Life has ebbed but Letters endure

New Delhi, Feb 23 (UNI) Sham Lal's 'life' may have been extinguished but his ''Life and Letters'', a weekly literary column in The Times of India that dabbled in a wide variety of issues with razor-sharp erudition and profound understanding, is enough to ensure his place in the pantheon of immortal newspaper editors.

To Sham Lal, former Editor-in-Chief of The Times of India, also goes the credit of giving an awesome, even titanic, stature to the institution of editorship, which has now come under proprietary onslaughts.

Sham Lal, who died here this morning at age 94, easily towered over the journalistic scene during the 60s, 70s and early 80s, with both prodigious and quality writings, which have been compiled in two books, entitled ''A Hundred Encounters'' and ''Indian Realities in Bits and Pieces''.

The book is a collection of his reviews and essays that have been earlier published in his column in Times of India.

In his introduction to the book, Sham Lal wrote: ''The reviewer interrogates the writer and looks for answers in the text. It is for him to point out where the author fumbles or takes refuge in silence, evasion or ambiguity, and locate the points of tension between his different selves.

''This is why I call my reviews encounters. if they are too brief, it is because of the limited space available to a columnist.'' Beginning his career in 1934 in The Hindustan Times, he moved to the Delhi edition of Times of India early in 1950. Soon after, he was transferred to the main edition of the paper, he began writing a the literay weekly column under the heading 'Life and Letters''.

His column was the first to introduce many Indian readers to scores of writers and thinkers who left their mark on post-war literature and social thought. For the last few years, he had been writing for The Telegraph, and occasionally for Biblio: A Review of Books, a literary journal.

Reviewing his book ''A Hundred Encounters'', a newspaper wrote that even at the peak of his career -- the editorship of The Times of India from 1967 to 1978 -- Sham Lal side-stepped the booby-traps of journalism without a twitch of self-righteousness.

''He seldom rubbed shoulders with the rich, refused to play confidant to the powerful, shunned socialites and never broke bread with celebrities. Commitment for him meant the company of a few chosen friends and more so the company of his books...The publication of One Hundred Encounters, the first volume of a selection of his writings... not only enchanted those who have long admired him but it also attracted the attention of readers who had not been born when he retired from the paper.'' Sham Lal was not merely a journalist but also a top-rate political commentator. He approached issues not as a scholar or an ideologue or an actvist, but as a moralist.

He warned the country's movers and shakers to consider seriously the issues of population growth, the frantic pace of technological change, the logic of democratisation set in motion by adult franchise and the ongoing process of globalisation.

''Al these factors can and do exacerbate ethnic, religious, regional and class conflicts. The conscience-keepers of the nation must pay heed to the encounter between tradition and modernity and to the grim consequences of the commodification of ideas, philosophies, the arts and other works of the human mind,'' he once commented.

With Sham Lal dissolving into eternity, the Fourth Estate has lost one of its most hallowed signatures.

UNI