Irfan Khan and Roshnak Khan, parents of Sameera Khan, came to visit on Monday night and certainly knew their way to our twins hearts. It was great to catch up with them after a long time. The Khan family has been part of my life for 20+ years. I first met Sameera when she was a Columbia J-school student in the fall of 1993 (and was around when SAJA was formed), though Id read her impressive application the spring before. She has gone on to have a deeply meaningful career as a writer, teacher, activist. Her work on urban life in Mumbai is fascinating and if you want to understand some of the issues around womens safety and rights in India, be sure to look at Why Loiter? Women & Risk on Mumbai Streets amazon/gp/aw/d/0143415956?pc_redir=1411900122&robot_redir=1 One of her many gifts to me was introducing me properly to the work of P. Sainath, Indias leading development journo. I was familiar with his work, but when she gave me a copy of Everyone Loves a Good Drought, Sainaths seminal work on rural India, I finally understood why hes won the Ramon Magsaysay Award, which I compare to Asias Nobel Prizes (my former Columbia colleague, @SheilaCoronel has a Magsaysay, too). I met Sameeras parents for the first time when they kindly hosted me in Mumbai in 1995 and weve been in touch ever since, with them showing me countless kindnesses. Irfan saab had a long and adventurous career. In the 1950s, he was a reporter covering Prime Minister Nehru and a newly independent India. In 1975 he joined in the Hindustan Unilever a PR officer and went onto become one of the best-known and most influential corp comm execs in the country. After retiring, he spent four years as a senior VP for Coca-Cola India. Ask any business journalist who worked in India between 1980 and 2003 and s/he will tell you his admirable qualities (something very rare for journos to do). #friendsinreallife
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 11:07:05 +0000
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