| From the Editor |
BY WATSON SIMS
Watson Sims was AP’s bureau chief in New Delhi from 1958 to 1961. He joined the AP in Nashville in 1947, held a 1952 Nieman Fellowship at Harvard and later worked in New York and London. He also served as World Services editor, general executive for Personnel and deputy director of World Services before retiring from the AP in 1971. Sims spent 15 years as editor of newspapers in Michigan and New Jersey before retiring to Asheville, N.C.
March 21, 1961 was a memorable day for AP in India. That was the day United News of India, began operation, using AP exclusively for foreign news. It was also the day that AP was evicted and tossed lock, stock and typewriter out on the street.
A far cry from the spacious offices into which AP’s India operations moved last October, the New Delhi bureau in 1961 occupied three rooms in a ramshackle row house on Narendra Place. Two other rooms provided quarters for Correspondent Rangaswamy Satakopan and his family.
Whatever the bureau lacked in luxury was compensated by our location on Narendra Place, a diversion off Parliament Street, between downtown and the main government buildings. Parliament was a favored route for demonstrations, camels, elephants and occasionally holy men.
These colorful if musty quarters had long been home to AP when I arrived as bureau chief in 1958. Monthly rent of $18 was mailed to a post office box, and no one had met the landlord. Then, out of the blue, came a letter complaining of “machinery” being used in the bureau. I replied that we only used typewriters. My letter was not acknowledged. When another letter arrived, I wrote to ask a meeting with the landlord, but again there was no reply.
On March 21 I returned from the United News of India’s opening ceremony to find Henry Bradsher in front of the bureau, surrounded by office furniture. Satakopan, his wife and son were out back with their household belongings. Inside, two men in turbans were removing a ceiling fan. I demanded an explanation, but they shrugged and went on stripping the office.
“Maybe Khushwant Singh would know who is behind it,” said Satakopan.
I visited Singh, a noted Indian author and friend, and he was able to provide address of our building’s owner.
AP's landlord lived in an imposing mansion, where a gatehouse sentry checked by telephone before leading me to an office where a man with a white beard and turban sat behind a huge desk.
“You should not be using machinery in that building,” he said. We suspected that the owner wanted to replace the row house with something more profitable.
I told him that Correspondent Preston Grover, a friend of Nehru and Gandhi, had rented the office during India’s struggle for independence. Now AP was evicted without notice, and could not send news of India to the rest of the world.
“If I let you back in, will you look for another place?” he asked cautiously.
I said I would begin looking that very day.
“Then go back,” he said. “It will be okay.”
Back at Narendra Place, we went to work, with ceiling fans still piled atop desks and curtains on the floor. That afternoon, I began looking for a new office and also filed suit against unlawful eviction from a rent-controlled building. The judge ruled in our favor, and 25 years passed before AP moved out and a ten-storied office building rose above Narendra Place. (Feb. 20, 2004)