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ALIVE AND CLICKING T.S. Satyan was born and educated in Mysore. He took his first photographs as a high school student. He was among the earliest in India to take to photojournalism. He has travelled widely and has published numerous articles, essays and travelogues. His photographs have been published in newspapers and magazines like Life and Time. He has also done several photo assignments for UNICEF and other international agencies. To mark the International Year of the Child in 1979, UNICEF sponsored his exhibition of photographs on children titled Little People which was displayed at the UN headquarters in New York. His published books include Exploring Karnataka, German Vignettes, Hampi—The Fabled Capital of the Vijayanagar Empire, In Love with Life—A Journey through Life in Photographs and Kalakke Kannadi, his memoirs in Kannada. T.S. Satyan was awarded the prestigious Padma Shri by the government of India. The University of Mysore conferred an honorary Doctor of Literature degree on him.

Praise for T.S. Satyan

The point about Satyan is not that he is a great photographer. That of course he is. As a balladeer of black and white, he outshines the captains of colour. But greater than the photographer is the man. Satyan epitomises a culture, a way of life, a civilisational mode. Satyan is an attitude to life. That is precisely why the story of his life should be of more than passing interest. Without flamboyance, yet with a sureness of touch, his life illustrates the extraordinariness in the ordinary and thus elevates us all. When the creative becomes the inspirational in him, a whole world lights up. The pen becomes a camera as he fills his narrative with a unique sense of charm, of wonderment, of grace. Louis Armstrong undoubtedly had T.S. Satyan in mind when he gave soul to the song It’s a wonderful world. Satyan makes the world wonderful and richer for all of us by being alive and clicking. By being Satyan. —T.J.S. George The New Indian Express Satyan has been long enough with his camera. So let us leave his prints alone. The real point about his photography and writing is that he still sees afresh, every day, with wonder and with feeling. —The Statesman It is not given to every small-town boy with a box camera to grow into one of the best-known and best-loved photographers of the country. The secret of T.S. Satyan’s success is not merely in the mastery he has achieved in the techniques of camera craft but in his enthusiasm for life and his sympathy with people. His humanism makes him part of the life he records, wiping out the line between objectivity and subjectivity. That is how his pictures are so spontaneous and vital. Another of Satyan’s achievements is his ambidexterity. He is as fluent with the pen as with the camera. His memoirs make warm, wonderful reading. —H.Y. Sharada Prasad Journalist and former information adviser to the prime minister

Alive and Clicking A Memoir

T . S . S AT Y A N

PENGUIN BOOKS USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia New Zealand | India | South Africa | China Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

First published by Penguin Books India 2005 Text and photographs copyright © T.S. Satyan 2005 All rights reserved 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 ISBN 9780143033530 Typeset in Saban by SURYA, New Delhi

Printed at Repro India Limited

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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Contents FOREWORD

VII

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS WHY DID I WRITE?

XI XIII

1.

GROWING UP IN MYSORE

2.

THE INITIATION

3.

THE ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY OF INDIA

4.

PRINCELY HOUSE OF LEARNING

5.

RIDING A DREAM HORSE

6.

LIFE IN PRE-WIRED BANGALORE

7.

THE RAMAN EFFECT

8.

VISVESVARAYA: THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN

9.

THE LITTLE MERMAID

1

13 22

31

38 47

57

76

10.

THE GREAT ANOINTING

11.

BLOODSHED ON THE GOA BORDER

12.

ONE WONDERFUL MONTH IN DELHI

13.

PRIME TIME IN DELHI

14.

WAITING FOR THE DALAI LAMA

15.

SIRIMAVO AND HER ANGELS

85 92

104

119

110

97

67

16.

WALKING WITH VINOBA BHAVE

17.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT

18.

AFGHANISTAN BEFORE THE FALL

19.

THE BANGLADESH MASSACRE

146

20.

GENTLE FANGS IN A TEMPLE

154

21.

ARUNACHAL PRADESH:

125

131

THE CHANGING PANORAMA

134

159

22.

ENCHANTING SIKKIM

23.

THE CONNOISSEUR KING

24.

THE YOGI AND THE VIOLINIST

25.

THE MAHARANI AT THE HUSTINGS

26.

THE MALGUDI MAN

27.

REMEMBERING A FIELD MARSHAL

28.

172 180 194 203

214 229

THE MAN WHO SAW A THOUSAND FULL MOONS

237

29.

RAY OF GENIUS

30.

R.K. LAXMAN RETURNS HOME

31.

THE WIZARD OF THE VEENA

32.

THE FIRST WOMAN PHOTOJOURNALIST OF INDIA

244 255 266

273

33.

PHOTOGRAPHING THE POPE

34.

DEATH IN THE VALLEY OF FLOWERS

35.

RAGHUBIR SINGH: THE DREAM-CHASER

36.

REACHING OUT

37.

FOOTLOOSE AND FANCY-FREE INDEX

315

280

302 308

286 294

Foreword

B

ritish colonialists and Indian nationalists were agreed on one thing: the utter worthlessness of the maharajas and nawabs of princely India. These rulers were viewed as feckless and dissolute, overfond of racing horses and unattached women and holidays in Europe. This was mostly true, but there were exceptions. One was in the state of Baroda, whose great maharaja Sayaji Rao Gaekwad encouraged modern education and worked for the abolition of untouchability (it was he who endowed a travelling scholarship to that gifted boy from a low-caste home, B.R. Ambedkar). Then there was the state of Mysore, which had the good fortune to be ruled by a series of progressive maharajas who recruited still more progressive dewans. The princely state of Mysore was never a democracy. Power was tightly controlled by the (generally overweight) ruler and his (usually Brahmin) advisers. It was undoubtedly an autocracy, but, as autocracies go, a rather enlightened one. Between them, the maharajas and their dewans started modern industries (including a

viii

Foreword

steel mill), ran efficient railways, built an impressive network of irrigation canals, patronized great musicians and artists, and created and nurtured first-rate colleges. In its pomp, which ran roughly from 1910 to 1945, the state of Mysore was a very interesting place to grow up in. In those years, if you were young, talented, and ambitious, and if you had the luck to be born in the state, you might go a very long way indeed. Among the products of this ‘Mysore Generation’ were R.K. Narayan, the first of the now distinguished line of Indo-Anglian novelists; B.S. Kesavan, the pioneering historian of Indian publishing; R.K. Laxman, one of the greatest cartoonists in the world; M.N. Srinivas, without question India’s most eminent social anthropologist; C.D. Narasimhaiah, the most celebrated English teacher and critic of his generation; and Doreswamy Iyengar, arguably the finest veena player of his generation. A little younger than this cohort was A.K. Ramanujan, the poet, folklorist, and translator, who did so much to bring the riches of classical Tamil and Kannada literature to the modern world. While the fame of these men spread far beyond Mysore, they were all shaped by the town, especially by its culture and its teachers. Most of them studied at the Maharaja’s College, an institution known for the high quality of its instruction in the humanities. In the great presidency towns, Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, bright young men flocked to the study of the sciences. But in Mysore it seems the liberal arts were reckoned to be at least as attractive. Certainly, the teachers were topclass. Not least in philosophy, where the faculty included, at various times, A.R. Wadia, M. Hiriyanna, and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.

Foreword

ix

T.S. Satyan’s evocative memoir captures what it was like to learn and live in the Mysore of those days. Like his colleagues, he too moved on from the town he once called home, to achieve international renown as a photographer. But as this book demonstrates, Satyan’s dexterity with the camera is matched by the lucidity of his pen. His prose has the same understated irony as that of R.K. Narayan (one of the many Mysore luminaries remembered in these pages). But—and here he is perhaps unlike Narayan—Satyan’s world embraces other than his boyhood milieu; it takes in the far corners of India, and the countries beyond. There are sensitive profiles here of the first Indian Chief of Army Staff, K.M. Cariappa; of Sirimavo Bandaranaike (the first woman prime minister anywhere); and of the last Dalai Lama—three among the many unusual people he was once asked to photograph, and whom he remembers here with such clarity and wit. The humanity and humour of this book are characteristic of the man. There is still much of the boy in Satyan—at eighty-one, he retains the same robust curiosity about the world that he did when he was eight. I have rarely met an elderly Indian with less cynicism, and never one with less ‘side’. (Despite the thirty-some years that separate us, I have never felt the need to call him anything other than ‘Satyan’.) T.S. Satyan is among the nicest of men, and Alive and Clicking is among the most charming of autobiographies. Satyan’s book will justly attract a wide and enduring readership. But my own hopes go beyond this. For even to the unprejudiced eye, the ‘Mysore Generation’ seems to be as variously gifted as the ‘Bloomsbury Group’—

x

Foreword

and yet there is a whole shelf of books on the latter, not one on the former. With luck, this book will encourage an energetic young historian to make good this deficiency, thus to explain how a small (and now obscure) town came to contribute so mightily to the cultural life of modern India. Bangalore January 2005

RAMACHANDRA GUHA

Acknowledgements Ramachandra Guha, H.Y. Sharada Prasad, T.J.S. George, Krishna Prasad, S. Srinivasachar, Sunaad Raghuram and June Gaur. Many thanks.

Why Did I Write?

I

am neither a professional writer nor a major movershaker, just a simple photographer. Writing doesn’t come easily to me, and I would not even venture to suggest that I have influenced events beyond the corners of my home—and sometimes not even there. Yet, why did I write this book, and why do I think that what I have to say might be interesting enough for somebody to pick it up and read? Obviously, when you spend eighty summers on one planet with a camera in hand, things happen, events occur, and you have a bunch of experiences and encounters because you were there at the right time at the right place. Still, is that good enough reason to put them all in a book to be inflicted on an unsuspecting reader? I think so. To explain why, let me take you to the first test match that Australia played in the twenty-first century. The captain was Steve Waugh, and the Australian team strode onto the field wearing replicas of the baggy green caps worn by its predecessors who had played the first test in the twentieth century, hundred years earlier.

xiv

Why Did I Write?

Waugh is not particularly known for his sentimentality on the cricket field, and this sudden throwback to an age gone by caught observers unawares. The skipper had a simple explanation for this burst of nostalgia, ‘How will we know where to go if we do not know where we came from?’ This is precisely the reason why you have this book in your hands. To take you to an age, an era to which I was a witness. To help you meet people, some ordinary, some extraordinary, in my personal and professional lives. To show events, some ordinary, some extraordinary, as I saw them through the prism and lens of my camera. Whether all of them deserved to be recounted here, I do not know. But this much I do know that a species that does not record its past, that does not remember its past, is no species at all. How, as Steve Waugh put it so eloquently, will we know where to go if we do not know where we came from? ‘What is the ultimate impulse to write?’ Paris Review magazine had posed this question to writer James Salter ten years ago. ‘Because all this is gong to vanish. The only thing left will be the prose, and poems, the books, what is written down. Man was very fortunate to have invented the book. Without it the past would completely vanish, and we would be left with nothing, we would be naked on earth.’

{1}

Growing Up in Mysore

M

ysore, with its marvellous ambience, seemed an ideal place to indulge in my wanderlust when I was growing up. I would set out early in the morning to walk along the Sayaji Rao Road to reach the agrahara in the southern part of the town. Walking along the roads one day I noticed that a light shower the previous night had washed the trees, streets, boulevards and buildings, which glowed in the soft light of the morning. My eyes feasted on the carpet formed by the flowers—the yellow tabebuia, the purple jacaranda, the pink and white acacia and other blooms. The air was thick with the fragrance of floral bounty, accentuated by the scent of jasmine and sampige, wafting from houses that had bushes of croton, guava trees and coconut palms. I could hear young boys repeating Sanskrit verses, and girls playing the harmonium as they practised their music lessons. Women were busy drawing rangoli designs in front of their homes, after washing the ground with cow dung. Breakfast was already being cooked in some homes. I could catch the flavour of the

2

Alive and Clicking

garnish oggarane—a seasoning of dried chillies and mustard seeds fried in oil—which is an essential ingredient of Mysore cuisine. Here and there I saw people taking their morning walks. Some of them looked imposing—dressed in a white dhoti, buttoned-up coat and gold-laced turban. At around eight in the morning, I was at my favourite eatery that was commonly known as Boardless Naranachar. Paunchy merchants sat there waiting for their ‘set dosa’ and ‘kesari bhath’, served on a banana leaf. The ‘set’ was a pile of four soft dosas, free from oil and topped with coconut chutney, potatoes and two small pats of butter. Some regulars addicted to butter brought their own stock held between muttuga leaves! They splashed the butter on the dosas with the passion of gourmets. I also joined them and, with the ‘set’ well inside me, topped it by drinking a cup of steaming coffee. Naranachar’s restaurant was an extension of his home. His clients used to say that he was an ‘autocrat of the kitchen’. One day, while I was eating my set, I noticed that a merchant of ample proportions summoned the waiter and screamed: ‘I ordered my set fifteen minutes ago! How much longer should I wait?’ Naranachar who was in the kitchen heard him and shouted back: ‘Who is that man, making so much noise? Tell him that nothing is available.’ This chastened the merchant who meekly asked to be excused. The set made at Naranachar’s place had become so popular that owners of other eateries in Mysore began preparing the dish. The best known among them was Raju Iyer’s ‘nameless’ restaurant near the Vani Vilas

‘there is still much of the boy in satyan— at eighty-one, he retains the same robust curiosity about the world that he did when he was eight’ —from the foreword by ramachandra guha ‘. . . when you spend eighty summers on one planet with a camera in hand, things happen, events occur, and you have a bunch of experiences and encounters because you were there at the right time at the right place,’ says T.S. Satyan, award-winning photojournalist and recipient of the Padma Shri in 1977. A vivid montage of people and places, Alive and Clicking is about chance meetings and brief encounters, beautifully portrayed in a style reminiscent of a long-lost era. Spanning eighty years of what is perhaps the most eventful century in history, the book recounts the days Satyan spent with luminaries like Nobel Laureate C.V. Raman and virtuoso film-maker Satyajit Ray; the significant moments he captured in the lives of leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Pope Paul VI, and his enduring friendships with creative masterminds like R.K. Narayan and R.K. Laxman. It also portrays vividly his experiences as a photographer in places as varied as Sikkim, Afghanistan, Arunachal Pradesh and Malaysia, and describes life-changing events like the massacre of non-violent satyagrahis by the Portuguese rulers in Goa and the mayhem that followed the assassination of Mujibur Rahman in Bangladesh. Like a slow, easy ride in a carriage, Alive and Clicking takes us through the dusty paths of Mysore of the 1930s and 40s to the farthest corners of India and countries beyond, recording for posterity an extraordinary life lived in interesting times.

Memoir

Cover photograph by the author

MRP `375 (incl. of all taxes)

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