I was feeling slightly restless – what, with having landed up like those incorrigible Virgos way ahead of time. My first official day as a journalist. I didn’t want to be late.
I sat on that uncomfortable so-called sofa in the crammed lobby of the Press Trust of India (PTI) regional office in Calcutta that rainy October morning of 1991. It didn’t quite dampen my spirits – whatever significant I do, it always seems to rain that day.
So, as it kept drizzling outside, my restlessness grew. Why the blazes am I the only one here to join as a trainee journalist? I was contemplating whether I should step outside for a smoke, when two young men appeared on the doorway.
Laurel and Hardy, I said to myself. They were almost so. One was lean, the other thickset. Well, almost. They were here as trainee journalists too, they told the receptionist, and were promptly directed towards me and asked to wait.
The leaner one was Zarir Hussain, Ankur Borbora the other. Zarir was as loquacious, as Ankur was soft-spoken. We hit it off fine from day one. Presently, the other three batchmates of ours too made it – Ajitha Menon, Durba Ghose and Richa Bansal. We were all of the same age group. Ankur was the one with the most experience, I with the least – had never done any writing worth the name before this day.
Ankur, with his experience as a reporter with the Assam Tribune, was the first to be given reporting/writing assignments from our batch. But no one resented this, for you could hardly resent Ankkur for anything. He barely opened his mouth, unless he had a point to make. He would let his smile do most of the work. At the most, he would let out monosyllables, mostly “yes” or “no”.
We were to remain as trainees for a year, except for Ankur. Some time at the end of that year or probably early the next, we were told Ankur was being pushed off to Kohima. Those days being dispatched to Nagaland was as good or bad as a punishment posting. Not for Ankur.
The hardcore journalist that he was, he knew Kohima was probably the best place to be. That was close to four years after the NSCN split, and more than five years before the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN) was to sign a ceasefire agreement with the Indian government. Nagaland was hot, and an ideal place for a journalist to be. Especially, since barring the other news agency no other major news establishment had a permanent staffer there.
Ankur’s predecessor was apparently not filing enough number of stories. His brief was to boost the news trafffic from there. Ankur did not take time to settle down there. He knew his job and he knew his territory. He did not miss stories.
Zarir left PTI before we completed our first year. I left for the Telegraph in the first week of 1995. The only interaction in the meantime I had with Ankur was over the phone, and more often than not , always official. We exchanged pleasantries and few Assamese four-lettered words that Zarir and he had taught me.
It was in March 1995 that the going started getting hot for Ankur. On the 5th of that month, there was an incident in Kohima that saw indiscriminate firing by Rashtriya Rifles personnel killing seven civilians and injuring several others. They resorted to “indiscriminate, unnecessary and uncontrolled firing and mortar shelling under the imaginary apprehension that insurgents had opened fire at them; that they had killed innocent civilians in a most cold-blooded manner.”
As allegations, counter-allegations, and public anger began piling up, Ankur got embroiled in the goings-on. The Kohima incident was followed close on its heels by the deathly ambush on the Kohima DC, LV Reddy, by the NSCN(Isak-Muivah). I myself don’t remember the exact sequence of events, but the widespread allegations against Ankur was that he had goofed up on quotes. Organisations like the Naga Students Federation wanted him to make a public apology. Ankur and a colleague fled Kohima.
I saw him in Calcutta at my Telegraph office a day or two later. Ankur seemed extremely hassled and was looking for a change. From what I gathered, no one wanted him at the Telegraph – he was bad news for the paper. He did not have to quit PTI; he was soon transferred to Gangtok – another place which sent out few stories to the national media. But Gangtok was not hot like Kohima.
I was myself making forays into Kohima at this time, and was hamstrung by lack of contacts. If anyone made life easier for me, it was Ankur. On one particular day, he dictated over 50 phone numbers to me over the line from Gangtok. That was Ankur, if you asked him for help he would not ask you questions. He would help if he could. And why did I have to run for his help? That was because my own Northeast colleagues at the Telegraph were not too helpful – contacts for them were meant to be guarded with life. They would not part either with names or with numbers.
In spring of 1996, I and now-wife Richa landed up in Gangtok by a quirk of fate, since Darjeeling was swarming with people like us from Calcutta. Late evening the previous day we decided to head for the hills on the spur of the moment. We never planned our trips and making reservations before hand was something we never did. As luck would have it, Gangtok too was brimming with tourists, though not as crowded.
We needed to find a hotel fast – the ones we checked out were housefull. We were wondering how to get in touch with Ankur – a man you could count on to bail you out of trouble. I wasn’t carrying his number, and those were pre-mobile days anyway.
“It is a small place. For all you know we might see Ankur rolling down the hill,” she quipped, as we huffed and puffed our way uphill with our baggage. We burst into a fit of giggles and were still giggling when he looked uphill and blinked. There was Ankur smiling his way downhilll. No, he wasn’t exactly rolling down, though he was rollier and pollier than ever before. He was warm as always. And as helpful. He told us exactly what we should see in the only day that we had in hand, and how we should go about it. And of course, Hotel Tibet where we were most likely to find a room.
We gradually lost touch. For a while. The next time I saw him was again at my Telegraph office – at the fag end of 1997. This time he seemed extremely distraught. He was frantic for a change. Ankur was reticent; he was unlikely to get things off his chest just like that. Maybe Gangtok was getting on his journalistic nerves. Maybe there was something else. Maybe his career was stagnating because of this posting. He never said what it was.
A new regime had taken over at the Telegraph, but Ankur still seemed bad news for the decisionmakers. He perforce joined the Asian Age, whose offices were just across the street. But the few minutes we had with each other that afternoon, we promised to meet soon for some rum and cola. He joined the Age, and we talked about the beer meet over phone again. The beer meet never happened.
Sometime in January 1998, I was in the middle of some work when my colleague Rajib Borah came up to me. “Subir, Ankur is missing,” he said. For a moment I thought Rajib was pulling my leg – he was quite capable of doing that. Or maybe, my ears were playing tricks on me. But Rajib seemed exteremely hassled. From what I knew of him, it took something heavy duty to ruffle Rajib.
Ankur had been sharing accommodation with Rajib in South Calcutta at the time. A night earlier, Ankur had gone out for a stroll during his night shift at the Age. It was common for us folks both at the Telegraph and at the Age to go down for a walk during night shifts – especially during the interregnum between the first and late city editions. So, his going downstairs was normal. He never returned – that was not normal.
It took some time for his colleagues and also Rajib to realise that Ankur was indeed missing. It has been over ten years since – Ankur is still missing.
The Calcutta Police stepped in duly. Conspiracy theories were floated. That was where things ended. Nothing happened. Till this day, we remain as much in the dark about what happened to Ankur that winter night ten years ago.
It is difficult for anyone to imagine how anyone can disappear from the face of the earth just like that. No one ever claimed responsibility of having abducted or killed him either individually or collectively. No remotely similar bodies were found in Calcutta during the time. He was too large a person to have fallen into a manhole, in the dead of the night or otherwise. Theories abounded, but nothing fit in. It still doesn’t.
Ankur was to have got married later that month. There was precious little his family could do from far-away Jorhat. His brother made trips to Calcutta, trips that went nowhere. His father expired in December 1999. Items in the press gradually disappeared. Ankur Borbora was soon forgotten.
Except for a few of us who do remember him time and again, Ankur Borbora does not exist. Even Googling his name will not give you more than 3/4 results.
We journalists write tomes about so many people who go missing for this reason or that. Such rivetting, heart-wrenching stories, no? But, it is such a travesty that we cannot find the space or the forum when one of our own goes missing in such singular and mysterious circumstances. The Asian Age was probably among the first to forget him.
We are all to blame for having shamelessly forgotten a journalist who would never say no to you if you asked for his help. I cannot absolve myself either.
