India, In A Minute

Here's a confession: you need to be at least a little bit crazy to be a good TV journalist. Or maybe I'm only justifying my own madness.

But as a first-generation child of the industry—my career coincided with the birth of private television—I can tell you one thing: if the written word is a symphony of thoughts, TV is the opera. Except that we capture the theatre of life as it unfolds, in real time, with neither rehearsal nor encore. To script this drama needs not just imagination, but an inordinate passion, curiosity and hunger that only the insane possess. It's easy to slot us as slightly stupid soundbite soldiers. But try it for a day, and you will marvel at the sheer energy invested in the pursuit of news.