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True Fiction Project
S5 Ep 5 - In Conversation with Sathya Saran: Flying High Despite Clipped Wings
00:33:54
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- [00:00]
Satya Saran
I managed to find a job with the competition. And that is where I really encountered chauvinism. Because they didn't like me. I had come from the competition. I had been pulling down their paper. Whenever they made a mistake, I would shout about it in my paper. And then I was not a local and I was a woman. But I wanted to prove that I can do whatever is given to me. And I just continued with it because I love writing. I started writing for the national magazines and one thing led to another.
- [00:41]
Rinita Hora
Welcome to the Tru Fiction Project, a podcast series that explores the origins of fiction. Every week we begin with an interview nonfiction. Followed by a creative piece, fiction inspired by something from the interview. The idea is to demonstrate, of course, that fiction is born out of our life experiences. Now here's your host, storyteller, author, public speaker, health and wellness expert, Rinita Hora. Welcome back to the True Fiction Project. I am your host, Rinita Hora. I am very excited to introduce my guest for today. Her name is Satya Saran, a Mumbai based writer, editor and editorial consultant for Penguin India. Sathya has had a fascinating career journey being an editor for leading magazines and publications like Femina India and the ME magazine for DNA daily news and analysis. So welcome to the True Fiction Project, Satya.
- [01:46]
Satya Saran
Thank you, Rinita. I'm very happy to be here and.
- [01:50]
Rinita Hora
I am just thrilled to have you on the show. You have so many great stories and there was one thing that stood out very clearly right through your career path. You have met with adversity and you have been this very strong woman in a male dominated working world. So tell us where that began.
- [02:17]
Satya Saran
Well, I was quite happy being a homemaker. I got married when I was 19 and I was enjoying life doing nothing when a friend of mine asked me if I could stand in for him. He was migrating to Canada and he was editing the Sunday section of a newspaper in Nagpur. And he said, if you will go in and just give the interview, they will release me. And then you can of course, go back to being who you are. So I kind of obliged him and they gave me the magazine to look after. I had absolutely no idea how to bring out a four page newspaper supplement. But I had a good editor and he showed me what had to be done. The English that was in the newspaper was not exactly English. And then I started enjoying myself so much I never went back.
- [03:09]
Rinita Hora
So I have to ask right off the bat, Satya, what kind of paper was this? What was it called? Was it a daily paper? And what do you mean when you say the English was not really English?
- [03:22]
Satya Saran
Well, I mean it was bad grammar. It was written in a. Loosely translated from the local language practically. Well, the syntax was not good enough and it was not worthy of being in a newspaper. Yes, the newspaper was called the Hitawada, which means the voice of the people. It's a very important paper which was very vital during our freedom struggle in India. I was given the four pages of the Sunday supplement.
- [03:53]
Rinita Hora
And this is something that you did on a regular basis. I remember you telling me that you faced adversity even in this starting position. There was chauvinism, there was competition. Tell us about that.
- [04:05]
Satya Saran
Well, not much at that point. I used to drive up in my own car, or rather my husband's car, and they thought, oh, here is this woman doing this for the fun of it. She doesn't really need this job, we need it much more than her. So there was this undercurrent that happened and I could sense it in some of my colleagues and there was a little, oh, what is she going to do with this? She'll leave and go. She'll find another thing to play around with. But I took it very seriously because I really enjoyed doing. I love words, I love reading. And when the newspaper started showing results, the Sunday magazine overtook in circulation the daily paper. And that's when I started getting the kind of respect that my colleagues would give me. But to give him credit, my editor was a wonderful man. I learned a lot from him. His name was GT Parande. Very humble person and he taught me, he supported me and I learned very quickly.
- [05:05]
Rinita Hora
Fantastic. Now to put it in context for our listeners, what time period during Indian history are we talking about?
- [05:14]
Satya Saran
We're talking about the 70s. The mid-70s.
- [05:19]
Rinita Hora
The mid-770s. So it's fascinating to think that even at that time this was such a male dominated profession. Right. Today, when we think about editorial, there are lots and lots of women working in editorial.
- [05:33]
Satya Saran
I was the only woman.
- [05:36]
Rinita Hora
You were the only woman in the office?
- [05:38]
Satya Saran
I was the only editorial person in the office, yes.
- [05:41]
Rinita Hora
Wow. And was that peculiar to Nagpur and a publication in Nagpur, was it peculiar to India at large?
- [05:49]
Satya Saran
No. I don't know. Women were slowly entering. We had women editors in Bombay whom I encountered later in my career. And there had been another editorial person in HI itself before me who had left and gone off to become famous somewhere else. So it wasn't that rare. But yes, women were not there in numbers as they are now. I mean, now we are more women than men in Journalism.
- [06:17]
Rinita Hora
That's correct. So speaking about women in journalism, it was this early part of your career, like Femina and Eve's Weekly, Is that correct? Tell us.
- [06:28]
Satya Saran
Yes, because the newspaper that I was in closed down and I managed to find a job with the competition. And that is where I really encountered chauvinism, because they didn't like me. I had come from the competition. I had been pulling down their paper. Whenever they made a mistake, I would shout about it in my paper. So they didn't like me at all. And then I was not a local. I was from another part of the country. So they held that against me. I didn't speak the local language very well and I was a woman. So they would put me up to do translations, which was really something I was not good at because I was not very conversant with the local language. But I wanted to prove that I can do whatever is given to me. And I just continued with it and to keep my hand in, because I love writing. I started writing for the national magazines. And one thing led to another.
- [07:34]
Rinita Hora
When you think about the competition snapping you up, what comes to my mind is that they would welcome you because, you know, if you come from the competitive newspaper, it's an added advantage. How or why did this lead to this kind of hostility that you're describing where they just didn't like you? Okay, there were these factors, but the fact that you came from the competitive paper, should that not have given you an advantage?
- [08:03]
Satya Saran
No, because the paper was not running. So they couldn't use me to fight my own paper. The paper had closed down and I came in because, I mean, absolutely because of what you can interpret as nepotism. My father knew the owner of the CMD chairman come managing director of this other paper called Nakpur Times. And he put in a word. He said, you know, my daughter is talented. Can you help? So he kind of planted me in there. And they resented that. And in a way, I think they were fair. They were fair and right in doing so. But they needn't have continued it.
- [08:41]
Rinita Hora
Correct. It's hard for anybody to start out in their career without a little bit of a helping hand. But it was along this time that you then met with Dr. Mulkaraj Anand. So tell our listeners who he is and what that meeting led to.
- [08:59]
Satya Saran
I met him, but what he did for me was not when I had met him, I met him much later. Dr. Mulkarajanand was at that point, one of our leading novelists. He was a big name in literature in Indian literature, writing in English. He was internationally known and he was one of the judges, along with two editors of India's leading magazines for a little competition that was named the Young Journalist Award in memory of a young journalist who had suddenly passed away. And I sent in my entries and they were the judges. They liked what I had written because in my attempt to find news stories, I was going to areas where people don't normally go. I wrote about how blind people cope. I wrote about how leper colonies manage their lives and try to rehabilitate those afflicted by leprosy. I spent two days there with my husband and they were moved by what I wrote. And I won the award. It was not a big sum, but the fact remained that it put me in touch with the editors of two very important magazines, Femina and Eve's Weekly. And I started writing for both of them.
- [10:17]
Rinita Hora
Tell us what was so important about. About Femina and Eve's Weekly, these two really iconic magazines for Indian women.
- [10:26]
Satya Saran
At that time there were two magazines which were catering to Indian women. And they were the only magazines that really spoke to women. Of course, they were still talking mainly about things that women were supposed to be doing like how to look after your home and recipes and making dresses for your children, things like that. But once in a while they would also tackle some subject that made sense to women even if they were not working. But it was meant for the housewife to make her life more complete. And they were important magazines. They were competing with each other. The editors were friends and they were both amazing people. They played a role in women's lives. They had huge circulations.
- [11:13]
Rinita Hora
So you were writing for both of them. But then you came into Femina as a full time staffer which led to other great things. And you really changed that magazine around. I'm really curious as to how, not why. Why that question is answered without me even asking it. But how did you change?
- [11:47]
Satya Saran
Well, I came to Feminine. I was writing for both years and one day I just picked up the phone. I was so fed up with my position at Nagpur Times that I rang the editor of Femina and I said, look, do you have a job for me? And she said, surprisingly two people have resigned today. So why don't you come for an interview? So my husband said, of course, go ahead to Bombay and you work there for six months and come back and Nagpur Times will give you what is due to you. You know, they will give you the respect that's due to you. So I packed my bags and I Came to Bombay and took up the job. And I started again, enjoying myself so much. I told my husband, sorry, I'm not coming back. You better come here. And then over a long period of time, over eight years, mainly, I think, because I was enjoying what I did did, and I did it with my full heart and soul. I ended up growing in the ranks. And I became editor Renita at a point where they were planning to close the magazine.
- [12:45]
Rinita Hora
Oh, goodness. Why? Why were they planning?
- [12:49]
Satya Saran
I'll tell you why. Because my editor had been editor for a long time. She was an amazing editor. She had kind of decided that she didn't want to go go beyond this. She would go thus far and no further. And I was training at the leash, saying, the women of today have changed. We had the Gulf War. And with the Gulf War, we started getting. We had the Asian Games in India. So color TV had come in, CNN had come in. And we were getting beautiful images. We were getting news packaged very differently. And I said, this is the time for us to. To change. And she was resisting. And because she was resisting, our advertisers were turning to other magazines which were pushing the envelope, so to say. So we were really running dry of money because the advertising had dropped to from maybe 30 ads or 40 ads to maybe 5 ads. And they were planning to close the magazine. And then we had someone who was in the marketing department who said, let me try working with this magazine. Let me try working with a new team, because the editor is due to retire. And we kind of took it over and changed it.
- [14:01]
Rinita Hora
I'm very curious. What exactly was your editor resisting? Was it the photography? What is it that you were trying to change that she said no to?
- [14:12]
Satya Saran
Well, I tried to change the covers. I started working with a few design designers who are my friends, and I remember one of them sent me a beautiful picture from Paris over the fax machine, which was a meso picture. It was a very nice portrait, but it was all in shades of green, so it was all light and shade, and the model's features really stood up. And they told me at the press that we can't use this picture. We need something which is sharper because a Xerox machine doesn't get pixels in it. So I managed to get that, and my editor was touring, and I quickly put that in. And when she came back, she was livid. She said, she looks like a frog. What is this? I said, this is new technology. Let's use it. So little things like this, and even the subjects, I said, we need to talk about new things we need to talk about to the professional. And I wasn't. There were others who were also talking the same language, younger people. But she resisted. She said, I have managed this magazine for so long, I don't see why not. And I suppose that happens, could have happened to me if I had stayed there long enough. One believes that if something is not broken, why fix it? But this was broken.
- [15:26]
Rinita Hora
So what eventually happened?
- [15:27]
Satya Saran
Well, she retired and I took over. And over a period of time, we started changing the magazine. I would go to parties and people would say, where do you work? I would say, femina. And they'll say, oh, my mother reads it. And I would wonder, why would my mother eat it? She is my age. She should be reading a magazine that I bring out. So I started talking to the woman of my age. And I realized that they had many issues. They were stepping out of their homes. They had issues at home where people were not sure whether they should be working or how to handle a working woman or how to handle the double duties of being a working woman and a homemaker. So there were many, many issues. Who handles the money she earns? So we started talking about these issues. We started talking about stories of incest, which is rampant everywhere in the world, but hidden under the bed, so to say. We started talking about affairs. We started talking about things that hurt women and they were hiding it. We talked about Eve teasing. We talked about rape. We talked about divorce. And the women came back and said, this is what we want solved in our lives. So the circulation soared. We brought in fashion and beauty. How to dress for the workplace, how to dress anywhere. Women were not aware Western clothes were coming in. They didn't know how to wear them. How to handle your male colleagues, how to handle your female colleagues, Everything.
- [17:01]
Rinita Hora
All traditionally very taboo subjects in India. I mean, taken for granted in the rest of the world, but very, very taboo in India at a time when the country was actually evolving. Remind us, what was the age group or the age span of these women facing these issues? These women looking at how to sort of manage their money or their occupation or who would take care of the money they earned. These things that you've mentioned, how old were they?
- [17:30]
Satya Saran
I was in my early 30s at that time. And that was our core reader because she had entered the workplace or she had children and was juggling everything. So the professional woman. So our actually band was 18 or 19 to 35, 40.
- [17:52]
Rinita Hora
So, Sathya, did you stay with Femina?
- [17:55]
Satya Saran
Yes, 26 years.
- [17:57]
Rinita Hora
26 years. That's a lifetime unto itself. What happened in year 27?
- [18:04]
Satya Saran
Most important years of my life for this magazine. I lived it, I breathed it.
- [18:11]
Rinita Hora
And what happened after that?
- [18:13]
Satya Saran
I had been editor for 12 years. We had become a super brand. And we were doing amazing things in marketing also, because I realized that we don't fight across the table. Traditionally, marketing and editorial are enemies. Because marketing things, we bring in the money, these guys only spend it. The editorial things, those are just mercenary people. They have no brains. Neither of which is true. So I started working with marketing and getting in extra income into the magazine. Like when I realized Chanel was going to be coming into India, I was going on a trip to Europe and I asked my publishers, can I also pitch to Chanel? And they helped me by printing out eight page supplement I created on art paper which I could present to Chanel. And they were impressed. I said, this is my magazine and this is what I can do for you. So they took all the back covers so I would help the marketing department. And things were going very well. Then the Times of India, which owned the magazines, went into a joint venture with the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC and the magazines became a separate entity. So new people came in at the top and they wanted to use my marketing skills and find a new editor. And that is when they started edging me out. They started telling me repeatedly that I had to just do marketing. And for a year I did both. And then when they finally found a new editor, they wouldn't let me write. I decided I had to leave.
- [19:52]
Rinita Hora
So you decided you had to leave, and that brought your career at Femina to an end. It was a time when you mentioned to me that you would cry into your pillow.
- [20:02]
Satya Saran
Because it was like, yeah, the whole year that I knew they were trying to push me out. I would be very brave at work, but it would hit me at night that this is something I have built, I have brought up, I've given my life to, for at least all of 12 years as editor. Because wherever I was, I was on a board of international editors which was being funded by Washington D.C. and we would meet every year to talk on reproductive issues. I felt that even whether I was in Europe or in Costa Rica, I would look at every page of the magazine. It would be faxed to me, I would send and corrections. So that's the kind of commitment I had given this magazine. It's not unusual. I was reading the history of Vogue and people do this to editors all the time. They decide that they need more power in the magazine. The editors Become too big and they just plug them out like a cherry and throw them out. I knew that was happening and I would really weep into my pillow. Not figuratively, but literally. It was very, very painful. And that is when I started writing books to get out of this pain.
- [21:22]
Rinita Hora
It was an emotional time. It was a hard time for you. But when life closes the door, it definitely opens a window. And I remember you telling me that it was an article that you wrote about Guru Dutt that actually became your first book.
- [21:35]
Satya Saran
I read an article on Guru Dutt. He's a very famous filmmaker who died young, who committed suicide at 39 and remains enigmatic director whom everybody like James Dean or somebody, they think we want to know more, we want to see, wish we had could see more of his work. And I read an article about his last days and the interviewer had said, if you want more stories, his friend and scriptwriter is willing to share them. And that is when I went to meet the scriptwriter. He was 80 something. And I thought I was going to write an article because I love cinema. I love cinema of the 50s, 60s, 70s and the music of Indian cinema. I said, let's enter this world and forget about Femina and the pain it's giving me and maybe I will not feel so bad about what's happening in my life here. And it ended up as a book. And I got onto an absolutely new journey of being a writer of books.
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Rinita Hora
It's amazing to see how one thing leads to the next and how it changes your own life in the process. But you still had one more magazine left in you. Tell us about the ME magazine for the DNA Daily News and Analysis.
- [23:13]
Satya Saran
Yes. I knew I had to find another job. I mean, books in India do not keep you alive. For my first book I got the equivalent maybe of $40. So that's not going to, that's not going to feed me. I remember my publisher had left by then, the person I had worked with in restructuring and re evolving this magazine. He had joined a competitive paper, DNA Daily News and Analysis, which was actually taking on the Times, which had become a little jaded at that time. I thought, why not join him? But then I said, he's not going to to take me on just like that. So I did reach out once or twice to him. I got no response. And then one day I realized, I said, this man, I mean he's a great marketing wizard, but he's also a little starstruck. So let me talk his language. And I was watching a fashion show in Delhi which I was covering for the magazine. And I sent him a message on my phone saying, I'm pretty good, take a chance on me, quoting from the ABBA song. And it hit home. He immediately replied, come and see me when you return. And I went to meet him and he said, I can give you a page in DNA, but what will you do with a page after being the second most influential editor in India? I said, work is work. I love my work. It doesn't matter whether it's a page or 100 pages, I'll do it. So he said, all right, you come back. I had taken a holiday of 15 days after your holiday and we'll sign the papers and let's go on. So I was in ceremony for my uncle's 80th birthday in another part of India when I get a message from him on my phone and he says, plan for a 52 page magazine. I can give you three people on your stuff. And it was excitement. I literally walked on air after that. And that's how ME magazine was born.
- [25:19]
Rinita Hora
So he much more than took a chance on you, he took a chance on you. He took a chance on the magazine itself, the fact that there would be a readership and it all worked out perfectly. Is that right?
- [25:32]
Satya Saran
Oh, yes. We were hugely successful because I had to break the mould I had created. I had to compete with my own magazine, Femina, and it worked out wonderfully. I mean, we just recreated the weekly magazine and we were not selling because we were going with the newspaper, but there were people buying two copies of the paper because they wanted two copies of the Sunday magazine.
- [25:58]
Rinita Hora
So what did you do to differentiate the ME magazine from Femina, for example, to compete with where you had come from?
- [26:07]
Satya Saran
ME was also considered a woman's magazine, but we were going into the home with the newspaper, so my readership was broader. I knew the man would also pick it up. We went into subjects that were fun and we went in depth, but we presented it in snippets with a lot of pictures. We broke up the story into little boxes. There was no running text over three pages or two pages. Everything was there, but it looked as if it was a jigsaw puzzle, not as if it was a long form story. So I did, for example, five two page stories on HIV AIDS where we talked about how is AIDS contacted with real life examples. What happens? What is aids, How a mother can give it to her child, how do you cure it? What are the new advances? We did everything, but we did not make it sound somber. You know, and in fact, the Family Planning association of India picked it up and said, can we make a pamphlet out of this? Because this will reach out to a lot of people who are scared to even read about aids.
- [27:15]
Rinita Hora
What I find very, very important in all of what you're saying, Satya, is more than being a trendsetter. The work that you have done has really set examples for the country at large. When you say the Family Planning association picked it up to distribute as a piece of important content, information, knowledge to the community at large, I mean, this is important work. This is important communication. And I think what's fascinating about this particular magazine is that over the five year or so span that you were there, the circulation of the magazine in fact exceeded that of the newspaper itself. Is that right?
- [27:59]
Satya Saran
Yeah, it did. Because he says, my husband takes away the magazine to work and I'm not able to read it over the week because I can't read it on Sundays. So I want one more copy. So we would print more copies than.
- [28:12]
Rinita Hora
The newspaper and the daily news and analysis is well known as one of the most important pieces of content, daily content, daily newspaper coverage in India at the time. What then led you to concentrating full time on your books and what are the kind of books that you write? Where can we find them? Where can we know more about them?
- [28:44]
Satya Saran
When I wrote that book on Guru Darth, one thing led to another. Somebody asked me if I would write another book on a music director of the same period. And he said, we have a fan club. We have collected a lot of material on him. The gentleman was dead by then. Very famous music director, S.D. berman. So he said, would you write about him? And so I wrote about him. And then by then I had become quite familiar with the publishing industry. So they started giving me assignments again on music. So I have kind of created a niche for myself on music, on Indian film music and the great people who have worked in cinema and music. And then I crossed over recently with a book on Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasya, who is a world renowned flautist in classical music, in Indian classical music. He teaches. He's the music director at Rotterdam Music Conservatory. He has world music under him and he has been teaching there for 28 years. But he's been there and he has huge flanks of foreign students learning the flute. So that was my crossover into more serious writing on music. But most of my books have been on music, though I have also written books on other subjects.
- [30:13]
Rinita Hora
And these really are the iconic figures of the Indian music industry. Both film music as well as classical music. So everything is available on Amazon. What do we do? Just go search for Sathya Saran and.
- [30:28]
Satya Saran
You should find it. I have people in America and England who have. And Scotland who have bought my books on Amazon.com yes, thank you, Satya.
- [30:39]
Rinita Hora
Is there anything else you would like to share with our listeners?
- [30:43]
Satya Saran
One small point maybe that I do believe that over the years my profession has given me a lot. And it's time for me to give back. So I teach at the National Institute of Fashion Technology. I teach fashion journalism there and writing. Because you can't be a journalist without learning to write. And a lot of my students unfortunately come there to learn journalism without really being fond of writing or reading. So I start from scratch and start teaching them how to write, how to do an introduction, how to do a middle basic composition. And then we go on to critiquing fashion and understanding textiles and whatnot. Sometimes it feels like a thankless task. But sometimes gems emerge from among those students. And that's very gratifying.
- [31:32]
Rinita Hora
You are such a role model, Satya, to female storytellers. I should say minority storytellers. Because I think the idea of minority extends well beyond female. Although certainly that was the situation that you found yourself in in India at the time. If there is a message that you could give to minority storytellers out there, what would it be?
- [31:58]
Satya Saran
I think it would be that if you are genuinely in love with what you do or even if you don't like what you're doing, but you do it with commitment and you do it with integrity, it will reward you in some way, if not monetarily, because editors are never paid as much as marketing people. So if you sit and compare yourself, then you build in a lot of resentment. But if not monetarily, you have the satisfaction of having done something wonderful and to the best of your ability. And at the end of it, somewhere, something will happen.
- [32:36]
Rinita Hora
Sathya, thank you so much for joining us today on the True Fiction Project.
- [32:41]
Satya Saran
Oh, thank you, Renita. And thank you. True Fiction Project. It's been fun actually talking to you.
- [32:47]
Rinita Hora
Thank you, everyone. That was Satya Saran. She is an independent editor, a consulting editor for Penguin India, and a strong woman female journalist in the evolving world of Indian publishing. This is the True Fiction Project. And I am your host, Rinita Hora. Here at the True Fiction Project, we're always looking for great stories that make for compelling fiction. So if you have a great story, you know someone who does. Or if you're a writer who'd like to be featured on the show, then please do get in touch with us at renita.com forward/contact and if you haven't signed up for our newsletter, then you can do so by visiting substack.com/renitahora all spelled out one word. That's substack.com/@r e E N I T A H I o R80.