Haschke isn’t home. How do I know that? I actually underwent the tiresome process of reading Loveena Tandon’s Mail Today article, I found Haschke’s House but not Him (February 19, 2013). The article tells us precious little beyond what the headline discloses.  What you get to read is how painstakingly Tandon mooched on the streets of Lugano to find Guido Ralph Haschke and Ferdinand Carlo Valentino Gerosa- the two middlemen who made possible what the aam aadmi now knows as the Chopper Scam.

So what new information did this full page news report? We were informed that this was the “biggest story” of Loveena’s career and one that promised to change the course of her professional life. She was asked by her editor to get in touch with Finmeccanica, politicians, lawyers, magistrate and most importantly, Haschke and Gerosa. Considering how the breed of Italian politicians is behaviourally so distinct from our desis, she assumed it would be no problem to get bytes from them. In the first half of the “news report”, she explains why her “news report” carries no responses from the well-groomed politicians of Italy. And the explanation is that they weren’t willing to talk.

This, by the way, did not deter Tandon. After going through many-a-directory and visiting many-a-local office, she finally laid paws on the addresses of Haschke and Gerosa. Remember the two middlemen? But they were not available to meet her.

What was Loveena to do? She was after all in Milan. She better make the trip worth Mail Today’s while. Tired of drawing blanks everywhere, Tandon decided to chat up Haschke’s son, Edward, and shamelessly, with the approval of an indulgent editor, published an article with a pictorial representation of her pointless conversation with him.

After the author makes us wade through one full page of her “reporting” (if you can call it that) and her futile attempts at gathering bytes, she ends with writing that she’ll continue to look for the man. That she does not give up – “I have reached the house of Haschke. I will keep looking for him. The story goes on” – and a stalker is born! Although we feel for Tandon and her endless hunt for red October, we feel worse for ourselves because we had to suffer her very blah travelogue which is posing as a news report.

And no, we didn’t bother contacting Tandon to ask why she wasted so much newsprint to illustrate her inefficacies. If there’s one thing we learnt from this “news report”, it’s that Tandon most probably ain’t home!