She & Her Marriage

She is my neighbour. May be a year elder to me or almost my age.
Let's put it this way-- in a city like Delhi where there is no concept of 'padosi' who says Namaste to you daily or keeps a tab on your health and how the kids are doing at school, this neighbour was indeed full of warmth and affection for me.
It began with a bowl of chicken curry she had made one day which she wanted me to taste. Then it was Pav Bhaaji on another day.
Her culinary skills were too good! I didn't have to order anything or rely on insipid food made by domestic maid every time she would send across these delicacies made at home.

Our camaraderie soon led to us gossiping and complaining about one domestic maid who used to work at my place as well as hers.
Everytime didi won't come for work, we would go on a rant about maids and how life is still difficult even in their presence.
Then one day, she complained about her husband being stingy so much so that it was difficult to manage household expenses.
'I want to start my own thing of sending tiffins to students nearby', she once told me.
I encouraged her and even pitched in with a suggestion that I will ask around at workplace if someone is looking for home-cooked food on a daily basis.

There was an aspiration in her to work, a desire to have a separate identity apart from being someone's wife and mother of two kids.
She used to work at a beauty parlour before marriage and had been a housewife for the last 7-8 years.
Almost a week after she shared her idea about starting tiffin service, I bumped into her again while I was on my way back to home from office.
With a sullen look, she informed me that her husband had trashed the idea.
It was an awkward moment because for the first time she had opened up about her marital life which was undergoing a turbulent phase.

I didn't know how to react initially and told her to negotiate with husband later when tempers have cooled down a bit. She nodded in agreement. I also told her to think again about tiffin services as it may not be profitable all the time given that vegetables might be costly and students/office goers may turn out to be choosy customers. She got the cue and said that she will think about it again.

Few weeks later, I got a call from her while I was in office. 'Are you back from work?' she asked, her tone sounding the usual way. It was a busy day due to unpredictable news cycle and I hung up very quickly after telling her that I will see her after wrapping up work. As soon as I entered her drawing room, it looked like anything but a normal household. A bunch of plastic flowers was strewn across the room, it seemed as if a hurricane just went past this place.

Her husband sat at one corner with a grumpy look, she huddled in another corner, anger writ large on her face. 'Aap meri kahin naukri lagwa dijiye (help me in getting a job)', she urged as soon as our eyes met for the first time in midst of the tension inside.

It took me a few minutes to understand that I had been called upon as an arbitrator to negotiate between two parties, a husband and wife in this case. With few statements urging both of them to resolve differences either on their own or with the help of a counselor, I decided to leave, feeling very uncomfortable being in midst of this unprecedented situation.

Remember the courtroom scene from the 1979 legal drama, 'Kramer vs Kramer', starring Meryl Streep? Separation by legal processes can be painful and heart-wrenching as every single piece of information one may know about his or her spouse is out there, it's mutual 'washing of dirty laundry in public' just to part ways on your own terms and conditions.

Thinking about my neighbour and her struggle with marriage as an institution, which she believed to be a sacrosanct one but had turned out to be otherwise, I really thought if she was still ready to step out of it.

I decided to keep mum instead of pushing her and we switched back to discussing about usual mundane stuff.

Some months later, as I was about to doze off at around 11 pm, I heard a thud sound very close to the wall of my bedroom. Her house was close by and apprehension of another violent fight between the couple forced me to step out yet again.

I was joined by two other female neighbours as well who had also heard the sound.

Once again as we stepped inside her drawing room, table laid upside down, a crack on the wall-mounted TV confirmed that it had also suffered damage. Her husband again sat in one corner with a grump look, she huddled in another corner, anger writ large on her face.

This time even the three of us failed in our peace-making efforts as my neighbour-cum-friend broke down into loud sobs, screaming how unjustly she had been treated by her husband. Unable to pacify her at her home, I persuaded her to come over to my place for sometime.

A cup of tea soothed her nerves as she began narrating horror tales of how her husband had once pulled her by her hair when she was late one day even as dozens of utensils remained uncleaned.

My sympathy for her, until this moment, had turned into a diabolical rage which wanted to punch her husband really hard. I, anyways, had stopped respecting the man sometime ago.

The two other female neighbours, who had also settled down at my place, in an effort to calm down the situation, also told her to muster the courage and release herself from the pangs of such an abusive and violent marriage. She nodded even as we explained her the steps to be taken for filing a divorce, jobs she could take up and extra help we can get from activists who are working with such victims.

A week passed. We were waiting for a reaction from her side so that we could spring into action at our end. NOTHING HAPPENED!

One evening as I had just returned from office, she called asking if I can lend my remote for TataSky set-top box to her for few hours. I am anyways not a fan of watching television after work so I readily agreed.

Days after the fight, her husband had bought a new TV and the remote which was damaged in the last brawl, was needed to check if the TV was functioning fine. 

As I stepped into her drawing room for the Nth time, it seemed like any other typical middle class drawing room, everything seemed to be in its place.

'He had broken the remote that day so...', she smiled as I gave her my remote. 'Sure, take your time, I anyways don't watch TV in evenings', I said and returned to my hole.

It was life as usual for her. It was marriage as 'normal' as it can be for her. To each his own I thought with a resolve never to interfere in her affairs again.

As I sat down at a nearby theatre watching Thappad starring Tapsee Pannu, I couldn't stop my thoughts which were hell-bent on drawing parallels between real and reel life.

Yes, a slap was all it took a female protagonist to call it off yet women still choose to suffer in silence without knowing that they are killing that side of theirs which wants to stand on itsown feet, start tiffin services and earn few thousands every month instead of being beaten and abused by your better half every day.

P.S. I still hear sounds next door occasionally, I ignore them. 

Stories & Their Impact

'You first tell me, how will it benefit us?', the woman with a thick Bengali accent, on the other end of our mobile conversation, demanded.
'Well, let's first put the information in public domain and that should be enough to put pressure on the government', I tried explaining in a bid to convince her to give me an interview.
The lady's younger brother was in the Army and had gone missing while on duty in Gujarat in 1997. Since there was editorial interest in the story, I was trying hard to get her on record about the efforts made by the family in trying to find their only son.

The STORY & Its IMPACT, that's the classic dilemma for any journalist who would want his or her piece of work to send ripples as far as possible but often that's not exactly what happens with people always wondering if it's worth the effort at all.
And why is IMPACT important?
Hmmm...let me try to elaborate on that front.
On 8 June 1972, Associated Press photographer, Nick UT, raised a storm after his photo of the 'Napalm Girl' unraveled the savagery, of the Vietnam War, before the world.
Imagine one photo left the world stunned ...that's the kind of impact a journalist's piece of work can have -- you can shake the governments as it happened in the case of Watergate, you can expose corruption as it happened in the case of famous sting (Operation Westend) done by Tehelka magazine in 2001, or it can be just an interview like that of Tanushree Dutta that initiated the MeToo movement in India.
Between stories that never see the light of day and those that make heads turn are innumerable tales that do affect the common man yet are not able to shake up the system.
In May 2019, while covering the General Elections, I had gone to a village called Ghatigaon near Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh. My point person on the ground wanted me to highlight the ordeal of several villagers whose houses were left incomplete under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana.
As I sat down outside the kuccha house of one of the villagers, two women came inside the porch and sat down, their gaze intently fixed on me.
(can watch the full story here)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3woi4rCoh6I
Both these women, in their late 50s, were daily wage labourers and wanted to speak to a mediawalla about the corrupt Sarpanch who had siphoned off the money meant for building their 'home sweet home'.
'Inko umeed hai ki apki story se shayad inka kaam ban jaye (they are hopeful that the work will be done after your story)', the local contact had told me while we were on our way.
The story was published in the height of election season and as was expected the BJP led by Narendra Modi came back to power with a thumping majority.
For months, after I came back to Delhi, often while returning from office on a rickshaw, I would recall the sullen faces of those two women -- Ram Snehi and Rona -- those were their names.
It's not easy to live under a thatched roof in the blistering heat of May that too in rural parts where there is no fan, no cooler. 
It's been almost a year and I still don't know whether these people got complete pucca houses with plastered roofs and walls.

And that's the dilemma I often face as a reporter, somewhere at the bottom of pyramid who files stories hoping that lives would change for better. But nothing changes and it's still business as usual for those in positions of power and authority.

Sometime in June 2019, following a spate of attacks on doctors at government hospitals by patients' family members, I got a chance to work on a short documentary on the condition of government-run hospitals and dispensaries in Delhi.
(can watch the full story here)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilAGXLveYoU&t=44s

While we were working on the series, a colleague walked up to me and said how we need to do this on a repeated basis to drive home the point -- that hospitals are overcrowded and government needs to invest more in improving the infrastructure of public healthcare. Of course, he gave the example of Ravish and how his show on trains getting late actually pressured the government to ensure that trains start running on time. As much as we revere Ravish, the fact is that not every journalist has the luxury of deciding the primetime agenda, in our case, there is this much only that we could have done.

As a student of journalism at a broadcast media institute, I remember one senior TV journalist coming for a guest lecture who told us quite bluntly: 'Don't think you can change the world'. It was 2012 and at 26 years I was too optimistic to believe what he preached.

The problem is that somewhere down the line I have now started feeling guilty. Am I doing enough professionally? This question often bothers me as I firmly believe in the principles of public interest journalism. I do have this fancy notion that my job is no less than an IAS officer who has to jump into fray, tackle one of the most intricate and complex situations and make sense of the news as and when it unfolds.

Like just two weeks ago, while covering the plight of women labourers in East Delhi's Gandhinagar locality, who were out of jobs after MCD's sealing drive, those women did ask me the usual question, 'Isse hume kuch fayda hoga? (Will this benefit us?)' 

(can watch the full story here)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDQivOitxYY
With a poker face, I told them that at least their issues would be highlighted ahead of elections. Once working for 5-6 hrs a day and making a measly Rs200-300 per day, they knew how tough it's is to be a working woman, especially one who opts for field job. They not only fed me but even asked if I wanted to use the washroom.

In hindsight, instead of falling prey to usual coverage of toxic electoral politics replete with religious slurs and remarks about a particular community, at least there was a sincere effort to bring the real issues to the fore.

As long as truth, objectivity and conviction is there...perhaps the impact can take a backseat, many more such ripples may create a strong wave one day. Inshallah!