As you may or may not know, I aim to be a journalist. In the future, I see my face as a grainy colour picture, smiling and looking into the West-direction on an op-ed piece. I want to be the person people like to read. I'd also like to really be on TV, talking to people with a creased brow, trying to inform viewers just how dire and important the information I'm relaying is. Keeping in mind these future endeavours, I took Journalism as a major (one of two; my other is International Studies) for my degree. As such, I've jotted down a number of articles and stints in various kinds of media. Below are links, articles and other miscellaneous undertakings of mine* (in chronological order). Do let me know what you think.
Each year my alma mater (Monash University) undertakes an Arts-school study trip to a country in the South-East Asian region. All of us are assigned stories and duties throughout the trip. In year 2009, we went to Yogyakarta, Indonesia for a 9-day trip. I was in charge of the Facebook chapter of the blog. Link above is the website, while links below are my individual articles.
The following year, 2010, we went to Chiang Mai, Thailand. I was Head Photographer and wrote 2 articles again.
A blog made as part of a major assessment task of ours, we were assigned a group with a specific focus, and asked to write articles around that topic. My team focused on the happenings in and around Monash, and looked at various aspects. The year was 2009, and the subject Online Journalism. I wrote one article, which is as follows.
For a unit that I undertook that was rather daunting, we were asked to create a live blog with all of our stories in it. This unit was Sports Journalism (2010) and I didn't quite like it, as I ended up (in my opinion) not knowing how to report the nitty-gritty of sport. Tellingly, I wrote human interest pieces. There are about 4 pieces written by me within.
5. Interview in MUISS' Mad Monkeys (2010)
For the international students of Monash, there was once upon a time a magazine. It was called Mad Monkey, simply because people who were in the international students committee were as mad as monkeys (I was one of them). I got interviewed not because of nepotism, but because I was um, er, a known face around campus. Here is a scanned image of ze article.
An online, UAE-based ezine that is published periodically, I got initiated thanks to a friend. I've written a couple of articles for them till date.
Issue 3- A Pen Crying On How It Feels Abandoned Thanks To Virtuality
Issue 4- A Piece on Being A Retard on A Social Media Platform
Issue 5- A Piece on the Fallacy of Fame (link unavailable)
7. CNBCTV18, Mumbai (D2010-F2011)
I am lucky enough to have the pleasure of calling myself a CNBC intern, having worked there for 2 months. I worked on a show called Tech Toyz. TT is basically a weekly consumer show about the latest high-end technology in the market, and revolves around a theme each week. Among other things, it was my job to sit in meetings sipping hot lemon tea from the dispenser, 'un-rigid' my body parts from frost bites thanks to the the Arctic setting the central AC was on and to go on hour-long lunch breaks. Besides this, I would also co-ordinate with PR companies to handle logistics of all the tech products, brainstorm ideas for coming weeks and shoots and provide content/ideas for upcoming episodes, research and script stories (I did 7 in total), shoot products and stories, as well as sit in on edits. It was also my job to run around from one end of Bombay to another to source locations and good angles to shoot the anchors in. I also contributed to quite a few captions (VTs) in the show. The show airs on CNBC 4 times a week and 2 times on CNN-IBN. It was an excellent opportunity and thanks to some exemplary teachers in the form of bosses, I learnt an awful lot.
The One With My Hand On National TV
The First Script I Ever Write
The One Where I Write All The Captions And Do A Story Too (I Think)
The One With My Face On National TV
8. In Search of Saigon (2011)
During my last year on board the 'In Search of' series, I was in my Honours year, having completed my degree. As is custom, the role and title of Editor-in-Chief is usually taken on by a Honours year student, and in 2011, I was given the honour. It was rather tedious setting up schedules for everyone from writers to editors while making sure no one was overworked nor underworked. My duties and responsibilities, from start to finish included co-ordinating all other teams (Photography, Video and Editorial) to ensure a smooth visible flow on the blog; making sure the blog's appearance was up to scratch, functioning and appealing to the visiting eye; assigning stories (hard and soft) making maximum use of the respective writers' strengths; compiling and editing all traveller profiles; ensuring that every blog entry was grammatically and politically correct, including making sure regional words were spelt correctly and all Vietnamese names and words were correctly written; ensuring all stories had a flow, made sense and captions matched pictures and pictures matched stories. Basically it was a 9 day no sleep trip for me. But it was all worth it in the end because I got voted 'Most Hardworking' during our internal traveller contest! I also wrote 3 stories while on the trip; one a session story detailing a session we had with an NGO focusing on differently-abled peoples' rights, another a personal experiment of technology detox and last an editorial Editor-in-Chief's address. Upon returning home, I was asked to write a summary to be put up on the school website.
Session Story for Saigon NGO, DRD
Technology Detox Experiment Story
Editor-In-Chief's Address
Summary of Trip for School Website
9. Alternative Cricket (2011-present)
Being Indian, cricket runs in my veins. Okay, I lie. It runs on my tv. My father avidly watches the game, therefore interest and having no choice in a communist household meant I grew up watching 11 men chase after a barely visible ball. But of course it grew on me. And then came this fantastic find on Twitter, @altcricket, which I even tried to push for a cricket-themed show during my time at CNBC. A brilliantly curated handle with sharp-as-Dhoni's strokes commentary and witty observations and insights. So imagine my surprise when I ended up in conversation with its curator, creator and editor, who then even more surprisingly approached me to write for his site. To date, I've written a few articles, that are mainly fluff pieces, for the site and have had a really fun time working with them!
5 Types of Cricket Spectators
4 Types of Cricket Commentators
6 Things to Do Now That The IPL Is Over
I love music, just like anybody else. Sometimes I spend hours travelling through YouTube listening to songs that might escape pop culture's attention. I'm a huge fan of soundtrack music, I find that there is something very ethereal and larger than life to it. Of course, most of the time I imagine myself being a part of some greater plan, wherein the soundtrack has been constructed for me. It was in similar circumstances while posting songs on my personal Twitter account that I found someone who shared similar eclectic tastes for the kind of music I liked- Kismet. A photographer who specialises in weddings and takes amazing memories, I was a fan of her visualisation and talent. One thing lead to another and now I contribute on a weekly basis to her blog. I make song suggestions every week, so that's about it. But I enjoy it a hella lot!
Here are the songs that I've contributed till date.
This is probably the biggest coup of my life and something that brought me immense pride. I couldn't believe this was reality when it did actually happen, and I haven't ever been more grateful for my life than on the day I saw my book stocked at Kinokuniya. I started bawling right there in the New Arrivals section. O well. I was approached to contribute a chapter to an upcoming book on Malaysian diaspora, provided that whatever I was writing had a link to Malaysia. At the time, I was studying for my Honours year and developing my thesis on TCKs. Seeing as I had done mounds of research on the topic and knew a fair bit about what being a TCK involved, I wrote a chapter on TCKs who've grown up in Malaysia with my friend. It came out rather well and you can buy the book at every Malaysian bookstore, as well as online.
About my chapter
*- Aside from these, I've done run-of-the-mill stints as a writer for my university's magazine, called MonGa (2009-2011). As digital copies are not available however, I cannot reproduce them online.
i still love you...
ReplyDeleteDINESH. imma kill you.
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