Space at the table?
I’m back for my annual post on Medium, and this time it’s prompted by thoughts that are simply too many to be condensed into a 60 second reel. I did not want to fixate on whether the hook would be engaging enough, or whether the music fits what I’m trying to say. It would have felt like a corruption of what I’m attempting to do here — let my guard down in public and being vulnerable for once.
Somewhere in my late 20s to early 30s, a realization of the finiteness of time, combined with a personality trait that loves comfort in places, people and patterns, led to me starting to feel at odds with the notion that I was a journalist. My work up until that point of time with Catchnews.com, The Ring Side View and Sports18 had highlighted social ills, inequality, gender disparity, but had never really taken on power. I had never followed a story resulting in an expose, or done anything professionally which required me to be brave.
Journalism in India didn’t pay as much as I’d have to earn to sustain the lifestyle I was born into. And the journalists who’ve made it big here have done so by being at the right place at the right time, i.e., at media houses that were well funded, that rewarded passion and graft, that were coming into their own before the smartphone boom.
On the other hand, when I got my first job as a sports journalist in 2015 with CatchNews, ad revenues for news websites were low because there were so many of them, your work was gauged by how many views your articles were getting (and hence SEO managers started assuming more importance than editors — you can imagine what that did to journalistic integrity), and news websites and channels weren’t the only place where people were getting information from anymore.
You’re telling me I would have to compete with thousands of new YouTube and Twitter accounts to pine for peoples’ attention? Me, someone who had been told he spoke and wrote and presented himself really well since he was a child, would have to wait years more to be recognised in a profession which once prioritised those very qualities in a professional, but didn’t anymore? Because the message which was being delivered became more important than the manner in which it was being delivered? What do you mean I didn’t have a divine right to do well here?
I spent six years trying to be called a ‘journalist’, but I was out.
It was time to scratch another itch — Sports Broadcasting. It had been a long standing dream since I started seeing the likes of Alan Wilkins and Harsha Bhogle on TV. A sanitized environment, where the only thing that mattered was how well you weaved a story with a words, and it was a mandate to not piss anyone off by daring to express a *shudder* personal opinion? Sign. Me. Up.
I got offered a position as a football commentator with the I-League in late 2019, and I took it up immediately, quitting my job at News18.com to jump at the opportunity. I did a few games at the stunning TRC Ground in Srinagar before Covid hit. The league stopped. The job was gone. It was time to reflect and recalibrate.
And that’s when Nausheen and I started spending a lot of time again. What a transformative year that became in my life.
My high school bestie. We lost touch through college. She went off on her own quests, I went off on mine. A few years later, I think we both needed a reminder of what unconditional friendship feels like. We were always bound to come back to each other’s sanguine company again, it was just a matter of time.
I’d go over to her apartment in Gurgaon. We would talk for hours about the state of affairs in the world, her family, my family, friends, what makes us angry, what makes us happy, what makes us sad. I would tell her about my broadcasting dreams, and she would help me with editing videos which would eventually become an important part of my portfolio.
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The year wasn’t transformative for this reason alone though. Nausheen Khan became a mirror for me. For the bravery I wish I had. Which I thought I had studying humanities and literature in Delhi University, when I thought I would take on the world equipped with all this beautiful knowledge. For what it meant to live your ideals. For what it meant to stand up to power. If a single, Muslim woman could document the atrocities during the CAA-NRC protests with just one camera and a lot of gumption, the least that I could do was follow in her footsteps and provide moral cover fire in whatever way I could.
And I did. I visited Shaheen Bagh once. I believed in the cause. But my inherent conflict remained. How much was I willing to speak out? How much was I willing to risk? Because at some point, the protests as we know it ended. Covid gradually came to a halt in a couple of years. I ended up getting a dream job in football with the Indian Super League. Expressing strong personal opinions usually doesn’t sit well with big corporates, specially if you have a camera facing role. Was it possible to fight the good fight while chasing a long-standing personal dream of being a football broadcaster?
Can you sense the trepidation? I still don’t have the answers to these questions.
Nausheen continued her stellar journey as an independent film-maker and gained much repute for her honest and vulnerable storytelling. I continued my journey with the ISL. The four years I worked with the internal team of the league have been my most fulfilling as a working professional till date. I was being pushed to churn out my best work in a demanding environment, under tight deadlines, but I rose to the challenge. In digital media, the feedback and validation you get is also almost immediate. Views, comments and shares were always through the roof. But amid this, with each successful sidestep of issues I otherwise felt deeply about but chose to not talk about publicly, I lost the muscle to talk about them further. Self preservation, comfort, and maintaining status quo became second nature.
I would always think about Nausheen in those moments. I don’t know if she noticed each time I was conspicuous by my absence. I don’t know if my reflection in the mirror was looking back at me, disappointed. I knew that she’s someone who gives people the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes, life weighed heavy. Sometimes, I had to tend to my inner monologue before having anything of value to contribute towards societal and public discourse. Sometimes, I had to fill my own cup. I hope she knew.
Sometimes, I would speak about things on my Instagram stories, but those amounted to saying a lot without saying anything at all really. A slow acceptance of how things work in the world began to set in. I would internally philosophize about how these are social patterns that repeat themselves every few decades, about how we are all just part of a larger human script that is bound to follow its cycle, regardless of how much we try to alter or change its course by believing in and fighting for rights and ideals that would benefit millions of more people rather than a select few.
But something happened recently that has beseeched me to give a shit once again. More importantly, express to the world that I give a shit once again. To fight the instinct of playing it ‘safe’. To be able to see a true version of myself in the mirror once again.
At the time of writing this, all the acceptance of status quo, all this philosophy, all of this self-preservation, all of it has been challenged by a spur of the moment, devil-may-care movement by the Cockroach Janta Party, that swelled into representing the dissatisfaction of the Indian youth today. The associated ‘cost’ of speaking out has been laughed at by those opposing the dispensation.
One voice can be stifled. Ten, a little harder to do. But what about hundreds of voices, thousands and lakhs of voices? They embolden and encourage each other. In the recent past, I had not seen such high-profile public figures with so much more to lose than I, come out and speak in unison about the unreasonable, unilateral, dictatorial and contemptuous nature with which mass protests were being dealt with by the government.
And even if there is a cost to speaking out, it does not seem to be the death knell to any future creative pursuit that it has proven to be in the past. That happens when artists and institutions that make them are singing from the same hymn sheet. As far as the CJP protests are concerned, they were all part of the same orchestra which eventually led to the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan. It is only the first, and hopefully not the last demonstration of what is possible when lakhs involved in a movement are pulling in the same direction.
And what effect did this have on me? The same finite-ness of time I mentioned earlier, which prompted me to play it safe, not step out of my comfort zone and adopt a timid approach, is now staring at me in the face and asking me if I want to go through this existence being a diluted version of myself. The answer is a resounding no. It might have taken someone else to lead the way and inspire confidence in me again, but it won’t take someone else to be a spokesperson for my own thoughts. I don’t want to fire off people’s shoulders anymore. I want to bring my own wares to the battlefield of fiercely independent thought.
So that when I see my mirror again, we like what we see in it. So that there is still space for me at this table.
