New Delhi: “Meet Ravish Tiwari. He has come from Rhodes to roads.” This introduction made him smile — the glint in his eyes unmistakable. An IITian who went to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, he would literally be on Delhi’s roads most of the day, walking and driving from one ministry building or party office to another, meeting politicians and policymakers.
He had chosen to return from Oxford to become a reporter with The Indian Express. That was in 2006. Years passed by. He went on to become political editor and chief of the national bureau of The Indian Express.
He would sometimes meet his friends from IIT, Bombay. Many of them had gone on to set up companies and become multi-millionaires. Ravish was proud of them. But he took no less pride in what he had chosen to become — a pavement-thumping journalist.
He made a name for himself for his brilliant grasp of politics and policies, a wide network of sources across sectors and, above all, his objectivity and fearlessness.
On Saturday, when Ravish, 40, passed away — after valiantly battling cancer for one-and-a-half years — the immense respect he gained for his objective, irreverent journalism got reflected in the form of condolences.
They poured in from people across ideological and political spectrums — from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah to Congress leader Jairam Ramesh and Aam Aadmi Party’s Atishi, among many others.
Also read: Senior journalist and Indian Express national bureau chief Ravish Tiwari is no more
A chance encounter & journalism, his calling
Ravish attributed his entry into journalism to chance and fate. He was about to leave for Oxford. He and his friends came to Bombay’s Bandra Bandstand to celebrate.
Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief of ThePrint, who was then the Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express, was taking a walk there.
Ravish recognised Gupta. He was an avid reader of his column, National Interest, and had seen him on TV. He went to Gupta for a chat and left him impressed with his intellect and grasp of contemporary issues. Gupta gave him his visiting card, which Ravish took to Oxford.
Ravish completed his M.Sc. in Contemporary Social Policy at Oxford and had the option of staying back to do research. A lucrative career was awaiting him. It looked like a natural and logical option for a man coming from a farmer’s family from a village in UP’s Deoria district.
From Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Basti, to IIT and Oxford, Ravish had come a long way. It was time to make it count.
But he wanted to do “something different”, “something connected to the ground”. That’s when he remembered Shekhar Gupta’s visiting card. He shot off an email to him.
As luck would have it, Ravish’s CV landed in the mailbox of then managing editor (now chief editor) of The Indian Express, Rajkamal Jha, also an IITian who had chosen to opt for journalism. The rest is history.
Passion for politics, politicians
As Ravish walked into The IE office in Delhi, there were many sceptics — how long will it take for him to get disillusioned with reporting and take up a corporate job, they wondered.
They were in for a surprise. The Rhodes scholar was loving the roads. He was given Uttar Pradesh political parties and rural development to cover.
He would spend hours chatting with then Union minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh about policies and also politics.
And then he would use sources to get a copy of a damning audit report on the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme, leaving the minister and the entire government red-faced when the IE published it.
Ravish loved spending time with UP politicians — from Mulayam Singh Yadav to Ram Gopal Yadav and Beni Prasad Verma (a Congress minister then). Such was his passion for politics that he would spend the day talking with politicians and the evening regaling his close friends and colleagues with interesting tidbits — without breaking the confidentiality of his sources.
When Amit Shah became BJP general secretary in charge of UP in 2013, Ravish started following him across the state. Though the media wasn’t allowed to enter Shah’s meetings with party workers, he would keep standing outside, placing his ears near the windows and doors and later talk with BJP workers to piece together stories to give an idea of Shah as an electoral strategist, who had stayed confined to Gujarat until then.
Ravish loved politicians, every aspect of them — their ideological commitments (both in public and private), rhetoric, bombast, ambitions, jealousy, conspiracies, et al. He enjoyed it because he was never judgmental. He just loved the art (and science) of politics and reported it irreverently.
Brilliant journalist, better individual
Ravish Tiwari was a brilliant journalist, but still better as an individual, someone who found virtue in everyone and spoke ill about none.
Think of a person who found one of his kidneys damaged in his early 30s and then had advanced stage cancer at 38!
“Kya haal hai aapka? Thik thaak?” Ravish would ask when one called up to enquire about his health. He would give a clinical account of his health, displaying no anxiety or tension. He would then switch to politics and discuss the happenings as animatedly as he always used to.
“Doctors have changed the drugs. The old treatment has stopped working,” Ravish told one of his friends last week matter-of-factly, before getting into a detailed discussion about Punjab politics.
When suggested that he should consider staying in the hills for a few weeks, he sounded keen: “I think it’s a good idea. But let’s wait till next month to see how the new drug is working.”
At 40, Ravish had many more things to look forward to. A few months back, he had informed the same friend, a former colleague: “Aapke liye maine ek Glenlivet ki bottle bachaa kar rakhi hai Noida waale ghar mein. (I have saved a bottle of Glenlivet for you in the Noida house)”
The friend told him, “We will have it together. You get out of this (cancer) first. We will have it together.”
And Ravish said he “surely will”.
That’s probably the only promise he didn’t keep. He must have intended to, surely.
(Edited by Saikat Niyogi)
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