Ranbir Kapoor is to journalists what Dhinchak Pooja is to bathroom singers. Bird-eye viewers think all journalists do is grow a fancy beard (for males), travel to exotic places, sleep with out-of-bounds men and women and lead a life that one only dreams about.
Dear onlookers, it does NOT operate that way.
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Life of every twenty-something journalist consists of two parts, viz, pursuit and struggle. He/she is either running or preparing to run. The pursuit against time to reach office, to file the story before the rest do, to garner as many exclusives as possible.
When the pursuit is somehow lulled, the struggle begins. Struggle to look presentable as you got to meet people, struggle to eat good food everyday but you hardly earn enough to afford that, struggle not to party three times a week but Press Club has Old Monk at Rs 30 per peg and the constant struggle of making your friends understand that television is not the only medium of journalism in reply to “Bhai tu TV pe kab ayega?”
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“You are getting into a profession that is regarded as the fourth pillar of democracy,” said my professor at one of the leading J-schools in India.
Indian middle class parents, or even otherwise, still find Journalism not to be one of those careers that they would like their dearly-brought up children to embark upon. Since the times of Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge to partly Udaan our parents do not understand concepts such as interest, aptitude, willingness and sometimes plain simple wish. All they want to see is currency in our bank accounts and smiles on our faces, which is absolutely what any parent would want to witness.
However, conflicting interests is a reality.
Life for aspiring journalists becomes all more the difficult when reports such as these come out:
Reporters Without Borders, a global advocacy group, called India “Asia’s deadliest country for media personnel, ahead of both Pakistan and Afghanistan.” (Source: https://scroll.in/article/806322/india-is-the-deadliest-country-for-journalists-in-asia)
The argument about choosing a career suddenly transforms into, “how will we survive if you are burnt alive?”
True, how will they? What must have fallen upon those families that lost their son?
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*clears the mist* “Doesn’t matter, I still want to be a reporter.
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After having lost all hopes of convincing me into giving up the idea of becoming a journalist, I remember my father bringing his office-mate home one evening to lecture me on productive career choices. After gobbling half a ton snacks, three gallons of tea and talking about every national news possible he tells me, “Journalism is worthless (irony smirks). You’ll have to roam about with a microphone the entire day and run behind people. Is it worth it? Get a job where you sit in an air-conditioned cabin the entire day, hardly work and get paid handsomely at the end of the month.”
Just as I was about to pose a fake smile and leave he caught me by the arm and continued, “journalists ain’t paid enough (true), there are no fixed working hours for them (true) and there is no job security (true). Think of better options.”
He was right.
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He did not have to be wrong for me to disagree. While weighing options there are always two scales, one, facts and the other will.
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Enthused by passion and propelled by will on the first day of work I dress up in the best way possible and wait for people to ask me my profession so that I can point my nose to the sky, put on my gravest tone and say, “I am a journalist.”
Sadly, I was brought back to reality when nothing happened. Nobody bothered.
However, the high was of a different level when after having toiled for two months in humanly difficult (to put it subtly) hours I had my first byline!
Believe you me, the emotions of a mother giving birth to a child, helping a poor blind man cross the road and then getting him something to eat, getting an Oscar for your speech after the Nobel Prize you won, being adjudged the most handsome man to have visited the moon are some of the feelings that come close to the eccentricity of getting your first by-line.
You are on Google. People don’t need to look for you on Facebook anymore. Swag level: Ultimate!
Slowly, however, the child grows up and turns out to be a rebel, the old man you helped doesn’t like your food anymore, the Nobel and Oscar rust and people reach Pluto so the Moon is no more in. In short, bylines become a regular. Nevertheless they are still sacrosanct.
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However, having cribbed for almost 800 words now, I still want to be a journalist.
Imagine a world where there is no communication of information. One morning you suddenly have a new President and how do you know about it? He himself comes and tells you.
While curiosity stems journalism, every reporter and deskie is a story-teller in him/her-self. And ladies and genetlemen, right from historians and archaeologists to writers, it is story-tellers who’ve kept civilizations from dying even after ages of their extinction.
Bhitrampur Express 