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Mark Tully
Veteran journalist Mark Tully, a chronicler of India and an acclaimed author, breathed his last at a private hospital here on Sunday, his close friend said. Tully was 90. The award-winning journalist was ailing for some time and had been admitted to the Max Hospital in Saket for the past week. "Mark passed away at Max Hospital Saket this afternoon," Satish Jacob, veteran journalist and a close friend of Tully, told PTI. Born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) on October 24, 1935, Tully was the chief of bureau for the BBC, New Delhi, for 22 years. An acclaimed author, Tully was also the presenter of the BBC Radio 4 programme 'Something Understood'. He was knighted in 2002 and received the Padma Bhushan from the government of India in 2005. Tully has written several books on India, including 'No Full Stops in India', 'India in Slow Motion', and 'The Heart of India'.
As a child of rich British parents in West Bengal's Tollygunge in the late 1930s, Mark Tully was not allowed to socialise with locals. As if in a karmic response to his parents' preferences, Tully spent a lifetime in India as a journalist and observer, mingling with its people and telling their stories, including from some of the most remarkable chapters in the country's eventful past. The renowned journalist, author and Indophile breathed his last at a private hospital here on Sunday at the age of 90. He was ailing for some time and had been admitted to the Max Hospital in Saket for the past week. Born in 1935 in Tollygunge, Tully had spent the first decade of his life in India, studying at a boarding school in Darjeeling before he was sent off to England for further education. In an interview to the BBC in 2001 after he was selected for Knighthood, Tully remembered England as "a very miserable place dark and drab, without the bright skies of India". After taking up a theology co