Press Club tribute recalls Tully’s voice, Rai’s lens

Friends and colleagues gathered to honor journalists Mark Tully and Raghu Rai, celebrating their impactful legacies in storytelling and journalism.

Friends, family and colleagues gathered at the Press Club of India on Tuesday to remember journalists Mark Tully and Raghu Rai, both long-time members who died this year, leaving behind distinct yet intersecting legacies of storytelling.

Family members, friends, and colleagues of photojournalist Raghu Rai and British journalist Mark Tully during a memorial meeting at the Press Club of India, in New Delhi, on Tuesday. (ANI)

Veteran journalist Saeed Naqvi opened the evening with an anecdote from 1968, when he and a young Rai slipped into the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in Rishikesh as The Beatles sought a spiritual retreat.

“It was said of El Cordobez, Spain’s greatest matador, that he did not know that the earth was round. Raghu did not quite know who the Beatles were until I dragged him to Chaurasi Kutia in Rishikesh. All the foreign correspondents waited outside while we sneaked in. I pointed out who the men were and Raghu quickly placed his zoom lens on my shoulder, clicked and ran back out,” Naqvi said.

Naqvi said Rai’s images were never just visual records but carried emotion, contradiction and depth. Whether covering the Bangladesh War or photographing figures such as Mother Teresa, he said, Rai combined valour with a deep sense of tragedy.

If Rai’s lens shaped how India was seen, Tully’s voice shaped how it was heard. Journalist Qurban Ali recalled working with Tully through decades of political upheaval.

“He never rushed to judgment. He listened patiently and that is why people trusted him. He was fearless, but never loud. He also wrote his stories within minutes and that is the mark of a real journalist; someone who knew exactly what story he wanted to tell,” said Ali, who shifted from another agency to work with Tully for decades after only meeting him once.

Rai’s daughter, Purvai Rai, offered a more personal glimpse.She recalled how her father, while accompanying Mother Teresa to a meditation centre, was told not to take photographs but instinctively leapt forward to capture a moment. “But that was him. He could not resist a frame,” she said.

She added that for Rai, even a photograph of a sparrow held meaning. “He believed art and spirituality were interlinked. He would say there is God in every speck of dust,” she said.

Messages of tribute also came from The Wire founding editor Siddharth Varadarajan, photographer Ram Rahman and Bangladesh High Commissioner to India M Riaz Hamidullah, highlighting how both men shaped public memory across borders.

The evening unfolded less as a formal tribute and more as a collective act of remembrance. Two lives, lived differently yet bound by a shared pursuit of truth, were brought back through stories, silences and the enduring power of words and images.

Tully, former BBC bureau chief in India, died in January, while Rai, known for iconic images from India’s post-Independence decades, died on April 26.