New Delhi: Those were the days when growing up meant reading the editorials in the national English mainline dailies to achieve that cutting edge in vocabulary over your peers while polishing your diction of the queens English meant tuning into the All India Radio English news broadcast. Those were the days when the AIR was the undisputed king of media, that voice of the nation brought alive by certain legends of yester-years — Melville de Mellow, Surojit Sen, Lotika Ratnam, Moby Clarke to name a few.
Those were the days when news over voice, the precursors of today’s electronic media, was religion, and many swore their life over its contents and objectivity. There was absolutely no ambiguity, the news was the last word and the room for errors almost nil. When Mr. Sen started his bulletin in his unfathomable baritone, recognized by all across the nation, ‘’ This is All India Radio, the news read by Surojit Sen….’’ You could easily feel the goosebumps rise all over your body, such was the magic in the man’s voice who once set out to carve a career for himself in the armed forces. It was during his stint there that his officers pointed out that he could make a better living by lending his voice over the radio, that upcoming medium, which could later pitchfork him into that rarefied stratosphere of radio journalism.
Just a day after India got its independence (August 16, 1947), Mr. Sen joined the AIR at Delhi and the rest as they say was history. Some of his scoops are historical in every sense of the word. He was the first man to report the liberation of East Bengal, now Bangladesh. Perched on his knees, he recorded the signing of the declaration of Independence between the two rival military commanders, General Jasjit Singh Aurora and General Amir Abdullah Niazi of Pakistan. Today, this copy of the historical photograph is set in copper plate hanging on the walls of the National Museum at Delhi. Another incident, to recall is the 1972 Munich Olympics when a bunch of Israeli athletes were kidnapped and later massacred by the Palestine terrorists and Mr. Sen was in a nearby ditch recording and scribbling away his report!
His long career as a radio news caster, sports commentator and a roving journalist took him around the globe, linked him up with famous personalities and nearly catapulted him to a celebrity status. But, none of this glamour and hype had any enduring effects on Mr. Sen, at heart he was the same old school boy from St Xavier’s, Ranchi who loved his job reassuring the millions who had cocked their years onto the radio that all is well as he spoke with that inimitable sense of mission. He never bothered to cultivate anyone, feared nor favoured absolutely none and only listened to the inner voice.
Maybe in today’s world of networking he is a big loser, but his legacy cannot be wished away. To name a few of his achievements, he was the role model for a generation of news readers. Objectivity was synonymous with his reporting, the news was the last word. Last but not the least his courage was never under fire. Mr. Sen despite being stone –deaf, fading memory, heart condition, weak lungs ravaged by pneumonia, arthritis , to list a few of his debilitating mess that his body had become during the last years was unvanquished till he breathed his last.
It would not be too far-fetched or an effort to imagine that when his heart finally gave up this evening he would have loved to pick up his old mike, dust it and thank all those who loved him and took care of his vegetative self, especially Subal and Jeevanthi, that young couple who unflinchingly stood by him till the very last.