Gitanjali Aiyar, one of the best news anchors the nation has ever seen, has died. In 1989, she received an Outstanding Women award.
71-year-old Gitanjali Aiyar, one of the well-known hosts of Doordarshan’s prime-time news at nine o’clock for many years, passed away in Delhi on Wednesday. She was ill for a while.
Gitanjali contributed grace and dignity to television reporting before news studios grew to resemble war chambers and news presenters started engaging in yelling matches, like many of her peers on the national network. She thoroughly read the news. In her time, anchors had a neutral tone and students were urged to listen to Gitanjali, Rini Simon, and Neethi Ravindran, to improve their English.
In those days, when news studios used teleprompters, they often had technological issues during live broadcasts. But, Gitanjali maintained her serenity and calmness in addition to her flawless accent.
Gitanjali joined Doordarshan in 1971 after beginning her career with All India Radio and was recognized four times as the channel’s finest anchor. She was also bestowed with the Indira Gandhi Priyadarshini Outstanding Women award in 1989.
Gitanjali was obsessed with being a news reader from the young age of six. She excelled in elocution competitions while a student and immediately entered the news industry after graduating from Kolkata’s Loreto College. She was also a National School of Drama graduate. It enabled her to soar beyond the local environment. She was given a role in the well-liked Doordarshan teleserial Khandaan, which shot to fame in the middle of the 1980s.
When she was at the height of her fame, the newscaster was a featured in Marmite and Solidaire television advertising. Gitanjali’s visage fit the Solidare commercial’s punchline, “that seldom fails,” since she never lost her composure when technology failed her in the early days of Doordarshan.
She experimented with corporate communications after leaving Doordarshan and worked as a consultant for the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Worldwide Fund for Nature.
