Is it true that when the Emergency was announced, electricity supply to newspaper offices was cut off?
The day before the Emergency was announced, as a young reporter with the Patriot newspaper in Delhi, I had gone to cover a rally in Ramlila Maidan which was being addressed by JP (Jayaprakash Narayan) himself. I got a good story—JP was not upbeat, and was complaining that the Total Revolution (against the Indira Gandhi regime) was not taking off. It was like a statement of defeat. My editor was happy with the story and, being on the crime beat, I was looking forward to having a political story of mine feature on Page 1. But the next morning, I found no newspapers at my doorstep. I headed to office, where I met a colleague outside and asked him how they had played my story. His face was grim. “Don’t talk too much,” he said. “There is an Emergency.” When I walked in, the office was in absolute darkness. Everyone was looking shattered. Only one person was happy, my eccentric editor, Edatata Narayanan. There were no papers for the next three days. When they came out none published any edit
