Editor with wit and panache (1944-2016)
The veteran editor and journalist, connoisseur and former consulting editor of the Times of India passed away on 25 November 2016, at age 72, after a prolonged illness.
The comments which poured in are testimony to his myriad qualities. He lived a life of the mind as well as the senses, on his own terms. A scholar with eclectic tastes, he was a treasure trove of knowledge, a mentor, guide and a great friend to colleagues. An astute thinker, analyst, liberal and level headed man, he remained humble, helpful and kind, the quintessential common man, full of life and humour, despite hobnobbing with the powerful.
He was truly a global citizen, with a wide range of interests, from politics to the arts, music and food. As editor, he encouraged people to write on varied subjects. In the newsroom, he was accommodating and always polite, easy to approach, and his door was always open. Perfect in using words, he maintained the highest standard of journalism. He gave his reporters space.
He could speak on food with rare eloquence. Dileep was considered a good cook of continental food and dreamt of creating a map of India based on dals, achars-murabbas and papads.
He had a vast and eclectic taste in reading. His French fluency enabled him to read most of the original works of France’s great thinkers. He also knew Sanskrit really well, was well-versed in the Vedas and was very secular in his views. He was a raconteur extraordinaire and his stories enthralled his peers and juniors alike.
A personal friend of some of the greatest thinkers of our time like Andre Malraux, Isaiah Berlin and Claude Levi Strauss, he derived his friends from the academia, the world of film, gastronomy and politics. A classic liberal, he was a believer in the values of free speech and individual freedoms. An excellent Hindustani classical singer, with a deep knowledge on the subject, he also had an abiding love of cinema and wrote a book on Roberto Rossellini called Under Her Spell in 2008.
His incomparable, abundant humour and wit and ability to mimic in a variety of languages and accents, used to keep many institches, a rare honour, since oftentimes he maintained a poker faced solemnity before the outside world.
Dileep, born in Pune and educated at St. Vincent High School and Fergusson College in Pune, began as a cub reporter at the age of 24 with the then Pune Herald. After a doctorate from the University of Paris-Sorbonne, in June 1968, he joined the Times of India (ToI) as its Paris correspondent, from where he chronicled the epoch-making May ’68 Movement that spread swiftly through all of Europe – East and West.
From 1978 to ’86, he had an UNESCO stint, where he set up the controversial non-aligned news pool, much despised by some Western powers, but embraced warmly by newly emerging nations. He was also editor of Sharjah’s The Gulf Today daily.
He returned to the Times of India in 1986 and continued as editor till 1994. He then became chairman of the Asia-Pacific Communications Associates, a multimedia organisation active in news and current affairs on TV and in print journalism. He founded ‘Biblio: A Review Of Books’ and was its editor.
He returned to the ToI as executive managing editor in 1998, and then was consulting editor before retirement in 2002. He settled in Pune, and was closely associated with the R.K. Laxman Chair that was established at Symbiosis.
In April 2002 he was honoured with the Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest civilian distinction for his services to journalism. Ever the Francophile, with his jaunty beret and omnipresent muffler, sometimes replaced by a Peshwapagdi or a Ranatopi, his favourite books clutched in one hand, he went out without any fuss. He is survived by wife Latika (71), and sons Nikhil (45) and Rohit (40).