This week, it's nostalgia time. After 300 years London's Fleet Street is irrevocably dead. My earliest years as a journalist during 1958-59 were spent there. They left an indelible imprint. I was 23, penniless and hungry. I washed dishes or mopped floors during lean times as a cartoonist. I was down and out in London, not Paris. It was glorious. George Orwell zindabad!
I spent most of the day loafing around Fleet Street. Daily Express, Daily Mail, News Chronicle, Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Reuters were located there. So were most overseas papers. India House at Aldwych was adjacent. Scruffy Indian students and yours truly gathered there for cheap lunches. All Indian dishes, northern or southern, were cooked in sambar masala. Indian restaurants could be smelt a mile away. "Indian restaurant?" the Bobby would grin. "Straight down, turn left, then follow your nose!"
London itself was different. Even the weather was different. A wan sun occasionally peeped out of a misty sky. The grey streets smelt of fish and chips and beer. No wine bars, no continental food. Apart from shabby aliens like myself, everybody wore a tie.
Fleet Street bustled with media celebrities. The pub below Daily Mail was a favourite haunt for cartoonists. The office of Punch was adjacent. I met Emwood of Daily Mail whose drawing inspired me. His colleague, the great Illingsworth, was incredibly warm and friendly towards the unshaven Indian yokel who sometimes called on him. The papers displayed originals of the great cartoonists of those days—Vicky, Illingsworth, Cummings, Emwood and Giles. Low, Sir David by then, remained remote in his Holland Park residence. On Fleet Street one could often glimpse stars like James Cameron, William Neil Connor (Cassandra) and Vicky. I never got to talk with Vicky. Though I did attend a BBC radio programme when a young academician, Romila Thapar, interviewed him. At the head of Fleet Street's City end was a plaque of the legendary Edgar Wallace, famous reporter and crime fiction author.
There was romance in journalism. Now, Fleet Street is dead because the world has changed. Journalism was a service. Now it is an industry. There was bonding among journalists. Now, there's networking. Newspapers were content-driven. Smart managers maximised sales and advertisement. Now, newspapers are market-driven. Managers determine content. Last century, dictatorship killed Marx's socialist dream. This century, global capitalism is killing the democratic dream.
That's why Fleet Street died. What will Next Street be like?
(Puri can be reached at rajinderpuri2000@yahoo.com)
