ALI PETER JOHN’S DEMISE MARKS THE END OF AN ERA IN MEDIA

Senior most Journalist JYOTHI VENKATESH pens down is notes in memory of the late ALI PETER JOHN

It is with sadness that I am penning this piece on my late friend and colleague in bollyy.com and Mayapuri, Ali Peter John, whose death at the age of just 72 after a period of prolonged illness, has left a big void in the film industry as well as media circles.

The first time I met him was when both Ali and I were attending a press conference art Hotel Oberoi Towers in Nariman Point in Mumbai, known at that point of time as Bombay.

While Ali was employed with the weekly film trade newspaper Screen, I was employed at that point of time with Hotel Oberoi Sheraton, now known as Hotel Trident

Though for me, it was a hop and skip distance to the banquet hall known as the Regal Room in the hotel where the press conference was held, Ali had to walk from his building to the hotel after leaving his office.

Ali was quite sweet and smug in his demeanor then. He walked up to me at the party and had introduced himself as “I am Ali Peter John from Screen weekly. How are you?”

Ali, I should confess, was very popular then since not only was Screen very popular, Ali was perhaps the only staffer who roamed around the studios and reported diligently on all activities in the film industry. And besides me, there were hardly any freelancers at that point of time way back in 1974, except perhaps Deepak Puri and Mohan Bawa, who, alas, are no more now.

Of course without any iota of doubt, the only freelancer queen at that time was my guru Devyani Chaubal who used to write exclusively for Star & Style.

Besides working at the Hotel in the Accounts department, I used to moonlight as a freelancer for publications like Free Press Journal, Free Press Bulletin, Filmfare, Star & Style, Film World, Femina and Illustrated Weekly.

I was intrigued when Ali introduced himself to me. Are you a Muslim, or a Catholic? I remember having asked him because his name was Ali Peter John and he had merely smiled and said, “You presume whatever you feel I am but this is my name.

Take it or leave it” Ali was quite brisk and agile and what’s more young at that time obviously. We used to meet off and on at various film land parties as well as mahurats and outdoor shootings then.

Such was Ali’s popularity that an A listed PR guy like the late Gopal Pandey used to make it a point to come to Ali’s office at Screen and fetch him home, pile him with scotch, of which Ali was fond of, and get press release written by him in English since Ali was very proficient in English and Gopal was not.

And such was his clout that producers used to wait for Ali’s arrival at parties hosted by them and till Ali landed up, they did not start the proceedings at the party.

Ali Peter John was prolific as a journalist and was used to write reams and reams in his weekly with a column called Ali’s Notes. Ali used to cover all actors, whether he or she was a newcomer or a mega star.

Each and every actor used to love to figure in his column. His favorite of course was none other than Amitabh Bachchan who he used to interview regularly even when the latter had imposed a blanket ban on the press, when he was cut up with the gossip press and that included me too.

What I liked about Ali was the fact that the PR guys used to like the way he obliged each and every one of them, whether he was a big shot or a newcomer.

Like veteran PRO Ramesh Kerur said to me on the day Ali died, “Ali was very straight forward, whether it was PRO Bunny Reuben or Gopal Pandey, or me he used to oblige each and every one of us without any partiality and did not expect anything from any of us by way of gratifying him.”

Frankly, I confess that though I never used to read whatever he wrote in Ali’s Notes in the weekly Screen, I made it a point to read whatever Ali wrote in film trade weeklies like Super Cinema, Complete Cinema and bollyy.com and Mayapuri for the past six years.

I realized that he had a good memory of even incidents that had happened three to four decades ago. It was then that I too started remembering incidents that happened 30 to 40 years ago and started writing about them in bollyy.com and Mayapuri.

Though we were not great friends at any point of time, I remember once telling him that he should also cultivate the younger generation of today like Varun Dhawan, Ranveer Singh, Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Jahnvi Kapoor, instead of all the time writing only about Dilip Kumar, Anupam Kher and Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand, Ali took it sportingly and told me that the younger generation of PR girls do not even bother to invite him for their functions and interviews and hence he was missing out on the new generation.

Ali told me that Dungarpur’s book release was being held the same evening but PRO Anusha Iyer had not invited him and asked me to put in a word to her to invite him. I gladly asked Anusha to invite Ali and she was happy to oblige. Shivendra Singh Dungarpur is an Indian filmmaker, producer, film archivist and restorer, best known for his films Celluloid Man, The Immortals and CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel.

Ali was writing only for bollyy.com and Mayapuri and had stopped writing for various other publications because print publications had ceased coming out and payment had become a major issue.

I hope Ali Peter John’s soul rests in peace up there though I wish all those stars who Ali wrote about, when he was alive and what’s more kicking, had bothered to attend Ali’s funeral. RIP!