CHIP Thrills – The End

The late-1990s dotcom boom was a memorable period, though that boom was clearly unsustainable

In part 2 of this story, I’d written about CHIP moving from Bandra Kurla to DN Road, new magazines being added to the Jasubhai Digital Media (JDM) portfolio and a bunch of new people joining the fast-growing organization. I also wrote about Sridhar, my first meeting with whom was marked by my unwarranted misbehaviour with him but who later became one of my best friends in Bombay. The story continues below.

I had been made head of the CHIP writers’ team and was doing reasonably well at work – the features editor and the copy editor were, for the most part, happy with the articles I wrote, and Gourav, the magazine’s editor, seemed to have faith in my potential. However, there was one faction that was up in arms against me. While the writers were supposed to handle news and features, all the hardware and software testing was handled by the CHIP test centre team, who subsequently wrote hardware and software review for the magazine. The one difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ was that the writers got a byline for their stories, while the test centre guys did not – for the stories they did, the byline only said ‘CHIP Test Centre.’ Now, for one issue, we had to feature a comparison test of 3D animation software, which would normally be handled by the test centre team. In this case, I offered to do the story, since I had extensive experience of using 3D animation software and also used to teach 3D StudioMAX to a bunch of students at Pixels Multimedia, in Lucknow. Gourav agreed and I did the comparison test story, and was given a byline for it as well. When the test centre team saw this, they were united in their strong disapproval of this. If they did not get a byline for the software reviews they did, how could someone from the writers’ team – a mere writer, not even an engineer – get a byline?! Gourav stood up for me and for his decision to give me a byline, saying that I deserved a byline because I wasn’t part of the test centre team and had still managed to do, all by myself, part of what was their work, and had done it very well, too. (These, by the way, were Gourav’s words, not mine.) The hue and cry died away in some time, but some members of the test centre team – whom I will not name here – seemed to harbour a permanent grudge against me after this incident. After that, whenever I walked into the test centre, I was often met with a frosty silence. Never overt aggression, just a subtle undercurrent that implied I wasn’t welcome there anymore. Not that paid too much attention to this – I had my own troubles to deal with.

Over time, as the team grew and new team members joined CHIP, the work culture in office began to change somewhat – the earlier purity, the singularity of thought and purpose that held the original team together – started to wither away. We had arguments between writers and copy editors, writers and the test centre, and the test centre and the copy editors. One particularly strident gentleman, who functioned as both writer and copy editor, insisted that he had caught a certain writer, who had joined the team just a few weeks ago, cheating. The said writer was supposed to have been copy-pasting stuff from various sources off the Web and patching his stories together using copied material. The writer was asked to leave. Two senior team members – editors – were also fired. One, because he had a habit of skipping office very often and not delivering his work on time, the other because of his profligate spending of company money and not conforming to ethics that were congruent with JDM’s way of functioning. There were allegations of there being an ‘inner circle’ of people who were particularly close to Gourav and who used that proximity to gain an unfair advantage over the others. One person, who was particularly close to Gourav, became very unpopular with everyone since he was suspected of spying on team members and reporting about their personal lives – the lives people used to live outside of the office – to the boss. Team members used to smirk openly and make derogatory remarks about this person, who couldn’t care less. And there was the argument between Gourav and a senior editorial team member about what construed cheating in the editorial context. In all of this, the general atmosphere in the office became somewhat strained – things weren’t the same anymore.

Things also weren’t working out for my friend, Naintara, who had joined CHIP just a few months ago. Naintara had come from Delhi to Bombay to join CHIP and was essentially a programmer who wanted to try her hand at journalism. The copy editors, however, did not think she was very well suited to writing – at least not the kind of writing that was required at CHIP. On her part, Naintara also wasn’t entirely happy at CHIP and, soon, decided she wanted to go back to Delhi. She and I often used to go out for lunch together in the afternoon, and sometimes we used to hang out at Marine Drive or in Colaba in the evenings, where we’d have a beer or two and maybe grab a bite at Café Mondegar or Leopold Café. The day before she was supposed to go back to Delhi, she invited me over to her house – she used to live with her brother in a shared apartment – for dinner. We ate and drank, and talked for a long time late into the night. The next day, I went to the Bombay Central railway station with her, to see her off as she went back to Delhi for good.

Back in the office, the winds of change were blowing – it was becoming clear to everyone that print magazines were all very well, but the Internet was the next big thing. The dotcom boom of the late-1990s/early-2000s was in full swing and JDM wanted a slice of the action. The company would soon enter into an alliance with ZDNet, of the US, and ZDNetIndia.com was launched. Mr Jasubhai Shah’s son, Maulik started coming to office occasionally, and a certain Shvetank Shah was brought over from the US to oversee ZDNet India’s operations. There was large-scale expansion and a whole bunch of new people had to be hired. Soon, the Taj Building office was deemed too small for JDM’s requirements and the decision was made to move to the Group’s much larger, newer, fancier office premises near Nerul, in New Bombay. Some team members were strongly opposed to the move, saying that a media organization needed to be in the thick of things – in town. DN Road and nearby areas is where all the action was, and that it might be impossible to function from an office situated on a remote industrial estate in far-off New Bombay. These objections were all struck down and in early-2000, our office moved to JDM’s fancy new office in New Bombay.

The dotcom boom was happening all around us and we kept hearing stories of people being paid outrageous sums of money to join new-age Internet companies. Many of these companies did not seem to have anything much going for them – no product, no service, no business, no revenue and no substantial plan – but they were still hiring like crazy, offering pay hikes of anywhere between 100% to 200%. In the meanwhile, Sridhar and I were still on our original salaries – I was getting Rs 12,000 per month, he was on something that around twice this amount. Money was always tight. One evening, due to careless spending and/or lack of planning, Sridhar and I were left with only a few rupees between the both of us. I was head of the writers’ team at CHIP, he was the editor of Network Computing, and between the two of us we did not have enough money to buy ourselves even a simple, basic dinner. Yes, journalism is a poorly-paying profession and many journalists are underpaid and overworked. But this was hitting rock bottom – we couldn’t sink any further.

Luckily, CP Thomas, CHIP’s editorial head, happened to be in the vicinity on that day and purely by chance, he happened to call me up and offered to take Sridhar and me out for dinner. This, believe me, was pure coincidence. He couldn’t possibly have known we had no money – he just happened to call. This, I’d like to believe, was God’s way of letting us know he was looking out for us. We had a good meal that day and we spoke at length about the dotcom boom and the frenzy it had created in media circles. Subconsciously, I think both Sridhar and I decided that day, that it was time for us to move on from JDM and look at better prospects elsewhere.

Given my huge interest in cars, motorcycles and motorsport, I wanted to explore the possibility of working with an automotive publication. In the interests of transparency and in order to let Gourav know that I might soon be moving on, I discussed this with him and he actually offered to put me in touch with Hormazd Sorabjee, the editor of Autocar India. I said yes, a meeting was arranged and I went to meet Hormazd, who discussed my interest in working for Autocar. We spoke at length but in the end, due to certain circumstances, things did not work out.

Soon, some of the more senior people in JDM came to know that I was looking to move on. George, the editor of CRN, offered to put me in touch with one of his friends – Anil Nair, who was at that time heading CNET India. Along with ZDNet, which JDM had brought to India, CNET was one of the biggest technology portals in the world, and Anil was looking at hiring an editorial team. Immediately, reached out to Anil, via George, and a meeting was set up. Anil interviewed me and right away agreed to hire me for CNET India, at a salary of Rs 33,000 per month – quite a jump over the Rs 12K I was getting at CHIP at the time. Anil also asked if I knew anyone else who might be suitable and, of course, I suggested Sridhar’s name. Sridhar was also interviewed and subsequently hired at Rs 50,000 per month – a more than 100% hike over what he was getting at Network Computing. Both of us were elated – we’d gotten big pay hikes, we’d be going to work for an international tech portal and we’d still be working together, right alongside each other.

While Sridhar and I were happy about moving to CNET, the timing wasn’t all that great. Especially in Sridhar’s context. What happened a few days earlier was that Gourav himself had announced that he’d be leaving Mumbai and would be moving to Goa, where he would be setting up his own company. While he’s no longer be the editor of CHIP, he’d continue to be closely involved and would still be providing overall direction and guidance to CHIP’s new editor, along with the heads of all the other print and online properties. The new editor of CHIP, he had announced, would be Sridhar. So, just a few days after that announcement, when Sridhar walked in with the news that he was moving to CNET, fireworks flew. From what Sridhar told me at the time, Gourav came after Sridhar with everything he had and really lay into him. Somehow, Sridhar held his ground and refused to relent. With me, Gourav was still upset and said he was disappointed with my decision to go to CNET, but in the end he accepted my decision and wished me all the best.

And so, with that, my time at CHIP came to an end. The one thing that would never change is that I was – and still am, and always will be – deeply grateful to Gourav for having given me an opportunity to come to Bombay, to work for CHIP. He gave me that very crucial first break, which allowed me to build a career in journalism. CHIP set the tone for the rest of my life, and I owe that to Gourav, who showed faith in a naïve boy from Lucknow, and gave him that first all-important break.

With Gourav himself leaving for Goa (along with Dhirender, Gulnar, Umesh from the design team, copy editor Mohan and one or two others), a whole era had come to an end for CHIP itself. Over the next few years, CHIP would see a succession of editors come and go, but none would ever match Gourav’s sheer, outstanding brilliance. After a few years, JDM would also part ways with Vogel Media and CHIP, as I knew it, would no longer exist. The magazine would later come back to India as Intelligent Computing CHIP, with the Infomedia Group.

As for me, I had left CHIP for good, but in a surprising turn of events, I’d soon be back in the Jasubhai fold, albeit in a different avatar. But that’s another story, for another day. 

The story continues here