to all of us as much as air and water. And, to repeat the eternal Karmic message, what goes around, comes around.”

'Blowing a Whistle' is a risky proposition as Murali found out under a decade ago. Yet, it was a philosophical call he took for he believed then that the bigger and a long-term risk was not standing up right then when something was not right. Another man would have been shattered at the manner of his exit from a newspaper but not Murali. While he did not seem to garner any support at the time of his exit, he has no regretful look back at the past for he has now moved on to more exciting things in life.

Interestingly, he has in the recent past brought together hundreds of journalists in a whatsapp group where he alerts them with news of the day as it happens. Many including TV channels have used his alerts to lead with their news. Such has been his contribution to the field of Journalism staying always ahead of time.

This journalist stood his ground for what he believed was a right cause taking a principled stance on an issue of high importance. Very few in life exchange a high paying job with 'Philosophy'. Once upon a time, D Murali did!!!