Newsroom Mafia by Oswald Pereira- Book Review

mahekmishra

Feb 1, 2012, 11:14 am

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A wonderful book to read and enjoy More details

A wonderful book to read and enjoy Hide details

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Jan 30, 2012, 5:25 am

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Oscar Pinto is a crime reporter who has inside information about the arrest of the Don Narayan Swamy. He publishes this information in “The Newsroom”, where he works .. More details

Oscar Pinto is a crime reporter who has inside information about the arrest of the Don Narayan Swamy. He publishes this information in “The Newsroom”, where he works as a reporter. For the first time in the 150 year history of the newspaper, a story was being published even before the event had taken place! Oscar’s editor Sreedhar Shastri had a lot of trust in the information given by the police commissioner, Donald Fernandez, who had taken a tough stand against criminals in Mumbai, particularly the Don, Narayan Swamy.
Narayan Swamy had a large number of criminals, newspaper reporters, the police and politicians in his network. He has been ruling the underworld for many decades. The people in his ‘employment’ were very handsomely rewarded by the Don in return for ‘favours’. If someone did not deliver or was caught by the police, however close he may be was eliminated by the Don. Now the escape of the Don was necessary as his trusted deputy Guruji a/s Pitambara was arrested for the murder of Jitender . Guruji was Narayan Swamy’s trusted henchman and decided to eliminate Jitender because he was taken by the police. Guruji’s arrest was a threat to the Don. He had to escape out of Mumbai. With the police closing in on him, he leaves Mumbai with the help of politicians and senior police officers in Madras. The police in Chennai get a tip off and end up making an arrest. This leads to an embarrassing situation for the Madras police, but their hands are tied as the police commissioner and a powerful politician are involved in the plot.
The story weaves through the nexus of the criminals, the police and their accomplices and gives us an inside story of how things work in the journalist’s space - “ the stock or the price that a reporter commanded did not necessarily match the market value or size of his newspaper ; it was proportionate to his bargaining skills and the art of news or knowledge management. There was a price for printing a story. But, in most cases, the price for not printing a story was higher.”

The narrative gives a lot of details of the key people who were in Narayan Swamy’s ‘employment – Sudhakar, Manian, Stella kutty . The police are also given their due in the story and the dedication and single mindedness of a few cops comes across throughout the book.

The narrative is based in Mumbai and then in Madras and south India. However, even though it is fictional, the names of the buildings and street names in Madras do not evoke the mood that the story is based in Madras. The choice of names has a very Bombay or Calcutta feel to it. The pace of the novel is racy in parts. For the most part, the descriptions go into detail about the sleaze involved in the crime world. Even though the story is set in the 80s, the situations have a very contemporary feel to it. The book is replete with incidents that could make it a favourite for a movie adaptation. Hide details

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natarajan.srivatsa

Jan 21, 2012, 10:58 am

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‘The Newsroom Mafia’ is the debut novel of Oswald Pereira. The title gives the reader an idea of the contents between the covers – the press and the underworld. A j.. More details

‘The Newsroom Mafia’ is the debut novel of Oswald Pereira. The title gives the reader an idea of the contents between the covers – the press and the underworld. A journalist for over three decades, Pereira knows how the newspapers work. The fierce competition amidst journalists for coveted beats and the charm of a “byline”, the thrill in being the first to break news and the resultant fame, the undercurrents in the editorial board, the deadlines to be met, the protocols to be followed, Pereira brings out all that and more in his writing. He proves how the pen is mightier than the sword, how the public can be swayed by newspaper reports that attain gospel status and how those in power are dependent on favourable stories to be highlighted when they happen sometimes by themselves but are staged more often.

On the one hand is the media and on the other is the mafia, the seedy underworld with its tentacles spread everywhere. At times, one would even wonder if the Godfather is indeed God himself, by virtue of the power he wields. The Boss, in this story, is the South Indian Don, Narayan Swamy, who was born in penury but rose from rags to riches through muscle power in the slums of Dharavi. Throughout the book, the author brings out different facets of the Don as though to explain why a man who could mercilessly order the killing of someone, would also send millions to the victim’s family. The physical appearance of the crime king and some of the events narrated are bound to bring to mind the late Varadaraja Mudaliar as well as Kamal Hassan as Velu Nayakar in Mani Ratnam’s Tamizh film ‘Nayakan’, but the similarity ends there.

The reader gets an idea of what the underworld deems as honour, as compared to honour amidst politicians, journalists and the police.The perennial battle waged by the police headed by Supercop Donald Fernadez who is perilously close to losing his job but fights on determinedly for restoring the pride of Bombay Police against the nefarious activities of the underworld, the unscrupulous politicians and policemen who are on their ‘take’, the guile of a female reporter who is not just a pretty thing but has a brilliant brain too, the very ethical Editor-in –Chief Sreedhar Shastri who plays a supportive role to Oscar Pinto, the star reporter and protagonist are portrayed very well by Pereira.

The book is fast paced and is of the kind that one would like to read at one go like I did. A good read. - Sri Hide details

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chryselle

Jan 16, 2012, 12:23 pm

'The Newsroom Mafia' intrigued me from a journalist's point of view. The plot - supercop fights Bombay don and how the media colludes and conspires to make various events.. More details

'The Newsroom Mafia' intrigued me from a journalist's point of view. The plot - supercop fights Bombay don and how the media colludes and conspires to make various events happen - is so real that it could have been from one of our newspapers. And perhaps it was. The newspaper in the novel is the Victorian Grand Old Dame of Bombay, which is what the TOI is called. A rival newspaper is called First Xpress. A little more creativity could have been used here to make the establishments more fictional, and the story, therefore more plausible.

Manipulation of the news by newspapers and journalists is not a new thing. The book gives readers an idea of how insidious and pervasive this relationship between crime and the media really is. It leaves you asking questions: who can we trust, if not our newspapers to give us some degree of the truth?

Bollywood will love this book. It has everything a pot-boiler needs - drama, tough cops, violence, sex and bad guys. Oswald Pereira's debut novel gives us food for thought. And will make you rethink your newspaper subscription in the morning. Hide details

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harish_p

Jan 14, 2012, 5:22 am

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The Newsroom Mafia is the second Indian novel that I read in recent times with the term newsroom in the title. The first one, also a debut novel written by a professional.. More details

The Newsroom Mafia is the second Indian novel that I read in recent times with the term newsroom in the title. The first one, also a debut novel written by a professional journalist centering on her life in newsroom, was a very readable novel. But the associations that come with the term newsroom is much more serious and demanding because the effect of media in the activities, decisions and opinions that we make in our life is large. Thus when someone attempts to tell a story about newspapers or media in general, the expectations become humungous, which was not met in the novel that I read before. For that reason I had an apprehension while taking The Newsroom Mafia by veteran journalist Oswald Pereira for reading.

But the novel delivers and how! The Newsroom Mafia, as the name indicates is a story based on the intrusion of crime into fourth estate. What strikes the reader hard is the fact that news can be manipulated for devious ends. The story set in eighties is chilling real. The characters are multi layered and drawn from life. The motives, the master plans, the encounters every thing is life like. Oswald Pereira has used his three decades of experience masterfully in crafting this page turner.

Super-cop Donald Fernandez is hell bent on demolishing the criminal enterprise of Don Narayan Swamy, an underworld king who is as popular among corrupt politicians and bureaucracy as with common people. It is not an easy task when the whole world is loyal to the Don. Aiding Donald in his venture is the aspiring investigative journalist Oscar Pinto of The Newsroom, an orthodox English newspaper. The story is told in a first person account by Oscar. Every available ammunition is tried by both sides to get an upper hand in the game. Much of the war is fought through media when both sides try to manipulate the news to turn the opinion n favor or against the party they prefer. Journalists are bought, news stories are created, planted and manipulated every day for this end.

A good crime novel written in Indian English is a non existent genre (if you try to match with British and American standard of novels). But The Newsroom Mafia comes close to it. Very close I should say. If there are any cons, like certain really unwanted subplots and structural inconsistencies in some parts, it has to be excused as the first attempt of an otherwise gifted writer. So I will recommend everyone who likes their reads with a certain amount of violence and suspense to read The Newsroom mafia. But only hitch is that from the next day you will read every news story twice, to cross check if you have missed anything. Hide details

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Achmed

Jan 9, 2012, 5:31 am

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A very fast paced, intriguing read, The Newsroom Mafia shows a different aspect of media unknown to many. Given, in this age where every incident eventually gets picked u.. More details

A very fast paced, intriguing read, The Newsroom Mafia shows a different aspect of media unknown to many. Given, in this age where every incident eventually gets picked up for a movie story, the plot of the novel outshines even the best media-based movies till date.

The story shows a police commissioner trying, with all his wit and power, to nab an underworld don. While he is on the verge of victory, things go awry. And it is soon known that the don uses his power (money and influence) to mold the media and people in the force to walk his way, and laughs in the face of adversity.
Some very insightful events (fictionalized) bring out the scheming truth of the ruthless world around us. We cannot trust the media blindly. “News” as we know it has lost most of its authenticity in this age, where money (and power) rules the game.
A racy, compelling crime thriller, The Newsroom Mafia captures the unholy alliance between the fourth estate, the underworld and the government. Brilliantly put by the author.
Must Read! Hide details

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rituparna

Jan 8, 2012, 9:22 am

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It's been years since my Dad and I switched our reading habits and moved on to different genres. My first book from BookChums however had both of us fighting over it! Tha.. More details

It's been years since my Dad and I switched our reading habits and moved on to different genres. My first book from BookChums however had both of us fighting over it! Thank God, I had a review to do and he relented.

As I read The Newsroom Mafia, the one phrase that kept echoing in my mind from start to finish was "Dhanda Hai Par Ganda Hai Yeh". RGV's 2002 film 'Company' based on Dawood Ibrahim's life and times kept coming back to me, and like a background score my brain kept humming the song! It is quite a thing that like the film the book is based on an underworld Don Narayan Swamy, but the ‘dhanda’ that the book really refers to is the profession of journalism. And being an insider in the business of news production I know how far a corruptible business this is! Considering the writer is a former journalist (with a name strikingly similar to his star reporter in the novel Oscar Pinto) and is a teacher of journalism, I’d like to ask him a thing or two about how he instructs his students on the ethics of journalism! I wonder what his students would have to say after reading the book. *wicked smile*

The allure of a news scoop is as tempting as a dollop of ice cream. For a newspaper reporter it is about having a headline, like for a television correspondent it translates into higher TRP. The rewards are too immediate and the hunger of bigger, mouthful stories is insatiable. Oscar Pinto’s camaraderie with supercop Donald Fernandes is a fine example of how a journalist befriends a cop for mutual benefit. A Police Commissioner hungry for publicity and a news reporter looking for the next big exclusive are a lethal combination. This mutually beneficial relationship has its own pitfalls though, like Oscar and Donald’s friendship goes through. Twists and turns, exclusives and revelations later, the last page of the novel holds the key to their connection. You cannot dislike them for the deal that they have, but you can’t like them either! You will cluck your tongue, shake your head and read every crime news piece in the newspaper with a sense of doubt.

The novel is set in the late 1980’s when Mumbai was Bombay. I found that very, very interesting. For one it was really the time when the big bad ‘underworld’ was spreading its roots in the city. Illicit liquor joints, bootlegging, smuggling, running prostitution hubs, funding elections and political parties, it was really the precursor to the grey days of crime in the city. Terrorism came in a little later, not too far though. I quite liked the Godfather, Narayan Swamy. A Tamilian living in the city of Bombay (since I am talking about a Don who lived in a city called Bombay, I hope no one will drag me to jail!) rises to the rank of a Godfather and in the wake of his new found status looks at covering up his tracks in the murky world of crime. ‘Sarkar’ anyone? If RGV’s Amitabh Bachchan starrer was a tribute to Mario Puzo’s Godfather, Oswald Pereira’s Narayan Swamy is an amalgamation of the two! I quite like the Don actually. The part where he deals with politician Bhoomipanar is hilarious! He depends on his press triumvirate and when the time is right he coldly eliminates the odd one out. Quite like a Don who doesn’t get his hands dirty, he plays his pawns in a way that his work is done. But really his dark deeds haunt him and he looks at ‘social service’ as a means of cleansing his soul. The drama around his personality works!

Most of the characters around Narayan Swamy’s den are sycophants, except for the journalist turned economical adviser to the Don. He becomes a turncoat and is duly punished for it. Quite the thing that you would expect, right? His men are scared of him, like they revere him and whitewash his crime riddled empire with the social work he does. The lawyer and chief adviser Chandran is an interesting character. The fact that tears sprout his eyes at the mention of his benefactor makes him a likeable chap.

The plot and structure of the book is apt. A crime thriller has to be a page turner. It has to hold your attention with every word. The Newsroom Mafia does all that and more. In parts I could imagine Oscar Pinto’s narration as a voice over in a film. Imagine a Makrand Deshpande reading it…nice! That brings me to the one quality that I think almost everyone will agree to. The Newsroom Mafia is a book waiting to be converted into a film. The city, its tryst with the underworld, a larger than life Don who you cannot totally hate, his army of sycophants, corrupt and upright cops, dirty politicians and sullied journalists – Oswald Pereira has a story that is screaming for Ram Gopal Varma’s attention. Yes, despite the film makers recent duds at the box office, he is the one man who handles the underworld as an excellent cinematic subject!

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Madhu_Nair

Dec 28, 2011, 2:19 am

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Gripping, thrilling and fast-paced, Oscar Pereira’s The Newsroom Mafia is a piece of work that gets you in the driver’s seat right from the start. A veteran-journalis.. More details

Gripping, thrilling and fast-paced, Oscar Pereira’s The Newsroom Mafia is a piece of work that gets you in the driver’s seat right from the start. A veteran-journalist, Oscar gives an inside view of the unholy nexus between the police, the corporate sector, the underworld and the print media aptly known as the Fourth Estate. While many of us look up to the press and take their word as the final one, Oscar sheds light on how members of the media exploit it for their own good. What’s more interesting is the manner in which the author narrates the entire plot with every line egging you to read on further. There is hardly any dull moment in the book and Oscar also manages to throw in quite a number of surprises.

The plot surrounds an underworld Don, Narayan Swamy, who is challenged by a Supercop, the Commissioner of Mumbai, Donald Fernandez. While the commissioner is a sincere cop, his job demands a lot of dirty tactics to trap the invincible gangster. The Don, usually humble and sober, is a witty character with a world full of cash, political backup and some good brains from the media. While many stories are just of politicos and armed gangsters taking the center stage, here the media steals the show. The book gives very good insights on how the media can twist and turn any story to make it look good or bad in return for some money and power. What follows is a showdown of ultimate power, filthy thinking and wit which both the lawmakers and the law breakers use as their weapon to bring each other down.

Bollywood producers if you’re reading this, go for it. Has everything in it to be a potboiler. This book is a serious must-read for those eager to have some thrill. Hide details

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BookChums

Dec 27, 2011, 3:16 am

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It’s true…and proven time and again - men opt for a “crime-thriller-suspense” novel when it comes to writing. And rightly so. They have a knack to capture and po.. More details

It’s true…and proven time and again - men opt for a “crime-thriller-suspense” novel when it comes to writing. And rightly so. They have a knack to capture and portray the precise feelings associated with the genre. And Oswald Periera does complete justice to his debut novel- The Newsroom Mafia that offers more than just the thrill of being a media-related-crime story.
The story is about how the Mumbai police commissioner Donald Fernandez puts all his efforts in nabbing the don, Narayan Swamy, with the help of Oscar Pinto, a young crime reporter with “The Newsroom”, one of India’s most venerable newspapers. But we see how Swamy’s ties in the media are stronger, and more effective than Fernandez can think of. How some of the “exclusive” stories were planted and how most police officials, reporters and politicians were mere pawns controlled by the don, is scripted quite brilliantly by the author.
The battle of power, and wits, played with dirty tactics by both, the law breakers and the law abiders raises a lot many questions in the mind of the reader, regarding the authenticity and the truthfulness of the media and the people attached to it.
Rightfully the book description says, “The Newsroom Mafia captures the unholy alliance between the fourth estate, the underworld and the government”.
The narrative is riveting. The language is simple and lucid; the pace perfect to keep you turning page-after-page without a break; and the description of places/situations/events and the people so meticulous and faithful that it breathes life in to the words.
The story is more of an eye-opener about things that happen in the media industry and how people (read: cops, politicians, the underworld and media) work their ways around situations and their counter-parts. What happens behind the curtains and the camera is only known to the insiders. Oswald bares the truth, and how!
Who says money can’t buy everything. In today’s world, the media is offered a more-than-handsome-amount to not print/publish/uncover stories that are critical and important for the public.
To say that not everyone is as corrupt or dishonest is true. But the number (or percentage) of such honest folks is miniscule.
The author’s background as a crime reporter gives him the leverage to churn out such a fantastic piece of crime-thriller. With such in depth research and insight, the book feels more real than just “a piece of fiction”.

MUST MUST MUST READ! Hide details

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Richa_Here

Dec 22, 2011, 10:17 am

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A fine blend of fiction and reality make this novel a great read. I was hooked right from the opening line to the last page. Common people will never trust the media as .. More details

A fine blend of fiction and reality make this novel a great read. I was hooked right from the opening line to the last page.
Common people will never trust the media as much on reading this book. And they would be justified in doing so. Coming from a credible journalist, I’d much rather believe and go by the book than believe what I see or read hereon.
“There was a price for printing a story. But, in most cases, the price for not printing a story was higher.” How can you escape the impact of this sentence!
How the Super-cop (police commissioner) opens war with the don only to end up being played upon by the ones he trusted makes for a great suspense and thrill.
While reading the book, the news of J Dey’s murder and the investigations therein struck me repeatedly. Come to think of it, it could be all true –how the gangsters have a much stronger hold on media than truth itself. How credible is the media anyways? The Newsroom Mafia exposes the ugly underbelly of the profession
I loved the book. The suspense, the thrill and the flow of the story have got me smitten.
If there’s another one brewing by the author, I’m ready to wait for it. Hide details

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