Mumbai

The Times of India is the world’s largest English-language newspaper. Work here in the newsroom is almost like anywhere else, but with a little more clapping.

Time management is a heavy phrase. Yet, all at once it is so important and has such great status. I never really put a lot of thought into punctuality. I was simply punctual. Full stop. Rachel and I are the only whites here in the newsroom at the Times of India. Rachel, an Englishwoman, loves working in Mumbai. In London, she has to find a date two weeks in advance to meet friends for a drink, while here she never knows what she will be doing in the evening. Journalism here is similar. Who knows today what will happen tomorrow? Will the interview take place? Somehow, it does.

It is an appointment like any other: a background interview. Can I arrange it by telephone? It won’t work, one of the employees says, the boss is away. So, I drop by in person. The boss is not there. I ask the employee to tell the boss I’ll come back tomorrow at about 8:30. The employee says he can’t, he’s not allowed to speak to the boss. The caste system is legally prohibited, actually. I ask another employee, who promises to inform the boss, and yes, he will be in tomorrow. What do I do? I wait...for minutes...for an hour. I’ve long finished the watermelon juice. If you work in Mumbai you have to adjust and you suddenly develop more patience than you ever thought possible.

It is 7:45 pm and everyone in the newsroom of the Times of India is clapping. Not Mansi, though; her keyboard fell on the floor from the pullout shelf under the desk. No one knows where this ritual came from, but it is probably the only one that is repeated every day. If something falls on the floor, everyone claps.

The Times of India newsroom is situated in the centre of Mumbai across from Victoria Station, which was the target of terrorists in November 2008. “It was a hard day,” Derek D’sa tells me. In the days following, the mood in the newsroom was tense, scared, but also busy. Camp beds were set up for the journalists who could not bear to go home and speak with their families about the events. “We somehow devised a system for dealing with such extreme situations,” says D’sa.

Derek D’sa is the assistant executive editor of the paper; he is the central coordinator. He decides which stories will appear on what pages and in what length. About 150 reporters, journalists and desk editors work in Mumbai and a few more in Delhi. All over India, the Times of India employs over 1,000 people in its offices. “We have the country’s largest network with the best reporters,” says Derek D’sa and probably knows what he’s talking about.

There are many – very many – people here in the newsroom. A lot of typing is done, but not just on the computer keyboards. The mobile phone is used far more as a means of communication than in German newsrooms. Anyone who is in the field texts their editor to tell them that the article is a story or not, as the case may be. Here in the newsroom a lot of mobile phones ring and, of course, regular telephones, as well. The journalists in the newsroom sit in rows like in the secretarial pools of old. There is a sort of department for “sundry and various,” called the Feature. There are eight staff members for it; all but one are women. They also supply the Sunday edition with articles and columns and write blogs for the website, each in their special field.

Each of the journalists speaks a minimum of three languages, and always English and Hindi. Without Hindi it is practically impossible to do research in Mumbai. And each of the journalists skims over at least three newspapers every morning; the journalists for the news page twice as many. They need to know. Although 25 percent of the population in India can neither read nor write newspapers have high status here. They are also cheap: an issue of the Times of India costs five rupees or only eight eurocents. There is no such thing as a newspaper crisis like those in Europe and America.

The Internet, which is used just as everywhere else in the world in India’s cities, is no competition yet for print media. “In India more and more people are learning English, which means more and more readers,” says D’sa. Anyone who can afford it subscribes to a number of newspapers. But, even the lower class reads papers daily. People talk about what is in the newspaper. Reading the newspaper and the tactile experience are a tradition that no one would want to do without.

Mobile phones ring, text messages are written. “Is your story in tomorrow?” someone calls across the rows. Others are arguing about the spelling of a name. It is like it always is in every newsroom. Then a keyboard falls on the floor and everyone claps.

Rachel loves this attitude towards life; the spontaneity and even the uncertainty. She looks sad when she tells me her visa will expire in July. She has learned so much here, even some Hindi. This language has the word kal. Its meaning changes depending on the context of the sentence. Unimaginable in German: the word can mean “yesterday” or it can mean “tomorrow.”