It is rightly said that self-made individuals who know their path guide themselves — and, they cannot lose their way, or goal. This is primarily because the path they love to tread presents itself below their feet. The picturesque boulevard they choose may just as well twist, or turn, and impediments would emerge, all right, but they continue onwards and upwards on their journey.
Yet, as my ‘guru,’ M V Kamath, the doyen of Indian journalism [September 7, 1921-October 9, 2014] would always tell the path one chooses and pursues with passion and persistence makes the ‘combatant’ in us equipped with the instinctive capacity to complete the voyage, howsoever difficult it may appear to be. The higher one climbs, the better the view from one’s summit in one’s own ‘mindful’ Mount Everest.
I was in awe of Kamath’s immense erudition and learning. I followed his writings as a budding writer — with diligence. I got to know him personally much later, not only as a seasoned writer, journalist, editor, author, and a much-sought-after speaker, but as a man from my own backyard — or, hometown. I met him more than a handful of times and spoke to him at length — each time conversing in Kannada, the language and the cultural backdrop that connected us. I’d think of myself as Ekalavya and I’d often wheedle him as my own Dronacharya. And, he’d quip, each time, pronto, “But, Ekalavya, without the ‘iniquitous’ portent, because, don’t you worry, I will never ever ask for your thumb.”
Such images keep falling like raindrops on my head, or rather bald pate — but, what has left a lasting impression on my mind and memory is his serene, gentle, divine face, the mesmeric twinkle in his eyes and his perennial encouraging words for the writer in me. What made my day was he would quickly recall something I wrote and tell me he liked it. He was so unassuming that I was at ease to converse with him without feeling edgy. This was his greatness. This was something that helped me to get a good grasp of what each of us should aspire for — learning the fundamental lessons in a voyage called life, not simply success with a career option, but understanding our higher calling to work and expanding on our potential, howsoever small, big, significant, or insignificant.
Most importantly, I loved to hear his riveting anecdotes from his vast repository, his remarkable media experience — glimpses from the times past. He’d recall events like a computer accessing files from the hard disk — in a flash — be it tales from his ‘beat’ as a reporter, his postings in Bonn, Washington, or elsewhere, including some amusing ‘real-time’ yarn, or strands, traced and pulled from Patagonia, in a jiffy, or compelling details of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s vitriolic temper to utter calm in an instant, or the once friendly and later standoffish Indira Gandhi. His insuperable repertoire and the power of being a lively raconteur would construct fragments into their full identity and meaning — something that led one to a deeper level of knowledge, long before the Internet became a way of life.
Kamath loved his Olivetti typewriter. He never embraced the word processor, or computer to write his articles, or books nor the e-mail. His was a long, consistently prolific innings of 70 years without a lean trot, from which is no batsman is exempt. He sent in his pieces to Free Press Journal where he made his ‘debut’ in journalism among others, till his indisposition, subsequent hospitalisation, owing to geriatric problems, and final adieu.
For a science graduate, who toyed with the half-hearted idea of being a chemist, Kamath had a way for authenticity, or validation of his thought process — he thought of it as the light of consciousness that made its way into the shadows, or danced with them. Something that one could accept as being a part of us and also others. Yes, not everyone acquiesced to his ‘rightist’ political leanings. This was palpable — but, what made him exceptional was his enormous body of work, the numerous tomes he authored and edited. This includes The Sunday Times and The Illustrated Weekly of India.
To call Kamath the inexhaustible, also quintessential, wordsmith would be stating the obvious — primarily because he cuddled not just the full spectrum of chronicling politics and our human canvas, but he also opened up a whole new vista of transformed, as also divergent, constructs. There won’t be another like him again.
— First published in First India
