Pitch Black- Journalism Day One

Journalism Day One

I joined Hindustan Times as an intern on Wednesday. In my 3 days old Journalistic career, I have met with- Disappointment, The registrar of Firms & Societies, Countless security guards, two reporters, and two editors. The first two are synonyms of each other; the third one is a variegated patch of people who think I am a moron from some foreign country; the two reporters are the only help I have had till now; and out of the two editors I have met one is the best mentor anyone could ask for, and the other one is as dull as a cow on the road.

In these three days, I have also been to three government offices ( to collect information), and have been stonewalled with excuses as lame as “we don’t have this info”, “our servers have crashed” and “our hard disks have crashed and have been in repairs for 3 days”. May I ask, Mr. Registrar, that how can a department work where the main server has crashed?

In a country where 1.2 Billion people trudge/live/thrive and are burgeoning like mould on a damp wall that has a meager area of 3 million square miles- human beings are treated with the same indifference as cockroaches. No wonder my politeness and my patience amuses everyone around me.

The very first thing I learned here as an intern is that in journalism ones days are colored- red for danger, pale for fear, black for frustration and shining white for satisfaction. In this small amount of time I have been through pale to black to pale to black. When I see red, I’d know that I have done something right and important; and I’d see white when I’d have made a difference.

Anyways, my first goal is to get well versed with figures, numbers, names, offices and most importantly- the Hindi translation of all the English department names.

At the beginning of each day I start with a strong sense of clueless-ness and intrigue; the former usually clears away after I have talked to Rahul, Shravani or N.K. Singh; but the latter remains.

I don’t know why this scene from the movie Pitch Black flashed in front of my eyes while writing this post- the scene where Vin Diesel sits on a part of a crashed plane, smothers his head with grease, shaves it with his knife, and then wipe the knife over the rim of a metal cup.

To anyone who hasn’t seen Pitch Black I’d advise them to immediately go and see it. To everyone else- stay intrigued!

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