Wordsmith forced to take a break!

M.V. Kamath, who is recovering from a silent heart attack, is longing to get back to his 15 columns a week!

It has been 24 years since Madhav Vithal Kamath retired as Editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India. And for the first time since then, he is actually on a much deserved and long awaited break. Having survived a silent heart attack three weeks ago and now on medication to clear a blockage, M. V. Kamath is recovering at a friend's residence in Malabar Hill.Kamath, who turns 84 this September, is actually enjoying this rest. "It happened so suddenly," he said. I was walking to the bank and the post office near my residence and started feeling uneasy. Looking back I don't know how I managed to walk home. I called a friend and later that day went to see my doctor. He took one look at me and said I need to be hospitalised immediately." Kamath spent the next ten days at Breach Candy Hospital, of which five were in the ICU. "A few years ago, I had three blockages cleared, while two were fine, one was not so. But thankfully there was no surgery done. The blockages are getting cleared through medication. But more than the medication, the doctors have advised me to rest and de-stress myself. Come to think of it, I was stressed and now feel much better."

This only means a temporary hold on the 15 columns Kamath writes for various publications all over India. But it's not just the columns he is abstaining from. There's a biography on Nani Palkivala that is due for release in January next year and updates on the history of five national banks, books that have been previously written by Kamath.After 60 years in journalism, Kamath is without doubt of the oldest professionals. But still he remains faithful to his 50 year-old Olivetti that has never let him down. "I bought the typewriter in London in 1955 and it still is in excellent condition. Once when I thought it would give way I asked around for the same model. The late M. R. Pai had one and he happily gave it me. That aside I also have a Remington, but no computer. And yes, after all these years, I am still a two-finger typist."Perhaps this break has given him time to reflect on how he began his profession and how much it has changed since. At the Free Press Journal as a junior reporter taking home a salary of a mere Rs. 100! Three years later, he was the editor and from there it was no looking back. He has fond memories of his colleagues at the Free Press, though very few of them are still alive. Of course there was the late Behram Contractor, Anantrao Kannangi, R. K. Laxman, M. K. B. Nair and Bal Thackeray who he simply calls Bal. And yes the young, very young Dom Moraes who started his cricket writing with the paper.Journalism has changed much since then and although Kamath no longer lectures (or rather shares his experiences as he puts it), he says that if there is anything you can't compete with it is experience. "I and very few left have see history and change not just in India, but all over he world. And writing and talking about those experience is what makes the difference," he laughed and said.