Tejpal’s letter of apology reveals his nature

...that the world is what it is, ephemeral, uneven, to be squarely dealt with, and not to be conjured out of weak romantic novels. But few seemed to possess the gift of leaving the room while the laughter was still in the air and the spirits high. For the most, everyone seemed to be committed to creating a heap of debris before walking away from it.”

Excerpts from The Story of My Assassins by Tarun Tejpal.

Did Tarun Tejpal ever imagine that these very words that sprang from his famously fecund imagination would one day come to mock him with merciless mirth? How did he not realise the importance of leaving the room while laughter was still in the air? By his own authorial admission,not many people do,but those unwashed-of-the-mind surely had nothing in common with the force behind Tehelka?

He surely couldn’t belong to that breed? As it turns out, fact has one up on fiction this time. In his prodigious output as a journalist and author, Tejpal has used words with varying degrees of force,from blunt to brute, at all times being deeply aware of his gift and its heft. It’s perhaps the reason why his letter of apology is such a masterpiece of self-indulgence and emotional colic. He attributes his need to violate and transgress all rules of dignity and moral discipline in sexually molesting a female colleague to a “lapse of judgement”.

A lapse that occurred twice over two days suggesting Tejpal’s moral incontinence. His letter of apology, surprisingly, has been taken at face value but a careful reading reveals the pathological narcissism of the man whose contrition is brittle as an eggshell.

The words that take your breath away are these: “an awful misreading of the situation”. What was he suggesting here? How exactly did he misread the situation with the girl in question, who is his daughter’s good friend, and his good friend’s daughter? Mulling on these words is like staring into the maw of darkness. He signs off his flagellating tryst with words thus: “I must do penance that lacerates me.” Such grandstanding, on a heap of beans.

A letter of apology, by definition, requires an admission of wrong-doing, humility, and contrition. But in Tejpal’s hands, this genuine article becomes an artwork of manipulation.