Burjor K. Karanjia, former editor of India’s Filmfare magazine, Screen and Cinema, died in Pune on Friday. He was 92. He leaves behind two daughters, Rutton and Delshad, and a son, Yuzud.
“He passed away peacefully in his sleep on Friday afternoon,” said Delshad Karanjia Kumana, who works for Saudi Aramco. She had rushed to Pune on Tuesday to be by her ailing father’s side. “He had not been keeping well for some time, and had to be taken in and out of hospital,” she told Arab News.
A doyen of Indian film journalism, B.K., as he was popularly known, frequently visited his second daughter in Dhahran, and contributed interesting features and book reviews to Arab News.
While in Saudi Arabia, he chronicled Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah’s path-breaking educational and interfaith initiatives. He continued to write excellent pieces for Indian magazines and newspapers despite suffering from a number of debilitating ailments in the last years of his life.
Besides being the former editor of Filmfare, Screen and Cinema, he was the former chairman of the Film Finance Corporation of India and the National Film Development Corporation of India.
B.K. was the younger brother of the famous Indian journalist, Russi Karanjia of Blitz. He saw a number of film stars, including the very beautiful Madhubala (Mumtaz Begum), from a very close quarter, and wrote very delectably about his encounters with them in his famous autobiographical work, entitled, “Counting My Blessings.” “One of the greatest influences of my life was my maternal grandfather, Burjorji Patel, a merchant prince who lived in Balochistan,” he wrote in his autobiography. He would often recall with relish the happy days of his childhood in Quetta.
B.K. had shifted to Pune from Mumbai after his wife’s death in 2005. He loved Mumbai, but frequently mourned its loss. “Mumbai was once a beautiful city, with life moving at a leisurely pace. Just a few cars on the roads, tram cars clanging, orderly queues at bus-stops, police guiding traffic with ease (the best police force in the country), no Marine Drive (built only in 1935), no Backbay Reclamation, all roads in excellent condition, greenery all around, plenty of open spaces, a contented citizenry under an honest, caring government, a city in control of itself,” he wrote in one of his many articles on the city.
