Bachi Karkaria

This is a tribute to the woman whose writing style I like the most. The best is her line of thinking on which her articles are based.

Well before writing about her, I was so confused about so many things. Firstly it was contradictions to the sole idea of my blog. It was supposed to be a musing. But here it’s hardly one. It’s just keeping on blabbering about a person about who already so much is written. And second was the fact that I have to be so much correct in my grammar and word usage because I am writing about someone who is excellent in this department. I even checked whether we can call it a “tribute” if the person is still living.

The person I am talking about is of course “Bachi Karkaria”.

Long time in my 9^th -10^th standards, I thought that she is the Bunny Jug Suraiya always mentions about as his wife, because bunny is also a humorous character. And I think I am not alone in thinking this. I have found 2-3 more people who also thought the same.

It so turns out that its quite the different. She is a totally different person on her own and more importantly she is not just a writer, which I think is still the best thing about her. What I like about her writing is the simplicity of the topics and which are so relevant and almost 80% of the times exactly what I want to think about. Like her latest article in Erratica about what she thinks is actually happening but which people may think is a part of the April fool day.

Just googling about her, I came across another wonderful article of her in BBC about the neo-Hinduism. For a moment I thought is she turning anti-Hindu etc only to revert back my views. It was again as always exactly what I thought of it. The Neo-Hinduism is same as it was 30 years back, accepting Hinduism from the west.

She is I guess the mother of what we now call – Blogging. Her articles are so so natural that it always falls in the musing category, which half the bloggers always claim to do and mostly giving away their strong views about a person or event. But throughout her articles which I have always made a point to read since standard 10^th, never did she take any sides.

Anyway here are a few links.

1) Her Page “Erratica” on ToI website.

2) Her biography on ASHA page.

A few notable things from her bio which appealed to me.

· Graduating with Honours in English Literature from Loreto College, Calcutta, Bachi then received a diploma in journalism from Calcutta University, ranking first and being awarded a gold medal.

· Prior to her present assignment at The Times of India, Bachi was Resident Editor of the paper’s largest and prestigious New Delhi edition.

· In 2003, she was invited to join the high-profile Board of the India AIDS Initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

· Earlier, as Senior Editor of The Times of India, Bachi edited the Sunday Times of India, turned around the Bangalore edition, making it rise from No.4 to No. 1 within the year, and, before that, conceptualised and edited the path-breaking Bombay Times.