Bittersweet memories

Rina Datta, (acj 1999-2000)

I heard of Jyoti Sanyal back in Kolkata 1997, much before I heard of ACJ. His daughter Reshma was my classmate in Jadavpur University, Dept. of English Literature. I was proud of my writing skills then. At ACJ, Sanyal wiped it out on day one.

All I knew about him was that he ran some journalism course in Bangalore. I read his columns but not often while I immersed myself in exactly the kind of English he later taught me to despise. At our introductory lecture, he told us we were lousy. We didn't believe it then, but today, I think we all agree he made us better.

It was never an easy relationship with Mr Sanyal. We were a little taken aback by his love for the four-letter word on day one. He continued to shock us by shouting and swearing his way through session after session. Frankly, he enjoyed the effect he had on us! Many of us couldn't stand his straight talk and temper, but Mr Sanyal grew on us. His lifelong passion for diction was addictive. We could not deter him from getting a little bit of himself into each one of us. I thought him invincible, until last week.

But beyond all that he was a father at heart. He took care of us girls, especially those of us staying at the hostel. I remember once the bathroom drain was clogged and Sir came home after the day’s work. He put his hand down the drain and took out all the hair and the dirt and the grime with his bare hands. We girls stood shocked and shamed that we put him through that much trouble. Shamed that we couldn't get ourselves to do it.

I had a terrible sinus infection once. Every day, as soon as I reached ACJ, Sir would call me in. He marched me to the rest room with a cup of hot salt water in his hand and made me draw it up my nose... and oh! though I still can't forget the pain, it was something that even my father failed to get me to do.

We heard many stories about him, that once he thought students had poisoned his coffee and once they’d locked him up in the bathroom. Or that someone let a monkey inside his office! I have no idea if any are true but he gave us many a good laugh. Once Mr. Sanyal, Meena, Ram and others took some people out for dinner. Next day we heard that he had thrown a fit over no bamboo shoots in his bamboo shoot soup and garam masala in Chinese food.

Sanyal Sir is a part of such bittersweet memories, I wonder what I could pick out about him that could sum him up. No way! What and who he really was inside is a riddle. His daughter Reshma said to me on his death: I know a part of him lives in me, but then a part of him has died too. That echoes with us, his students.

Good bye Sir, and though he would have greatly scorned at it, God Bless!!

Another tragedy in the family

Rajesh Kumar Nair's (acj, 98) father passed away a few days ago. He'd been ill for a while, but the end was sudden.
Rajesh is with Sify.com and based in Chennai.
He can be contacted at 09443389024 or acjrajesh@gmail.com.

When I put the arse before the face...

By Shaila Preeti Mathew (acj 1998-99)

*When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I put the arse before the face. The tragedy of Jyoti Sanyal is not the man he was and not his untimely death, but that we, especially his students, waited until now to recognise his better side.

Sir, as I called him, rubbed people the wrong way. He was abrasive, prone to rage, and tore our pretty little egos to pieces. I remember my last meeting with him. I had stopped by to show off my wedding pictures. He looked at them, shocked at what he saw, and said, "Preeti, is that really you? You actually look so pretty!"

I honestly don't know (to this day) if that was a jibe or a compliment. I managed a weak smile and left, bruised.

That was his style. He showed no desire to be ornate, stating facts as they were… Pure, simple and brutal. He chose his words well and worked them effortlessly, slicing you when you least expected. He had his task set before him to weed us of wordiness. It worked.

Week after week, as we trudged uphill, we did get better and even understood what he was trying to tell us.

He could talk about anything. From the patterns on a Hyderabadi sari to authentic Chinese food to the crocodiles in the Nile. My only regret is that I never stopped to tell him, however grudgingly it might have been, the impact he had on me.

There is no stupid sentimentality in telling people how much you appreciate them while they are alive, only good old common sense. After life, dead people don't read tributes written to them.

Thank you, Sir.

*I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

(*When I am Dead, My Dearest by Christina Georgina Rossetti)

Different strokes

Rahul Saigal (acj, 98)

Some holidays change the course of our lives forever. Of course, we do not know this beforehand.

When I traveled from Bombay to Bangalore with my entire wardrobe packed in two suitcases, I hadn't a clue if I'd be back home in a couple of days, or nine months later with a diploma in print journalism from the Asian College of Journalism. Rather absurd, that twice as many students, who would finally be admitted, should be asked to attend an interview on the pre-condition that selected candidates would start school immediately.

At 20, we ask fewer questions of situations we do not understand. Or even of instances that threaten to change the trajectory of our lives. It is only obvious then that every person who constitutes a space in this time of our lives will live with us forever. Even Peter, the accountant, who'd almost convinced me to pursue a career in whores racing so that I could tip him off beforehand on the best whores. Only a couple of days earlier, Sanyal had asked me to work on a series of investigative stories on a politician-in-power's many relationships with promiscuous women.

I didn't take up Peter's advice after I figured he was talking about horses. Sanyal, I still suspect, was only thinking of innovative ways of having me bumped off.

One of the very few things that Shinibali* and I had in common, then, was that we could never have been among Sanyal's favourite students. It's funny how one man's dogged obsession to gun for you can change your life forever. Most admit to have become "new and improved" writers and editors. Shinibali and I got married. I sometimes wonder if we hooked up initially only in spite of Sanyal.

I did not pursue writing or journalism as a career.

My days at ACJ hold some of my fondest memories. All made up of Kerala parathas, lousy movies, Shinibali's cool chauffeured bike, great friends, the girls' hostel, Meena, Ramki, Clara and Peter. And punctuated by one remarkable man. Remarkable – someone you cannot help but make a remark about.

Ten years ago, we were all perhaps the most integral part of each other's lives. Let's meet again. This time, for a shorter holiday. August in Bangalore?

(* Shinibali, or Saki as we used to call her, was Rahul's classmate at acj. They married soon after the course.)

Some memories...

Dev SS (acj, 98)

A couple of incidents came to mind. We were at Honnemaradu (a green paradise amidst the backwaters of the Sharavati river in Shimoga) on our first field trip. We were to camp on an island the first day. As it got dark, the organisers realised we had forgotten the food… so Sanyal and I volunteered to help Chakra (Sudarshan – one of the organisers) get back to the mainland by coracle and fetch rice, vegetables and utensils from the kitchen.

Since we were camping atop the hill on the island, it took a while to clamber down. Along the way, Sanyal narrated a reporting assignment he’d taken up during the war (for the liberation of Bangladesh). He was stringing for AFP or AP. He'd disguised himself as a Bangladeshi villager and was accompanied by a boy-guide.

However, in one village, somebody suspected him and started following the two. In Sanyal’s words… “He kept shadowing us. I was a bit nervous. The boy told me we should make a run for it… then the villager came up to us and started asking questions. I think he suspected my accent, he knew I wasn’t from those parts.

"We were away from the village and approaching a thicket. I sized him up, wondering if I could strangle him and throw the body in the thicket. But the village was not far away and they would have heard if he shouted.
Suddenly, clouds gathered overhead and it started to pour. The villager ran back to his friends, while my guide shouted at me to get away as quickly as possible!”

All of this was said in a grave voice. The image of Sanyal sizing up his unwelcome companion and thinking of strangling him is somehow… hilarious.

**

I wasn’t one of those who was intimidated by his searing tongue. Somehow, I guessed it was all a performance… his anger sometimes seemed too disproportionate to the 'crime'.

I asked him about it at the final convocation. I asked him if his anger at students wasn’t a put-on… and he admitted it was. “You see, I had never worked as a teacher before I arrived in Bangalore, so I wasn’t sure how to approach it,” he said. “I thought I had to present this image of being a hard task-master. That’s why I was so strict with the first batch (1997-98). Gradually, I realised there was no point in intimidating them as much, and I softened.”

That was true. He was much harder on us than with the last batch. And from what I’ve heard, he was really tough on his first batch (fourth batch of acj).

I don’t know how many of us judged him by his image rather than his true self.

'You are my worst nightmare come true'

By Sarita Tukaram (acj, 1999-2000)

I never thought I’d get admission into the prestigious Asian College of Journalism – not after I had blundered my way through the national entrance exam and the interview, where I was told by Dean Jyoti Sanyal, “Sarita, you don’t know English.” No one had ever told me that, and if it had been Math or Science I wouldn’t have cared. But English, my favorite subject and one I had always excelled in, was sacred cow. Here was this man, the dean of the college – standing knee-deep in his hideous brown gumboots and half-unbuttoned shirt - telling me I did not know English. I had no desire to sit at his feet to learn the alphabet, and was certain Sanyal did not want me as his student. What could be better? He rid of me and I spared of him. But it was not to be.

And so we started in the fall of 1999, a stubborn mentor and an unwilling student. The college was small – tucked into the second and third floors of the rickety Express Building at the corner of bustling Queens Road in Bangalore. It had a permanent teaching faculty of four, with Sanyal the only editor, and a class of 15 students. The elevator and computers took turns to break down and most often, both sprung back to life unassisted. The second floor had faculty cubicles, restrooms and a library. Classes were held on the third floor in the large room that doubled as a newsroom. Every morning at 9, Sanyal would walk into class triumphantly displaying a newspaper marked up with “gems” – poorly edited articles. Repeatedly putting on and taking off his glasses, he would squint his eyes as he concentrated on our critique of the “shit-rag”, thumping his hand on the table, every now and then, in agreement and pure joy. Each class would end with him goading us to join the war against wasted words. After class, the college functioned like a newspaper. Students took turns to report, edit, and design pages, and published a newspaper, The Word, once every week.

Sanyal’s comment on my English had dented my confidence so much that I dreaded the editing-rewriting process. I routinely exchanged my editing spots for reporting. Except for the mandatory classes with Sanyal, I did no other editing. This showed in my verbose articles and Sanyal was quick to point out that my writing “sagged like the bottoms of voluptuous Victorian women.” Couldn’t I be thriftier with my words? Why did I “maim” verbs by converting them into nouns? Every chance he got he picked on my editing. And every time he criticized my editing, I further shied away from it.

It got so bad that one day, after grading us on an editing test, he stormed into class with my paper in hand. “Sarita, you are my worst nightmare come true,” he spat, disgusted at my wordiness. “Don’t you realize, excess words are your enemy? Fight it.” For Sanyal, language was an obsession, wordiness a disease, and editing its only cure. Seeing him edit an article – pencil and eraser in hand striking out unwanted words with force – was like watching a soldier hack an enemy at war. Now he stood in front of the class, as if infected by my article. “We’ve got to do something about this,” he said, marching down the stairs. Friends told me not to take it to heart, “he’s just a crazy old man,” they said, but I had grudgingly come to accept he was right. My editing was awful.

That evening Sanyal called me to his cabin to discuss “a remedy” for my wordiness. Cigarette in hand, he was hunched over his cup of hot tea, sniffing it. “Sarita, do you smell something fishy in this?” he asked sliding the cup towards me. I didn’t. “Strange, it doesn’t seem right to me,” he said. A suspicious man, Sanyal’s days were spent killing excess words and saving his own life. He constantly believed his tea was poisoned, his computer hacked or his phone tapped. He often answered the phone with a curt “Who is it?” rarely a “Hello”. Students and colleagues alike were tickled by his idiosyncrasies but respected his work.

An acclaimed editor, Sanyal had spent nearly three decades with The Statesman, an English language daily in his hometown Calcutta. Before becoming dean at the Asian College of Journalism in 1997, he had authored The Statesman’s stylebook and overhauled its editing process. Sanyal firmly believed, “A good editor makes a better reporter” and often assigned readings from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and Amar Chitra Katha, a series of comic books with tales from Indian mythology. I got a generous dose of that, along with extra editing assignments. Three months after a strict editing-diet, I finally passed the Sanyal test. “Not bad, but it can be better,” said Sanyal, the first positive remark about my editing. I had become as obsessed as Sanyal, sometimes editing sentences as people spoke, changing passive voice to active. I won’t say I ever got good at it, I got a C on my transcript, but the drill helped me appreciate clarity in writing.

After graduating I went on to work as a reporter at the newspaper Sanyal loved to hate. “Send me their gems,” he wrote to me. We kept in touch for a couple of months and then the e-mails and phone calls petered out. It’s three years since I last spoke with him. In that time I quit my job, got married, and enrolled in a journalism master’s program at UC, Berkeley. Here too, I’ve shied away from editing. Now in my final semester, I’ve mustered the courage to take an editing class. As I start my first assignment, armed with a pencil and eraser, I remember Sanyal and strive to be the warrior he trained me to be.

Look who is talking…

(By Ashish Mukherjee)

To say that Jyoti Sanyal knew the English language inside out would be an understatement. Or to snatch an idea from his Statesman Stylebook, it would be "stating the obvious".

In my nine months at ACJ, and afterwards, I never found Sanyal stuck for want of the right word – written or spoken. I used to be as much kicked about his razor-sharp intros (scribbled in red ballpoint ink on my newswriting exercises) as his manner of speaking.

During the daily swipes that he took at English language newspapers, Sanyal never wasted time or vocabulary on unnecessary civilities. Blunt was his way. He would call a spade a spade, and often a bit more! No wonder that quite a few of my batchmates would routinely get pissed off.

Here's a rewind to the ACJ classroom of 1998, to the “vocabulary” of Jyoti Sanyal.

Shitrag – First day, first salvo against substandard journalism. This was Sanyal's common noun for English language newspapers. Not one paper escaped the tag.

Who wrote this piece of shit? – A question Sanyal would regularly throw at us, especially during critiques of the ACJ lab journal. Unable to explain the use of that unnecessary adjective or wrong phrase, the culprit could do little but fumble.

Face first, arse later – This had nothing to do with the human anatomy. Sanyal was merely telling us how to put names and designations in copies – always, the name first and designation later. "S M Krishna, former chief minister of Karnataka", he would say…

This is Baboo English! – Thank you Ram for reminding me of this in your MiD DAY column!
“Baboo English” was Sanyal’s dig at 21st century Indian English written with a 19th century colonial hangover. The commonest example he would give was the practice of putting a "subject" in official letters.
My admission application to ACJ had run with the subject "Request for ACJ admission form". The teacher in Sanyal lost no time in correcting me, even though I was months away from my ACJ studentship.

Handout journalists – A reference to reporters who churned out reader-unfriendly stories from government and police handouts, ignorantly picking up and adopting hackneyed expressions and clumsy sentences along the way.

25 – The maximum number of words the intro of a copy could have. A Lakshman Rekha that we dare not cross! I started my ACJ stint with 40-word intros and steadily improved…
Towards the end of the course, when I sometimes managed to say it all in about 20 words, Sanyal would don his editing hat, carefully strike off a few words and say, "It's 15 words now. What do you think? Can we tighten it further?”...

Don't put the cart before the horse – News first always was Sanyal’s mantra. Especially in legal copies where reporters have the habit of prefacing important judgements with the name of the judge.

Never point out, it's bad manners – While quoting in copies, Sanyal wondered why journalists would unnecessarily make officials and ministers "point out", "mention", “stress”, “add” or "opine" when one could simply "say" things. His take was when reporters write "so and so pointed out", they actually mean "so and so said"…

"In any case, never point out,” Sanyal would say, his index finger pointing very much at you. “It's bad manners!"

-Ashish

Miss you

By Shiny Phillip (acj, 1999-2000)

It's a strange feeling... My first meeting with Sanyal was before I actually walked up the steps of ACJ, Bangalore. I was at a writing workshop in Whitefield for which he was a resource person. At that time, ACJ wasn't on my radar. Here was this man, zealously denouncing 'legalese' almost as if the 'jargon' had given him a summer rash.

At the end of the session, we had to write a short story. When I got my paper back, it read, “An excellent Roald Dahl ending. Keep it up.” Of course I was thrilled.

Two years later, ACJ happened. Two sessions later, when I had my worksheet literally thrown back at me, my hangover vanished. It was an uphill climb, plodding through the redundant phrases and weeding the excesses out of oneself. I still go back to his 'style sheet', using it as a compass when I lose my way in murky texts.

It was on Sunday that I heard he died. He must have been very lonely, I mused. We will all miss him -- his temper, as Meena says, his missionary zeal, as Ashish says, his sense of intolerance, his restlessness... we will miss him.

Posthumous recognition

By Nandagopal Menon (Nandu, acj, 98)

I remember my last encounter with Jyoti for all the wrong reasons. It was in late 2005 and he tried to recruit me for a rather unpleasant cause, to say the least. I almost signed up. But, fortunately, one of my colleagues (who also happened to work with Jyoti in The Statesman) saw through it and warned me. I don't want to go into the details of the episode. At least some of you ACJians, especially my classmates, know about it.

That said, I have to add that I have always respected Jyoti's brilliance and passionate commitment to his work. I believe that when alive, he did not receive the recognition he deserved. Part of that, of course, was because of his hot-headedness and unenviable skill to alienate people. Now that he is no more, hopefully people will judge his work and not the person. And, for sure, his work is near-flawless. Some are born posthumously. Perhaps Jyoti is one among them.

Still alive

By Priyadarshini Basu (acj, 98)

The only tribute I have silently been paying 'The Blighter', as some of us secretly referred to him, is by fighting to keep the intros within 20-25 words every crack of dawn. Can't tell you how much I thought of him the first day that I joined MiD DAY! The reporters' copies would have been a gold mine for Sanyal! He could've written a sequel to his book. But since that will not be, I can only pray his spirit continues to handhold and help me deliver the goods.

As you rightly said Ashish, we may have hated him, secretly admired his sheer editing genius, but we have never really been able to ignore him.
He lives on in our speech, in every written word and perhaps a tad grudgingly, has even managed a little nook in our hearts.

Long live Jyoti!

Priya

Learning to teach

Sandhya Bhattacharya (acj, 98)

Thank you for letting me know about Mr Sanyal's death. Like Vijay, I must admit that being his student was nerve racking, to say the least. But I was shocked and saddened by this news.

Surprisingly, I've thought about Mr Sanyal many times in the last decade, (he would even rant in my dreams). As someone who is now herself a teacher I've spent a fair amount of time reflecting upon effective pedagogical strategies, and reviewed those of my mentors. I remember reluctantly coming to the conclusion that Mr Sanyal was (despite my deep seated resistance to him), among the finer teachers I've had. Like my peer in ACJ I still cringe when I see writing in passive voice -- and thanks to him, am conscious about adopting the apposite word in a given context.

As I try to teach my students to write efficiently and get frustrated when they can barely string two words together, I find myself actually sympathising with Mr Sanyal! I honestly never did think I would be tempted to lash out like he did, but have come close to doing so several occasions. But I always remember how his temper would affect students and have learned to keep mine in check.

So aside from learning how to write I suppose Mr Sanyal also inadvertently taught me how to teach. We never do think of telling people that we have learned something from them (and honestly, I don't know if I would have done so had he been alive). But I did want to share this with you, who have known him perhaps far better than I did.

More doffs of the hat

Two tributes in newspapers. Ravinder Kumar of The Stateman wrote this obit:
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?clid=2&id=226119&usrsess=1

while Ram has written this moving piece in Mid-Day:


An angry man called Jyoti
Obits are being written all over India for Jyoti Sanyal, the journalism guru who died in Kolkata last week. I had seen him every day for three years when he was in Bangalore, and for someone in his fifties, he looked young and fit. When I heard the news of his passing, I wondered how someone like him could have had a stroke. “It was his temper,” said C K Meena, who knew him closely as a colleague at Asian College of Journalism.

Meena (now a columnist for The Hindu), Vishweshwar Bhat (editor, Vijaya Karnataka) and I taught at ACJ when Jyoti was dean (1997-2000), and we often watched him rage against the ugly style that rules our English language newspapers. He certainly was an angry man, but the anger was more ideological than personal. He shouted at students who turned in clumsy copy, and flung insults that left them reeling. But a trainee just had to write one nicely worded story for him to fall in love with her (He mentored the boys with equal concern).

Jyoti blamed the bad English of the Indian newspapers on two influences. Indians, he believed, thought in their own tongues, and then translated their thoughts into English, which is why they don’t find expressions such as “I am having two brothers” wrong. Second, he was convinced the merchant language of the East India Company had overwhelmed Indians and left them incapable of clarity of thought and expression. Jyoti called it “baboo English” because it used “scraps of commercialese such as same/the same; the said letter; aforesaid letter; duly noted, and Kindly instead of please, and so on.”

When I first heard about Jyoti’s insistence on English that sounded like English and not like an Indian language, I thought he was one of those literal school-teacher types, obsessed with textbook correctness. I had discovered the psychedelic beauty of Salman Rushdie’s prose, and had earlier enjoyed the bold Kannada-coloured English of Raja Rao’s novel Kanthapura. I had arrived at the position that Indians writing in English ought not to feel apologetic about bringing in their own cadences and idioms into English. But I soon realised Jyoti was bristling against something else altogether, and at one point he acknowledged my argument that English would be enriched, and not impoverished, if we applied our native imagination to it.

Looking back, Jyoti looks like a Naxal of the newspaper world, incensed not so much by personal injury as by the absence of a just system. And he carried himself around like an ideologue with his own idea of fashion, wearing oversized goggles, puffing away on a Wills Filter, and outfitted in jeans and cowboy-style zip-up boots.

When we published an obit for Jyoti in MiD DAY yesterday, we headlined it ‘Enemy of the cliché’. Ashish Mukherjee, the author, had almost ruined his chance of getting an ACJ seat when he said he wanted to become a journalist and fight for some great cause. Jyoti believed Ashish had “airy fairy” ideas about journalism, and decided to turn him away, but changed his mind at the last minute. Ashish came down from Delhi and and turned into one of Jyoti’s fervent disciples. He went back to work for Indian Express and CNN-IBN in that city.

Jyoti’s students now populate newspapers and TV channels across India, and are conscious they have the responsibility of carrying forward his crusade against shoddy writing. On their blog (http://acjbillboard.blogspot.com), they have been sharing stories about Jyoti. Elsewhere, Ravinder Kumar, editor of The Statesman when Jyoti wrote its style book, describes him as a man of style and great substance.

Here in MiD DAY, we bought copies of his book Indlish for all our journalists as soon as it hit the stands a year ago. We didn’t know it then, but our preference for it over The Economist Style Book had pleased Jyoti, and he had felt vindicated that a newspaper was trying to put his ideas into practice.

Jyoti didn’t teach me anything overtly, perhaps because he felt it would be indecorous to instruct a colleague, but I watched him at work, and picked up Ekalavya-like! writing and editing techniques that have proved invaluable in my journalistic career. I know this is belated, but thanks, Jyoti!

Fire and Ice

By KC Vijaya Kumar (batch 1997-98)

Let me be honest upfront. I never had a great equation with Mr Sanyal. We were the first batch to learn from him at ACJ and understandably there were misgivings. He was a man who spoke his mind, never held his punches back and it did not help that his irritation over the use of wrong English got aggravated on reading the dailies and obviously his mood in the mornings could be quite taxing.
But there was no faulting his commitment to helping us improve our writing as well as editing skills. If many of us in that batch manage that odd tightly-written copy, it is thanks to him. But while studying under him, he was the feisty `old-man' with strong biases and prejudices when compared to the serene Mr Ramakrishna and the ever-smiling CK Meena. It didn't help that he was perhaps teaching for the first time and we were a bunch of strong-willed individuals. It was a strange equation - we loved his linguistic repertoire, his skill to enhance the readability of our copies but at the same time our personal equations with him sucked. But credit to him, we could walk into his cabin anytime and say what we didn't like about his approach and he would listen, argue and then give up with a resigned air. And while he would improve our way with words, he did lacerate a few with his acid-tongue. But he never held any grudges. I do fondly recall him mentioning my interest in sports journalism to a visiting faculty! He was never politically correct and in this age of too much sugar, he was indeed a relief though I guess we all realised it a bit late. Sir, thanks for the memories. Never got a chance to tell you earlier, we have had our fights with you but we always respected you. You were one of the finest teachers I have had in my life. Wish I told you that earlier.

P(l)ainly Speaking

I have known about Mr Sanyal but never met him - a great writer with simplicity of expression par excellence. My condolence to his family.
- Radhika Rani (acj, 96)

My interaction with Mr Sanyal was restricted to the telephone when I was working for Deccan Chronicle and he was writing a column for students on the correct usage of English language. I was awed at his meticulousness. He would call the day before to update me on the status of his column, call back to inform he had faxed it and then call back again to find out if all was well. Sad that the Guru of English Usage is no more.
- Manju Latha Kalanidhi (acj, 96)

Thank You

R.I.P, Mr Jyoti Sanyal (Dean, Asian College of Journalism 1997-2000)



Stupid locals in these sleepy villages. Can't we have some better facilities here also?

A tribute by Ashish Mukherjee (acj bangalore, 98)

Why must all villages be sleepy ones? Because Kipling once described them that way? Indian villages are no longer sleepy, reporter. It's you who needs to wake up and resolve never again to use this tattered expression.

local residents
Residents generally are local. People live in an area / a neighbourhood / a vicinity. Stop using local residents and use the appropriate term. And never use locals, which is a hangover of the colonial days.

actively consider
As opposed to passively consider? What does that piece of officialese mean?

- From Write it Right, The Statesman Stylebook (By Jyoti Sanyal)

Jyoti Sanyal, the man who passionately and relentlessly tried to introduce good writing into our journalistic consciousness, died of a heart attack on April 12.

Sanyal, as my batchmates and I used to call him after we passed out of Asian College of Journalism, was far ahead of his times. The clear and pointed newswriting that he wanted ACJians to practise has yet to gain ground in the industry.


Around the country, journalists are more than happy prefacing a report with "in a significant development..." Or calling everything from a theft to a murder to an assassination an "incident".

"Write what you mean, and mean what you say," Sanyal would roar during the critiques sessions of ACJ lab journal The Word. Those who took him seriously found out along their careers how difficult this was. And probably, that's where my respect for the man comes from. For Sanyal showed us - copy after copy, day after day, month after month - that it was possible to write that way…

There was hardly anything about Sanyal's persona that one could ignore. Some of us noticed his "piercing eyes", some commented on his "fancy boots". Quite a few hated the sarcasm and bite in his official notes on the ACJ softboard (they were always marked From the Dean), while the more inquisitive among us wondered why he drank only black coffee.

Everyone had, and still has, an opinion on Sanyal. In my first week at ACJ, I had sneaked out of Bangalore to attend an interview for a film production course at Delhi's Jamia Millia University. I remember fibbing to Sanyal that I was going to Mysore, and I can't forget the look he gave me. As if he had seen through my lie…

From that moment on, his eyes were kind of set on me, for good reasons though. I almost became obsessed with the Sanyal-kind of newswriting, and he told me I was doing a "good job" at subbing. That "good job" is perhaps the only reason I can today manage a job on any newsdesk.

***

Thank you, Mr S

A tribute by Dev S Sukumar (acj bangalore, 98)

I suppose we've yet to come to terms with the loss. I used to send him my writing from time to time and seek his comments. A 'good' from him was cherished for long, because it meant it was good, while a few yellow patches (he used to colour questionable sentence construction with yellow on MS Word) would mean I had to get back to the basics, as it were.

I just realised I couldn't mail him my stories any more.

I remember two phases he went through. After ACJ, when the IIJNM thing didn't work out, he was freelance consultant for technical writers. He was low, mentally, because I suppose it wasn't half as challenging as a journalism job. Soon after, he left for Calcutta. When I mailed him a story, he replied saying he didn't think he was fit enough to edit it! That, from a man who went about editing with the single-mindedness of a surgeon at an operation theatre.

I happened to visit him in December 2004. He was a changed man – I think he was about to set up Clear English India and was looking charged up as before. His mind was sharp once again and we had a pretty long conversation. Among other things, we talked about God.

I asked him what he thought of God, and the answer was typically Sanyal – "People believe in God because… you see, if I get hit by somebody, and I cannot hit back, I'd like to think there is somebody to punish him."

"There might or might not be a God," he continued. "But why do I need a priest to act as a middleman?" I cracked up, because I remembered his hatred for obscure mantras and their practitioners. Sanyal was always for the clear and simple.

His skill of editing reflected this philosophy. There was nothing 'arty' about editing – it was to make language simple, precise and to the point. No mantras, no language gymnastics. His was a scientific mind in a literary project – always searching for the word that was in excess, for the phrase that had no place – and cutting his way through the underbrush of our linguistic and cultural peculiarities. As Indians, he would always tell us, we had a tougher battle at hand, because our culture had predisposed us to use English in a way that should not be used. I don't know if anyone has dived so deep into the use of English language among Indians. In the years since I left ACJ, I haven't come across anyone who treated English usage with the kind of rigour that he did.

For Sanyal, language did not mean just smart ways of expression, it meant making life simpler. Consider, for instance, the incomprehensible legal documents against which countless Indians dash their heads. If he had his way, all legal documents would be far simpler and easy to understand, and there would be lesser opportunity for middlemen to control our lives.

I think he was quite disappointed that none of us at ACJ went through his notes with the seriousness with which we were expected to. Speaking for myself, the collection of notes he handed us has been top of The List of Things to Do ever since I left ACJ. You know what happens to these lists.

Still, whenever a certain word or phrase comes up, Ping! an antenna picks it: Also; Facilities; Local Residents; Sleepy Village… It hits. That's because he tore into us with such abandon that we still fear using those phrases… He gave us the skills we'd need on the job, and he made us feel we were fighting for a cause, the cause of purer English. Few of us still have that missionary zeal, but we are thankful to have worked with someone who showed us that such zeal was not misplaced.

Apart from what he bequeathed us, I'm thankful for two things – that he died quickly and painlessly, and that his book (a bestseller) will continue to wage the war against bad language on his behalf.