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Memoirs of a scribe
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The first woman Malayali journalist, Amni Shivram, goes down memory lane
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Photo: H. Vibhu
For old times’ sake Amni Shivram, veteran journalist
When she went to meet actor Bharat Bhushan with Ajit Merchant, who used to write on cinema, he told the actor, who was every girl’s heartthrob in the fifties, “Amni is in love with you, so she wants your picture.” The girl from Moov
attupuzha blushed, but she got his picture. It was half a century ago. Those were the days when she was a journalist with the Free Press Journal, when her colleagues were T. J. S. George, M.V. Kamath, K. Shivram (she later married him) and M. Shivram, all names to reckon with in the field. She is the first woman Malayali journalist and perhaps the second one in the country.
Cherished values
“There was Gulshan Ewing, in Bombay, remember?” she asks. Amni Shivram, 76, who did her graduation from St. Teresa’s College, Kochi, and her post-graduation from University College, Thiruvananthapuram, joined the Free Press Journal on August 2, 1954. She got the job when she went to stay with her sister in Mumbai.
“I belong to the old school of journalism, when there was little money in it, but we cherished the values passed on to us by our seniors in the field.” What Amni finds difficult to digest is the way some newspapers treat news and photos. “I cannot understand why newspapers give banner headlines for everything now. A real calamity or earthshaking event warranted huge types in the old days, but now I see that the headlines are very big for every main story,” she remarked.
After a spell in the Free Press, she took time off to raise her children but took up freelance assignments. Cookery stories and film reviews were her forte, apart from lots of interviews. “North Indians knew little about South Indian cuisine and I took advantage of that. I wrote recipes of idlis, dosas and appams and our curries, which were hits.” She has interesting memories of her film beat days. “Madhubala used to come to a hospital in Mumbai often to practise spoken English with the doctor there! I was scared to meet Pran because of his image as a villain. But once on a set, the spot boy got scolded by the producer for coming late. The poor chap did not have a watch. Immediately, Pran gave his watch to the spot boy saying he needed it more than him. I was so touched and he became a hero, in my eyes. Meena Kumari was my sister’s neighbour in Bandra and she was close to her, so I knew her better.”
Family first
Of her marriage, says Amni, “Family always came first, so I never aspired to go far in my career. I have no regrets. For some time I taught in a school where my children studied.” She always followed her husband when he got a transfer. Amni lives with her youngest son, Bijoy Anand Shivram, who is a graphics designer and a dancer, whose troupe, ‘Preksha’ performs in several countries. “He got the Gujarat State Government’s Gourav Puraskar in 2007 for his contribution to the State through art.”
Though theirs was an inter-religious marriage, it never came in the way for anything. She remained a devout Christian and he, a Hindu. Her book, ‘My Town, My People’, released two years ago, sums up her love for her home state and her journey through journalism. Her second book was a compilation of articles on her husband, Shivram. She is now writing a third book on the Jacobite Syrian Christian Holy Kurbana, because the ‘new generation finds it difficult to understand what is said in church.’
Amni fought against oral cancer three years ago and fell right back into the groove of life. But she says the experience is heart wrenching. “You see death in the eyes of people who look at you. I plan to write a book about that also,” says Amni who is waiting to get a cataract operation done in Kochi, resting at her sister’s house in Kochi.
PREMA MANMADHAN
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Mangalore
Puducherry
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
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