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Vol. XXVI No. 05, June 16-30, 2016

JC of The Mail

Partab Ramchand

As Madras Musings begins its 26th year, it remembers one of its first regular contributors, who enabled us to cover all sports. Would that we could find another.

He was a guru to many journalists who with the passage of time became gurus for younger pen-pushers. That made J.C. Jacob, who passed away in 2002 at the age of 89, the patriarch of the fraternity. My respected senior colleague, from whom I learnt the rudiments of editing, reporting and making pages was V.P. Vijayakumar. But for Vijayakumar, Jacob was his mentor. He always maintained that the proudest moment in his career was when Jacob, as Sports Editor of The Mail, passed his copy without editing a single word!

That was indeed creditable, for Jacob had an eagle eye for spotting spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and incorrect use of syntax. His English was exemplary, his knowledge of various sports profound, and he wielded a facile pen. He could write with authority on a number of sports and perhaps the best tribute I can pay him is to state that I used to read his articles no matter on which sport it was written. For example, my knowledge of horse racing is next to nil but when Jacob wrote a comment piece on events at Guindy, I was an avid reader. I found his style easy to follow. He stuck to the basics, never indulged in hyperbole and the phrases followed in a neat context. For balanced judgment on sporting events, JC as he was popularly known had few equals.

I first met Jacob in 1968, shortly after I joined the profession. At first I was in awe of the senior man. He was, after all, some 35 years older. But by his informal manner, he soon put me at ease and therein commenced a professional relationship that lasted till his death. Like his contemporary T. Govindarajan of The Hindu, another kindred soul who passed away in 1998, Jacob had this happy knack of bridging the generation gap.

He took young reporters under his wing, taught them the basics and saw them become major figures in the world of sports journalism. Besides Vijayakumar, others who benefited from Jacob’s help and guidance were Godfrey Hector, L.D. Kapoor, Sundar Rajan, P.R. Viswanathan and T.P. Vivek, all of whom worked in The Mail.

A popular evening daily for over a hundred years, The Mail folded up in 1982. Fortunately Jacob had been appointed Sports Correspondent for The Times of India and he reported for that newspaper almost till his last days. Shortly after I joined the profession, a senior colleague told me that K.N. Prabhu, then Sports Editor of The Times of India had given instructions to the news desk that not even a word of Jacob’s copy was to be edited. Such was the confidence and respect that Prabhu, himself a doyen among sports writers, had for Jacob. Another senior Times man from the capital, R. Sriman, always made it a point to visit Jacob and pay his respects whenever he came to Madras.

Jacob loved his social drinking and was the life and soul of a party or at press meets, where his knowledgeable queries sometimes would have the organisers in a quandary. But his humour remained intact and even off duty he was able to bridge the generation gap as he enjoyed his peg or two in the company of the young, regaling them with stories of old.

Unlike many old men, he was not boring and never imposed his views on the new generation. Befitting a man who started his career in journalism in 1937, he was well informed and youngsters longed to be around him, benefiting from his pearls of wisdom, laced with earthy humour. The guru to so many of us will be fondly remembered.

– Partab Ramchand

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