We knew it was coming. It was 28 November 2021, and I was meeting my friend Ravish for the first time in nearly 20 months.
Because of Covid I had been working from home since March 2020; a home that was 660km away from Delhi.
It was a smoggy winter, as is usually the case in Delhi, but that day was a bright sunny one. We walked along Lodhi Road, and at one point in our conversation Ravish turned to me and said with a grim smile: “Don’t worry. When NDTV shuts down, we will set up a YouTube channel.”
Such comments were not new for him, but this was the first time Ravish had spoken of what would happen after our jobs had gone.
I would always brush away such fearful forecasts, and I disregarded this one until August 2022, when NDTV was taken over by billionaire Gautam Adani.
In November of that year – almost exactly a year after that winter afternoon on Lodhi Road, as the takeover neared completion – Ravish quit. The YouTube channel that we run today – Ravish Kumar Official – became operational with the release of his resignation episode.
The response at the time was overwhelming.
In the first month, more than 2.75 million people subscribed to the channel. Ravish and I never formally sat down to discuss working together. I was far more clueless than I had ever been but also sure of the fact that, for a variety of reasons, I was part of something momentous. And I knew I wanted to be here.
My first experience of the editorial independence we had bought for ourselves came two months after we started.
In January 2023, US financial forensic investigators Hindenburg Research issued a critical report on Adani’s companies, which led to a collapse in stock prices.
Throughout the next few days, we regularly reported on the story on our channel, and realised that we were on different turf now. We did not have the resources of a TV station. We had no network of journalists to rely on. We could not afford lights and live transmission systems. We struggled with visuals as everything was copyrighted. We were a small team of four yet, somehow, we managed.
It has been 20 months since Ravish’s resignation. In that time, I have found greater confidence in myself as a journalist. My political sense has evolved and my writing has improved. I can produce and edit very quickly and can create compelling reports on the most meagre of resources.
I have started my own series called Vox Vrinda, but it has not been an easy ride. After five years of working under the regime in India, I now know that censorship works in insidious ways.
It is not just about the jailing of a journalist. It is also about making their life and livelihood so precarious that they question their choices every waking moment.
Every other day, Ravish and I talk about what will happen when this channel is taken down. As a young female journalist, I do not know what my future looks like in this profession. The powers that govern my life and want to control my voice have received electoral shocks, but they are as vicious as ever.
It is true that my experience as a journalist is informed by the very stifling political environment that I am in – but it has also been about finding my way and my voice by knocking my knees and elbows against all that comes my way.
I know the path ahead is not an easy walk, but I have good shoes on.
