Bengaluru: It's certainly not a cover page which Editor Gauri Lankesh would have approved of, but her colleagues will make sure that she will be featured on the cover in the edition scheduled to hit the stands this coming weekend.
The rest of the edition, of course, will be content already approved by Ms Lankesh and handed over to "Mari" (son) as she fondly addressed Satish, a sub-editor who commenced his career under her late father, P Lankesh, in 1994, and continued to work for "Gauri Lankesh Patrike." "The complete content is in a pen drive which she gave me before heading home around 7-30 PM last night. She said let's decide the cover today afternoon (Wednesday), and meet on Thursday morning to discuss about the special edition for Deepavali. We had planned the special edition, in a book format, and were to meet on Thursday to pick special authors for the festival edition," Satish told Deccan Chronicle.
He was the last member of the editorial team she spoke with, before heading from her office in Gandhibazaar to her residence in Rajarajeshwari Nagar on Tuesday night.
Satish said for the first time the publication was feeling the pinch because of a financial crisis and the special edition was planned along with advertorials, a first for the tabloid, to overcome shortage of resources. "I had just returned from Vidhana Soudha where I met important people in connection with advertorials. I wanted to return to Vidhana Soudha but she said I could go another day, and handed over the pen drive with content for the forthcoming edition," he added.
On the issue of hate mails or threatening calls, Satish said Ms Lankesh did not mention about them so far. "She was like a friend, not a boss. On Tuesday, she left much earlier than her daily routine. A little after 8 PM, I got a call as soon as I reached home that she was shot at. I rushed to her residence and found that she had been killed by assailants," he said.
