Veteran BBC correspondent Daniel Lak has criss-crossed the Indian sub-continent in search of ?good stories?. He reported from New Delhi when India took the world by surprise and detonated a nuclear device. He moved to Nepal and was just in time for the extraordinary palace massacre that decimated the royal family. And, in an earlier avatar, he covered five changes of government in Pakistan. Also, for good measure, he covered the Kargil conflict.

So, what makes a ?good story?? ?It should be stunning and unexpected,? says Lak. It?s said that every journalist has a book in him or her, just waiting to be written. In Lak?s case, he has just translated his three-year India stint between 1997 to 2000 into Mantras of Change ? Reporting India in a Time of Flux.

It?s a book of essays really, with each chapter looking at different aspects of life in a changing India. Many themes pop up in more than one essay ? the IT boom, the breakdown of the family structure, sexual revolution, the onslaught of mobile telephony, down to STD booths that have filtered down to rural India. ?It?s a look at a country that?s in a constant and prolonged state of social and economic ferment,? he says. So, there are no bullock carts and snake charmers, or followers of Gandhi or Karl Marx. And not a single cow ambles through its pages.

Now back home in Canada as BBC?s correspondent in Toronto after stints in Kathmandu and Miami, the 47-year-old Lak recalls the time when he was competing for an India posting back in 1996. His agenda was clear ? to make a conscious effort to change the imagery that goes with the country.

Just back from Srinagar (the last visit was over a decade ago) Lak cheerfully reports that the tourists are swelling in numbers, hotels are open and the houseboats are doing some business too. ?Though the army camp atmosphere still lingers and it?s tragic that people don?t seem to see any light at the end of the tunnel,? he says ruefully.

Lak knows the region well having reported on it since 1992, with his first foreign posting to Pakistan. As a Canadian, working with the BBC reporting on South-East Asia, Lak describes himself humorously (his trademark feature, friends point out) as an ?inadvertent expert on India though not an Indophile and the only functioning SAARC institute?.

The seeds for Mantras of Change were sown even as Lak was packing his bags to take charge as BBC?s correspondent in Nepal looking forward to a laidback posting peppered with trekking expeditions and India holidays. As it turned out he arrived in Nepal in time for the royal massacre and the Maoist rebellion. ?A great story, but a terrible time for Nepal ? and for my dreams of living a semi-retired life in the country,? he says with a smile.

Soon after Lak quit India, he was invited to write a column for a leading weekly in which he waxed eloquent on how he was once accused by a fiery university student on promoting stereotypes about India in his reports: bullock carts, cows ambling on roads, elephants and snake charmers. He defended the foreign media in his columns but was provoked into thinking hard about the portrayal of India by the foreign press. That?s when Penguin snapped him up for a book about his personal experiences of covering India in the crucial years of economic change.

Mantras of Change is thus a positive take on the country (though his critics have panned his rather rose-tinted gaze), focusing on the new India. Having covered India for nearly four years (1996 was spent reporting on India while based in London), Lak went into the book armed with countless Indian voices that he couldn?t include in his snap two-minute reports for BBC, voices that are liberally sprinkled over its pages.

However, more research brought him back to India from Nepal over the next few years and he made several trips to Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi ? meeting businessmen, politicians and anyone else who could give him a clearer insight into the India he wanted to write about.

Not knowing the language has never bothered Lak. And he found it easy to get the facts even though he couldn?t speak Hindi or any other Indian language. ?Foreign correspondents face this everywhere, but they get by, ensuring that they take ?gatekeepers? (translators) with them. What?s more, every Indian is a linguist, speaking two or more languages. So it wasn?t terribly difficult.?

The Toronto born and bred Lak, never planned to be a journalist. He confesses to dragging his feet at school but discovered that he enjoyed writing. After a journalism course in Ottawa, he spent eight years with Canadian television but soon got bored with Canadian politics. He wanted to spread his wings and took off for the UK in 1987 where he landed a job with the BBC. Holidays brought him travelling to India and Pakistan in 1989 and he was hooked to the idea of returning for more. Back in London he applied for a Pakistan posting, and got it in 1992. That?s when he decided that India would be his next stop.

For a hard-nosed scribe, what could be the toughest story? Obviously, Kashmir. Lak believes he knows the story inside out as he has had his sights set on the region since ?89, especially since he?s reported the story from both sides of the border. His Pakistan posting between 1992-95 revealed a highly militarised country where militant camps were commonplace. It was a brutal zone and there was little that gave him hope. ?In the past it was a story that was mired in atrocity and anger, and was difficult to convey. But today it?s a good story because there?s some hope,? he says.

And what did he love best about his Indian sojourn? He says with warmth, ?Its democratic space and the warmth of the people.?

Lak may be back home now ? finally to spend some time with his two children ? but he?ll return for sure. Give him a couple of years and his second India book will be out ? a hard and critical look at India?s economic and social change and its aspirations to be a superpower. But he?s positive about India, ?perhaps even more than Indians themselves,? he says firmly.

Photograph by Prem Singh