He's got jhing

Sagar Mehta isn't a great example to follow but up until now, he's the only person I know who has an obsessive craziness towards his work. I've seen that boy climb ladders, run around ordering people twice his size while burning at 103 degrees. He's never thought twice about skipping sleep when the fate of a college festival is at stake. You can't dismiss this as mere dedication, passion, louuu, paagalpan or any of those halka-phulka words. Which is why he's come up a word himself.

Jhing. Jhing describes and encompasses every emotion an individual experiences when working on something he/she loves. When you're prepared to die to achieve that objective, you've got jhing.

Jhing is contagious, as long as you're receptive. It was easy for him to convert those of us he knows best.

Now I've met another person. His name is Muzamil Jaleel and he's said to be the greatest journalist to come out of Kashmir. I never paid attention to him when he was just a face on Express' prospectus.

He's been brought to Delhi to presumbly work on a big story. I guess when you're an Associate Editor you have the liberty to pick and choose stories. And we've benefitted from that because he started teaching us in December. Not so much as teaching as immediately assigning us a 5000-word story. The objective is to produce a piece that will have publications falling over each other to run it when it's finished. It's a potentially career-deciding story, at least for me it is. The best of the lot will also be compiled into a magazine.

He's promised to give us hell and he isn't kidding. His face is shaped like a lizard, it's sharp at the nose, so when he laughs he resembles a crazed hyena. There is also a darkness about his face, like it conceals bitter memories, the thought of which still keeps him awake at night. He doesn't mince his words, like no journalist ever should. But the ones that pour forth have a certain gruffness about them, like he's barking them out after a lightning-fast observation/thought/analysis. He can make a minor criticism sound like an unbelieveably stupid blunder. The overall package makes him seem like a very scary man and mentor/boss from hell. He's tough on us and can bring us close to tears after he's done but only because he doesn't think we're completly worthless.

One thing I've understood about people like him is that they never waste their breath on those who don't deserve it. They save their best for people they really like and who possess the qualities to do something special.

And not everyone can put up with it. He's an intimidating personality and it's natural to be afraid of a man who promises to unleash physical violence if we produce cliched copy. (Personally, I don't blame him, after all, I've had to stop myself doing the same for about three years now). Those that survive are the ones who don't mistake his deep involvement in each of our stories as the sign of a whip-wielding dictator. I've learnt that the ones who crack it the hardest are also the ones who want you to succeed the most.

He takes journalism to a diffrent level, where the lines between a personal experience and a professional assignment are non-existent. I've learnt to treat the subjects of my stories as people and not sources that feed me just enough to fill a 400-word story.

Now that I'm no longer scared of him, I can finally appreciate the craziness with which he chases stories. Muzamil hasn't pushed me to do the story, he's grabbed me by the neck and thrown me outdoors. He's assailed my brain with “You have got to do it.” And it's worked, the one assignment I dreaded doing just a month ago has turned into the one I'm most excited about. I've learned to respect him and it's come the hard way.