HYDERABAD: At 3 am, her phone buzzed just to inform her to pack her bags to leave for New Delhi in the next three hours. Flummoxed, she prepared herself to take the flight that led her way to be a part of reporting the 2016 surgical strike. Keeping her safety in mind, her higher-ups suggested that she should go to Punjab and her male colleague to Kashmir. But this doughty journalist put her foot down and voiced that she would like to report from Kashmir.
Her bosses doffed their cap to her valour. Rehana, a broadcast journalist of Ntv, a regional television channel, witnessed the insecurity among people and restlessness in the state. Thanks to her eye for detail and heart to plunge into the ocean of information, her viewers were given an objective glimpse of the situation in Kashmir. Although she returned home, she left a part of her heart at the border itself which compelled her to pen down and debut as an author with her book, Sarihaddullo, which translates to ‘At the borders’.
The journalist coupled as an author felt that people down south, who do not know what it is to live in the borders should be educated about the same. “Life at the frontiers is unimaginable and as unprecedented as it can get. I stayed in Kashmir of 15 days reporting surgical strike. I was a witness to the trauma and the ordeal people go through. I thought we should do a series of shows on the precarious conditions of the partition point. I wanted to capture their lives day-in and day-out. My CEO heard my request and approved the idea.
I spent days at the Indo-Pak border and also Indo-Bangaldesh border. Fortunately, with the permission of a few authorities, I could shoot the border during the night time. In fact, I had even been to a malaria prone border in Tripura. I was a witness of how the men-at-arms, shielding the country manage their lives. Let alone the soldiers, I even chronicled the lives of civilians in those areas, “she reminisces.
Rehana covered all the five border states and kept her social media and blog followers updated with the tales of her mission. The idea of transcribing her videos into a book struck her thoughts and thus Sarihaddullo happened. “People appreciated my blogs and posts, which motivated me to come up with a book. I worked on this book for a year. I used to write on my off days and post working hours. Whenever I had some free time in hand, I used to work on my book,” she shares.
Sarihaddullo released last week, captures the essence of lives in borders. This 110-page book is published by Devalapalli Publishers.
— Purnima Sriram
purnima@newindianexpress.com
@iyer_purnima