Return of the Native!
My entire childhood and the teen was under the spell of printed letters; like many others, I believed every word I read. It would take me years to find out that many of the things I had read back then were pure bullshit and some extrenmely stupid and ignorant people wrote those! The same applied with everything braodcast by radio (TV being still not there).
During 1979-1985, there had been a Students' agitation in my state, and the cnetral goverment heavily censored the state-owned Radio and then TV programs. By 1980 or so, many of us would lose our faith on the national radio, and would listen to BBC or VOA for 'accurate' news!
In Feb. 1983, my state was swept by a wave of communal violence and bloodbath. Thousands of people would lose their life, and the BBC TV would telecast one such communal violence live! During all the time,one name of would have a very prominent place: Mark Tully. I still remember the Spring day in 1983 (when my town was still under curfew and sinpite of it we were all on the roads, the administration having a shortage of security forces, and thus failing to implement the curfew with full force) when we wintnessed and a series of cars with "Press" stickers pasted on them, passing through.Apparently, Satish Jacob, Mark Tully's deputy was in one of the cars.
Then after 1984, Mark Tully would exclusivley cover the Punjab movement. Being a foreigner and not being allows to enter Punjab, Mark Tully would send SDatish Jacob to do the on-field reporting for him. It must be bizarre for someone, who was born in Caccutta and thus an Indian in a way, to be banned from freely moving around. but then politics is not governed by emotions.
Over the years, I read a few books by him., And what I can tell is that this person has either put enough effort to learn about Indfia, or has earned effortlenssly; but either way, he has observed a lot and often drew the correct conclusions. In his book, No Full Stop in India, for example, he mentions his discussion with his servant, an untoucnhable man recently promoted to be his cook, regarding his faughter's arranged marriage. Tully had undergone a couple od divorces bt then and was living with his then girlfriend.
What the cook told Tully was something interestind, and somthingTully had to agree with: Ibn your country, you fall in love, marry and then divorce. In my country, we marry, fall in love and never divorce.
I dont know if the pictiure is so rosy anymore; three of the guys I shared the same corridor in the same University for years during my Hyderabasd days, had to end their weddings in divrice, two of them perfectly arranged!
But all I can tell is that Tully's observation and love for the country where he worked for decades was obvious. But that is not surprising. This is the country, where a few American Baptist missionaries published the first journal in Assamese (1829-1860 or so), or a Bulgarian missionary, Father Camil Bulke, published the first Hindi dictionary; this is the country where people almost forgot about Sanskrit, until a German scholar, Max Muller, pointed out the extreme similarities between the Sanskrit and German (and other European) languages.
Why do I remember him?
During my undergraduate days, many of the guys studying English literature in our batch and others joined as Assistant Editors in many English language newspapers. They were good at writing; they were smart people. But at the same time, they were the bunch of most hard-headed fools I would ever meet in my life. They were all full of shit and almost everything they wrote was completely biased and dogmatic. If I ever need to define "Yellow journalism" with prevision, all I would need to do is to remember and refer to their names. After that, I lost all respect for most newspapers published from my state.
Then, during my Delhi days, I would read an exclusive interview with Mark Tully in The Times of India. The two things of that interview that struck me were as follows:
During 1979-1985, there had been a Students' agitation in my state, and the cnetral goverment heavily censored the state-owned Radio and then TV programs. By 1980 or so, many of us would lose our faith on the national radio, and would listen to BBC or VOA for 'accurate' news!
In Feb. 1983, my state was swept by a wave of communal violence and bloodbath. Thousands of people would lose their life, and the BBC TV would telecast one such communal violence live! During all the time,one name of would have a very prominent place: Mark Tully. I still remember the Spring day in 1983 (when my town was still under curfew and sinpite of it we were all on the roads, the administration having a shortage of security forces, and thus failing to implement the curfew with full force) when we wintnessed and a series of cars with "Press" stickers pasted on them, passing through.Apparently, Satish Jacob, Mark Tully's deputy was in one of the cars.
Then after 1984, Mark Tully would exclusivley cover the Punjab movement. Being a foreigner and not being allows to enter Punjab, Mark Tully would send SDatish Jacob to do the on-field reporting for him. It must be bizarre for someone, who was born in Caccutta and thus an Indian in a way, to be banned from freely moving around. but then politics is not governed by emotions.
Over the years, I read a few books by him., And what I can tell is that this person has either put enough effort to learn about Indfia, or has earned effortlenssly; but either way, he has observed a lot and often drew the correct conclusions. In his book, No Full Stop in India, for example, he mentions his discussion with his servant, an untoucnhable man recently promoted to be his cook, regarding his faughter's arranged marriage. Tully had undergone a couple od divorces bt then and was living with his then girlfriend.
What the cook told Tully was something interestind, and somthingTully had to agree with: Ibn your country, you fall in love, marry and then divorce. In my country, we marry, fall in love and never divorce.
I dont know if the pictiure is so rosy anymore; three of the guys I shared the same corridor in the same University for years during my Hyderabasd days, had to end their weddings in divrice, two of them perfectly arranged!
But all I can tell is that Tully's observation and love for the country where he worked for decades was obvious. But that is not surprising. This is the country, where a few American Baptist missionaries published the first journal in Assamese (1829-1860 or so), or a Bulgarian missionary, Father Camil Bulke, published the first Hindi dictionary; this is the country where people almost forgot about Sanskrit, until a German scholar, Max Muller, pointed out the extreme similarities between the Sanskrit and German (and other European) languages.
Why do I remember him?
During my undergraduate days, many of the guys studying English literature in our batch and others joined as Assistant Editors in many English language newspapers. They were good at writing; they were smart people. But at the same time, they were the bunch of most hard-headed fools I would ever meet in my life. They were all full of shit and almost everything they wrote was completely biased and dogmatic. If I ever need to define "Yellow journalism" with prevision, all I would need to do is to remember and refer to their names. After that, I lost all respect for most newspapers published from my state.
Then, during my Delhi days, I would read an exclusive interview with Mark Tully in The Times of India. The two things of that interview that struck me were as follows:
The first was that Mark Tully said that the basic tenet of journalism was not to sensationalize. A journalist must report with a detached involvement and not as an active participant. He is not suppsoed to take sides or include his opinions while reporting (Looking back, I think that exaggeration is the major reason that Gabo could never shine as a top-notch journalist!)
The second thing that he said was even more interesting: he said that the TV craze was transient and radio would again return. I found it hard to believe. (I had denounced radio by 1985, when I bought a casssette player and within 2 years, my cassette collection touched 400!). We used to play radio in Delhi; but it was because, due to the poor design of the apartment we rented, we did not have the place to put a TV, and so we did not buy one.
The introduction of FM radio was what made me get back to Radio. My friends MK and DA would accompany me when I went to buy a radio in 1996. It was a slick, small Philips radio with a powerful speaker. We even gave it a name: Tinku. Tinku would be very popular among some of my friends in the hostel I lived; he often used to travel to two other rooms when I was out, and used to sing songs for the guys there. Perhaps Tinku's slick, compact size was the factor that made him so popular.
Over the years, I have listened to radio a lot (I play a radio at my work all the time, a habit I got into during by Gal Galach days!). So much so that, now I have been planning to buy a short-wave radio to listen to International stations. However, something or other does not fit my bill: either the radioset does not have an in-built AC adaptor, or that the size is big, or the reviews are bad, or it is not available in Amazon.
The second thing that he said was even more interesting: he said that the TV craze was transient and radio would again return. I found it hard to believe. (I had denounced radio by 1985, when I bought a casssette player and within 2 years, my cassette collection touched 400!). We used to play radio in Delhi; but it was because, due to the poor design of the apartment we rented, we did not have the place to put a TV, and so we did not buy one.
The introduction of FM radio was what made me get back to Radio. My friends MK and DA would accompany me when I went to buy a radio in 1996. It was a slick, small Philips radio with a powerful speaker. We even gave it a name: Tinku. Tinku would be very popular among some of my friends in the hostel I lived; he often used to travel to two other rooms when I was out, and used to sing songs for the guys there. Perhaps Tinku's slick, compact size was the factor that made him so popular.
Over the years, I have listened to radio a lot (I play a radio at my work all the time, a habit I got into during by Gal Galach days!). So much so that, now I have been planning to buy a short-wave radio to listen to International stations. However, something or other does not fit my bill: either the radioset does not have an in-built AC adaptor, or that the size is big, or the reviews are bad, or it is not available in Amazon.
Now I live in a country, where every car has a radioset, and where many people actually play it and listen to radio while driving. And then, when I think about my transformation from a TV/Cassette Player buff (all my late teen and undergraduate days) to a radio-listener, I always remember what Mark Tully had said in a distant day of 1993!
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For info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Tully
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