Two interviews: CNN-IBN and Screen

Here is the video of the CNN-IBN interview with Somen Mishra, sorry I took some time to put it up:
http://www.ibnlive.com/videos/66331/next-big-thing-neelesh-misra-scribe-turns-to-showbiz.html

And the story in Screen by Rajiv Vijaykar:

"How do you write with so much depth at the age of 34 and in today’s age of vacuous cursory rhymes? Is it because your journalistic outlook colours your verse?

(Smiles) ‘Cursory’ rhymes is a good phrase. Yes, I do admit that the job of a journalist takes me to the real India and puts me in touch with emotions that are very real. It is a happy meeting where both the creative writer and the reporter in me are affecting each other, and not just one-way. "

Read the full interview here.

Saluting the small town reporter in Naxal land

"Can you help me get a raise? I could not send my daughter to a decent school this year as well. It would have cost Rs. 800," the stocky reporter in Ghatsila town asked my friend, his boss from Jamshedpur.

Covering the Naxal story is not a sexy assignment. It is not lucrative either -- unlike Kashmir, it won't make careers, help people buy big homes, big cars, earn dollars, and American-accented friends. This is the poor man's insurgency. This is a poor reporter's story.

The office was steaming hot, with just one fan whirring, the lights dim, and little to egg them on except their enthusiasm and fly swatters. From this dark hole, the reporters cover the Naxal insugency. They put out news reports when unnamed Naxalites call them and give them reports of ambushes and landmine attacks; or when neatly handwritten Naxal statements come in the post.

(Pic: A child in a village in the Saranda forest, Jharkhand)

They plod on even when police office accuse them of having links with the rebels or tap their telephones; or, in flamboyant conversations with the rare New Delhi journalist, accuse most local reporters of being "on their payroll".

They plod on not because there is a raise or congratulatory e-mail waiting for them. They do it because they know that somewhere they have become part of the story -- so deeply inter-twined with the lives of the people living in humiliating poverty that they cannot walk away from it.

They are India's true reporters. Even after years of travelling the beaten track, they will still get tears lining their eyes when they hear of the woman who died of third degree burns because she had nothing to cover herself on the winter night and slept too close top the fire.

They will never win any journalism awards or buy new cell phones or get a call and kindwords from the editor-in-chief or sit and give their views in a television channel's studio.
And they will never grudge others who do.

I salute them.

The caste of medicine

Ravish Kumar is one of the funniest people I know. He is also one of the most most talented journalists I know.
He wrote a piece on his blog about how in Bihar, a chemist can "look at the prescription and tell the caste of the doctor" -- an irony-filled piece about how caste plays into the health sector there. What happened next -- including a death threat to a person quoted there -- is detailed here in this extract by Mr. Avinash Das in Mohalla, the most popular Hindi blog.
http://mohalla.blogspot.com/2008/04/blog-post_7805.html