It was the best of times, it was the worst of times – as Anu Malik once famously said. For me though, the summer of 1990 ranks as the time of missed opportunity. The time when, along with my partner in crime, I came close, this close (I am shaping a bilaang with my palm here) to being counted as one half of the fearless duo who exposed the wheeling-dealing and corruption within the system and brought the government down. We could have been the Woodward and Bernstein of India, feted and honoured by powerful media houses, invited on all the exalted TV panels, awarded Rajya Sabha memberships and Padmas by the State. Instead, we remain what we are, feted and honoured by our RWAs, invited to all our kids’ birthday parties and awarded return gifts that our kids reject contemptuously once they are back home.

The episode would have remained buried in the deep recesses of my brain, were it not for the current upsurge in the usage of one particular word of the Queen’s language. Upsurge perhaps doesn’t do justice. A biblical flood, a dam-burst, a pole-melt, seems more appropriate.

The word, as you might have guessed, is “source”, and every time I hear Barkha or Rajdeep or Arnab mention it, my skin begins to crawl and my mind harks back to 1990 and what could have been.

So who is this source they keep quoting ad infinitum? Assuming that every piece of vital information can come only from a person vital for the well-being of a particular party, this “inside source” or “source close to us” or “highly placed source” or “confirmed source” has to be just one man or woman right at the very top. Now all famous sources, as we well know, disclose their identity after a minimum of 20 years – something to do with royalty payments, I imagine. Sten-Bofors-Lindstrom being a shining example of this unwritten rule. I wouldn’t be surprised, therefore, if Sonia Gandhi and Nitin Gadkari were to come out in 2032, either on Face the Nation or The Buck Stops Here and disclose that they were the sources feeding information during the Presidential Elections of 2012. That they used the magic password: “Only for you, my friend! Be kind towards me in your nine o’clock debates”, every time they met an anchor in an underground car park somewhere in Greater Noida.

Unearthing the identity of a source is not easy. The myth and the legend alone make it impossible to “out” him or her, and one has to wait for death or an autobiography. Who can forget Deep Throat, a trinity of gods rolled into one? He was, after all, the Brahma who gave birth to investigative journalism, the Vishnu who safeguarded the sanctity of reportage, and the Shiva who unlocked his third eye and singed Nixon to a heap of smouldering ash. Yes, I am talking of the most famous source in history: Deep Throat. Cultivated and nurtured by two Washington Post journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Deep Throat was instrumental in uncovering the Watergate scandal that rocked the White House in the 70s. The book, All The President’s Men – later made into a film by the same name – provides a detailed account of the investigation that ultimately lit Nixon’s fuse.

But what’s with the nom de plume? Deep Throat gives the impression of some disagreeable activity Bill Clinton, not Richard Nixon, might have indulged in. Indeed, one might be forgiven for thinking the source was a prostitute whose kotha Woodward and Bernstein regularly visited to get hot tips and intel. Actually, it was the highest grossing porn film of that time, with a delightful plot and excellent camerawork – er, so they say – and the source thought it clever to go by the alias Deep Throat. Some say he first met Woodward in a theatre that was screening Deep Throat. They watched the film with all the solemnity and focus it deserved and after the interval, feeling a lot more relaxed, decided to come together and shaft Nixon and his government.

Now, it is true, we have always come up with our own versions of all things Western – be it Bollywood films, generic drugs, touch screen tablets or disco compositions. Coca Cola morphed to Campa Cola and Agnetha Fältskog to Usha Uthup before you could blurt, “copy-paste!”. It gives us a sense of pride and accomplishment, and quite right, too: those who haven’t tasted Coca Cola or heard Abba or watched Memento or The Miracle Worker go home with the impression that we are a highly creative and original lot. Amazingly, though, there is one area where all our imitation know-how and jugaads have come to nought. Our sources, you see, have no pen names, not even porno ones. Yes, we haven’t yet had an equivalent of Deep Throat.

Oh, but we very nearly did, we so very nearly did…

The summer of 1990. I was seventeen. It was the height of the anti-Mandal agitation. The colleges had all been shut down. No teaching, only seeing. Seeing your friends take out candlelight processions, go on the rampage, and in the process get lathi-charged. It was all very exhilarating, heroic even, and for someone whose only brush with anarchist adventure had been the ownership of a Ché t-shirt, it was Wonderland.

A nondescript chowk was renamed Kranti Chowk – so one could say to one’s grandchildren when the time came: “I was at Kranti Chowk!”. And every evening we would assemble in hordes and stand and watch gory Newstrack videos of police and state atrocities, keeping most of our steam reserved for DD News that was deliberately shown in the end, knowing that it would have an abundance of VP Singh clips and sound bites.

Conspiracy theories abounded, especially after one student stoned the Kranti Chowk TV while another decided to try out our own version of the Quang Duc self-immolation. The wise men of our fraternity were sure of government agents and moles having infiltrated the hallowed university premises and its surrounding areas, disregarding the fact that it was virtually impossible for any government agent to look 17. This wasn’t some university in the UP hinterland where students not only look 40, they are 40. This was the University of Delhi, the hunting ground of famous men and women who’d helped shape the destiny of the nation in no mean measure. (Yes, blame the bastards!) In any case, we were asked to be forever on our guard, and to report back the moment we saw any suspicious activity, i.e. a 17-year-old talking in hushed tones with another 17-year-old.

It was hopeless, and soon our initial enthusiasm gave way to acute boredom. Remember, there was no facebook, no Youtube, no video-sharing and circulation in those days. The only things that circulated in our hostels were stale air and tattered copies of Human Digest and Debonair. To beat the monotony, there were, of course, ahem, two visits a week to Amba theatre for the morning show. Alright, make that five.

There might be a whole generation of Indians oblivious to a cultural heritage and a way of life that, admittedly now lost, gave us the strength to endure the trauma of our afternoons, evenings, and nights – held our centre, so to speak. Yes, the morning show. The lights dimmed, the projector rolled, the khatmals feasted, and we heard languages we had seldom heard before. Malayalam, Telugu, Polish, Czech, Serbian. What am I saying – we weren’t there for the languages, my friend and I. We were there for Reshma and her Jawani. The film – if one could use the word – was originally called Layanam, and it had set fire to the loins of all Nabokov lovers south of the Vindhyas. It threatened to do the same for the starving lot who waited expectantly for deliverance the other side of the mountain range.

One fine morning, while appreciating the camerawork and the screenplay of Reshma ki Jawani – having already appreciated the sound-mixing and acting on previous occasions – we noticed two young men talking in hushed tones, three chairs to our left.

My friend elbowed me and I turned to him and nodded. “Yes, yes”, I said, “I also liked the bit where the supporting actress was supporting a man twice her weight while still managing to balance an anthology of earthen pots on her forehead.”

“No, you idiot!”, he hissed. “I meant those two. They are talking of Mandal.”

“So?”, I said, irritated and wanting to return to the astonishing scene – surely the earthen pots were glued to each other.

“One of them is talking of full government support if one student body turns against the other. I am not sure but I heard the mention of money – and promise of public sector jobs.”

“Nonsense”, I said. “That’s exactly what we guys are fighting for, last I heard – the promise of public sector jobs.”

“But you don’t understand. Jobs only for him and his friends!”

“Enough!”, I exploded. “These things don’t happen during morning shows in Amba. Now be quiet.”

That was that. A week later, we heard the government had managed to do exactly that – cause a rift between the two student bodies. And we all know what happens when two student bodies come to blows. The values of Brotherhood and Fraternity are sacrificed faster than a pair of goats at a Kali temple. The whole agitation fizzled out, the colleges reopened, the teaching resumed. It was back to normal. Our Reshma ki Jawani never got a chance to become a Deep Throat. Maybe it was all for the good, or some jugaadu SOB would’ve very soon come up with Gehra Gulaa or some such, beating us to the hallowed portals of the Rajya Sabha. Yes, perhaps it was all for the good…

This article first appeared in newslaundry on Jun. 23, 2012.