4 decades of memories: KT photographers rewind
Serving Khaleej Times for decades, working from the days of black & white and film to today’s slick digitals and even reporting from the warfront, these shutterbugs’ work ethics were “gold standard”
Old timers have all the ‘goss’ — gossip. This much is evident when, out of the blue, you dial former KT staffers and have them jog their memories to talk about ‘what it was like’ back then in the old days. We decided to tap the memories of photographers.
Ringing up the photographers and hearing their tales of the 80s is a joy in itself. They have so much information, perspective, and aren’t shy of taking swipes at anyone, whether a former colleague or a rival paper that back in the day didn’t exist.
One old snapper tells me of a time when press conferences in Dubai wouldn’t begin till the KT reporter and photographer were present.
You get unprintable anecdotes about who was a “complete duffer” and who was the “genius from the beginning” and whose work ethic was gold standard.
Already an accomplished news photographer, Shakil Qaiser was recruited from Islamabad by then editor John Collier. Qaiser joined KT in October 1981. He retired in 2010 and has since put his camera down. He tells his wife the mobile camera has taken over the old methods. She urges him to return to it. He prefers gardening now.
But his memory is spot on and he talks freely of the good days, taking pride in recounting especially two aspects: 1. His several page-one bylines — so many that he’s lost count but the clippings exist in boxes somewhere, and 2. the times when the editors would want him to go on an assignment — “Shakil ko bhejo” (“Send Shakil”).
The respect your colleagues have for your work is a great feeling, he says. He’s been sent to Iraq and Afghanistan and to spend the better part of a month on war ships. “KT was like a family. We all knew each other and cared. If you work with a full heart, people will respect you.”
Shakil’s favourite subject was sport. One of his fondest memories is the day he took pictures of all five wickets that Wasim Akram took in Sharjah in the early 90s. You should have seen his expressions, he says about Akram. We have a long chat. There are more stories. Shakil is a leukemia survivor. Sometime in the ’80s, the doctors gave him 15 days to live.
He talks about the bone marrow match with his younger brother, about a lovely Dr Mehra at AIIMS in New Delhi who even drove to the airport to pick him up; who does that? The ruminations continue. Over the phone from Lahore, he says: “29 saal kam nahin hote” — 29 years (his tenure at KT) is no measly duration.
A contemporary of Shakil, Mukesh Kamal had been a photographer with Khaleej Times for 20 years. He joined in December 1996. Within a couple of years — before construction even began on the Burj Khalifa — he and a few other team members were given pagers. “I think it was 25 fils to make a call from a PCO (a pay phone) … but on some stretches, there weren’t many pay phones around. Often, I would be somewhere, like on the Al Ain Road, and the pager is ringing and ringing… I would turn around and go find a pay phone and this could take half an hour.”
He recalls about the time they would shoot on film, in black and white and where the dark room was in the old office, on Sheikh Zayed Road (colour film was saved for special assignments and shoots). Mukesh talks about the time he rode on a golf buggy in what is now the actual marina in Dubai Marina, before a momentous push of a button engorged the barren stretch with water.
The anecdotes are rich, telling, effusively told. Shivram Nair (or S. Nair, as the photo byline went), now retired and settled back in Kerala, remembers how he felt winning the best photograph award in 2008 for DSF (Dubai Shopping Festival). He was here from 1995 to 2010. I ask him to delve deeper in the memory well. He exclaims, oh yes, the whale.
One of his best memories of being in KT was heading out, on a tip off, to the Jebel Ali Port to photograph a whale that had bumped into a ship and now lay washed on the beach.
The creature was “approx 24 feet long”. Did it make it to page 1? He can’t remember bow. But it definitely made it to print.
KT was like a family. We all knew each other and cared. If you work with a full heart, people will respect you.” Shakil Qaiser, photographer