00:00We have news coming in. Veteran journalist Mark Tully was a chronicler of India and an acclaimed
00:12author is no more. He was last at a private hospital today in Delhi. Mark Tully was 90 years
00:21old. The award-winning journalist was ailing for some time and had been admitted to the
00:26Max Hospital in Saakit for the past week. Tully was born in Calcutta, which is now of course
00:34Kolkata, on October 24th in 1935. Mark Tully was the chief of bureau for the BBC New Delhi
00:42for 22 years. He was an acclaimed author. He was also the presenter of the BBC Radio 4 programming
00:50called Something Understood. He was knighted in 2002 and received the Padma Bhushan from
00:57the government of India in 2005. Tully has written several books about India, including
01:04No Full Stops in India, India in Slow Motion and also The Heart of India. And joining us
01:12right now is India Today's Rajdeep Sardesai. Rajdeep, he was a man who was not from India,
01:19but no one else could be more Indian than him.
01:22Absolutely, Anjali. In fact, if you told him that he was not from India, you would have said,
01:29no, no, I am very much Indian. In a sense, Mark Tully was a bridge builder. He built a remarkably
01:37durable relationship between his listeners in England and in India and across the world.
01:44He grew up in an age when radio, remember, was the principal medium of communication. So Mark
01:50Tully was not seen, but was heard by millions. And he completely immersed himself in the life
01:58and times of India through a very difficult period at times. Remember, he was turfed out of the country
02:06during the emergency by Mrs. Gandhi. And yet he was the first to report when he came back on Mrs.
02:11Gandhi's tragic death in 1984 in an assassination. So his love affair with India continued through all
02:17the ups and downs. And I think it was that love affair that gave him a distinctive voice. The fact
02:22that he was so immersed in India, its way of life, both reflected in his radio broadcast as well as
02:30in his writings. And in that sense, he will be much missed. He was perhaps the last connect with that
02:38entire era where being in love with India was part of being the great Anglophiles. And that's exactly
02:46who Sir Mark Tully was, someone who really traveled the length and breadth of this country because of
02:54his curious mind, wanting to discover every nuance of India.
02:59Rajneep, do tell us something about him as an author as well. As a journalist, we have known much
03:05about him. But for those who haven't had the opportunity to read his books, what can you tell
03:10us about the author and the man? Anjali, in a way, Mark Tully's writings flowed from his reporting. He was the
03:20classical reporter who liked to go on the ground even when the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992.
03:27Tully Saab was there on the ground documenting it for the BBC. And then he used that reportage,
03:34what he did on radio, to write books on India, to look at the India around him. It was primarily a
03:39reporter chronicling the times in which we lived and therefore no full stops in India, which is
03:46probably his best book, was a book that suggested how India was changing, how the kind of new forces
03:58that were emerging in this country. And in that sense he was very prescient, because he could see
04:03the important role that religion was playing in politics. He could see the various shades,
04:09which perhaps we sitting in India took for granted. But this was the genius of Mark Tully,
04:15that he would look at the little things of life that perhaps many of us living in this country missed
04:21out on. So his writing was a reflection of his reportage and his deep desire to understand the
04:28complexities of India. Right. Thank you, Rajee. Perhaps sometimes you need a third eye,
04:33a sight which is not coloured by indigenous. And that is what Mark Tully was for journalism in India.
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