At an age, where most children learn to ride their new bicycle or play massive games on computer, I was inclined to writing poetry and giving shapes to my thoughts and vision using powerful tools of imagery and writing. Writing helped me explore my inner knowledge and consciousness of the world around me. At a tender age of ten, I grabbed my pencil to jot down what influenced my thoughts and modelled my imagination. As I firmly remember in bits and pieces, the very first piece, in a distorted style, I wrote something on nature and birds. Growing up, I realized that I need to allocate a certain form and structure to my stories which could be read and cherished by all. Gradually, I began to read more on society and world affairs. Shortlisting the core areas affecting an average individual was an intrinsic task as there were hundreds to choose from. I began to prioritize concerns that indirectly shaped our lives and affected the masses. Picking out suitable topics that could somehow have a bearing on my potential and opportunities to explore and further correlating them to the larger audience, helped gain a meaningful insight to worldly affairs.
I developed my writing to structure itself into short prose and poetry on female foeticide, population growth, empowerment of women and gender roles, technological enhancement and environmental themes. Reading news and updates on weather, science, politics and economy help me opt for better and minute subjects that are spoken a lot about, but are rarely explored from a newer perspective. In my teenage days, I was always active in debates and highly vocal about concerns that affected our nation and its citizens. Firmly voicing the concerns, with supported facts and adequate details, surprisingly made everyone ponder. As I was hustling with my Academics and time to read books apart from my daily curriculum, the desire to get timely updates on events occurred before and new ones emerging, began to proliferate. Not to deny my love for news, I developed a sound habit of reading newspapers right from my childhood. I sometimes wondered as to how the process of news gathering would have evolved in the first place. It always amused me to know more about where the news came from? Who are these fellows whose bylines in black can be spotted on the front page and how did they begin their foray into the field.
Thus, I attached news to the living cells of my body, as something which cannot be separated as I read, thought, spoke, learnt and dreamt even of news!
Titles in bold, THE TIMES OF INDIA, always had been a dream since childhood, little did I know back then that I would actually be entering into one in the future, with a lot more to explore. Pursuing my Post Graduation Degree, I was fortunate enough to work in one of the world's leading organizations, with a wide array of senior reporters, with whom, I learnt enough to shape my own journey ahead in the field. Recalling the best one month in the year 2019 of my Internship program, I would rather term it as a 'topsy-turvy,' ride, as it made me hustle, run, sweat, gather, talk, and manage my time effectively. The although short, but 30 days of intense on-field reporting acquainted me enough with the basics of news reporting. The very art of getting to explore new concerns, fact-checking, researching, communicating, indeed involving all paradigms I learnt in the process has always been a fun and enriching experience.
Reporters acquire a skill of communicating and reflecting on an issue in a completely unbiased form, which a common individual can find tough to tackle. They know exactly the right format of questioning, approaching a subject with adequate facts, which are to the point and crisp, yet, they never fail to disappoint readers. At times, it appears, as if they know exactly what's going on in a reader's head and what would she/he like to read and dwell upon. The fact that news can be easily gathered inside a newsroom has now proved to be a myth. The field is a vast dimension in itself, and clearly, is an interplay of academic knowledge, theory and practice.
So, perhaps, it is arduous to describe my first journalistic experience, in but a few words. Maybe, one might wish to read the kind of inputs I framed for my readers to gain useful insights from and draft their own conclusions.
