By Adarsh Madhavan
I used to have a column called ‘Citylights’ in Oman’s most popular English daily, Times of Oman, where I had worked as a reporter. Citylights focussed on snippets of ‘infotainment’ that never made it to being “news” and was often discarded by the mainstream.
Thanks to my ignorance and my foolhardy nature, I ran an erroneous bit about the then reigning head of the Indian Social Club (or was it the Indian Cultural Association then?) on how he needed to pull up his socks and needed a ‘whack’ on his back to tidy up things with the club.
My… that was a foolish ‘slip of the tongue’ and although deployed in good faith, it was still not the type of journalism practiced in Oman. And I got what I deserved. Although I was not pulled up or given a kick on the back as I roundly deserved for writing what I wrote, Doc, or the late Dr Sathish Nambiar, did the next best thing: he picked up the phone and word-booted me!
When I got his word whacks, I was holding the office land phone. We didn’t have mobile phones at that time, and the one I held did not allow me to run to a corner and get my word beatings away from the snickering crowd in the office. I was gobsmacked. I did not know what hit me.
The blasting from the other end had me tongue tied and body frozen. I had never experienced a torrent of words like this, which were exploding from a man cannon and those in the office saw me go through a variety of emotions. I squirmed and also froze and went from brown, to blue, to red and back. Freddy Printer, Doc’s Man Friday, later told me that Doc was so livid he would have swallowed me and spat me out leaving a distaste in his mouth! But, once good old Doc let off his fury, he fizzled out.
And that was all that was to Doc’s anger. He’d let off his steam and then he would be patting the object of his fury on the back saying all was well. And it was the same with me.
One morning he was thundering down on me and on the next day he was telling me that it was alright and he had a good laugh at it after he read the wacky piece a second time. But his family had got annoyed with him for letting off “a scoundrel of a reporter to practice his unwanted yellow journalism on an unsuspecting victim”.
I never got off track with him ever since that episode. Maybe yes, one more time, but that was all official. Later, when we both got to know each other well and had more opportunities to share our kindred spirits, it was a different world. I had the luck to be with someone whom I could easily put my shoulder around even as much as I was overawed by his dynamic and zestful personality.
And oh my he could talk! I did not meet or hear anyone who could oust him in a combat of words fought over a mike. Confidence flowed in his blood but with a tinge of rashness too, however that was the beauty of his personality. He was a leader and commanded the ISC army of volunteers to victory after victory. He was a leader to all of us too, his non-ISC members/friends.
More than two and a half decades back, he and the current ISC chairman, Babu Rajendran, directed me to fasting during the Holy Month of Ramadan. I had never fasted in my life and it was an entirely new experience. Thanks to Doc, I still fast every year, without ever breaking that rule for the last 25 or more years.
There was a time when all roads for many of the Indian diaspora here led to the ISC. That was in the era of the ‘Doc’ and his faithful team. Everyone who was anything to the ISC knew who Doc was, their friendly neighbourhood Dr Sathish Nambiar, who was everything to them.
He had that rare ability to gather all in his arms, be it the ones who opposed him and the rest of us who held on to his every word.
Unfortunately, today, when we, the ones who were blessed to have known him, want to gather him in our arms, for one last time, for old time’s sake, and tell him he was a captain, our captain, our grand old Doc has slipped out of our hands, forever.
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