Anil Dharker (1946-2021): ‘We’d hog while he footed the bill’

Anil Dharker. Pic/Neha Parikh

I am still in shock. Though he was older, Anil Dharker's age never struck me because he was so active with Lit Live and the whole literary movement. My friends Shashi Baliga and Reena Agrawal work with his core team and Lit Live has a whole lot of spin-off events, and not just book readings and chats with authors. Reena for instance, organises LitLive 360@Campus Festival, with authors visiting colleges; and along with Amy Fernandes and Quasar Thakore Padamsee, she organises The Little Festival with children's books. So, it has grown into something much deeper. It was a vision that he nurtured.

Of course, I knew him best as my boss at Sunday mid-day, where he was the editor. But, our association started earlier when he was the editor of Debonair and I was a fresh-out-of-college assistant editor for Gentleman magazine, where I'd write cocktail recipes for the back of the book.

One day, out of nowhere, Dharker, who was a well-known editor even then, called me and asked to write a column for them on TV reviews. I had no idea what even made him think that I could do it. Debonair also had Iqbal Masud who was a great film critic and his pieces were intellectually solid, and he was one of my mentors. So, I felt overwhelmed. But, Dharker said, "Just shut up and write", or some such. The terrible thing was that I couldn't take a byline, as my parents would kill me if they knew I was writing for Debonair and my boss at Gentleman would have thrown a fit. Worse, I didn't watch TV. And I said to Dharker, "I don't even see the bloody thing." He responded with, "So, bloody see it."

Sending the first column, I forgot to put in a pen name. At the last minute, just before going to press, Dharker came up with ‘Monitor'. It was a pun on TV, a bad one, but I couldn't think of anything better. While I did watch a lot of films then, it was this stint that made my interest in the medium more disciplined.

When he started editing Sunday mid-day, he invited me to join. And we had a great team with the likes of Jeet Thayil, CP Surendran and Amy Fernandes. Dharker was great fun, apart from being so well read. I was dazzled by his poet-wife Imtiaz, who is highly cultured and conducted herself with spectacular grace and class. And he has a lovely daughter, actress Ayesha.

At mid-day, we had such a great time. Not only did we get to put out great work, I had my own Sunday mid-day column too, but we also had a great team and we enjoyed each other's company, which is rare, and a reflection of who he was as a person.

Dharker was a well-known food critic too, and so, we'd all - seven or eight of us - pile into his tiny Maruti and head out for his food reviews and we'd all hog. He was, after all, footing the bill. And then we'd give our opinions about the food as well. Those were good times.

As told to Gitanjali Chandrasekharan

Meenakshi Shedde is a Sunday mid-day columnist who worked with Anil Dharker