Of all the jobs that I did over near three decades with the BBC none was as difficult, fascinating, or as under-resourced, as my time in Delhi as Deputy Editor, BBC Hindi TV, 1996 – 97.

Indian politics is the most complex I have ever encountered, and if I had not had the help of my Indian colleagues it would have been quite impossible.

To try to put on a daily half hour television news with one camera crew, when I did not speak Hindi, was a challenge, to put it mildly.

Yet with the late Luke Alberin as editor and Paul Danahar (who went on to be BBC’s Washington Bureau Chief and then executive news editor, World story team) as my co-deputy, we somehow managed it.

With journalists like Seema Chishti (who went on to the Express and then joined The Wire as Editor) we somehow got it together day after day. But getting it broadcast could be really tough.

I will never forget trying to get past a parade of elephants, brought in to celebrate an Indian celebrity wedding, to get the edited programme to the uplink station. Many things are possible, but hurrying an elephant is not one of them!

Sadly, Hindi TV did not survive much beyond a year. The channel on which it was being broadcast ceased to function and the BBC failed to negotiate an alternative platform. It was not until 2012 that the BBC re-launched the operation as BBC Hindi TV.

But it was an extraordinary experience: certainly one I will never forget.