JS & The Times of My Life: A Worm's-eye View of Journalism by Jug Suraiya



Mr. Subir Roy unveiling the book with Jug Suraiya.

 ‘I never wanted to a journalist’ is Jug Suraiya’s trademark tongue-in-the-cheek beginning to his book – The Times of My Life: A Worm’s-eye View of Journalism. Jug Suraiya narrates his journey from when he joined Junior Statesman in Calcutta as a writer right through relocation to Delhi to write for The Times Of India.


At the book launch event on Thursday (Nov 24) at The Park Bangalore, the author reads out some excerpts from the book. The lines he read were about his initial days as a journalist and painted a picture perfect imagery of Calcutta. The venerable Times of India (TOI) journalist, better known for his popular humour column 'Jugular Vein', narrated his awesome stints as a spray painting machine operator and a wannabe tendu leaf tycoon. The real story starts when he gets to join the (now-defunct) Junior Statesman in Calcutta as a writer, and takes a curious turn when he relocates to Delhi to join TOI. The author has been fair in allotting almost equal number of pages for Statesman and TOI.

With his friend Mr. Subir Roy, a most esteemed journalist, Jug Suraiya launched his book. Present at the event was his writer wife Mrs. Bunny Suraiya. While in conversation on journalism with Mr. Subir Roy, Jug said “Newspapers tend to speak to you, they converse with you”… “Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism is something that is grasped at once.”

About the Book

‘I never wanted to a journalist’ is Jug Suraiya’s trademark tongue-in-the-cheek beginning to this book.

And yet, everything that impacted on his life appeared on the pages of first the youth magazine Junior Statesman, and later, the hoary Times of India. The chapters in this book are told in the same voice as his regular columns. The characters they describe—some well-known to us, some not—will remain immortal in our minds. Suraiya is the first Asian to have won the Grand Prize for Travel Writing awarded by the Pacific Area Travel Association (PATA).


Some Highlights of the book:

* Gives an insider’s view of the years when Indian journalism in English was coming into its own

* Anecdotal and quietly comical

* There is already strong media interest in its Publication


Release Type: Original



Price: Rs. 495/-



Binding: Hardback



Imprint: Tranquebar Press



Genre: Memoir/Humour



Page Extent: 350 pp



Pub Date: June 2011



Territory: World


About the Author:

Jug Suraiya is a journalist with The Times of India. He began his writing career first with the iconic Junior Statesman. His memories—both humorous and nostalgic—pepper the pages of this unforgettable book by a writer who has been described by Khushwant Singh as ‘India’s Art Buchwald’.

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