A Letter

Nikhil Chakravartty in a letter after his receiving a journalists’ award wrote a few lines I would like to share with all those who mourn him.

A feel a sense of fulfilment on having been able to communicate whatever my thoughts maybe, to those who would be reading me.

I strayed into journalism from teaching at the university. The searing experience of the Bengal famine tore me away from the classroom to the field to report that heartrending struggle between life and death. For me as a journalist, the sense of achievement comes when I find that I have been able to communicate.

My central prayer as I look up to the boundless sky every morning is ’this above all is true’ (a reference to the title of my novel)—that I am here as just a particle of the wide universe and I must at best be true to myself. In the eyes of others, I may have played false at times, but in life’s journey I have never tried to deceive myself.

Mrinalini Sarabhai
 Darpana Academy of Performing Arts,
 Usmanpura,
 Ahmedabad

(Courtesy: The Asian Age)