It was around this time that I accompanied him to a meeting with L K Advani, along with R V Pandit, a common friend and another fearless publisher. Karanjia was so enthused after that meeting with Advani that he agreed to come as a special guest at the national council meeting of the BJP in Bangalore where he declared his support to the Ayodhya movement.

Karanjia was born in 1912 in Quetta, now in Pakistan, which has produced another great Parsi name in journalism —Ardeshir Cowasjee, the celebrated columnist of Dawn. A journalist who started his career as a war correspondent for a British paper during World War II (hence the name ‘Blitz’), he founded Blitz in 1941. Its first issue came out on February 1, exactly the day he breathed his last 67 years later, at age 95. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Blitz was Karanjia’s life, his passion, his mission. He made history with it. Interestingly, Wayside Inn, the famous (and now-extinct) restaurant near Kala Ghoda, where the decision to launch Blitz was taken over a cup of tea by a group of three young and fiercely patriotic journalists — B.V. Nadkarni and Benjamin Hornim — was also the place where history was made for another, grander, reason: Dr. Ambedkar wrote the first draft of the Indian Constitution here.

Like all Parsis, Karanjia was kind-hearted and gentle to the core. He served India with devotion and passion. About Parsis, Mahatma Gandhi had said, “In their number, they are beneath contempt. In their contribution to the nation, they are beyond compare.” Russy K. Karanjia, you were, indeed, beyond compare. You touched my life, just as you touched the lives of millions of Indians.

... contd.