Why former journalist, author Mark Tully will always be a 'Janata' man

Tully says he now wants to be free of the trappings of city life and all the fake news episodes have perhaps strengthened his resolve to 'spend more time in the countryside'

Gillian Wright, translator-writer and partner of Mark Tully, gently leads us to the spot that would be the most comfortable for Sir Mark. At 83, he is not as brisk as he used to be, but his is still a pace that many half his age would struggle with. In Mumbai to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award being conferred upon him at the recently concluded literary festival, the Tata Lit Live, he is running to a packed schedule.
 
As we settle down, catch our breath and the eye of the server to ask for three cups of filter coffee, strong with milk on the side, Tully leans forward to answer a question that I thought might bring about a discussion of the politics of the day. What gives him hope? Instead, his laughter tripping over his tongue, he says, “At 83, a good death.” Not to sound morbid, though, he hastily adds, lest the rest of our session turn into a bleary discussion on the after-life.

 
Tully chooses his words with care, cautious perhaps of having them turned into missives on social media or distorted into fake news. Recently (July 2018) a Facebook post in his name with vile references to the Nehru-Gandhi family went viral. Tully says he was distraught at the way his name was misused for political purposes, but what dismayed him even more was that there were many who actually believed he could have written such bilge. 
 

“I realised that it was a backhanded compliment to my credibility but it was very damaging, also very hurtful,” he says, seated at the edge of a sofa inside the sprawling (by Mumbai standards) Royal Bombay Yacht Club. Founded in 1846, the club looks out to the Arabian Sea and has a coffee shop cum lounge where we have been seated. It was the only place where we could have matched our schedule and that of the event he is scheduled to attend in about an hour and a half.

 
The morning sun falls in a sharp ray of light on the floor around us as Tully talks, his voice dropping to a whisper so often that I worry the recorder on my phone will capture a hoarse garble instead of his words. He has since cleared the air with the Gandhi family and written to Google for the news to be forgotten.
 
At his age, he says, he now wants to be free of the trappings of a city life and all the fake news episodes have perhaps strengthened his resolve to “spend less time writing and working in the city and having more time in the countryside”. His childhood was spent largely in verdant open spaces, be it in the school he went to in Darjeeling or in England where they also lived in a big country house. “But all my adult life, virtually all of it, I have been in the city.”

 
Tully has spent a lifetime in India. Born in Calcutta, as the city was then known, he spent his early school years in Darjeeling. He went back to the UK after India won independence but came back thrice with the BBC before setting down roots in Delhi. He was fated to be in India, he says. “My family is here since the first war of Independence.” Tully’s maternal great grandfather came to India in the 1800s. His mother was born in Bangladesh and met his father in Calcutta where he was a senior partner in Gillanders Arbuthnot.
 
After the third break in India through the BBC, Tully did have a choice, between a job in the television service and the World Hindi Service. “The TV job would have been more prestigious, offered better career prospects,” he says. But he chose India. What made him so sure? “I think we are all able to make such decisions if we allow ourselves to listen,” he quietly adds. It comes from seeking balance in one’s life.

 
Tully thinks a lot about balance and its attendant manifestations, equanimity, acceptance and eschewing consumerism. Consumerism is completely anti- “the Hindu sense of balance that tells you the need to walk the line between artha, dharma and karma”. For him these concepts hold profound wisdom and understanding the wisdom means understanding the sense of balance that they propagate.
 
“In the personal life it is what brings true humility, not the groveling kind but one you achieve without losing pride in yourself.” For him, his understanding of his personal space in the vastness of things comes from nature where he finds “a feeling of the great oneness that we (humans) are a small part of.”

 
He worries about society losing balance. “That I think was very strong in India but is now changing unfortunately.” Balance is a continual struggle. “I don’t think I have achieved it either. I am a failed priest after all,” he quips. At a very personal level, balance for him “is to realise the presence of god or fate or whatever you think”.
 
Tully is a believer. “I don’t find it all that easy, the discipline of Christianity can be tedious. And there are many temptations — as we know the world, the flesh and the devil are the three enemies of the soul. So I have struggled but it has always been my ambition or my hope to have a real sense of god.”

 
I am curious, as a journalist, doesn’t our well-honed scepticism interfere with faith? I am swiftly reprimanded, albeit very kindly. “I don’t think scepticism is a hallmark of a journalist. Some journalists make that mistake.” A journalist is meant to be objective, to keep the balance. “Certainly you have to keep your eyes open. Because there are people who will lead you up the garden path but if you believe that of everyone then you won’t get anywhere at all.”
 
He has found friends in the unlikeliest of associations. The late Colonel (Siddiqui) Salik, Pakistan Army’s PRO and Zia-ul-Haq’s confidante is one such. “Salik saab, I had known since the Bangladesh war. He thoroughly disapproved of me because he thought I was hostile to Zia and to be honest, I was.” Yet they were great friends, working their way around sticky situations like the time when Salik blew up over a broadcast that Tully was to make about Bhutto’s hanging.

 
Another friend, despite deep disagreements over his politics, is L K Advani. “I was with him on the rath yatra and I don’t support all that and he knows that but that does not stop us from being friends. We have a lot of affection and respect.” It pains him to see the media under attack in India and elsewhere. “I think there are some people in power who have so much ghamand that they can’t handle criticism. The older politicians were a different breed.”
 
His absolute favourite among the older political lot is Chaudhary Devi Lal. “We were good friends. He used to come have breakfast,” Tully says recounting one rather funny situation when Lal was Deputy Prime Minister (1989-91). One evening, tired of the incessant parties and engagements that he had to go to, Tully decided to pull down the blinds and spend an evening at home with a drink and early dinner. However, he soon heard a loud banging on the door. Outside stood the country’s deputy PM and his entire posse of security men. “Maine socha Tully saab ko milta jaoon,” (I thought I would drop in on Tully saab), Devi Lal guffawed at him. He had just dropped in, on his way back from an official engagement.

 
Devi Lal was fond of him, ticking him off in his rustic Haryanvi and even calling him bewakoof (foolish) for his naivete. These were men of the earth and “I don’t find people like them today in the BJP or the Congress. Maybe they are there but I don’t find them”, he says wistfully. Journalists are not meant to have political allegiances, but “my favourite school of politics was the Janata Dal. I am a Janata man.”