Looking at a journalist’s strange relationship with demise of a public figure
A still from Obit, a film about the obituary team at The New York Times; false alarms crop up every time Dilip Kumar falls sick
What’s the first response to news of death for loved ones? Shock, then grief. What’s a newsperson’s response to death of a public figure from a field they survey?
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Worked-up thoughts of writing/editing/researching/delegating, lining up the deceased’s former associates, for their condolences/anecdotes… Distance between the above measured against a dangling deadline—depending on time/place of death.
In 2002, as a cub reporter in Bombay—having learnt of filmmaker Nishit Sharan, among others, in a car crash, I wished aloud how this could’ve taken place closer than Delhi, making it easier to report/verify. My boss diagnosed this ailment as journalism—that I may find hard to recover from, eventually.
Unless the journalist is employed with the New York Times (NYT). A rare newspaper where the work of investigating/ruminating over the accomplished dead is handed over to a full-fledged department of specialised ‘obituary writers’.
A profession you’d otherwise consider “macabre, one step away from the undertaker.” Given that journalism itself privileges meeting people, while this is simply the opposite. But then again an obituary involves, “a sentence or two about death. All of it is about the life. So it’s not depressing at all.”
These are two perspectives from professional obituary writers in Vanessa Gould’s delightful documentary, Obit—set in NYT’s said editorial department. As under-watched films on journalism go, it’s the most realistic/original take on a print newsroom I know (less dramatic than Andrew Rossi’s Page One, in the same setting).
Together, over years, the obit department has written over 1,700 “advance” notices for public figures, who are still around—storing them, with other precious data, in a library they call the “morgue”! In the case of young achiever-aviator Elinor Smith, her fully composed obituary lay in NYT ‘morgue’ for 80 years, until she died at 98!
What exactly is an obituary anyway—besides an “eloquent sendoff”? Margalit Fox from NYT’s obit team says a euphemism for someone dead is that “they’re history. [An obit] captures [a person] at the precise point that they become history!”
Couldn’t have been put better. Know this from having written profiles, or biographical sketches, of people I meet. And yet there is an incomparably reassuring finality to an obit, given your impressions/assessment can’t change from hereon—for better/worse.
The praise isn’t premature. The subject remains incapable of disappointing you after all. Or surprising you further, being no more a work-in-progress. This is the end. The writer’s only friend, the end!
Also, learnt this from writing more obituaries in (the pandemic year) 2020 than all years put together. An exercise so mentally exhausting that I lost count of tributes/dead after a point—Amar Singh, Basu Chatterjee, Nishikant Kamath, SP Balasubrahmanyam, Saroj Khan, Irrfan, Jagdeep, Rishi Kapoor, Sushant Singh Rajput….
But since this is news, outside of inevitable elegy, the obituary is about facts. NYT stipulates that in the second paragraph, the writers mention the cause of the subject’s death; but more importantly, name the person who confirmed the event.
Why? In 2003, based on a send-off that appeared in the late edition of a European daily, NYT ran an obit of actor-ballerina Katherina Sergava, to learn that she was alive—in fact being nursed at a Manhattan hospital, down their street!
Once, writing a piece on the film Naya Daur (upon its re-release), strangely I had the image of Bimal Roy in my head, while typing the name of the film’s director as “late” BR Chopra on the computer—declaring him prematurely deceased in print.
BR’s son Ravi was naturally furious, demanding an apology, although beyond the level/proportion of the crime. I submitted my sincere regrets to the editor. He said he’s killed off more. Which is true. Most journalists, in the long run, end up with a wrong dead-story!
Worse is confirming deaths. Where, again, I’m bestowed with the unique ignominy of calling up the great star-actor Pran, who was alive, to check on if he was! He picked up the landline. Guessing my purpose, rightly blasted back, “All you care for is if I’m dead?” I hung up.
Similar episode occurred with the amazing Amrish Puri, who concealed his health issues, when asked to confirm. Which is wholly understandable/fair. Only making the correspondent feel like a despicable ambulance chaser.
Worst is the rumour of death. Or as Mark Twain, erroneously bumped off in his lifetime, famously remarked, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated!” Such has been the appalling case with Indian cinema’s greatest acting maestros, Dilip Kumar, 98.
About a decade ago, I was convinced there was a miscreant at the desk of a Delhi-based newspaper I worked for, who would cook up a rumour of Dilip Saab’s demise, periodically sending us into a tizzy.
How he knew better sitting in Connaught Place is beyond me. Only, the number of such a-holes grew over the years.
With false alarms over his health circulating every time the thespian falls sick. Rumours of death are obviously received differently by loved ones—his wife Saira Banu having to publicly deny them each time. It’s not the fake-news you want to hear.
Sad what she has to go through. As she had to again, this week. May Yusuf/Dilip Saab live for a 100 years more. We know that won’t happen. The wish remains. Rumours must die, regardless.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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