My Family and Other Globalizers: A tribute to my mother, Gitanjali Aiyar

Gitanjali Aiyar's passing has illuminated a desire for a time when there was less choice and less news, and even the fact that we had less. (Photo via Twitter/@sheela2010)

Note to readers: My Family and Other Globalizers is a weekly parenting column on bringing up global citizens.

This column has focused largely on my children, but today I will write about the person for whom I was the child – my mother. Gitanjali Aiyar, nurturer extraordinaire, favourite “aunt” to my childhood friends and teacher of diction and style to an entire generation of Indians.

Her passing in early June, created a tsunami of posts on social media, which I am still sorting through. My mother, you see, had been a celebrity and an influencer in the 1980s, long before it became possible for anyone with good photo filters and an Instagram account to claim the same.2

In the great era of terrestrial TV, she had ruled the screens of hundreds of millions of Indians, first in black and white and later in colour. My mum was a newsreader on the single, state-owned channel, Doordarshan - that equated to all of TV in India - before the advent of cable and long before streaming meant anything other than a verb that applied to rivers.

My mother read the prime-time news in English at 9pm, a few days a week for over a decade. She dressed in a saree and wore a bindi, spoke in a starched accent and read out government-sanitized events - heavy on grainy footage of dignitaries meeting other dignitaries - from a teleprompter, and sometimes from pages of paper, when the teleprompters failed.

In 1980s' India, the news, dull as it was by today’s infotainment standards, was about as exciting as watching TV could get. The alternative was krishidarshan (literally: agricultural tour) a one-hour daily programme about the latest in seed technology.

My mother’s passing has unearthed a well of nostalgia that runs deep. Here’s a smattering of (unedited) examples selected at random from the thousands of commiserations I received on twitter:

“I have such fond memories of Your mom and the newsreaders who shaped the face of television and news journalism. Nation builders!”

“Your mum is a legend. Articulate, dignified. She signified a different news experience when the anchor delivered the news and wasn’t the news themself, yet we knew and thought much better of them.”

“Geetanjali Aiyar redefined grace and elegance and professionalism..We learned our English listening to her.”

"RIP Gitanjali. You added an Indian eloquence to spoken #english that will remain etched for ever.”

“This pure nostalgic. Used to love watching news. Today it's not news but war room.”

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The truly bizarre thing is that this was Twitter and I didn’t receive a single nasty comment. It was almost like we were back in the '80s, a time when trolls were gnarly giants who remained safely confined between the covers of Tolkien novels.

My takeaway from this outpouring of affection was that people liked how my mother dressed and how she spoke. Many learned their English by watching her contemporaries and her read out the news. People used to go to hairdressers and ask for a “Gitanjali Aiyar cut". My mum had been community, nation-building and fashion adviser rolled into a nightly package. Wow!

What is also clear, is the nostalgia that people seem to have for a simpler time. Her passing has illuminated a desire for a time when there was less choice and less news, and even the fact that we had less. In the '80s, an ice-cream could make you happy.

From the one-channel era of Doordarshan that my mum encapsulated, the country now offers over 900 TV channels, including terrestrial, satellite and cable. Indians no longer need to watch programmes about seed harvesting technology alá krishidarshan for their nightly fix. They have a vertiginous choice of sitcoms, soaps, quizzes, thrillers, horror, reality TV, and so on.

And if all of these aren’t entertainment enough, there is always the news.
A proliferation of 24x7 news channels and a penchant for TV news as a Roman arena, has assured this. News in India today is blood sport. It is presided over by self-appointed Caesars of morality - the contemporary “news” anchor - who self-righteously pass judgement on the invited combatants, as they shout and rage at each other about caste, religion, politics and every other faultline that splits India into a kaleidoscope of tragedy.

The news that my mother used to read out was tedious and censored in the “public good” as defined by the government of the day. But I suppose, when compared to the three-ring circus of today, there was something soothing about it. We could all go to bed having learned some diction and sleep the dreams of the unaware.

My parents got divorced when I was seven years old and for most of my growing up years, she was a single mom- in a society that was not kind to single moms. But it meant that I had this tremendous role model: someone who refused to be trodden upon, who blazed a trail, who touched the hearts of every person she met – and did it all with breathtaking dignity and poise.

In her passing I have lost that refuge that all mothers are. That metaphorical roof that they provide over their children’s heads, no matter how grown up they may be. That sense that there is someone who will always somehow be able to kiss and make it all better. Someone who will anchor you even when everything and everyone else fails you.

I am not alone in my grief. I am not alone in losing a mother. It is a universal experience, an existential one. All I can do is send out love into this world through these words for every one of us who has lived through this inevitability and made it to the other side.