The Making of a Journalist
[Music]
hi
my name is sonal mirotra kapoor i’m a
reporter and anchor in
india i’ve been in the mad world of
television journalism for over 10 years
now
and i’m here in front of you today to
tell you
what goes into the making of a
journalist here
in the country and mostly what happens
behind the scenes now to understand that
let’s take you back in time
let’s take you to the december of 2012.
it was that time in the country when the
streets of the national capital were
flooded with people
angry people men and women young and
old seething with anger with the brutal
gang rape
of a young girl in the national capital
there were protests breaking out
everywhere outside rashtrapati bhavan
outside india gate i was at that time
as a city reporter reporting from sapta
jung hospital
reporting on her medical updates and
talking to her family
i remember the doctors
telling me that they were shocked at
how she was still alive because not an
inch of interstein was left inside of
her
i remember talking to her brother who
later on became a good friend of mine
and at that time just throwing words in
middle of his sobs
just venting out to me saying how did
this happen
didi had just gone to watch a movie with
a friend
how did this happen how did she land up
here
now the reporter in me wanted all the
whereabouts all the details
where did she go what movie did she
watch whom did she go with
and the details they stunned
me she had gone to watch
life of pie at a multiplex in south
delhi with a male friend of hers
why that was shocking is because i was
watching life of pie
at the same theater the same night the
same
show with a male friend of mine
the only difference perhaps was that my
male friend happened to have a car he
could drop me back home in
else i would have taken a public
transport as well
in that minute i realized how close i
was
to becoming the story i was reporting
upon
she was my age she was
just like me perhaps not wanting to
conform
to the ways of the society or limit
herself to a home just wanting to live
in the weeks that followed the gang rape
and the unfortunate incident i covered
various aspects of the story
i remember being at india gate when
i can still hear as if it’s happening
right in front of me right now on how
people were screaming when lottie charge
was taking place
i remember recording a piece with my
camera person when a tear gas shelling
fell right in between us
there was commotion there were screams
people were falling on top of each other
i lost contact with my camera person
somebody stole my phone
i was vomiting i had fiery eyes
typical reactions by the way of a tear
gas shelling
my shoe was broken and in that
moment i don’t remember for how long i
walked to just get some help
and to give you an idea it was not just
that one day this was happening
every day in delhi one day it was tear
gas shelling the other day it was water
cannons
cold water cannons being fired at
protesters
at media as well in the
diliki sadly you know how cold it gets
in delhi in december
but most of all from that december
i remember being at singapore at the
mount elizabeth hospital
just her family and i at that point when
the doctors walked in and said that
she didn’t have much long to live
i had the opportunity to
meet her to see her 15 minutes
before she died and
that’s an image that has stayed with me
till this day
that is an image when i saw her
where everything around me just stood
still for a minute
and i had no thought nothing in my mind
it was just her and i
in many ways i think it was my epiphany
it was that moment where time stood
still and i met my purpose
unfortunately for me it was when another
girl was losing her life but when these
moments of
epiphany happens it’s not like your life
changes
completely well let me put it this way
when i came back i was the same person
i was still reporting my work was still
quite hard
i as a city reporter you’re on call 24 7
the mental and the physical toil of
things really gets to you you
hardly paid anything it was all the same
life was the same but something had
changed something had altered inside me
i had a new perspective perhaps a new
calling
perhaps a new way of looking at things
fun fact that night
before everything started the night when
i was watching life of pi
unknowingly with nirvya in the same
theater
i had told myself i’m gonna quit and i’m
gonna go
and put in my papers and go back home
take that walk of shame go back to my
parents
to a small city in up and tell them i
couldn’t make it could make it as a
reporter the city life was just too hard
guess what happened right after guess
where we are right now that one reddit
call that i got the next morning
5 30 a.m from the newsroom assignment
desk
for those of you who don’t understand
they’re like these newsroom warriors who
keep a hawks eye on every alert and
every
development that takes place they gave
me a call at 5 30 in the morning and the
only detail i had at that point was that
there had been a
rape that had taken place in south delhi
that they needed a reporter to go on
that rape is now the story of
a lot of people’s life story of a lot of
transformed lives as well
and over the years i’ve had lots of
these calls actually
from the same newsroom assignment desk i
remember one call
where i was asked to rush to a
village in haryana where the cops had
decided
that women would no longer be allowed to
wear jeans
this mostly included young girls as well
i got a call i had to rush
i did that immediately somewhere halfway
in my travel trying to coordinate
details
i realized that i was going to
go to a village which had banned jeans
for women
talk to them about it spend a day with
them
wearing exactly that
frankly in 11 years of journalism i’ve
had several
such encounters as a woman journalist
i’ve had several stories where i’ve
reported on women not being allowed to
wear what they want say what they feel
love who they love at times
women who’ve not even had a chance at
life
which brings me to a story in rajasthan
i went to one of the remotest village in
rajasthan
a village which had the worst female
feticide ratio in the country
when i reached there my instinct was to
talk to other women right they would
understand what’s going on they’ll have
an insight
maybe i can highlight their voice
to my horror i sat there
in the middle of the village on a chart
by with women young and old
and they
had no inhibitions in telling me that
according to them
women were a burden a girl child was a
burden
one of them turned around and said kura
meaning they’re just garbage
a lot of them even then went to great
details to even
explicitly tell me how they handled the
girl child
problem in the village
i’m not gonna give you the details to
spare you on that one but
they basically if a girl child was born
they had their
own ways of getting rid of it they would
simply go to the mother
and say the child was still born the
mother knew the reality the villagers
knew the reality
and the mother also knew that she would
have to continue to do this till the
time she bore a boy
at moments like these i’ve reflected
upon my own life
i am after all a only child only girl
child of a
small conservative family back in up but
at least
i had a chance to live at least i had
free will to make my own decisions
something which a lot of women even till
date do not have
something which i especially know two
girls two teenage girls
born about 250 kilometers from my birth
place in up
a place called badayou certainly did not
have
this is the story of two girls who were
allegedly
raped murdered then hung to a tree in
full public spectacle
in the village
and this case had followed
a lot of anger on the ground
when i reached there there were riot
police
all over the place the angry the family
was very angry the
highway was blocked they were sitting
with the bodies over there saying we’re
not going to cremate till the time
justice is met
there was a lot of international press
on this because they had gone to relieve
themselves because there were no toilets
in that village and that’s when the
incident had taken place
well it was so complicated and when i
got there there were so many
views and counter views that to get to
the
heart of the issue i decided to go back
to reporting rules 101
you first speak to the family of the
bereaved
identified them i went there i saw their
humble home
i saw the father
but i couldn’t take my first step i
remember just standing there thinking
how do you how do you ask a daughter
or how do you ask a father in fact
how their two daughters died in such a
public way
how do you enter the house in moaning
with a camera and mic in your hand how
do you even start a conversation like
that
i remember being stuck there not being
able to take
that one step but over the years i’ve
taken such hard steps a lot of times
but mostly been
thankful about the fact that i get to
tell their story
all these stories have changed me living
their lives
living the lives i’m in fact reporting
upon has transformed me
for several assignments we’ve had
no proper food or lodging to depend upon
in the case of badayou no toilets for 15
days
but at least we were able to bring out
the story
take the tough decision knowing that it
was for the larger good
i think upon these stories all these
years down the line and i think that
i thought my life was tough i thought
i wanted to throw all this away and go
back
home thinking it was too much to take
and to be frank with you over the years
i’ve had several such opportunities i’ve
had several such moments i’ve met some
fantastic people as well
i’ve met a lot of people from
prime ministers to chief ministers
to homeless people to drug addicts to
criminals i’ve had
lunch with the most powerful woman in
the country
and the same day skip dinner to hear the
story of a girl who was thrown into
trafficking at the age of 13.
i still remember how she showed me her
scars
the scratch in her voice when she told
me
how she was used and abused
sold and resold
forced into marriage with a guy much
older to her
she beared the children never got
control of them
and there she was still telling me her
story
stuff like that changes you i was also a
young girl she was
the girl sitting in front of me going
having gone through abuse was just about
my age
but anyways so is life these things
happen especially
when you are a
reporter and frankly
looking back at it i know you all have
churnings in your stomach right now but
i at least had the freedom to talk
the freedom to tell that story the
freedom to reflect upon it
a voice and if you’re watching this
trust me so do you what are you doing
with that voice
in these moments of ffme or in these
moments
when i have been broken as well
and i’ll not lie to you i’ve had my
moments i’ve had my moments when i’ve
been numb
i’ve had my moments when i’ve had silent
cries
two panic attacks all hidden behind
the makeup and the smiles when i sit on
primetime television and i greet
the nation
but i still get sleep at night i still
get sleep
thinking that that spot at prime time
television
has its impact thinking
that we’ve managed to change if not all
some lives
at least start a conversation with the
reporting that we did
we changed the life of that girl
that girl who was thrown into
trafficking today has a respectable job
she has hired lawyers to bring back the
custody and to win back the custody of
her two kids
governments have been forced to build
toilets in villages which have never had
one for generations
ngos are now working in the most remote
corners of the countries
building up and bettering the sex ratio
in the country
and most of all we have a new sexual
harassment law in the country
one of the best in the world and i have
not been a silent spectator i’ve been an
agent of change
sometimes a loud one so my message to
you is this
when that moment of epiphany hits you
live it embrace it enjoy it
because your life is about to change and
with you
the life of so many others thank you