Allen's newsroom novel

Anyone who knew Allen Mendonca also knew he enjoyed his journalism. Which is why they won’t be surprised at the earnestness and energy in The Sentinel House, his novel about the newspaper business.

MiD DAY got an advance copy of the book, which Arundhati Nag is releasing at Ranga Shankara on Wednesday. Allen goes about challenging readers, fellow journalists particularly, to identify real-life media people hiding behind his fictional characters. He is a satirist this moment, and a practitioner of pulp fiction the next, but there isn’t a moment he isn’t having a go at the media world. For that reason, it is likely that journalists will grasp the novel's nuances better than those with no access to newsroom gossip.

The Sentinel House narrates the saga of Harivanshrai aka Harry, a media baron driven as much by his hormones as by the opportunities afforded by the new Indian economy. In a hurry to expand his empire, he transforms his newspaper from institution to product, obscures the once-inviolable line between editorial and marketing, and elevates advertiser over reader.

Many will read The Sentinel House as a dramatised chronicle of what Allen saw in the newsrooms of the past two decades. The book also seethes with media-boardroom news and gossip that never made it to print. If journalists sit around at bars and coffee shops with a copy of The Sentinel House, smirking, taunting, hooting, or even getting into brawls, you know why.

And unexpectedly, running through all the masala and the action is Allen’s faith in Hindu karma and Christian compassion. When Harry’s crippled son Sid finally finds love and fulfilment, and wealth and power, Allen suggests it is all because of the character’s essential goodness. The Sentinel House describes crimes provoked by lust and greed, but it is also an optimistic tribute to innocence.

But for all that, Allen’s book is vulnerable, and can be ripped apart easily by any critical book lover. Its sex scenes are inspired by Harold Robbins. Its characters are predictable in what they do when faced with a crisis. (The media czar sleeps around, his wife parties and hits the bottle, and their son seeks meaning in art). The Sentinel House is clearly inclined towards populist fiction and Page 3 reportage. With this novel, Allen joins the ranks of Bangalorean journalists-turned-novelists Narendra Pani and C K Meena, but they take stylistic routes different from his.

If anyone was qualified to write this novel, it was Allen. In the decades he spent in journalism, he changed from intrepid reporter to Page 3 heartthrob to independent entrepreneur. He knew this story from the inside. He did many diverse things, including playing the guitar. Allen died of a heart attack late in September, and it is sad that his first novel will also be his last.

One doesn’t know if Allen would have liked to revise it before sending it out to the press, but The Sentinel House, even in its present form, can deliver a satisfyingly nasty punch.