A lovely resignation letter!

This is a belated review of a resignation letter, a tiny memoir of a journalist, who quit journalism at the 'tender' age of fifty. Fourth estate to rubber estate – Resignation letter of a journalist is a delightful read about the 28-year-old journalistic career of Joe A Scaria, who was our editing teacher at Institute of Journalism, Trivandrum Press Club (circa 2000 AD). 

For us the eager novices, Joe came across not only as the best editing teacher who taught us the nuances and finer aspects of editing (which, I remember gratefully, has helped me immensely use the editor's scalpel with utmost caution and journalistic circumspection), he also at once impressed us with his admiring persona. Impeccably dressed and soft-spoken minus the self-importance intellectual air, he is a true gentleman in all senses of the word and surprised us with his on-time arrival with clock-like precision at the class. In fact, he would arrive well before the class time, putting professional bunkers and incorrigible lotus-eaters among us in a kind of moral indignation. They tried to outwit him in the matter of on-time arrival but with little success! 

It would be unjust to delve directly into his book without this prefatory eulogy on him, which he eminently deserves. The candid narrative of his colorful career, condensed to a few pages, minus the sanctimonious smugness typical of journalists of our times, is worth mentioning. Each word in this book is emblematic of his exemplary persona: amiable, laconically funny, information-packed and a keen observer with a perceptive mind.

Here’s a journalist who made it a point to resign at the tender age of fifty to spend time with his 95-year-old father and rest under the shade of his rubber plantation in his village in Kottayam district. Tender? Well in the life of a journalist, fifty is too early an age to call it quits. It is around this time that he shows signs of supposed maturity (there are of course scribes who precociously attain the same much before the fifty-year-old threshold, though) and preens himself at primetime TV news hours pretending to be expert of this and that. Who would want to sacrifice that primetime glory? But Joe isn’t the typical journo next-door wheeler-dealer. In fact, he has no qualms in writing that never in his journalistic lifetime has he ever received an award. Not even those monthly internal awards at Economic Times, where he worked for eighteen years.

But he won the hearts of his past employers, earning him privileges of surreal kind. While working at Magnum Publishing; he was flown Bombay-Kochi back and forth by the now-defunct East West Airlines continuously for nine days of every month for two years at company expense! This was in the early 90’s when air travel was an unthinkable luxury. Economic Times’ South Editor permitted him to travel officially to any destination at any time without any prior approvals, helping him transcend the porous borders of business journalism. Times’ management granted him three months’ paternity leave, probably first time in the 157 years of company’s history. 

There are many such interesting anecdotes that will interest both journalists and laymen. 

He ends his ‘resignation letter’ with dignified humility and predictable sensitivity, true to his wont, which reminded me of his last class in press club; as he bade adieu he made it a point to shake hands with each one of us individually.    

As I finished reading the book, I found myself drunk on press club nostalgia with an inexplicable yearning to be back in the sedate pace of his early morning editing classes: a lively journalistic cooking lab where the day’s newspapers are dissected with hair-split precision with a lot of fun and journalistic wisdom thrown in for extra taste.