Mainstream Weekly

Tribute: Rajendra Yadav

Mrinal Pande — 2013-12-07T20:05:35Z

In his lifetime Rajendra Yadav, one of the most complex of Hindi writers, editors and literary critics, appeared to outsiders a deceptively ageless two dimensional black and white figure from Hindi literature of the late 20th Century. The last I saw him, he was a frail old 84-year-old in a wheelchair scowling behind his tinted glasses, eyeing the women in the auditorium at the India International Centre with interest. He cackled as I approached him and held my hand before trying to crack a (…)

- 2013

Nikhilda, my Dopplegänger

Mrinal Pande — 2013-11-01T10:01:03Z

Nikhilda observed, watched, recognised, listened to what surrounded him and was, at the same time, a part of his own life, and then wrote. In his journalistic writing he constantly arranged what he had perceived, trying to find a sense in the historic events he witnessed in his own country and the rest of the world. His presence for us, who followed his generation of journalists, referred to nothing else except what an intelligent and sensitive mind had felt, seen and reported without caring (…)

- 2013

Nikhilda through the Mists of Memory

Mrinal Pande — 2008-06-30T14:48:41Z

If one wanted to find an iconic journalist whose work straddled both the colonial period and the post-independence India, the first inspired by the spirit of Gandhian thought and the latter influenced by the many avatars of Nehruvian socialism clashing with the rational and militant ideologies of the Left parties, I would unhesitatingly name Nikhil Chakravartty. He was the best representative of an era that was great and sick at the same time and listening to him talk one saw how much (…)

- June 28, 2008