She walked with seers, but always had her feet firmly on the ground

Chairman, Mataji, Mum-my, dispenser of wisdom and breakfast poha, landlady? How many ways did I know the beauteous Indu Jain?

- Bachi Karkaria

Most of us at the Times of India Group first met her after she took over as Chairman after the passing of her husband. She changed the nameplate on the solid teak office door to ‘Chair Prasanna’. In a couple of months, the designation reverted to the conventional. The occupant remained anything but.

Indu Jain had arrived from the polar opposite of the empire suddenly at her command. She had evolved through satsangs promoting peace and universal humanhood; media thrived on clashes — political and economic, social, civic and celeb. She had walked with believers; cynicism was a professional imperative for journalists. She was the boss, so open revolt wasn’t possible; but you couldn’t miss the clatter of collectively dropped jaws that met her diktats.

The new Chairman wanted a kinder, gentler, happier newspaper. How is it possible, we grumbled, when doom and gloom are the raison d’etre of media, when the ageold mantra was ‘good news is no news’? But you know what? From this conflicted churning emerged an antidote to troubled times: the positive stories of human goodness which lit the way out of the catastrophic events that hit the nation — droughts, floods, cyclones, major accidents, terror attacks. This has continued in the latest, arguable worst scourge of all. During the the pandemic, the Times of India has given prime space to the series, ‘Shot of Hope’ and ‘Beacons of Hope’.