Glimpses

This is the story of a man whose integrity and professionalism inspired scores of young journalists in his time and continues to bestow the honor of a best journalist year after year. He was as much a man about town as he was a master of letters. Rolling on the wave of the freedom struggle in his early years, then anchoring himself firmly on the fourth estate, he carved a niche in the turbulent times of a search for the national identity and the traivails of nation-building in the wake of the Indian independence.

He saw life too closely to be a romantic. He shared the dreams of freedom fighters and Indophiles of his generation who dreamed of seeing India build into a strong and self-reliant nation. Abundance, social standing or indigence - nothing could corrupt his fierce dignity or moral uprightness. He was irreproachable in his conduct in public or private affairs. When he rose to speak at public functions, hosted to honour a dignitary, artist or himself, he dressed formally, remained composed and maintained the dignity the occasion demanded with elan.

1. Personal
Likes/dislikes
He liked to watch TV when it came into the house in 1978 during the Asian Games. He had regularly heard the news over the radio before that. He disliked gossip. He disliked beating children and never did. He disliked if someone held a job that did not match his qualification. To him, work defined a person. Honesty and moral integrity were the two pillars on which he stood and walked the earth. He never used a wallet, for he never carried money enough to fill it. He lived simply and frugally, a Gandhian at heart with Nehruvian views. A large framed photograph of Jawahralal Nehru adorned a wall at home and a biography of Mahatma Gandhi by Roamin Rolland snuggled in the bookrack.

Traits
His voice was rarely heard and when he spoke it was just audible, no more, no less, except of course when he was angry which resulted in a short burst of words sharp and scathing, never repeating, closing fast.

Interests
Books, fiction and non-fiction, reading, writing. He read Sartre, Tales of Hoffman, American essays, Gunnar Myrdal, Toynbee, Indian writing in English, political writings of Marx, Lincoln and Mark Tully.

Tastes
He was at his sartorial best at all important social and political events and regarded as the best dressed journalist. He loved good well-cooked tasty food, served hot, with little spices, and a dash of pickle. He listened to music both Hindustani and Carnatic, and his favorite was Bala Murali Krishna.

Dishes
Capsicum curry. He liked to cook mixed vegetable rice, which he did but very, very rarely, but did so with keen interest and total absorption.

Passions
He was passionate about the upliftment of the needy and the disadvantaged. He was not a social activist, but a socialist with a keen interest in the developing economies of his time, especially China and the erstwhile Soviet Union. But he believed in democracy, freedom of speech ordained by an independent republic, and of course the freedom of the press, for he contributed a great deal to the developing fourth estate in independent India. He was inspired by the work and the sacrifices of the Indian stalwarts in British India. He understood very well the need for reforms in the society that had withdrawn into itself, overwhelmed by the superciliousness of the British in India and the superior advantage of the advanced counties in the West. It is in this milieu that he grew up, spoke against the unjust policies and the corroding authority of not only the British, but also the rule of the Nizam in the Hyderabad State, and took up the pen as a warrior might take to arms.

Talents
He was a wordsmith and he spoke and wrote about politics from the age of twelve, against the wishes of his elder brother under whose patronage he was at that time, and against the draconian and sometimes whimsical rules of the school principal, who promptly disallowed him from sitting for the Board Examinations. He spoke well and to the point and his speech was not of the imflamatory or the rabble-rousing kind; it was just as his writings were, merely pointing out the injustice of the system.

Avocations
Gardening was perhaps something he felt deeply about and spent his energies in reaching out to mother earth in his own way. He was not one given to rites and rituals, but a sense of the spiritual he had always carried about him. He spoke to me often on the philosophy of shunya, the nothingness in which everything is. He did not quote from the scriptures, but when he spoke on such matters, which was but rarely, it seemed like distilled truth. Books, magazines and newspapers were his constant companions. They were always only an arm's length away. He was a voracious reader and had been so right from his teens. If he was not discussing politics, or attending a political rally organized by the Congress, his younger brother recalls, he was sure to be found in a public library.

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The kitchen garden

When we moved into our own home in Banjara Hills from the rented house in Abids, father spent more time home, tending to the kitchen garden he was so fond of that he spent a lot of his time and money in enriching the ground with artificial manure and fertile top soil. He took personal care in watering the plants and ensuring that they grew up protected from excessive sun and rain. Our house excited envy in the neighborhood, for we grew vegetables in the backyard such as cauliflower and cabbage, potatoes and tomatoes, green chillies and ladyfingers, brinjals and snake gourds. We had a difficult time protecting the coriander leaves from the numerous variety of birds in the neighbourhood, especially the sparrows, which have unfortunately disappeared at about the same time that father passed away. He had had the saplings of Ashoka trees planted in the front yard which today tower over the house like sentinels. He worked with his own hands and exulted when a flower bloomed or a brinjal sprouted on the tender stalks. The karipattha trees were ubiquitous and grew in large numbers with such a copious quantity of leaves that for years we never purchased them from the market. Even today we don't, though their numbers dwindled, the species survives to this day. Father hired a bony lad to work the soil once a week; the boy worked tirelessly and fed heartily from the plate mother offered him whenever he came to work. Father helped him get an autorickshaw and when he was not driving people around the city, he worked in our house whenever he was called to do so, for mother fed him generously and paid him despite his protests. The front of the house came alive with potted plants of crotons and cacti and the soil was luxuriant with flowering plants like hibiscus, lillies, marigolds and roses. The money plant crept across the windows, snaked across the balcony walls or climbed over to the roof, twisting, coiling and supporting itself over trees and banisters. We had three mango trees, two of them were identified as father tree and mother tree. I do not know how this naming came about, but alas the father tree succumbed to a deadly virus that hollowed out its huge trunk, lay bare its branches that once were proud of its leafy foliage, as a roosting place for birds and offered a seasonal bounty of mango fruit year after year. It died at about the same time that father left us. Desolate and under nourished, the soil too eventually lost its vigor and capacity to sustain life and soon after father's demise the garden of flowers and vegetables vanished. What lies today is not even a faint shadow of its former glory, for the soil exists in patches, covered over mostly by cement and stone slabs.
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A large family

A remarkable situation in father's life is the recurring motif of living in a large family. As a child he was one among eleven children, occasionally augmented by cousins who frequented his maternal home. Again as a married man he raised a slew of children in his home of which only four were his own, the others being nephews, nieces and cousins from all over the city of Hyderabad. It has been the lot of that generation of men who left the districts in search of their destiny in the growing cosmopolitan city that being self-sustained and better-off professionally and socially compared to their siblings, undertook the onus of disciplining and fostering education and a sense of responsibility in the cousins who grew up with us in the sixties and seventies. Until he moved with his own family to Banjara Hills, considered an inaccessible and inhospitable outback of that period, father spent the prime of his life among a large family and his rented home in Abids was a haven to a floating population of friends and relatives. My cousins, especially the female ones, recall with touching gravity the help and homely atmosphere they received from my father and the gratitude they feel for my mother who made it all possible without a whimper. It may be noted here that surprisingly all the relatives without an exception were from the father's side and remarkably enough mother went about her wifely chores of the household without complaint or discrimination.

Despite his busy life as a reporter, he invariably spared one day during the first two months of every new year, recalls my elder sister Indira, when he took us to the industrial exhibition. A retinue of children followed him into the exhibition grounds, bypassing the ticketing queues, for he carried a pass. She felt elated and proud that she could walk right through the barriers unhindered, without having to show the ticket, unlike the rest of humanity which plodded ponderously in a long chain of ordinary people with tickets in their hands and awaiting their turn to pass through. He was generous in purchases and we all returned home eminently satisfied. My siblings and cousins bought bangles, toys and dresses, but I badly wanted a cane, which father bought for me ignoring Indira's protests. Later when I used it successfully to beat the younger ones at home, her worst fears came true. We grew up freely and happily, and though mother controlled us with shouts and screams father left us pretty much to ourselves. He was too active in the happenings of the world outside, carving a niche for himself in the hectic and fledgeling world of journalism; he spent little time at home.

When he was free he went to the cinemas in the neighbourhood: there were at least a half dozen within walking distance from home running three and sometimes four shows a day. Every new movie in the town saw mother and father watching it in the first few days of its release. Father's favourite was Madhubala? And Sadhana? He watched movies with children too; only one accompanied him at any time. Which movie did I see with father? My memory fails here or I may never have gone out with him to see a movie at all. So is the case with my next sibling Manjuala. We never really enjoyed the movies; we were made of different stuff that made us cry and disturb those who took us there. Indira and Rajani found much favour in this regard; while the former recalled blandly watching bhakti movies, the latter recollects in her typically exuberant way having thoroughly enjoyed watching Zorro with father. Perhaps he knew precisely well the child's temperament and conducted accordingly. Indira reminisces warmly how she got to munch snacks during the intermission and returning home with an icecream when she went out with father. By all counts he was a good father, caring and keenly aware of the needs of his children.
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"God is Great"

Father looked frail, his face was lined with creases and his eyes opened fully behind his spotless spectacles. He sat beside me on an iron bench with his lean frame huddled together and listened intently to what I was saying. Mother sat next to me on the other side.
"I told him not to accompany me," Mother said, "but he insisted."
I looked at father and he looked back at me unsmiling, but with a fatherly affection that conveyed much to me that I cannot put in words.
"He even threatened to go by himself, if I refused to let him come. You know how weak he is; it is too much of an ordeal for him to travel on these broken, congested streets."
I said something to the effect that he could have spared himself the trouble. Typical of a man of few words, he said simply, "God is great."
I was on my way to Bombay from Visakhapatnam on an official journey and the train had halted in Secunderabad station, when my parents came to meet me and see me off. Mother had packed something for me for the journey ahead and father wanted to see me, in spite of his failing health, overruling mother's remonstrations.
Whenever I remember that late January afternoon when I met father and mother together on that railway platform, I feel glad that he came to see me. It is the most cherished moment for me that he should come for me, regardless of the fact that he was extremely ill. He came and sat by my side and gave himself up completely in my presence.
I spoke mostly with my mother, for father was not a man with whom one could speak easily. I had always felt uncomfortable in his presence and his natural disposition towards reticence created a gulf that I could never cross.
The brief encounter left an indelible imprint on my mind, which I did not realize as I bid good bye to my parents and continued my journey. The image of father sitting on that bench on the crowded platform raising his slender arm in a farewell evoked in me the picture of a defenseless man struggling against the harsh vicissitudes of life. A strange quietude enveloped me after the train left the station.
One of the passengers was a man who looked much older than my father. He sat erect and appeared quite healthy. Scarcely a couple of hours passed, when this old man took out a steel tiffin box and began to eat chapattis. All of a sudden I felt
a rush of emotion well up in me and tears sprang in my eyes. I looked away. I think I envied that old man his good health in spite of his advanced age. I remembered the sorry figure of my father and couldn't help feeling immensely sad for him.
A few days later I received the message of my father's demise.
I was on a pipe-laying barge off Bombay High oil fields when the news came. It was a bright February morning. The sea appeared calm. I reclined on the helipad reading 'Notes to Myself' by Hugh Prather. A colleague came up to me and asked me to come to the cabin: he had apparently something to say to me in private. In the cabin he told me that he had received a radio message from the base: it was from my home.
Was it the look of gravity on his face or the manner in which he informed me, I couldn't be sure, but I remember asking him: "Is it about my father?" He nodded and added, "this morning."
I broke down and cried uncontrollably. I felt something leave me for good. Irrevocably.
On a pleasant February morning after a routine checkup at the Osmania General Hospital in Hyderabad, mother stepped out to purchase some medicines, waiting until father slept on the hospital couch after consultation with the doctor.
The end (date and time) came sometime when mother was out; he was alone when he died; none of his four children was present at the time of death. It was Uttarayan, a period in the diurnal movement of planet Earth when the Sun heads toward the Northern hemisphere, also known as the winter solstice, a period considered auspicious by the Hindus.
I flew from the high sea to Ville Parle heliport the same day and took the night train home. Relatives, friends, acquaintances and scores of journalists came and went in a steady stream, paying their tribute and last respects to the man
who had been a freedom fighter and veteran journalist for over four decades. He was sixty-two and survived by his selfless service to journalism, and a close-knit family of wife and four children.
One person, who later rose to be Prime Minister, deserves mention at this time. The late Shri P V Narashimha Rao, the then leader of the state congress (?) and future Chief Minister, shared the sad event by exchanging a few words with my
mother on that day I came home for the funeral.
About five years after his demise (?), during the time of the then Chief Minister CHandrababu Naidu, an award was instituted in father's name, called the B Nageswara Rao Best Journalist Award, and given away every year.

[needs to be edited and refined for accuracy]