‘Sex sells. Shah Rukh Khan sells. Scandal sells. That’s three Ss for you, all three together spell Success. But this fucking rag does not spell success. It spells shit. That’s another fucking S for you. This fucking rag spells shit because it has neither Shah Rukh, nor scandal and definitely no sex. How in the fucking hell are we going to sell this shit? Now, if you can sell this shit you must be a fucking genius. But I didn’t hire you to be a fucking genius. I hired you to do my bidding because I am the fucking editor. What part of it don’t you fucking understand?’

This is the weekly Monday morning edit meeting for the newest weekly newspaper a.k.a. ‘f***ing rag’ launched in New Delhi. It’s called Tabloid and I’ve joined it three months back.

The man giving the lecture is Tabloid’s editor. His name is Hrindham Bandopadhyay, poor thing, but he insists everyone either call him Ranu—which his mother calls him—or Ed, which is short for editor. Ed has really short, cropped hair, wears glasses with thick, black frames and his clothes are always, always in various shades of khaki. In fact, until I met him I hadn’t known that khaki had so many different shades.

Ed likes neat gin, expensive Oriental food, people who speak really good English, foreign-returned Indian authors, women who wear business suits and women who can say ‘tits’ and ‘f***ing’. In fact Ed likes f***ing so much he usually says it at least ten times in one sentence. According to office legend, Ed’s record is f***ing twenty-one times in eight seconds though legend also has it that the reporter who counted was fired soon after.

Currently, Ed is shouting at everyone present in the conference room—the entire news bureau, the features team and a couple of office peons thrown in as well because Ed is an equal opportunities employer.

‘The operative phrase here is “spell success”. Please don’t mind if I butt in Ed—you are right, but then you’re always right,’ Sinha says.

Chief of News Ravikant Sinha, better known as Sinha, loves focusing on the ‘operative phrase’ and has been in the news business for twenty years. He is tall, bald(ing), has a very fit body but an unmemorable face, and a baritone that could rival the late Amrish Puri. Sinha is said to have the best ‘nose for news’ and can apparently smell out a good story before anyone else. His fans love talking about how Sinha had not just predicted the Babri Masjid demolition, the Sarojini Nagar bomb blasts and Aishwarya Rai winning the Miss World title—he had his copy ready for publication before the incidents happened.