Behram Contractor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Behram Contractor (1930-2001), also known as Busybee, was one of the popular figured in Indian journalism.
He worked at the Free Press Journal, Times of India (Bombay), and Midday before founding his own newspaper The Afternoon Dispatch and Courier (now the Afternoon) in 1985.
Behram continued to write articles for the Times of India and the Midday under the pen name Busybee even while serving as editor of his own paper, and his column Round and About was one of the most loved editorials in the city.
Behram also wrote "Eating Out" which featured one of the best Mumbai restaurants giving a glimpse of many Indian and international cuisines.
He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1990, and the Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism in 1996. In 1998, Behram published From Bombay to Mumbai, a collection of the best of Busybee's columns from 1996 and 1997.
Behram Contractor died in 2001 from a heart attack.
In the history of Indian journalism, there will never be another humorist like Busybee; he was the Art Buchwald of India, the P.G. Wodehouse of our times and more, a writer with a brilliant sense of timing for satire and humour, but with a soft and sensitive pen. And with a flow of words that could have readers rolling in their living rooms, offices and suburban trains on their way home; or moisteyed with emotion and sepia-tinged nostalgia. That was Busybee.
And he conveyed all this through a cast of fictionary characters with himself in the lead, and ably supported by a spouse he simply named "the wife", two sons who never grew up, Darryl and Derrek, an unimaginably rich but generous friend who lived in the 21st floor penthouse of one of Bombay's highrises, and talking dog Bolshoi the Boxer. Busybee drew them all into his column 'Round and About', though which he told his reader that it was perfectly fine to be the Common Man. And that if they thought bad things happened to good people only, they were probably right! He wrote in this delightful, free-flowing fashion for 36 uninterrupted years every morning, beginning and latter onn Pentium III PC that he claimed did most of his thinking and half work. His writing did not reflect the tools, of him trade, they brought out his Bombay, and he was the champion of the city and its citizen, nobody could describe Bombay's people, its places, markets, maidans, institutions transport systems, politicians, socialities, food and eating habits, sports, business, underworld, fashion and life as Busybee did. Terse and laconic, but with a rhythm that created the impression of deadpan comedy.
There will never be another humorist like Busybee also because, through his writings, lives forever.
