Unlit Cigar and the ‘Nineteenth Friday Evening Meeting’ >>>>> With Political Commentator and Political Analyst Sanjaya Baru as Special Guest at Press Club Hyderabad : By Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao

 Unlit Cigar and the ‘Nineteenth Friday Evening Meeting’

With Political Commentator and Political Analyst

Sanjaya Baru as Special Guest at Press Club Hyderabad

By Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao (June 19, 2026)

The weekly Friday evening meetings at Press Club Hyderabad have quietly become a sacred platform for the city's senior journalists. It is a space where like-minded thoughts gather to unpack the immediate past events over a social drink, occasionally joined by select guests who shape public discourse. But the nineteenth Friday meeting carried a distinct, high-profile energy. The evening’s special guest was Sanjaya Baru, a son of the Telangana soil, who modestly navigated the highest corridors of power in Delhi, most notably serving as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s (PMO) official spokesperson.

Sanjaya Baru brought an aura of national political history besides few interesting anecdotes to the table. The normal practice of conversation preceded with a gesture that perfectly matched the gravity of the guest, when a regular participant, senior journalist A Saye Sekhar stepped forward and presented Baru with an impressive box containing a 'Churchill': a premium Cuban Cigar from the IIC brand. Named after Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, the Churchill Size is legendary, built for long, deliberate reflections.

Instead of reaching for a lighter, Sanjaya Baru simply held the cigar unlit. It was a striking visual. While couple of smokers in the group, frequently stepped out of the room to catch their quick smokes, Baru’s premium Cuban Tobacco remained entirely unsparked. Yet, it served as a powerful anchor for the evening. There was no smoke to cloud the room around him, but just the sharp clarity of insider insights, laughter, and pure, unfiltered camaraderie among familiar friends. The casual conversation over social drinks gradually evolved under Baru’s guidance into exploration of one of South India's success stories: the Trichinopoly Cigar.’

Steered by Baru's sharp historical lens, the discussion recollected about the Trichinopoly Cheroot, once a staple across the British Empire, which was supposed to be framed not merely as a tobacco product, but as an early pioneer of international trade. These hand-rolled cigars from Tiruchirappalli were in fact, commanding markets in Britain. The brand cemented its place deeply into the Victorian Consciousness. The conversation settled toward the legendary connection between Winston Churchill and the Trichinopoly.

Baru highlighted how Churchill was fond of the Cigars. However, the narrative carefully separated historical reality from regional lore. While industry traditions vividly claim that a clandestine ‘Churchill's Cigar Assistant’ was appointed in Madras to ship Trichy Cigars to Downing Street when Nazi U-boats cut off his Cuban supply, the table treated these accounts with a journalist's healthy scepticism, noting they remain fascinatingly reasonable but lack definitive archival proof. This distinction extended to the role of Guntur tobacco also.

Finally, the dialogue turned to recent social media buzz surrounding a ‘Revival’ of the craft. An FB Post according to Baru says: ‘Today, the industry has heavily dwindled. But, the historic 123-year-old Fenn Thompson and Co, the last primary manufacturer, has been still keeping the heritage craft alive.’ The consensus steered clear of exaggeration: reports of the Trichinopoly Cigar’s absolute demise are factually incorrect, as traditional manufacturing quietly persists on a limited scale via heritage-focused houses.

Ultimately, the evening's discourse yielded a striking reflection on India's commercial history. The story of the Trichinopoly cigar serves as a powerful, elegant reminder that South Indian craftsmanship captured global imagination, infiltrated British Elite Culture, and established international branding over a century before the modern corporate era. The smooth flow of the evening perfectly mirrored the unique nature of these Friday Meetings, as gatherings devoid of formal agendas, official invitations, or professional obligations, where every participant quietly picks up their own bill purely for the joy of high-calibre company.

As the conversation shifted, Sanjaya Baru revealed a beautiful, poignant coincidence behind his personal visit to Hyderabad. The very day of this Nineteenth Friday Gathering marked the Birth Centenary of his illustrious father, the late BPR Vithal, a towering colossus of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and a definitive authority on fiscal federalism. Vithal was legendary as the country’s longest-serving Finance and Planning Secretary, whose pivotal research on Telangana's budget surpluses provided the intellectual bedrock for the statehood movement.

With deep reverence, Baru recounted an intimate glimpse into the disciplined personal life of the great administrator. No matter how demanding or chaotic his schedule, Vithal maintained a lifelong, unshakeable ritual: a single peg of a social drink every single evening, a habit he kept right up until he breathed his last at the age of 94 years! The room broke into captivated smiles as Baru shared a classic, telling anecdote from his father’s bureaucratic career.

Decades ago, while serving as a member of the Tenth Finance Commission of India under the chairmanship of veteran statesman KC Pant, Vithal put forward a singular, highly specific request to the chief: ‘Let there be no meetings scheduled after 7:30 PM.’ It was a characteristically polite, yet uncompromising, nod to his inviolable evening social hour. Baru noted with nostalgic affection that those were eras defined by immense mutual respect, elegance, and a profound regard for elders.

Recognizing the wisdom and human necessity behind the request, Chairman Pant instantly issued informal executive orders. The directive, strictly forbidding late-evening official huddles, was swiftly honoured not just across the corridors of power in New Delhi, but seamlessly adopted by all state governments hosting the commission. For the senior journalists listening at the Press Club, the story was a beautiful reminder of a golden era of governance, where towering intellect and a perfectly balanced lifestyle walked hand in hand.

Keenly listening to Baru and on BPR Vithal, one of the participants, who was well acquainted with late Vithal, placed before the group to ponder and compare current undisciplined political expenditures with the financial discipline of previous eras, especially of BPR Vithal’s times. The roundtable criticized the modern, routine use of state resources, symbolized by indiscriminate helicopter and private aircraft usage for routine partisan activities, as a stark departure from past standards of public accountability.

 Sanjaya Baru’s keen interest in the Friday Meetings was unmistakable. He readily agreed to an invitation extended by Amar Devulapalli, one of the pioneers of these Meetings. As the evening progressed, Baru atypically drew a fascinating parallel between Hyderabad's Friday Gathering and a legendary institutional counterpart in the national capital: the ‘Saturday Club’ (or Saturday Discussion Group) of New Delhi. He revealed that he had been associated as a member of this elite, informal forum since 1994, though its roots trace back to 1977.

Born as a poignant ‘Post-Emergency’ development, the group was conceived during an era when civil liberties and intellectual discourse were reclaiming their breath. Much like the Friday Meetings at the Press Club, the Saturday Club operates on strict lines of egalitarian camaraderie, devoid of formal structures, where every participant unpretentiously clears their own bill. He said that: Meeting regularly at the prestigious India International Centre (IIC) in Delhi, the forum serves as a rare, eclectic melting pot.

He added that: It brings together a diverse galaxy of thinkers, academics, journalists, and senior politicians across ideological divides. Over the decades, the group has boasted an extraordinary roster of minds, including former Prime Minister IK Gujral {whose famous ‘Gujral Doctrine’ was partly (Supposed to be) shaped within these very deliberations!}, veteran statesman LK Advani, former Vice President Krishan Kant, political veteran S Jaipal Reddy, and iconic journalists like Pran Chopra and strategic thinkers like Bhabani Sengupta.

However, said Baru that, in those earlier decades, the club was known for its high-quality, unflinching deliberations, where policy strategists and political giants argued without malice. However, when the conversation touched upon the modern status and continuity of these historic Delhi meetings, Baru offered a subtle, yet biting, third-person diagnosis of changing times. He noted that while the gatherings persist, the sheer quality and depth of the deliberations have noticeably come down since the BJP rose to power.

{{The observation led to a reflection on how national polarization slowly alter the efficacy of a decade old organization. The Saturday Discussion Group's influence peaked in 1997, highlighted by an India Today profile which noted: ‘For the first time the eclectic forum enjoys a spell of fame,’ which captured the group during IK Gujral's Prime Ministership. This period marked the height of the club's prominence and unique political connection.’}}

The 19^th Friday Meeting, followed a familiar and electric trajectory. After winding down a few non-political subjects, such as reminiscing the great economist BPR Vithal, and the lingering old-world charm of ‘Churchill Cigar,’ the conversation shifted fundamentally into current affairs, more on politics. Such a transition is entirely natural for the Friday Roundtables, but it felt particularly inevitable in this meeting, given the composition of the room.

The special guest of the evening being Sanjaya Baru, the formidable political commentator, economic policy analyst, and renowned author of The Accidental Prime Minister, and seated around the informal table was a galaxy of a dozen senior journalists, veterans of the multifaceted reporting, alongside a shifting ring of occasional onlookers drawn by the gravity of the discussion, who come to club either for a leisure or on professional assignment. The conversation kick-started with a provocative view by one of the participants:

‘The BJP has systematically engineered splits in the Trinamool Congress and the Shiv Sena (Uddhav group) is actively planning to splinter the Samajwadi Party, perhaps even securing the tactical, under-the-table support of the DMK. What exactly is Modi up to? Is he preparing to structurally delete the words 'Secular' and 'Socialist' from the Preamble, transition India into a Presidential Form of Democracy, and effectively establish himself as a President?’

The political segment of the 19th Friday Meeting at the Press Club Hyderabad evolved into a rigorous evaluation of India’s systemic realities. Guided by the extensive experience of Sanjaya Baru, the roundtable moved past superficial electoral analysis to examine structural governance, institutional decline, and alternative models for national development. The collective findings of the group could be systematised, refined, and structured into thematic pillars.

The discussion centred on a fundamental structural transformation within the Indian executive, led by the insights of Sanjaya Baru regarding centralized power dynamics. The group reached a near consensus that the current leadership model by and large mirrors a Presidential Framework. The consensus indicated a distinct institutional admiration for highly centralized, top-down models of authority, such as that of Vladimir Putin, where the Prime Minister effectively operates as a singular, systemic executive.

Drawing from his analytical work published during the 2024 general election titled: ‘Who wants 370 majority? Not even BJP leaders’ Baru’s premise was revisited to contextualise this executive drive: ‘No business person too would want a PM so powerful that he can continue to hound them through instruments available to a government ... Prime Minister Modi has himself claimed that such a convincing majority will enable his government to undertake important economic reforms that will speed up India's growth and make it a developed economy by 2047.’

The collective opinion concluded that the constant push for overwhelming majorities is designed to minimize parliamentary friction, validating the theory that the political executive prefers a direct, presidential mandate over collective cabinet accountability. The table shifted to an objective critique of opposition politics, noting a deep structural disconnect within the primary opposition party despite glaring national opportunities. The observation was that, understanding contemporary Congress party strategy remains a challenge for political analysts, and absence of nationwide ‘Charismatic Leadership’ to counter BJP and NDA.

The Friday meeting agreed that the broader political ecosystem is currently facing a systemic absence of unifying, and it was strongly opined that Priyanka Gandhi possesses a better high degree of latent political potential. The consensus suggested that she could step into a major national leadership role to address the party's structural challenges, provided the organizational hierarchy chooses to actively empower her. Sanjaya Baru and the participating journalists opined that Mamata Banerjee stands out as perhaps the only truly self-made, grassroots woman leader who, for the present appears to be nearly ‘politically finished.’

A major philosophical pivot that can be broadly titled as ‘The 20-Year Strategic Pause’ occurred when Sanjaya Baru introduced a seasoned, alternative vision for India’s long-term trajectory, which resonated widely with the table. As part of this pragmatic diplomatic stance, which the group largely endorsed, it was proposed that: ‘Instead of exhausting creative, financial, and political capital on high-stakes global posturing to match the United States or China, India should adopt a quiet, low-profile stance in the international political arena for the next 20 years.’

Likewise, as Sanjaya Baru suggested, the group reasoned that the Nation's Primary focus must return to domestic stability. Success should be measured by the peaceful conduct of daily life, guaranteed access to basic nutrition and quality education, and the preservation of cultural practices as an individual option. The Friday Get-together agreed that over-ambitious global posturing should not override fundamental domestic human development indices. The growing systemic anxieties regarding North-South regional divide also came in conversation.

Interestingly, on the periodic friction points suggesting a North-South division among states, the group raised a cynical, yet precise question: ‘Does India possess a committed, regional leadership free of systemic corruption to handle this divide constructively? The broad view settled on the troubling reality was that institutionalized corruption cuts cleanly across party lines, complicating genuine federal representation.

The 19^th Friday Evening Meeting concluded by citing Brazil’s Economic Trajectory as a vital warning. The participants guided by Special Guest, Sanjaya Baru, noted how Brazil, once celebrated as an emerging global model of development, stumbled by sustaining its growth with unsustainable public finances and over-leveraging its economy without securing foundational domestic industries. Participants expressed their concern, whether India faces a parallel structural risk if it prioritizes rapid, speculative financial metrics over robust, institutionalized economic discipline.

The Nineteenth Friday Evening Meeting reaffirmed the enduring value of a simple yet powerful idea: when experienced minds gather without hierarchy, agenda, or compulsion, conversation itself becomes a repository of knowledge. From reflections on history, governance, economics, journalism, and public life, the evenings demonstrated how informal dialogue can generate insights often absent in formal forums.

These gatherings continue to evolve as living archives where memory is documented, experience is shared, and diverse perspectives are respectfully examined. Their strength lies not in numbers but in continuity, openness, and intellectual curiosity. As the circle steadily expands, more members, professionals, and thoughtful individuals are encouraged to participate. Every new voice enriches the collective narrative.