Poet, photographer, graphic designer, journalist, editor – Pritish Nandy was all this and more.
So was he a dilettante, dabbling in various things? Not at all. Pritish took everything seriously and dived into them with a great passion. Though much has been written about his award-winning poetry, he was also a calligrapher. He was a talented photographer who took some great images of Indira Gandhi. He won awards for his designs for the annual calendar of Guest Keen Williams, where he worked. He won the Padma Shri at the age of 26. And he was devoted to animal rights – I once saw him get out of his car and threaten to beat up a man on the street who was kicking a dog.
For me, he was also boss and friend. I worked with him for a few years and saw the professional side of Pritish Nandy, a man who empowered his team but expected results, but also the personal side, sensitive and generous. His temper was legendary; I have seen grown men either remained rooted to the spot or burst into tears. The rancour was not permanent; if he liked you or found you sincere in your job, he would calm down and life went on normally. No grudges. But his one quality made him a good leader – if there were complaints from the owners about a journalist, the person concerned never found out. That kind of support is rare among bosses. After work, we often sat till late at night chatting about a wide variety of subjects, from movies and literature to how he had met the beat poets as a young man. We talked about the vagaries of the owners. He was candid and had no illusions, and could be brutally frank in his assessment, but he knew he had a job to do.
Pritish was already a published poet with an all-India reputation when he arrived in Bombay from Calcutta in the early 1980s at the ripe old age of 28. Samir Jain, the new entrant in the family business, Bennett Coleman, had come with fresh ideas to not just revamp the old publications, but also dramatically increase the revenue.
Bennett had many old legacy publications, ranging from The Times of India to Science Today magazine. Pritish was tasked with redesigning and pepping up the magazines, which, under their old editors, had fallen into a stupor. But realising that the old guard would be offended, he was given a small office far away from the editorial side and told to bide his time. Pritish was not one to twiddle his thumbs and began gathering a team of designers around him.
By the late 1980s, he was in full charge and apart from his editorial duties, he also began working on the 150th anniversary — the sesquicentennial — of The Times of India, which fell in 1988. That’s when I met him first, where he talked about how he believed in big, bold ideas that often bordered on excess and broke away from tradition. That audacity was visible in the anniversary celebrations, when large paintings by Indian masters hung from the rafters in the (then) Victorian Terminus, a massive Gothic structure which had a huge through traffic of passing commuters. It had never been done and may never be again.
The same touch was brought to the fusty magazines — Femina, Filmfare, Science Today, Evening News and most of all The Illustrated Weekly. The editors had been in situ for many years and in Jain’s and Pritish’s view, had become old and boring. They were gently and not-so-gently pushed out and younger editors were brought in. Pritish himself took editorial charge of the Weekly, which had fallen from the halcyon days of Khushwant Singh and had become, under subsequent editors, a prissy magazine that was totally out of touch with a younger demographic.
Under Pritish, it turned into a dynamic publication with bold headlines, strong stories and great photographs. He is remembered for some memorable interviews – with Kishore Kumar, with Osho (in Oregon, where he had moved to), and with Frank Camper, an American mercenary who ran a school in Alabama where Pritish first revealed that four Sikhs were trained and whose later attempt to kill Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in Washington DC was unsuccessful. The Sikhs wanted to carry out multiple terror attacks in India, but Camper reportedly set up a sting operation with the FBI and got two of them caught. The other two escaped and later conducted the bombings of Air India flight 182 over the Atlantic Ocean.
In 1992, Pritish left the Times group and joined the Ambanis’ newspapers, the Sunday Observer and Observer of Business and Politics, and asked me to go along with him. I did, a bit later. Initially there was no interference – or none that reached me – but soon it began, and on one occasion Pritish had to tell them what they were suggesting was a bad idea. That didn’t change their mind. A Rubicon had been crossed and many journalists, including me, left.
Pritish too eventually left and tried his hand at television. Satellite television was new and he tried his hand at a show. Some of his actions around then mystified his supporters – he became a Rajya Sabha MP of the Shiv Sena and during the Narasimha Rao government, he made a show where Harshad Mehta showed a suitcase full of rupee notes he had taken for Rao in his official residence. He formed a company, Pritish Nandy Communications, which forayed into television programming and then film production. Among the landmark films his company made are Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, Chameli and Jhankar Beats, movies of the kind mainstream producers wouldn’t go near. His daughters have made highly rated TV shows like Four More Shots Please.
Of late, he had stepped away from the spotlight. I was in touch with him occasionally but we couldn’t meet. I got a signed book of poetry from him. Friends said he was unwell and knowing him, it was not surprising that he wanted a low profile. For all his flamboyance and larger-than-life persona, he was a deeply private man. I can see him quietly writing more poetry in solitude.
