Man who much The mobile phone rings. A text message flashing on its small green screen brings a smile to Aniruddha Bahal's lips. A fawning admirer gushes, 'I never looked up to a journalist before. Now I do.' Ever since the elaborate undercover sting operation on sordid defence deals, mounted jointly by Bahal and fellow journalist Mathew Samuel was made public knowledge earlier this week, the joint owner-cum-reporter of tehelka.com has been flooded with an avalanche of such effusive messages. He deserves them. Only 34, Bahal is already a past master at coming up with stunning journalistic scoops. With any means and methods his mind can conjure. But Bahal, who spent the first 10 years of his life in Calcutta and studied in St Mary's Orphanage and Auxilium Convent, is unwilling to rejoice aloud. At least on record. 'We pushed a certain amount of information in public space. What happens with that information is beyond our control. We should not be associated with what happens with it because that would implicate us with a motive,' he says. Somehow, the man and his stories don't fit. Bahal looks too ordinary for his work. What is clear though is that Bahal is hands-on and high on adrenaline. 'But I was never afraid, only cautious,' he maintains. The secret operation could have received a jolt but for a close shave by Mathew, the co-author of the endeavour. 'We would meet these people in Maruti Esteems. We would behave as if we had lots of money. But once Mathew was on his way to office in an autorickshaw and a guy we were working on came alongside in a Mercedes. He only had a brief glimpse before Mathew raised his jacket to cover his own face.' On his part, Bahal made a late appearance on the scene as Alvin D'Souza, the boss of the fictitious London-based company, West End International. He gave himself Goan parentage and put on an accent. To complete the charade, he wore a Givo suit and put on spectacles. 'I came on the scene towards the end of the investigation. Before that I was like a puppeteer telling the puppets what to do,' says Bahal. Sitting in his six feet by ten feet office cabin in New Delhi's Soami Nagar and dressed in a blue checked shirt, Bahal appears unfazed by the wild speculations that the tapes have sparked off. 'Since yesterday, I have heard six or seven versions (of who are behind the story). They include the Congress, the Hindujas and L.K. Advani. The story is also supposed to have some connection with the stock market crash. One version is that the ISI is behind this. We take all this with a pinch of salt.' Undercover journalism has its share of stern critics. But Bahal feels there is nothing wrong with the means and methods. His response is non-intellectual and direct: 'Do we let those who are making crores in commissions go scot free? This is the only way you can get these people.' He points at the three thick dossiers lying by the side of his table. Together they would run into thousands of pages. 'There is so much information which has not gone into the public domain. There are dozens of inferences to deals. We had to make a judgement whether this is serious or non-serious,' he says. Old friends believe that taking risks and a desire to make it big were always part of Bahal's mental make-up. The Allahabad University graduate's professional career also reflects a certain restlessness, a strong desire to make a big impact with a big story. During the 1996 World Cup, one of his reports said that Brian Lara had made certain racist remarks after the West Indies had lost to Kenya. The master batsman later denied this. Others insisted that the remarks had been made, though off the record. But Bahal was unfazed. In 1997, Bahal, who hadn't done any sports reporting before, hit the spotlight with a hard-hitting cover story on cricket betting for Outlook. 'I went on the South Africa cricket tour that year. It sparked off a lot of things. If you sat in the press box, you saw everything.What we saw and wrote later became hard to digest for many cricket lovers, not to forget the regular cricket correspondents.' But Bahal wouldn't have won a popularity contest in his former organisation. Colleagues in Outlook recall him as being 'cocky and abrasive' but Bahal differs. 'The fact that I was the most travelled reporter in Outlook made me unpopular.' He wasn't everybody's favourite in the press box either. But Bahal attributes this more to him working alone than in a pack as many reporters do. Bahal's critics also point out that he was always soft on WorldTel boss Mark Mascarenhas. They would like to link that with him taking up a job in Cricket Talk which Mascarenhas owned. But the journalist disagrees. He claims that he was hunting for a story on Mascarenhas but ultimately got nothing. In any case, Bahal's brief association with Cricket Talk ended when he jointly set up Tehelka with senior journalist Tarun Tejpal. Bahal had first met Tejpal during his first job in India Today ('I got it after doing a copy test for three days'). They later worked together in Financial Express and moved together to Outlook. Bahal believes that his later scoops could only have been done in a dotcom company. 'Traditional media doesn't have the time, the talent or the budget to spare for this kind of thing. There are too many hierarchies involved to okay a budget for an investigative story,' he says. Reading his articles it is obvious that Bahal has little flair for the language. It comes as a surprise then that he has written a novel, A Crack in the Mirror, published by Rupa way back in 1991. But it is even more surprising that amidst all the investigations he has written another one. 'Actually it was written sometime back,' he corrects. 'It is about what happens to a person during a single night. The final draft is ready now.' You can bet any publisher will lap it up now. It is time to leave. He has given 60 interviews in the past three days but more journalists are waiting. You cannot help asking how would this scoop compare with that of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two reporters who had unearthed the Watergate scandal and caused the fall of US President Richard Nixon. Bahal is blunt. 'I think we did much more. They had only one source: Deep Throat. If you compare the scale of work, they would be inferior.' That's Aniruddha Bahal. A little cocky, a little brash. But as some politicians, army officers and cricketers would insist: always on the ball.