Russi Karanjia dead

Rustom Khurshedji Karanjia,  more popularly known as Russi Karanjia, the flamboyant paper baron whose newspaper business crumbled around him as he aged, died in Mumbai today. He was 95. He died exactly 65 years to the day when Blitz rolled out of the press.

Karanjia started the Blitz after leaving The Times of India before the Indian businessman Ramkrishna Dalmia had taken it over. He launched Blitz along with other journalists Dinkar Nadkarni and B.G. Horniman. Blitz was the original tabloid and arguably the only newspaper that was tabloid both in form and content. The plan for the newspaper was drawn up in a cafe called Wayside Inn, the same place where B. R. Ambedkar is believed to have penned parts of the Constitution. Blitz was established on February 1, 1941. It appeared with the words, "Our BLITZ, India¿s BLITZ against Hitler".

With crime stories including the famous Nanavati trial, which it headlined, "Three shots that shook the nation," and writers like K. A. Abbas, A.F S. Talyarkhan, the newspaper blazed a trail with circulation soaring and this friend of Nasser, Nehru and Reza Pehalvi becoming a household name. The historian Gyan Prakash wrote that  his father in Patna would wait for a copy of the newspaper.

The journalists who worked with him included such names as P.R. Lele, Victor Hari, R. P. Iyer, P. Sainath, Sudheendra Kulkarni, V. Gangadhar and Ramesh Sanghvi (father of Vir Sanghvi) who even authored a book on Fidel Castro with him.

Karanjia was considered close to Jawaharlal Nehru and counted many foreign heads of state as his friend. He authored 10 books which included works on contemporary figures like Shah of Iran, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Jayaprakash Narayan. He also wrote a book on Kundalini Yoga for which the afterword was written by Mulkraj Anand.

When he launched Cine Blitz, it was his idea to get an actress photographed as she streaked. The person who agreed was Protima Bedi and the magazine had no hesitation in using the photograph. He was an owner-editor in a mould that many would aspire to today, but few would have either the needed wit or gumption.

In his later years, his media house disintegrated around him. The Blitz was sold to Vijay Mallya. He spent his last years away from the public eye of which he was an integral part for most of his life.