Gitanjali Aiyar (1947-2023): Poise and Perfection

The smart bob, the pearls, the printed silk sarees, and the perfect enunciation. Gitanjali Aiyar was decorous, demure and distinctive. Different from Minu Talwar’s charming friskiness and Nithi Ravindran’s practised professionalism, she was one of Doordarshan’s iconic faces, as much part of the 70 and 80s generation as Chitrahaar and Krishi Darshan. Adding to her persona was the programme A Date With You, a popular English request show she hosted on All India Radio which was a precursor to the chattier pop shows on FM radio.

On TV news, there was none of the walking and talking with the mic that is the trademark of TV journalists today, nor the relentless assaults on pronunciation by those who currently read the English news. Not for her the high pitched hectoring of subjects or the dreary drone of many of her successors. Gitanjali Aiyar told the news as it was, clearly, without fear or favour.

Of course, we didn’t know any better. Private news networks were nowhere on the horizon, and newsreaders chosen from potential beauty pageant entrants were still some time away. Women wore beautiful saris, often with flowers in their hair like Salma Sultana, and didn’t seem in a tearing hurry to tell the world what was wrong, or on the odd occasion. what was right.

The little smile Aiyar gave at the beginning and end of the bulletin was like a secret and secure embrace between the audience and her. She had our backs, the smile said, no matter what was happening. The Loreto College graduate joined Doordarshan in 1971, and stayed there for three decades reading the news, often at prime time at 9 pm.

She was a model, an executive with the Taj Group of Hotels, a consultant with the Confederation of Indian Industry, even an actor in the Doordarshan series Khandaan. Like many women of her generation finding her feet in the world of work, she switched many professions. But she was always unfailingly poised and beautifully groomed.

In an age when TV anchors were celebrities, she kept our faith in the news of the day. As nostalgia unspools and shows such as Rocket Boys on SonyLIV feature Doordarshan’s first newsreader Pratima Puri and Dil Bekarar on Disney+Hotstar, based on the 80s and adapted from Anuja Chauhan’s Those Pricey Thakur Girls, has a DD newsreader as its main character, it is no surprise to witness the sense of national loss at Aiyar’s passing.

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