Chillibreeze Interview with Natasha Badhwar

Natasha Badhwar Natasha is a columnist with Mint Lounge where she writes about the modern Indian family with a rare honesty and humour. She is also a teacher, trainer and mother of three children.

1. Tell us about your career path into mainstream media and then into private consultancy practice. What/who was your inspiration?

After completing my M.A. in Mass Communication I was determined to choose the path of maximum resistance. I thought to myself, what is the toughest thing I can choose to do?

I went for my first job interview at NDTV where a friend had submitted my CV along with hers. It was 1995, the year that private news programming started in India with NDTV’s The News Tonight. Radhika and Prannoy Roy asked me what I wanted to do. ‘Camerawork,’ I said. At that time, I was a delicate looking 40 kg young woman wearing an oversized shirt to appear bigger than I was during the interview. Mrs. Roy asked me, ‘But do you think you can do camera? The equipment is heavy.’ ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

They hired me anyway, with immediate effect and at the best salary in the industry at that time. My career was defined by the fact that NDTV was an extremely flexible and vibrant workplace that enabled everyone with talent and ambition to achieve their full potential. I quickly found myself shooting the best shows, editing my work through the night, producing news, features and documentary and becoming an in-house trainer. We had the best colleagues.

Radhika and Prannoy Roy were great mentors, bringing humour, grace and a sharp intelligence into their everyday working style. I couldn’t get enough of wanting to be like them as well as be fiercely individualistic in my own career path as a media person.

Natasha Badhwar – India’s first female TV News Cameraperson

2. Most people do volunteer work after they have had their achievements career-wise. But you started your career by doing volunteer work. Any particular reason?

I was raring to start working. To immerse myself in the world outside home. As soon as I left school, there was no reason to limit myself. So much to explore, feel and rediscover. Both in the real as well as my own inner world. I worked in orphanages, counselling centres and with political activists in tribal areas.

3. Who are the people in your field that have inspired you the most? (And why?) Someone you looked up to when you were a newbie.

Like I said, Radhika and Prannoy Roy have been great role models. I worked with the best camerapersons at NDTV. Ajmal Jami, Shantish Nayel and Habib Faisal were my seniors from college as well as extremely talented professionals who invested the best parts of their personality into their work.

4. You were India’s first female news TV cameraperson! Do you think being a woman added to your problems or did it not matter either way? What were the biggest challenges you faced in your climb up the career ladder?

Being a woman has been my best advantage in life. Once I took the plunge and landed my role as India’s first female news cameraperson, there was no looking back. Going out with our camera and equipment transformed us as people. We realised how powerful we could be and grew up quickly.

When I look back I realise that I never looked at myself as others saw me. There was nothing incongruous in my mind about a woman and a video camera. Most of my colleagues in the early years were also young, driven women like me. Barkha Dutt, Radhika Bordia, Shibani Sharma, Sutapa Deb, Maya Mirchandani and many others behind the camera were my partners in the field. Rajdeep Sardesai, Srineevasan Jain, Vikram Chandra, Arnab Goswami… all of us teamed together in the early years, learning the ropes and charting our own distinct paths. We would pick up our equipment and head out everyday. We had interviews to hunt for, destinations to reach and video stories to file. We did our jobs and slept exhausted.

Natasha Badhwar at work with her camera

5. What is video art? Does it require any specialisation (degree/course)?

Video Art is a term used to describe art that uses both the apparatus and processes of television and video. It can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast, viewed in galleries or as sculptural installations or freely distributed on the internet.

While many Art Schools have short courses in Video Art, anyone with an artistic sense and a video camera, even a mobile phone camera can create video art. The Motiroti 360 degrees project that I participated in is an example of video art.

6. You have been in charge of all in-house training at NDTV. Any tips for our people wanting to make it big in the media industry/journalism?

We know the crisis in journalism today. Besides the desperation to become profitable, there is a crisis of inspiration. What is news? How it is different and distinct from entertainment, advertisement and personality shows is a question that begs to be answered clearly. While large broadcasters and the mainstream press create their own everyday compromises, there is a revival of smaller media outlets that have built their own credibility, both online and offline.

As a trainer, I work with journalists, videographers and television producers. I find this a very exciting space because we work towards reviving and empowering the individual within the structure. Systems are not static, they are always evolving and individual professionals have a far greater power to influence outcomes than we like to concede. I love to unleash new rebels armed with skills and vision into old systems gasping for fresh air.

7. You left the news arena while you were clearly on your way to the top…to start your private consultancy practice. Was this a difficult decision to make? Did you ever have times when you regretted leaving the stability of a job and going out on your own?

I quit my full-time job to become an independent filmmaker and trainer in 2008. I took this decision at exactly the point that I needed to, for the sake of exploring and expressing my other selves. 24X7 news has brought with itself a great churn in the industry and it will be years before the dust settles. I got out of creating and selling television news at a time when it had become very difficult to be true to one’s work as well as oneself on the same day.

Quitting was heart-breaking and quite devastating for a while. Yet it was the only way forward for me. Conflict is inevitable, but we must insist on choosing battles that may help us actualize our best selves.

8. What do you like to do in your free time? Anything that we would be surprised to hear?

Natasha Badhwar with her baby

I write. I don’t write enough. I look at my garden and think of what all I will do when I begin to do it. I watch my children and let their sounds remind me of what I used to know, where all I was meant to go and how I can reach there. Being still is a great way of getting places. I revive love like it was an ancient well, which can be the source of life again.

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