To my everything, a very Happy Birthday! No, I wouldn’t dare to expose how old he is today, but even today I get trolled by my friends in every field, that he looks 100 times younger than me. Touchwood, I say it in my heart…
A man who hails from the remotest Jalgaon Jamod taluka of Budhana district, Baba has come a long way. Today he lives a very nice and a very comfortable life with all of us but very few know, what it is to be like Patrakar Hemant Joshi…We haven’t spoken much about his family background or his struggles, how his own family ‘disowned’ him, but this man without stopping or getting demotivated, today stands tall only with his sheer hard work and his dedication to his sole love, journalism !
A vegetarian today, Baba was a hard-core non-vegetarian till 1990’s. Like in a week, twice he ate non-veg for 4 days …But once while he was interviewing the senior most politician today alive in his car, this ‘nastik’ veteran kaka took Baba to a temple on the way to Baramati. In this mandir, ‘Kaka’ asked Baba, that Hemant, if you really want to change your fortunes and put all your struggles behind, leave one thing that you love the most in front of this Devi Mata and swear that it cannot come back in your life. Baba, without a second doubt said, non-veg is very dear to me and from today I shall quit! Boom, call it a miracle, Baba had to never look behind in life and even today he does not even eat a cake which has eggs in it.
The real hard work was in Mumbai…No, Baba hasn’t studied Journalism but he had a deeper understanding of politics since he was a PA to the lion of Jalgaon, Shri Suresh Dada Jain. Not many know, Baba was also NSUI president for Jalgaon for 2 years…He came to Mumbai in 1987 thanks to Suresh Dada and immediately due to his fierce writing he was close to almost 99% of all politicians across party lines. Today most of the senior politicians across party lines, know me because I am Hemant Joshi’s son…As a kid, I remember going to Varsha bungalow, Mantralaya, Vidhan Bhavan as young as 8 years old, was routine for me during my school holidays. I think the passion to be amongst the big people, who run Maharashtra, was inculcated in me since then, and what better luck, I took up journalism too…
By the way, today information is available by the click of a button…Imagine the struggle 25 years ago, and to top that my father didn’t have a banner to back him…No big newspaper behind his name even today…Today whatever little we are, it is brand “Hemant Joshi”…
The answer to the success story of a matriculate from Jalgaon Jamod to today being in the top 10 journalists of Maharashtra, is very simple. He gets up at 4 every single day and sleeps as early as 9 and in between these hours, be it a Sunday, he is only staying busy..I haven’t seen him depressed, getting bogged down, or disturbed even when he took on the mighty with his pen or he had many obstacles coming in his life..Positivity is his middle name…Today, We both might not qualify in the ‘mainstream journalism’ list, but today we are proud that before any mainstream news or views, people who run our state, people first read us and it is taken seriously, mind you…That’s what we have achieved…I am toh an accidental journalist…I am a NM college graduate with an Masters and Diploma degree..But when there was politics in the organisation I worked and had to quit, it was Baba who motivated me to become a journalist.
I can write pages and pages on him, but thought, let’s get started…Mind you even today he drives himself to work, and is in no mood to retire…I wish him a very long and healthy life ahead and may I be blessed by him always…As I write in my bio, I am a proud son and a proud father…Love him the same way how Ranbir Kapoor loved his on screen father Anil Kapoor in the movie ‘Animal’.
Baba, Happy Birthday once again….
– vikrant joshi
