Big hearts, small hearts

We were meeting face-to-face for the first time. As my editor emerged of the arrival lounge at the Srinagar airport, I offered to carry his bag. He responded by saying ‘Don’t be stupid. We are equals’. A year or so later, while I was sitting in the solitary guest chair in front of my news editor’s desk, the editor arrived to discuss some issue with him. I offered my chair to him but he declined asking ‘Didn’t I tell you we are equals?’

A colleague wanted to join a British newspaper as one of its India correspondents. Our editor rang up his counterpart in London, strongly recommending him for the assignment. I too wanted to earn a few extra bucks and asked my editor if he could suggest some foreign publication I may work for simultaneously. He gladly did it and even spoke to a friend in Jeddah asking him to help me.

In October 1993, I quit The Telegraph (Calcutta) to join The Asian Age. The parting was quiet and friendly. Not only that, my previous employer told me ‘you can come back any time if you wish to’. Not so long ago, a colleague quit the organization we were working at to join another newspaper as it offered him a better package. He, however, didn’t like his new job and returned in less than one month. He was received back only with open arms by the employers and his colleagues at the newspaper. There are several other such instances which I’ve come across and wherein editors showed benevolence towards their juniors and employers at news organizations too were but big-hearted. With present and past employees/ colleagues alike! However, we mostly lack such munificence back home.

All these anecdotes were called to mind after being to the release of the annual issue of Belaag Sahafat at a glittering ceremony held in Srinagar a day ago. Come-on! Ours is a different profession and we have to behave differently with one another-with love, caring, sharing, passionate benevolence and togetherness. The Creator has bestowed us with beautiful hearts. Let us make them as big as an ocean too.