If news television were a civilisation, then Newstrack and Aaj Tak surely would be its ancestral crib. Legions of anchors, reporters and editors – working across the broadcast industry today – have at some point, picked up their journalistic skills from the oldest and most respected names in the profession.

Household names like Deepak Chaurasia, Dibang, Vikram Chandra, Sanjay Pugalia and even AAP’s Ashutosh became famous while working for what went on to become the leading news channel in India. Not only on-screen talent, those behind the desk went on to head major news networks, including Star India CEO, Uday Shankar, who earned his stripes as TV Today’s high profile News Director for five years.

Usually when such big names move to another channel or network, there is a lot of buzz and announcements are made in trade websites; yet when a veteran of 23 years retired from Aaj Tak on the last working day of January – there wasn’t even a murmur.

SN Koushik wasn’t a star anchor who brought the house down at 9pm or a reporter with “deep” connections in the administration; he wasn’t an award-winning investigative reporter or book-writing war correspondent – in fact he hadn’t seen much of the world besides the backrooms of Newstrack and Aaj Tak. Yet, SN Koushik (or Koushik Ji as he was lovingly referred to) was singularly responsible for Aaj Tak’s speed and alacrity in putting up detailed news specials evening after evening – on a diverse range of topics.

In a fiercely competitive market, littered with Hindi news channels, Aaj Tak has steadfastly remained on top, thanks to its ‘Sabse Tez’ reporting and gigantic archival library that stores news spanning a quarter of a century of India in the making (and unmaking). SN Koushik was part-creator, part-curator and part-custodian of this monumental archive – a repository of visuals and images that Aaj Tak held in virtual vaults and a treasure trove of data that rivals would give an arm and leg for.

Want visuals of all the stellar centuries of Sachin Tendulkar? No problem. What about specific cases of hooliganism in Parliament? No sweat. And what if you wanted footage of all the train accidents over the last 20 years? That too would be made possible by Koushik Ji who would then dig into the Betamax tapes from Newstrack days and give you exact counter numbers as well.

For countless rookies like me who had to start their journey towards anchoring stardom from the feed rooms and ingesting tapes – Koushik Ji was manna from heaven. Without a worry he would rattle off tape numbers you would need for a story and would even tell you what visuals to use and what not to! Best off all – he didn’t have to rely on his computer all the time – he KNEW his library and the thousands of tapes that lived in it. Once I went up to Koushik Ji with a request to help me with a story on Pervez Musharraf completing five years in office – I came back to my desk with 14 tapes, covering every major event that transpired during the General’s stint in office. This sort of archival depth could only be dreamt of by newer channels – because purchasing stock footage isn’t an easy financial call.

There was good reason why SN Koushik was able to find a needle in a haystack – he had built pretty much the whole barn with his own hands. Along with Aaj Tak’s highly efficient library team, he religiously archived all the important shows and visuals of the channel ensuring that these could be retrieved and used in a jiffy in years to come.

Not only was Koushik Ji a perfectionist at his job (in an industry where mediocrity rules the roost) – in an ambition driven, dog-eat-dog world of broadcast media – he was the relaxed, always smiling, good Samaritan willing to walk that extra mile, helping you find the impossible.

When cost-cutting came, the Library’s quota of high quality Sony DV tapes was slashed – forcing reporters to use inferior quality tapes or reuse old ones leading to more corrupted footage. But Koushik Ji always remained sensitive to a reporter’s needs. If one was going for a critical shoot or foreign coverage, he would quietly slip in a new set of Sony DVs. Such sensitivity is missing in today’s media houses, which are driven more by worksheets, rather than passion from the heart.

While Aaj Tak will continue in the absence of another old-timer – as it has through the years –  computers rarely can do a thinking man’s job. Koushik Ji was a human computer himself.

As an icon fades away, retiring after 23 years of distinguished (uncelebrated) service, one is forced to turn the spotlight on the army of professionals who keep a news channel humming.

News television is more than acrimonious 9:00pm debates or reporters doing dramatic piece-to-cameras on “breaking news situations”. News television is as much about the video journalist who is shooting the big story, the producer who slogs as much to get the images on air, the ticker person who takes the breaking news to the millions, the video editor who painfully slices together a matrix of images. So here’s to all the Librarians, OB engineers, run down producers, makeup artists and car drivers – the heroes who work tirelessly, without recognition, to ensure that the on-screen “stars” of the channel get to keep their date with the audiences.