A tribute to an iconic Bengali actor

It was only five days ago that I was listening in fascination as Commitscions Kaustav Datta and Atreyee Sen talked in awe about the grand old man of Tollywood, Soumitra Chatterjee.

The three of us were having lunch at Zara, the spiffy restaurant in Kolkata's South City Mall, and since both Kaustav and Atreyee are production professionals the discussion veered around to films and television shows and the stars who continue to hold fans in thrall. That was when Kaustav told us about the time he went to interview Soumitra Chatterjee for a television channel and Atreyee chipped in with an anecdote about the iconic Bengali actor with whom she got an opportunity to interact when he came to her studio for a dubbing session.

SOUMITRA CHATTERJEE

And what I do see when I open Mint today? A tribute to Soumitra Chatterjee, who received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award this year, by veteran columnist Salil Tripathi.

"Over the years," Tripathi writes, "Chatterjee personified the nuanced angst of the modern educated Indian, bound by traditions and accepting them while being sceptical. When tragedy strikes, he is overwhelmed, but he finds the reserves within him to rise again and faces the future with equanimity."

Tripathi also pays tribute to Bengali cinema:

If quantity equated quality, Hindi cinema would be India’s best. For provocative cinema that stays with you beyond the three hours at a theatre, we turn to films made in other Indian languages, Bengali being the most prominent.

And then he returns to Chatterjee:

In his debut film [Satyajit Ray's Apur Sansar], Chatterjee showed a range of emotions that could only come from an actor of exceptional maturity and sensibility. Ray knew how to make his expressive face reveal emotions that words couldn’t depict.

Read the column in its entirety here: "A master of his craft". And if you're not a Bengali, you will understand, as I did, why Kaustav and Atreyee think the world of Soumitra Chatterjee.

Prakash and Mandakini Amte: The most inspirational story I have read in years

An e-mail I had sent out to my students, friends, and relatives in September 2009 (I did not have my own blog at the time):

Prakash and Mandakini Amte tend to a skeletal inmate at Hemalkasa.

In 2008, Prakash Amte and his wife, Mandakini, were given the Magsaysay award for service to humanity. (Twenty-three years previously, Prakash's father, the legendary Baba Amte, had received the same award.)

Our newspapers (mostly) carried the announcement prominently and the weekly magazines published some positive features. But it's Tehelka that put Prakash Amte and his achievement on the cover (August 23, 2009) and it's Tehelka that has devoted the most space to the Amtes and their super-human efforts to help some of the most under-privileged of India's under-privileged people.

The magazine also has some splendid photographs (the online edition has very few): pictures showing the work done for the Madia Gond tribals of Maharashtra; pictures that speak of the sacrifices that have been made willingly, of the tough lives that have been led, again willingly.

Prakash Amte with an orphaned leopard in his backyard.

In the magazine, there are also photographs of Prakash Amte with his menagerie of orphaned animals, one showing him frolicking with a hyena with his grandson by his side, another showing him holding a baby monkey.

Here is a telling extract:

Ask him [Prakash Amte] what kept him in Hemalkasa through all this, though, and his response is instinctive and quick. "Manda's companionship — and the people's faith. That is what keeps us here. I have never seen such tolerance for pain. They come to us from a radius of 200 kilometres, we try to help them. Sometimes when I cut their wounds, the pus sprays onto my face and body. We never had gloves but it never mattered. When I watch their wounds — black, poisonous, foul-smelling — slowly turning red and healthy, that is my reward."

And here is another:

A severely wheezing bare-breasted woman is slowly stopping to gasp. She had just raced past us at the river, perched on a motorcycle between two men. Now the generator has been put on, a nebuliser is breathing gentle breath into her.

In the open air shed a short distance away, Prakash and Manda dress an amputated foot. The patient — an old man — lies stoically on the hard floor; he does not want a hospital bed. A wood-fire smoulders near him. A few feet away, a ragged skeleton is recovering from tuberculosis next to a toddler with kidney failure. 

All of this would make an urban doctor faint, but in truth, it speaks of daily miracles over three decades. It speaks of lives saved without elaborate investigations or prophylactics. It speaks of urgent operations under torchlight, of emergency deliveries and complicated cataracts executed on the run with a textbook on the side.

And an excerpt that speaks of Prakash Amte's strength of character:

Four years ago, while showing a poisonous Russel's viper to a visitor, Prakash was momentarily distracted and it emptied its fangs into him. But nothing can perturb him, his children vouch: he always exudes a quiet, unflappable dignity in a crisis. He is the shade tree you take for granted, until it is cut down.

Now, instead of flinging the snake from him, he gently extricated it and put it back in its cage before walking towards Manda in the clinic. She, always the fit partner, the shadow he leans on, did not panic either.

On his way back to the house while she got the antidote ready, Prakash collapsed at the threshold and his blood pressure dropped to zero. A long hot drive took him to Nagpur; ten excruciating days followed. His body swelled like a balloon, blistering in a hundred places. Not once did he complain.

Both husband and wife — still visibly and palpably in love — have this understated sturdiness about them. Not for them the glib sentence, the worldly pitch. Instead, you sense the close workings of Nature in them, a kind of wise acceptance born of daily grappling with life and death.

"One good thing came of the snake bite," Gopal Phadnis, headmaster and co-traveller at Hemalkasa, laughs. "Prakash was never a talker, but he began to talk more after the bite."

To read the full story go to "The Quiet Soldiers of Compassion".

Better still, try to get hold of a copy of the magazine so that you can experience what I experienced when I read this awe-inspiring story: My head began spinning, I felt the hairs on my arms rising, and I kept asking myself: Are the Amtes flesh-and-blood like the rest of us?

CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME: Prakash Amte and his family in Hemalkasa.

After reading this article again today, March 21, 2012, I must reiterate that this heartwarming feature by Shoma Chaudhury remains the most inspirational story I have read in years.

• Photos courtesy: Tehelka

• Also read: "Fresh ideas, fresh writing" (on the vibrant quality of writing in the incomparable Tehelka. And also in the newish Open and in the relaunched Caravan).

What it means to be a features journalist with a daily newspaper

Commitscion SHREYA DUTT (Class of 2010) was, till recently, a features writer with the Deccan Chronicle in Hyderabad; she was in charge of the tabloid section, Hyderabad Chronicle. Here she gives us the lowdown on the responsibilities of a features journalist.

SHREYA DUTT

THE IDEA
How good you are as a writer depends on your ability to think out of the box; that is what sets apart your story from those on the same or similar subjects in other newspapers. Very honestly, all stories come from the same pool and there is only so much scope for doing something completely original. However, what will make your story stand out or give your readers that extra bit is the way you approach your subject. And that's the best part of being a member of the features team in a daily newspaper.

With features you can think out of the box and adopt a different writing style by avoiding the formulaic route if you feel that is what your story requires. Feature writing, after all, allows you to either stick to the basic rules of writing or to throw those rules out the window. Of course, you can junk the rules only AFTER you have mastered them.

At the Deccan Chronicle, many a time there was healthy competition among my colleagues with regard to who would write a particular story. When the Anna Hazare movement caught on in Hyderabad, I covered it first; later the editor offered the team an opportunity to do another story on Anna, but with the proviso that it should be something different. There were pitches for stories on the innovative methods Hyderabadis were using to support the movement while someone suggested profiling some of the youngest and oldest members. That's when my next idea struck me: a feature on people who had ulterior motives in supporting the movement, people who came to the gatherings to publicise their own organisations, and also people who turned up at the meetings not even knowing what the Lokpal Bill was all about.

The story was approved and DC was flooded with divided opinion. The article made people uncomfortable, sure, but it also made them think. This was one of many stories I wrote that got reactions from readers. I mention this because, contrary to the popular notion that feature writing only deals with "fluff" or light topics, features can be written on serious subjects and in a way that moves the reader to action.

THE CONTACTS
If you need stories, you need contacts. Period. This holds true for a features writer as well as a general news reporter. How you build your network of contacts, I would say, bears testimony to the kind of journalist you are.

THE EDIT MEET
Surely editorial meetings are the most crucial and challenging part of being in the newspaper business. In our case, most ideas were shot down while the best ones were slotted for the next day’s edition. Often, at these meetings, deadlines were advanced. Every day, at these meetings, our work was assessed. A strong heart and suitable armour are strongly advised.

THE OTHER STORY
As a features journalist, you will inevitably have to do research on the subject or subjects of the story you are attempting to write. If you haven’t done enough research, it’s sure to show in your writing. Which is another way of saying there’s no alternative to research. Especially when you have been assigned to do an interview, because then you have to know almost EVERYTHING about the person you’re going to meet. The last thing you want to do is appear ignorant, during the interview, of a small but significant factor that might have turned around this person’s life. This is challenging because there is always that little tick-tock at the back of your head… called the deadline.

However, despite all your preparations, you may find to your surprise that your story has taken a different shape eventually. That’s because, and I am speaking from experience here, people ARE your story and it is what they have to say to you that can either make or break your story. Quite a few of my stories turned out differently from how I had imagined them because of the kind of responses my interviewees gave me.

One last point: It is important to connect with the people you speak with, but it’s also important to have a very good bullshit detector as well (RP Sir is sure to have addressed this issue). While you may be getting some information that, on the surface, seems important, you need to figure out how authentic it is. As a reporter you will meet all sorts of people who are willing to dish the dirt. You have to be able to determine what is fact and what is fiction; this is an art all journalists need to master. And quickly.

THE OTHER JOURNALISTS
As a features journalist you do not work alone. You will need to form a tight unit with your photographer. Even more than your contacts, it is the photographers who sometimes give you a good story idea. Often their nose for news is more efficient than ours at sniffing out juicy items. And, of course, a good photograph adds value and credibility to your story like nothing else.

LET’S DO THE QUARK
As a features writer, and as a member of the Hyderabad Chronicle team, my other responsibility was to lay out the pages. My daily routine as the person in charge of the tabloid section consisted of writing a feature, coordinating with the paper’s national centres on common stories, and laying out a minimum of two pages using QuarkXPress, in addition to looking into the work done by the others, lending an extra hand to speed up the process so as to meet deadlines AND liaising with the editor AND redoing an entire page if necessary depending on the kind of news coming in.

Page-making involved designing the pages, which included choosing pictures and illustrations, and getting approval for the final design. We would get some 15 minutes — 20 if the editor was in a good mood and you were exceptionally lucky — to wrap up the last page. The page had to be error-free; if not, the penalty was nothing compared with the gentle ruler-taps RP Sir bestowed on us when we goofed up as co-editors of the college newspaper.

How Shammi Kapoor saved the life of a Time journalist

BOBBY GHOSH

Bobby Ghosh, the deputy international editor of Time and former Baghdad bureau chief, writes in the magazine that he was never much of a Shammi Kapoor fan: "I found his over-the-top acting style a little too much to take. But I quickly found that the best way to break the ice with people I met in Iraq was to ask if they remembered 'Shaami Kaboor', which is how they pronounced his name."

Then came an incident in the summer of 2003. "I was reporting from a small village west of Baghdad, known to be a stronghold of Saddam loyalists who were fighting against U.S. troops," writes Ghosh.

He continues:

My translator and I were taking a chance that as a person of brown skin, my presence would not rouse any special suspicions. Things were going well for a while: My translator thought it best to introduce me as an 'a journalist from India,' which was, in the narrowest definition, true. People spoke candidly about their love of Saddam and hatred for the U.S.

We were taken to meet the "Colonel," a 50-something man with an impressive moustache who was in charge of the village's fighters. He was a little more reserved that the others, and answered my questions warily. After the few moments, he asked me, in English, "Who do you work for?"

Reflexively, I replied, "TIME Magazine."

He frowned. "Times, of London?" he asked.

"No, TIME, al-Amreekiyya," I replied.

Immediately, he picked up his AK-47 and pointed it to my forehead. "You American?" he shouted.

"I'm from India," I said.

"No, you're American," he said again. "You will die."

What happened next? And how does Shammi Kapoor figure in this story? Read "How a Late Bollywood Icon Saved This Correspondent's Life".

• UPDATE (October 2, 2013): Bobby Ghosh is now Time's international editor. Another change at the magazine: Nancy Gibbs has just taken over as the managing editor. Read "Woman on top. About Time, some would say".

An excellent example of an interview-based local feature

Commitscion Dipankar Paul (Class of 2009), who was also a co-editor of the college newspaper, recently interviewed Christel DeHaan, the founder of Christel House International, a network of schools in four continents. (Dipankar, a copy editor with India Syndicate, which produces MSN India's content, has taken all the photographs, too.)

The interview is up on the MSN website: "When poverty met Christel DeHaan, and lost".

Isn't that a great headline?

And read that intro (first two paragraphs) again to see how well-written it is, how it complements the photograph placed above it, and how it leads up to the crux of the story in the next three paragraphs.

And also study the transitions in the paragraphs below — don't they work perfectly? 

DeHaan selects the principals of each school herself. She has promised to bear all administrative costs for the rest of her life. She has pledged her $4.3 million home to Christel House after her death.

"I feel blessed to be able to make a difference in the lives of so many children," she says. "The childhood I had was tough."

Tough does not convey half the story. DeHaan was born in Germany at the height of Nazi power. While Hitler was stomping all over Europe, her father, a German soldier, was killed in an American bombing raid.

DeHaan was raised in the ruins of post-War Germany by her mother. "My mother was my inspiration: I have learnt so much from her," she says.

Even though they were living in a time of need, "there was always place at the table. The neighbourhood children would often share our food." DeHaan says her mother never let her feel they were deprived.

And this, DeHaan says, is what brought her to what she does today. She had always wanted to help people, but it was an epiphanic trip to a children's home in Mexico in 1998 that made her realise how to.

In fact, the transitions throughout the article work beautifully. Well done, Dipankar!

DIPANKAR PAUL MAKING A PRESENTATION WHILE AT COMMITS.

• UPDATE (September 5, 2013): Mark Nichol, the editor of the excellent Daily Writing Tips blog, has put together some helpful guidelines for those who want to know how to prepare for an interview and do a good job of it: "10 Interviewing Tips and Techniques".

• UPDATE (October 20, 2013): Read this useful post by my favourite blogger, Maria Popova: "What makes a great interview". 

• UPDATE (December 2, 2013): In Mint Lounge today, Pavitra Jayaraman conjures up an accomplished feature on a regular Bangalore event: the Thursday mass at the city's Infant Jesus shrine. Read it here to understand how to extract the extraordinary from the seemingly ordinary: "Bangalore Bhath".

On SRK's birthday, a tribute by a well-known entertainment journalist

Yesterday was Shah Rukh Khan's 45th birthday. To mark the occasion, ToI published a feature on the superstar by noted entertainment journalist S. Ramachandran, who also happens to be the ex-boss of Commitscion Noyon Jyoti Parasara (Class of 2007), who sent me the link.

Noyon writes:

"What's striking is how Rama enriches the piece with information about which we have no knowledge despite our knowing so much about SRK. Also, don't miss Rama's trademark humour."

I must agree with Noyon. There are some facts in the article that I was unaware of and I had to grin when I read some of Rama's quips.

Read the article here: "Simply SRK: Know him more on his birthday".

• SRK fans (I can think of two Commitscions in particular): You probably know more about your idol than anyone else — I am certain you know more than I do, for sure — so if you don't find anything new here, please don't send me flame-mail. :-)

If you want to be healthy...

...a lot depends on you and your attitude towards a healthy lifestyle, says Madhuri Ruia, a nutritional and Pilates expert who writes a column called Diet Desk in Mint.

According to Ruia, there are three types of mindsets that prevent people from taking a step towards a healthy lifestyle:

The “definitely, maybe” attitude: You have definitely decided to become healthy but keep postponing the day when you will start implementing the changes. It will be the first Monday of every month and...that Monday never comes.

The “It’s just one life...” attitude: So why bother? You believe that this soup, salad and exercise routine is just too restrictive. The health craze is a fad that is bound to get shelved sooner or later. After all, people you know have managed to stay healthy on a paratha, pastry and party-till-you-drop lifestyle.

The “It all comes back again” attitude: It is better to stay fat than diet and exercise. After all, once you stop the diet, the weight will all come back with a vengeance.

Many young people today fall into one or the other of these categories. But I believe if you push yourself just a little every day you can work wonders, whether it is your health or your career.

When I began running on a treadmill at The Zone Mind and Body Studio in Koramangala eight years ago, it took all my willpower to run at a stretch for... five minutes. But I kept at it and gradually I was able to run for 20 minutes without a break. Then I began experimenting with the pace and also the distance. Finally, totting up 2 miles or 3.2K in 20 minutes at 6 mph (9.6K per hour) became a breeze.

Now I find a 20-minute run is very easy but, at 51, I find it difficult to maintain the 9.6K-per-hour pace from start to finish, so I have opted to go for distance. Yesterday, for example, at the gym in our apartment complex, I ran for 45 minutes without a break at the average speed of about 9K per hour and notched up 7K, burning up more than 500 calories in the process. As I said earlier, if you push yourself, you can achieve miracles.

Back to the Diet Desk now. To brush up on your health attitude, and to learn how to motivate yourself, go here.

Why am I asking you to do this? Because the media industry expects you to work long hours and gives you very few opportunities for long downtime, especially if you're a junior. Your health, consequently, is going be a factor in how well you do in your career. So make time for it now when you're still young — 30-60 minutes a day, three days a week. I guarantee this will make a difference.

• Photo courtesy: Mint 

UPDATE-1 

Yesterday, a few hours after posting the item about the role of exercise above, I hit the treadmill at our gym. Normally, after a longish run, I take it easy the next day. But yesterday I wanted to see if I could push myself again and I went at it hammer and tongs. Starting at 9K per hour, I increased the pace gradually till, in the 31st minute, I was running at 10.2K per hour. I topped out at 10.6K per hour and in 32 minutes 18 seconds I achieved my target of 5K. (The video posted above was shot on April 8, 2015. I'm running at 9kmph and I covered 6.2K in 45 minutes.)

But, really, this is not a big deal for people who have been gymming for years. 

In fact, running 12K over two days can be likened to a speck in the cosmos if you consider the case of Ranulph Fiennes, the Englishman who, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the world's greatest living adventurer. He is also the holder of several endurance records. Here's one that is simply astounding, no other word for it:

(FROM WIKIPEDIA) Despite suffering a heart attack and undergoing a double heart bypass operation just four months before, Fiennes, in 2003, carried out the extraordinary feat of completing seven marathons in seven days on seven continents in the Land Rover 7x7x7 Challenge for the British Heart Foundation. "In retrospect I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't do it again. It was [nutrition specialist] Mike Stroud's idea". Their routes were as follows:

26 October - Race 1: Patagonia, South America

27 October - Race 2: Falkland Islands, "Antarctica"

28 October - Race 3: Sydney, Australia

29 October - Race 4: Singapore, Asia

30 October - Race 5: London, England

31 October - Race 6: Cairo, Egypt

1 November - Race 7: New York, USA

Originally Fiennes had planned to run the first marathon on King George Island, Antarctica. The second marathon would then have taken place in Santiago, Chile. However, bad weather and aeroplane engine trouble caused him to change his plans, running the South American segment in southern Patagonia first and then hopping to the Falklands as a substitute for the Antarctic leg.

Speaking after the event, Fiennes said the Singapore Marathon had been by far the most difficult because of high humidity and pollution. He also said his cardiac surgeon had approved the marathons, providing his heart-rate did not exceed 130 beats per minute; Fiennes later confessed to having forgotten to pack his heart-rate monitor, and as such does not know how fast his heart was beating.

• For more on the great man, go here.

UPDATE-2

Ranulph Fiennes is such an inspiration. If he can run seven marathons in seven days on seven continents, surely I can push myself to do that little extra every time I get on the treadmill. So yesterday, May 5, I gave it my all at the gym at our club. I didn't have a lot of energy at the beginning so I kept the pace at a steady 9K per hour. It took me a while — 53 minutes and 25 seconds to be precise — but, in the end,  I achieved my target of 8K, which is the distance from my home to Commits, and which takes me 25-30 minutes by car. I have done 8K on the treadmill before — once, many years ago. But this is the first time I clocked 20K in three days. It is gratifying to know that one can get better with age.

Thank you, Sir Ran!

Why is Plato known as Aflatoon in the subcontinent?

Mint columnist Aakar Patel gives us the lowdown in this erudite, fact-filled, and interestingly written piece.

Also, here's another interesting column on the origins of our gaalis.

• Aakar Patel, former editor of Mumbai's Mid Day, is now the director of Hill Road Media. His column in Mint, "Reply To All" touches upon the most unusual topics. On March 25, he explained why Indians are too self-absorbed to be team players; on January 21, he must have sparked a myriad classroom, boardroom, and cocktail party conversations with his analysis of why women are turned on by power, men by beauty. Bookmark his column and read it regularly.

Time says the iPad will usher in a new era for journalism

The managing editor of Time, Richard Stengel, writes: "In the media these days, we have to participate in things that we also cover. I am not one of those who see the tablet as the solution for all the media's problems, but I do see it as a dynamic new way that we can present great reporting and writing to our readers. For the first time since the magazine's birth in 1923, we will soon be delivering the entire contents of TIME to paying customers in a radically different way: as a self-contained application that you can download to the iPad."

Read more.

Time put Steve Jobs on the cover of the April 12 issue and also commissioned Stephen Fry, the actor and writer, to go to Apple headquarters and write about the iPad.

Fry is an unabashed admirer of both Jobs and Apple. Here is his intro: 

It is a gorgeous spring day when I arrive at the coolest address in the universe: 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, Calif., where Apple has been headquartered since 1993. The campus, for such they call it, is enormous yet not big enough to contain Apple's current rate of expansion. An additional site is being designed and built. After stocking up on "I visited the mothership" T-shirts at the company store (we fanboys are pathetic, I readily confess), I am shown around the canteen, lawns and public spaces. It is right to call this a campus, for everyone looks and dresses like a student. I should imagine the only people ever caught wearing suits here have been visiting politicians.

Read the rest of the article here.

And then savour the review of the iPad by Lev Grossman, "Do we need the iPad?".

All three pieces are writing of the highest quality. Enjoy.

• Photo courtesy: Time

 

 

 PRECILLA LEONITA'S iPAD WAS GIVEN THE ONCE-OVER BY SURAJ AND HIREN,

MY WIFE'S NEPHEWS, WHEN THEY VISITED COMMITS RECENTLY.

• For an Indian take on the iPad, here's Arun Katiyar, the Bangalore-based content and communication consultant and a former India Today journalist, writing about the "newest shiny toy on the block" in Mint.

 

Why was the cyclone that hit Kolkata and Bangladesh in May 2009...

...named “Aila”? I was curious and so was a Mint reporter — he developed it into a story. How creative!

It turns out that storm names must be “...culturally sensitive and shouldn’t have a negative, inflammatory meaning”, according to the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) website.

Click on this link to read the Mint piece by Jacob P. Koshy: "The nomenclature of cyclonic winds".

UPDATE (OCTOBER 12, 2013): CYCLONE PHAILIN, WHICH MADE LANDFALL ON INDIA'S EAST COAST YESTERDAY, WAS NAMED AFTER THE THAI WORD FOR SAPPHIRE.

• UPDATE (October 13, 2014): "How Cyclone Hudhud got its name".