Five Questions for featured author Kay Benedict

1. How long have you been a journalist?

About 27 years

2. What is your current position, beat, or area of expertise?

I am Associate Editor, covering the ruling Congress party on a daily basis. I also cover Parliament when in session. Last many years I am writing on Indian politics, mostly national politics and at times the political developments In states. I have also been covering general (national) and provincial
elections.

I also write on Church affairs and Christian issues which are relevant to the Indian audience.

3. What brought you into journalism?

I hail from the southern state called Kerala . I was in high school when my mother died young, at 38 due to sudden illness. My father was a businessman. He used to buy tea leaves from estates, process them and export. Suddenly his business collapsed due to a combination of ill-luck and cheating by his business partners. He lost millions. My mother’s sudden death too came as devastating blow to him. Three months later, he too died. We were 12 children! all orphaned, all of a sudden. (Being devout Christians my parents or grand patents were loathe to practice family planning).

I was the fifth and barely managed to pass my high school examination. The atmosphere was a bit depressing after the deaths in the family for a teenager like me and I ran away to New Delhi, 3000 kms away, to meet two of my friends.

From there I went to Shimla, where I met a paternal uncle of mine, an educationist, who had retired as vice chancellor of Jodhpur University (Rajasthan) and was a fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. A kindhearted soul, he encouraged me to study further and offered financial help. With his help and encouragement I continued my studies.

Before I left Shimla, he took me a bookstall called “”Minerva” on the Mall Road and bought - Chamber’s Twentieth Century Dictionary - and gifted it to me, so that I could learn some English. I still have that red-bound dictionary.

I returned to Delhi and took up some odd jobs. In those days there were no computers, even land-based phones were a rarity. I used to write to my uncle in English (as he was not very proficient in Malayalam). But my English was so pathetic . I had studied in a Malayalam (my mother tongue) medium school. My uncle, who had done his Masters in English Literature from Oxford University in the 1950s, was a brilliant writer in English. His articles regularly appeared in the edit pages of various English dailies published from New Delhi and he had authored a few books on education. He was a regular face at seminar circuits. He was a great inspiration for me.

He was not the one to tolerate sloppy writing. He used to send me back my letters with all the mistakes duly marked with red ink with covering letter which affectionately said that I was not working hard to improve my English. “Hard work is the only way to get ahead,” said one of his typed replies on a portable “Hermes Baby” – a tiny, portable typewriter from Switzerland. Later, he gifted the machine to me enabling me to write my first journalistic piece.

A few years later he died, but his words rang in my ears for years afterward. My writing “adventure” began soon after I received my uncle's advice, which had stung me. I took it as a challenge. And within a couple of years I was able to get my first article printed in a mofussil paper.