PICTURE TALK
Manohar Shyam Joshi (1933–2006) was a Hindi writer, journalist, and scriptwriter, most well known as the writer of Indian television’s first soap opera, Hum Log (1984), and his early hits Buniyaad, Kakaji Kahin – a political satire, and Kyaap, a novel that won him the Sahitya Akademi Award. He is often called the “father of Indian soap operas”.
Both his serials, Hum Log and Buniyaad, used to be aired once a week on Doordarshan, the only state-run TV channel. These serials were so gripping that housewives, family members, even daily wage workers, used to stop working and got glued to the TV to watch the episodes.
Joshi was also an editor for two Hindustan Times weekly magazines at the same time – Hindi magazine Saptahik Hindustan and English weekly Morning Echo. There were many weeks when both publications either had my pictures on their cover, a full page inside, a full-page back cover, or a double-page center spread.
Joshi used to sit in a large room which was located at the end of another room in which all the Hindi weekly staff used to sit, except the cartoonist and layout artists, who worked on the second floor. Because my work was profusely used in both the publications, I was a frequent visitor to the Hindustan Times building on Kasturba Gandhi Road. On many such visits to his office, if I needed to ask or discuss anything with him, I could just enter his office, and he would get up from his seat, put his right hand on my shoulder, and take me to the canteen a floor below, and we would discuss what pictures he wanted me to shoot next or give him from my stock if I had them.
My frequent visits and contributions to both the magazines he edited had created such a camaraderie between us that whenever he needed a picture, he would either ask me for me to see him or leave a message with two of his favourite staffers – the layout artist and the cartoonist. I was the only outsider that he always dragged along with those two to the canteen for tea and snacks. The other staff used to call us “the group of four.”
There were many other cameramen, as well as five or six staff cameramen of the Hindustan Times who were available to him, but he liked my work so much, and he depended on me so much, that once he got me to find the “characters” and shoot all the relevant pictures, including the cover of the magazine, to illustrate an entire novel published in one issue of Saptahik Hindustan.
Years after he had left the editorship of both the magazines to devote all his time to literary writing, novels, and film scripts etc., I met him at International Film Festival of India in Delhi, where he introduced me to Kamal Haasan as a very famous and great photographer, such a great, genial and humble person was he. It was there that he also asked me to visit his home someday.
This picture was taken in his house about a year before Manohar Shyam Joshi passed away from heart attack on March 30, 2006, at the age of 73. According to Khushwant Singh, “by the time he died, in 2006, Manohar Shyam Joshi was recognised as the most innovative writer of Hindi.”
The views expressed here are the author’s own and The News Porter bears no responsibility for the same.
