It was a report in The Hindu that is said to have brought Wall Street Journal ’s well-known journalist Daniel Pearl to Thiruvananthapuram in January 2000. Daniel’s kidnapping and murder in Pakistan in 2001 evoked grief and shock among media persons. Those who met him in Kerala recalled his sense of humour and humility.
Daniel was on the trail of a story about a small village’s battle against palmolein, which it believed would hurt the interests of small-scale coconut farmers.
KPM Basheer, then a special correspondent of The Hindu in Kochi, wrote a piece (February 4, 2002) when Daniel was reported missing in Pakistan. “One morning in January 2001 I got a… call. The caller introduced himself ... Danny [Daniel Pearl] told me that he had read my story in The Hindu headlined ‘Step against globalisation: an oil war in the making’ on the anti-palmolein agitation in Kerala. He wanted to do a follow-up story for his paper and asked if I could help… ….This followed the exchange of a series of e-mail messages between Danny and I… His messages showed that he had been doing his homework. Apart from wanting to know the major aspects of the agitation, its social background and its leadership, his email queries elicited finer details…. He had flown down to Kozhikode before going to Koorachundu village, the birthplace of the anti-palmolein agitation…”.
Prior to the trip to northern Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram was his port of call. He had visited the Trivandrum Press Club and met P.P. James, the then secretary of the club, who is now deputy editor of the Kerala Kaumudi in Thiruvananthapuram and also president of the club. James recalls Daniel walking into the club and introducing himself as the Mumbai-based South Asia bureau chief correspondent chief of the Wall Street Journal and telling them that he was in Kerala to do a story on the anti-palmolein stir.
The next day when he visited the club again, he met S. Suresh, the then president of the club. Suresh, now the chief of a PR firm in Delhi, writes in an email: “On January 26, 2001, a bespectacled, tall and handsome foreigner strode into the Trivandrum Press Club. Accompanied by a woman, he went to its library and started flipping through newspapers. As the then president of the club, I was preoccupied with preparations for the annual family get-together which was to be held that evening.”
Eventually, Suresh was introduced to Daniel by James and Muralidharan, the Kerala head of PTI. The woman with him was Mariane, his fiancée.
The office-bearers of the club invited Daniel to be an honoured guest at the annual family meet. “Daniel, looking dapper in blue jeans, white shirt and a Gandhi-type (round-framed) spectacles, arrived at the function with Mariane. He mingled with media persons and their families as if he was one of them,” recollect Suresh and James.
Daniel had specialised in agrarian issues, and his sympathies lay with the underprivileged. “He was not an armchair journalist. He was keen on visiting the place whenever a story broke out and getting a first-hand feel of the situation. Otherwise, why would he take the trouble to come all the way to Kerala to go to Koorachundu? Many other international journalists would have merely collected details over the phone and filed a story,” says James.
Both Suresh and James remember how Daniel had charmed E.K. Nayanar, the then Chief Minister when he came to know that this American journalist was interested in the negative effects of globalisation on local economies. Nayanar was said to have remarked: “He is our man”.
Jovial and quick-witted, without any airs, Daniel watched a group dance led by Malayalam actress Geethu Mohandas, (whose maiden directorial venture, Liar’s Dice , has been shortlisted as India’s official entry to this year’s Oscars). He also broke into an impromptu jig to the two songs by mimic-turned-actor Kalabhavan Mani.
Daniel distributed prizes to winners of various contests at the function. He was presented with a gift too — a figurine of Nataraja. He left the next day with a promise to be back in Kerala. Daniel kept in touch with James through email. “He sympathised and empathised with the problems of the poor and was true to his work. The last mail I got from him was in December 2000 when he sent me greetings for Christmas and New Year. He mentioned in passing that he was going to Pakistan on work. That was the last mail from a man who was so full of life,” recalls James.
He adds: “After his death, we had organised a condolence meeting to pay homage to him. Now, as president of the club, we are hosting ‘Behind the Lines, Between the Lines’, an international film festival organised in association with the U.S. Consulate, which celebrates journalistic courage under fire. The festival was started in memory of Daniel Pearl and will honour the ideals of journalists like him who take enormous risks in the line of duty,” says James.
