Hyderabad, March 21 -- Over three decades ago, I knocked at the office door of Khalid Ansari's son Tarique Ansari (Tarique Bhai) in Mumbai. Then Khalid Ansari Sahab was too big for a young Bihari boy like me in a big, strange city desperately looking for a writing job to get an audience.

A friend of Tarique wrote him a letter recommending me to him to give a reporter's job in Mid Day, then a hugely popular English morninger in Mumbai. Tarique whom I began calling Tarique Bhai later gave a look at the letter, telling me his office would get back to me. It never happened. No complaints. No regrets.

Perhaps his editor did not find my CV impressive. Perhaps they did not have a vacant position.

I kept my fight on. There were many moments of...