The Last Word: Obituaries of 100 Indians Who Led Unusual Lives

Rahul Bedi

Description

An anthology of 100 obituaries written by journalist Rahul Bedi. Published between 1990 and 2008 in the Independent and Daily Telegraph, the collection ranges from obits written for people like Harkishan Singh Surjeet to Minoo Masani, and from Morarji Desai to Vijayalakshmi Pandit. These are not just obits but they also celebrate the extraordinary life of people who have changed the idea of India. Many of these were young professionals, politicians, film actors, writers, musicians or scientists when India got Independence and have played a crucial role in their fields of work.

Sujets

• Dying
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Young professional
• Minocher Rustom Masani
• Obit
• Last Words
• Harkishan Singh Surjeet
• Professional
• Politician
• Writer
• Musician
• The Independent
• The Daily Telegraph
• Independence
• Obituary
• Death
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 31 mai 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788193704905
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Last Word
  OTHER LOTUS TITLES Ajit Bhattacharjea Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah: Tragic Hero of Kashmir Aitzaz Ahsan The Indus Saga: The Making of Pakistan Ajay Mansingh Firaq Gorakhpuri: The Poet of Pain & Ecstasy Alam Srinivas Women of Vision: Nine Business Leaders in Conversation Amarinder Singh The Last Sunset: The Rise & Fall of the Lahore Durbar Bertil Falk Feroze: The Forgotten Gandhi Hamish Mcdonald Ambani & Sons Kunal Purandare Ramakant Achrekar: A Biography Lucy Peck Agra: The Architectural Heritage Lucy Peck Delhi a Thousand Years of Building: An INTACH-Roli Guide Madan Gopal My Life and Times: Munshi Premchand M.J. Akbar Byline M.J. Akbar Blood Brothers: A Family Saga M.J. Akbar Have Pen, Will Travel: Observations of a Globetrotter M.J. Akbar India The Siege Within: Challenges to a Nation’s Unity M.J. Akbar Kashmir: Behind the Vale M.J. Akbar Nehru: The Making of India M.J. Akbar The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity Maj. Gen. Ian Cardozo Param Vir: Our Heroes in Battle Maj. Gen. Ian Cardozo The Sinking of INS Khukri: What Happened in 1971 Madhu Trehan Tehelka as Metaphor Monisha Rajesh Around India in 80 Trains Noorul Hasan Meena Kumari: The Poet Peter Church Added Value: The Life Stories of Indian Business Leaders Peter Church Profiles in Enterprise: Inspiring Stories of Indian Business Leaders Prateep K. Lahri Decoding Intolerance: Riots and the Emergence of Terrorism in India Rajika Bhandari The Raj on the Move: Story of the Dak Bungalow Ralph Russell The Famous Ghalib: The Sound of my Moving Pen R.V. Smith Delhi: Unknown Tales of a City Salman Akthar The Book of Emotions Shahrayar Khan Bhopal Connections: Vignettes of Royal Rule Shantanu Guha Ray Mahi: The Story of India’s Most Successful Captain Sharmishta Gooptu Bengali Cinema: An Other Nation Shrabani Basu Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan S. Hussain Zaidi Dongri to Dubai Sunil Raman & Rohit Aggarwal Delhi Durbar: 1911 The Complete Story Sunetra Choudhury Behind Bars: Prison Tales of India’s Most Famous Thomas Weber Going Native: Gandhi’s Relationship with Western Women Thomas Weber Gandhi at First Sight Vappala Balachandran A Life In Shadow: The Secret Story of ACN Nambiar A forgotten Anti-Colonial Warrior Vir Sanghvi Men of Steel: India’s Business Leaders in Candid Conversation Zubin Mehta Zubin Mehta: The Score of My Life FORTHCOMING TITLES Prateep K. Lahiri A Tide in the Affairs of Men: A Public Servant Remembers Aruna Roy Power to People: The RTI Story
 

 
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CONTENTS

Preface
1. Harkishan Singh Surjeet
2. Air Marshal Jafar Zaheer
3. Hrishikesh Mukherjee
4. Pramod Mahajan
5. Nadira
6. Capt Umrao Singh VC
7. K.R. Narayanan
8. Amrita Pritam
9. Syed Mushtaq Ali
10. Sunil Dutt
11. Lt. Gen. J.S. Aurora
12. O.V. Vijayan
13. Gemini Ganesan
14. Parveen Babi
15. Amrish Puri
16. J.N. Dixit
17. P.V. Narasimha Rao
18. Raja Ramanna
19. Mehmood
20. Johnny Walker
21. Lt. Gen. K.P. Candeth
22. Nani Palkhivala
23. Abu Abraham
24. Air Marshal Aspy Engineer
25. R.N. Kao
26. Harshad Mehta
27. Maharaja Madhavrao Scindia
28. Lt. Gen. Inderjit Gill
29. Rangarajan Kumaramanglam
30. Usha Mehta
31. Rear Admiral Satyindra Singh
32. Rajeshwar Dayal
33. M.L. Jaisimha
34. Guru Hanuman
35. Lt-Col Michael Skinner
36. Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai
37. General Krishnaswami Sundarji
38. P.N. Haksar
39. Persis Khambatta
40. Nikhil Chakravartty
41. Minoo Masani
42. E.M.S. Namboodiripad
43. Ajit
44. Lalita Pawar
45. Biju Patnaik
46. Pupul Jayakar
47. Neville Wadia
48. Raaj Kumar
49. Aruna Asaf Ali
50. Krishnarao Shelvankar
51. Dinesh Singh
52. Maharaja Martand Singh of Rewa
53. Aditya Birla
54. Beant Singh
55. Gopalaswami Parthsarthy
56. The Maharaja of Bharatpur
57. Rajan Pillai
58. Morarji Desai
59. Zail Singh
60. Malcolm Adiseshiah
61. Swaran Singh
62. Tushar Kanti Ghosh
63. Dhirendra Brahmachari
64. Hajji Mastan Mirza
65. Devika Rani
66. J.R.D. Tata
67. Ghulam Khader, Prince of Arcot
68. Utpal Dutt
69. Swamy Chinmayananda
70. Girilal Jain
71. Srikrishna Mulgaokar
72. Field Marshal Kodandera Cariappa
73. Apasaheb Pant
74. Kalyan Sundaram
75. Justice Mittra Sikri
76. Mallikarjun Mansoor
77. Amjad Khan
78. Niranjan Singh Gill
79. Achyut Patwardhan
80. Lt-Gen Shankarrao Thorat
81. Kanan Devi
82. Sir Raghavan Pillai
83. Kumar Gandharva
84. Abid Syed
85. Ramnath Goenka
86. V.K.R.V. Rao
87. Shripad Amrit Dange
88. Govindan Aravindan
89. Nutan Behl
90. Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar
91. Vijayalakshmi Pandit
92. Atma Jayaram
93. Zia Mohiuddin Dagar
94. Vanakudre Shantaram
95. Suresh Mahindra
96. Balachandra Trimbak Ranadive
97. Angami Phizo
98. Ashok Birla
99. Keshav Shankar Pillai
100. Roy Axel-Khan
 
PREFACE

This anthology of 100 obituaries of prominent Indians from varied walks of life, written for two British newspapers over a two-decade period, came about entirely by happenstance in London in the late 1980s.
It was prompted by the passing away in 1989 of Roy Axel-Khan, the enigmatic, but little known Indian diplomat, who had become my good acquaintance during his last few years in London, where he increasingly spent most of his post-retirement years. This diminutive 80-year-old former Royal Indian Navy officer’s life story – encompassing calamity, pathos, adventure, glamour and success demanded telling, and motivated me to call the Obituaries section of the Independent newspaper.
Launched just three years earlier, and already the preferred choice of a burgeoning readership due to its lively and crisp writing and elegant, minimalistic design, it somehow seemed the obvious choice to carry Axel’s fascinating life story (featured on page 301). In comparison, the more established Fleet Street titles were far more staid and infinitely less approachable than the Indy, a start-up venture by three former Daily Telegraph journalists.
Louis Jebb the taciturn, but receptive Deputy Obituaries Editor listened patiently to my pitch, and almost immediately commissioned me to send in Axel’s obit, that was promptly published under my byline. The Indy’s practice of appending bylines to obituaries was an innovative feature for UK’s daily broadsheets at the time, having since become more commonplace.
Thereafter, over the next 19 years till 2007, when the Marxist leader Harkishen Singh Surjit passed on, I wrote the obits of some 150 Indians – politicians, diplomats, soldiers, civil servants, intellectuals, actors, businessmen, journalists, cricketers, maharajahs, gangsters and even a wrestler. Their lives spanned the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and without exception, were interestingly spent, as they all existed in restive times. All the subjects featured in this volume contributed in some form and measure in nurturing newly independent India into adolescence and adulthood, and were, to a person men and women of substance.
A few of the obituaries were written for the Daily Telegraph , for which I was New Delhi correspondent for over 20 years, and to whose foreign news pages I still contribute. But the bulk were carried by the Independent , where in later years, I had the pleasure of dealing with the droll Obit Editor Jamie Fergusson, formerly an antiquarian bookseller, and his two equally charming women deputies, as Jebb had moved onto grander pastures.
And in all the years of our extended association, not once did this witty Scotsman or either of the Indy’s Obits staff ever decline any of my offerings, continuing to accept obits of interesting Indians, however little known they may internationally have been. Their sole guiding mantra was that the subject needed to be captivating and had led an exciting, lively and colourful existence. Occasionally, they suggested the odd obit that I might have missed, or simply ignored for not being writable, but on further research, all their proposals proved worthy of narration.
The Independent ’s catholicity in approving obits of personalities as diverse as Bollywood villain Ajit or character actor Lalita Pawar, cartoonist Shankara, cultural czarina Pupul Jayakar, Victoria Cross recipient Umrao Singh of the Royal Indian Artillery or spymaster Atma Jayaram, was generously matched by another indulgence: permitting me the use of the nom de guerre Kuldip Singh as my byline between 1990 and 2007.
The duplicitous reason behind the alias – taken from my father’s name – I can now safely reveal after all these years, was simply a protective ploy, as I then worked for the Daily Telegraph and was contractually barred from writing – even obits – for any rival British newspaper. Ironically, this also meant that the fictitious Kuldip Singh – and not Rahul Bedi – was the object of vilification by those dismayed by my forthrightness in some of the obits. To the best of my recollection, this indignation