What does it take to be a Shesh Narayan Singh? Decades of hard work, hon­esty and hu­mil­ity. To­day, we lost him to Covid19, as we have many oth­ers in the last few weeks. Ace jour­nal­ist SP Singh pays a hum­ble first-per­son trib­ute ac­knowl­edg­ing his dili­gence, schol­ar­ship and stead­fast­ness in his jour­nal­is­tic en­deav­ours.

IN 2012, ARNAB GOSWAMI WAS A VERY DIF­FER­ENT KIND of jour­nal­ist. The New­shour had re­de­fined prime time tele­vi­sion; shrieky was in but sounded right­eous. As op­posed to ri­otous. Ut­tar Pradesh had gone through a very, very long elec­tion process – a seven phase month-long bal­lot­ing ex­er­cise. Mayawati seemed to be fight­ing with her back against the ele­phant-lined wall, and Mu­layam Singh was threat­en­ing to come back storm­ing. Arnab Goswami had in­vented a new tele­vi­sion prop­erty called 100-hour-non­stop-cov­er­age-of-elec­tion-re­sults. This would start three days be­fore the count­ing day. The first three days would be analy­sis-analy­sis-analy­sis, all build­ing up to the su­per day.

The first time I ran into him, he asked me point-blank: “How many seats will Sukhbir Badal get?” All I re­mem­ber was that my an­swer was eva­sive.

Pun­jab, too, had been through the elec­tion on 30th Jan­u­ary, while UP had fin­ished with the last vote polled on 3rd March. Elec­tions to Ut­tarak­hand, Goa and Ma­nipur were also held dur­ing the same days, and re­sults were to be on March 6.

“How many will Mu­layam Singh Ya­dav get?” I asked him as a way of round­ing up my nei­ther-here-nor-there an­swer to his pithy query. “Do Sau Bees.”

“Sorry?”

“Do Sau Bees.” He would chew his words be­fore speak­ing. This was my first meet­ing with Shesh Narayan Singh.

How could he be so sure, I won­dered. Nor­mally, se­nior jour­nal­ists found ways to cre­ate room for some am­bi­gu­ity in such mat­ters. Some kind of a ‘patli gali’ es­cape route, if things did not work out.

As I dis­cov­ered in­side Goswami’s sprawl­ing Times Now Stu­dios, the first three days of analy­sis-analy­sis-analy­sis were an ex­er­cise in show­cas­ing pan­el­lists’ knowl­edge, grasp and word­smith­ery, be­sides some in­tel­lec­tual cud-chew­ing, all roy­ally ig­nored by au­di­ences who just waited for the fourth big day of ac­tual count­ing and re­sults. But the fourth day had its own time di­vi­sion: the first few hours were a com­pressed re­peat of the first three days!

As I dis­cov­ered in­side Goswami’s sprawl­ing Times Now Stu­dios, the first three days of analy­sis-analy­sis-analy­sis were an ex­er­cise in show­cas­ing pan­el­lists’ knowl­edge, grasp and word­smith­ery, be­sides some in­tel­lec­tual cud-chew­ing, all roy­ally ig­nored by au­di­ences who just waited for the fourth big day of ac­tual count­ing and re­sults. But the fourth day had its own time di­vi­sion: the first few hours were a com­pressed re­peat of the first three days!

Af­ter all, what do you say, sur­mise and hang your rep­u­ta­tion on with the prospect of ac­tual hard num­bers hit­ting you in the next few min­utes or cou­ple of hours? Every­one was say­ing some­thing while try­ing not to say any­thing that could be held against him or her in the next few mo­ments.

Every now and then, some­one will quote him. “Yaar, suna tum ne? Shesh Narayan keh raha hai 220 le jayenge neta ji!” In the ho­tel, we would gather over evening poi­son – cof­fee for me, I should clar­ify – and se­nior jour­nal­ists would in­vari­ably re­fer to what Shesh Narayan had said. 220 is all that they talked about. In the first three days, there were many ref­er­ences to 220, every time at­trib­uted to Shesh Narayan.

Arnab clearly was an early riser. By 7 am on Day 4, he had warmed up. We all had a very early break­fast. Cam­eras were rolling. The high blood pres­sure in­duc­ing mu­sic and then sig­na­ture im­agery of Goswami, and we were on – for more analy­sis. Last-minute analy­sis, Arnab Goswami said. “Ab hum kya batayenge last minute? Pehle hee bata diya, utna hee mal­oom tha,” Shesh Narayan whis­pered, lean­ing into my ear. Ku­mar Ketkar could al­ways es­cape by telling some anec­dote, and be­tween Neerja Chowd­hury and Arati Jerath, there were al­ways sto­ries about ‘when I last in­ter­viewed Be­han ji’. It was still 9 am. Then Ajay Bose came in with more Be­han ji sto­ries. 10 am. Yo­gen­dra Ya­dav walked in. 10:15 am. The first re­sults were still a long way off. Hours were pass­ing in pack­ets of 15 min­utes each. Goswami was hy­per with en­ergy, but the re­sults were slow in com­ing.

“Ab hum kya batayenge last minute? Pehle hee bata diya, utna hee mal­oom tha,”

Every­thing was pre­fixed with Su­per. Su­per Hour, Su­per Cov­er­age. Su­per Analy­sis. Su­per Tab­u­la­tion. Su­per Graph­ics. If he wanted to re­tain su­per trac­tion, he needed to do some­thing su­per.

We had had our grub. Sama­jwadi Party num­bers were 110. Sud­denly, Arnab had a bright idea. “Should we dis­cuss what could be the sce­nario if Mu­layam gets stuck at 130-135? That will be very, very in­ter­est­ing.”

“Of course, that will be al­most a Bol­ly­wood thriller, be­cause that would mean any­thing can hap­pen,” said one of the an­a­lysts with a Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics ref­er­ence and some field­work in so­ci­ol­ogy un­der her belt. Sud­denly, every­one had warmed up. The dis­cus­sion got hot to a tem­per­a­ture Arnab clearly loved. “Now we are warm­ing up,” he said.

Tele­vi­sion loves faces, so cam­eras kept zoom­ing in one or the other in quick suc­ces­sion. Arnab wanted to draw in every­one. “Shesh Narayan, the man who knows UP best! What will hap­pen if Mu­layam gets stuck at 130-135?” Shesh Narayan should have been a poker player. Not a twitch on his face. For a mo­ment, he looked askance at the pan­el­lists around him, then looked at Arnab Goswami, and softly said, “Par un ki 220 seat aa rahi hain!”

Gosh, that was so un­der­whelm­ing for a tele­vi­sion de­bate.

But a new idea had been floated by one of the pan­el­lists. Will So­nia Gandhi in­dulge in some state­craft and change the UP gov­er­nor at this stage?

“Par un ki 220 seat aa rahi hain!”

I did not even have an idea at that mo­ment about who was UP gov­er­nor at the time. Ban­wari Lal Joshi had not made much news even when he was Lieu­tenant-Gov­er­nor of Delhi from 2004 to 2007. A for­mer cop with old-time val­ues, some­one who had worked with Lal Ba­hadur Shas­tri, spent time helm­ing a Cal­i­for­nia-based NGO of­fer­ing schol­ar­ship to bright and needy In­dian stu­dents, Joshi was­n’t ex­pected to skirt around the rule book if Mayawati de­cided to have tea with So­nia Gandhi and if the two had in­vited Lalu Prasad over. “Joshi won’t help Con­gress. Maybe it will be a good move to bring in Moti Lal Vora,” said an­other pan­el­list who had cov­ered In­dian pol­i­tics for four decades.

Lis­ten­ing to this Su­per Analy­sis, I won­dered whether Vora would be watch­ing this seg­ment, and how would it por­tray him on the ethics scale of 1 to 10, when sud­denly Arnab turned to the man he had de­clared to the world as “the man who knows UP best!”

“Nahi, mera mat­lab, gov­er­nor kyon badlegi Con­gress?” I thought he prob­a­bly could not un­der­stand Arn­ab’s ques­tion.

Arnab tried ex­plain­ing. This time in Hindi. “Agar Mu­layam Singh ma­jor­ity nahi le paate, Con­gress plus Mayawati plus RJD ka koyee chance ban sakta hai, aur chotti chotti par­tiyan aur in­de­pen­dent ek saath aa jayen, to phir pehle in­vi­ta­tion Mu­layam ko na dena ho, aur….”

By now, Shesh Narayan had got it. And he had a re­sponse.

“Par Mu­layam ki to 220 seat aa rahi hain!”

We broke for tea when I asked Vinod Mehta how sure he was about Shesh Narayan’s fig­ure of 220. “Ar­rey, Mu­layam is get­ting 220!” Wow! I thought. Mehta was also equally em­phatic. “So you’re very sure?” I asked Mehta. “Shesh Narayan keh raha hai,” he said.

So, this was the ev­i­dence.

“You think he’s right?” I asked him. “Bhai, no one knows UP bet­ter than him,” Mehta said. Com­ing from Vinod Mehta, that was a sort of a gold medal for any jour­nal­ist.

Our cud-chew­ing went on. There was­n’t much time for Pun­jab. Times Now’s Was­bir Hus­sain, who nor­mally used to ap­pear on my non-smart tele­vi­sion screen from Guwa­hati, was also in the stu­dio. “Hey, why are you here?” I asked him. “Ma­nipur!” he said by way of ex­pla­na­tion.

“Who cares about Ma­nipur? I am Pun­jab and no one has cared about it ever since UP re­sults started trick­ling in. Id­har mein aaj Ma­nipur main hee hoon. Aap ki to shayad baari bhee na aaye!” I told him. Shesh Narayan laughed the loud­est. Was­bir got very lit­tle chance to talk about Ma­nipur.

UP was the flavour. The re­sults kept trick­ling in. An­a­lysts kept tweak­ing their analy­sis to keep it in sync with the emerg­ing re­sults. Dur­ing the morn­ing hours, Con­gress was ‘a force to reckon with af­ter years’. By late af­ter­noon, they sur­mised, based on their decades of ex­pe­ri­ence of re­port­ing the key po­lit­i­cal state, that ‘Con­gress had lit­tle chance to make it in states where re­gional strong heads have emerged’. The SP fig­ure kept ris­ing in that Su­per Graphic and seemed to pause at 217 for some time. Then 218.

Some­one re­mem­bered Shesh Narayan. “Aap 220 keh rahe the!”

“Ji”
“Ho gaya al­most.”

“Dekho, 220 ka tha mera es­ti­mate. Thodi galti ho sakti hai…” 

By evening, SP fig­ure touched 220, then 221. Then 223. And fi­nally 224.

“Dekho, 220 ka tha mera es­ti­mate. Thodi galti ho sakti hai…” Shesh Narayan was still sound­ing hum­ble as he started ex­plain­ing which four-five seats he could have got­ten wrong.

By evening, SP fig­ure touched 220, then 221. Then 223. And fi­nally 224.

We wound up in the stu­dio at around 10:30 pm. At din­ner, Shesh Narayan was try­ing to ex­plain a few seats that he said he prob­a­bly should have vis­ited again be­cause his es­ti­mate had not proven cor­rect. He was still hum­ble, very hum­ble. He was still talk­ing data, vote per­cent­ages, fac­tional fights on cer­tain seats, the sur­prise num­ber of votes that an in­de­pen­dent had got­ten in some par­tic­u­lar seat.

I was mes­merised by not just the man’s knowl­edge, but by the amount and qual­ity of hard ground­work he had done, trav­el­ling all over Ut­tar Pradesh, get­ting to know it over decades, and re­main­ing hum­ble af­ter all of that.

Shesh Narayan Singh ji died to­day, on May 7, 2021, due to Covid-19. I wish I had prayed harder. I did not even get to know he was sick. I wish I had said a spe­cial prayer for him.

Shesh Narayan Singh ji died to­day, on May 7, 2021, due to Covid-19. I wish I had prayed harder. I did not even get to know he was sick. I wish I had said a spe­cial prayer for him.

I won­der if I will ever meet some­one who’s so sure of his craft, field­work, grass­roots level un­der­stand­ing and is so hum­ble. Over the years, he stayed in touch, al­ways ask­ing about Pun­jab’s po­lit­i­cal scene. Some­times, he would ask about num­bers. I would of­ten tell him jour­nal­ist x says this, an­a­lyst y says this. “Aap ka kya es­ti­mate hai?” he would ask. My re­sponse al­ways had that am­bi­gu­ity exit route, that patli gali. I never mus­tered up the courage to re­spond with the kind of sure­foot­ed­ness he ex­pected a jour­nal­ist to have to be able to say un­am­bigu­ously, with­out bat­ting an eye­lid: Do Sau Bees!

Rest in peace, sir. They don’t make ’em like you any­more! And God! we need 220 like him for every Shesh Narayan we lose, and we need him back, too.