What Happened to Gitanjali Aiyar? Gitanjali Aiyar died on June 7. She was one of the first English newscasters on Doordarshan, the state TV station. The well-known news reporter had Parkinson’s disease.
Gitanjali Aiyar was a news anchor who had been doing her job for more than 30 years. She won four times for being the best anchor. Sources close to Gitanjali’s family say that she passed out when she got home from a walk.
What Happened to Gitanjali Aiyar?
Aiyar was sick with an illness called Parkinson’s. According to people close to the family, Aiyar had passed out after coming home from a walk. One of Aiyar’s best friends, journalist Sumita Paul, told IE that he was being rushed to the hospital but died on the way.
Aiyar, who lived in Delhi and was one of the first people to read the news in English on Indian television, died of a brain hemorrhage on Wednesday. She was known for her poise, intelligence, and clear speech. She was 72 years old and sick for a long time. Aiyar has a boy named Shekhar and a daughter named Pallavi. Both of them live in the United States. On Friday, the body will be burned.
Sumita Paul, who is a close friend and a writer, said that Aiyar had started to get better. Paul, who worked with Aiyar at the All India Radio, said that a friend rushed her to the hospital on Wednesday, but she died on the way there.
Aiyar was always impressed by the way people like Surojit Sen and Pamela Singh read the news on the radio when he was growing up. This made her interested in public speaking and arguments in school and college. After she graduated in 1971, she went to an audition at AIR and joined the English news section.
In 1976, she went to DD. When India got color TV and DD went national in 1982, people on the street knew who the newsreaders were. “All of a sudden, everyone in India knew who you were…. My village butcher in Bhogal, south Delhi, would say, ‘Aiye, aaj ki kya taaza khabar hai madam’…. In 2022, Aiyar wrote in Outlook that teachers would tell kids to talk like us.
Rini Simon Khanna, who used to work with her and now presents news on DD, said, “I met her for dinner last month and saw that she had become very weak. She said that she hadn’t been feeling too good. But she was still very polite and well-mannered, which was the first thing I noticed about her back in the day. She was always careful and precise. There was never a hair out of place, and she never laughed.
Who was Gitanjali Iyer?
After graduating from Kolkata’s Loreto College in 1971, Aiyar started her work in TV news in 1976 when she joined Doordarshan. Aiyar was also interested in theater and went to the National School of Drama, where he got a diploma.
A story in the Indian Express says that when Aiyar was growing up, he watched people like Surojit Sen and Pamela Singh read the news on the radio. These people had a big impact on him. Before the mid-1970s, Doordarshan only had shows like Chitrahaar and Krishi Darshan. Newscasters like Aiyar became very popular across the country at that time.
In a report by Scroll, Aiyar talks about how powerful people thought she was when she worked at Doordarshan: “Once a man came and rang the doorbell to ask me to do something about getting electricity to the chawl he was living in. Another time, a Dehradun taxi driver wouldn’t take any money after taking me to the school where my son went to school. Many people thought we did a lot for the country. All of it was very sad.”
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In the same article, Aiyar is quoted talking about how hard it was for her to do her job back when there wasn’t much technology to help her.
Geetanjali Aiyar Career Highlights
Aiyar started her work in news when she joined the English news section of All India Radio right after she graduated. Aiyar has won the award for best anchor four times in a row. She is one of the most well-known faces on TV from her age. In 1989, she was given the Indira Gandhi Proyadarshini Award for Women of Merit.
The news reporter also played a role in Khandaan, a TV show that was also on DD. Aiyar worked on TV, but she also often featured in print ads. After she stopped reading the news, Aiyar worked for the Taj and Oberoi hotel chains, the CII, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
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Gitanjali Aiyar Family
Aiyar had two kids, a girl named Pallavi and a son named Shekhar. Pallavi, who is an award-winning journalist, wrote in one of her Substack pieces about how Indians still liked a picture of her mother that she had shared on Twitter.
Conclusion
Gitanjali Aiyar was one of the first English newscasters on Doordarshan and was known for her poise, intelligence, and clear speech. She died of a brain hemorrhage on Wednesday, and her body will be burned on Friday. Gitanjali Iyer was a powerful newscaster who became popular across the country in the mid-1970s due to her ability to read the news on the radio. Geetanjali Aiyar is an award-winning news reporter who has worked in TV, print ads, hotel chains, CII, and WWF.
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