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Worlds Apart
By Anuradha Kher
Before I came to New York in the spring of 2006, I worked as a reporter for The Times of India in Pune, a city in the western part of
India. It was easy to get stories published in Pune, partly because the journalism standards there are not as high as in the United States and partly because I knew exactly what my editor wanted to publish. It was also easy to get people to talk to me because I was affiliated to a publication. Coming from that comfort zone, I started my first semester at New York University’s journalism school with somewhat lofty expectations. I thought I would get a story published right away, but the reality is that my first published story did not come until the second semester. I thought I was a good writer; but in a class full of talented scribes I felt average. With these jolting revelations, it became quite clear that I would have to work harder and write better than I ever imagined possible in Pune. Still, as the months went by, getting anything published in an American newspaper started looking more and more like an impossible dream.
Meanwhile, there were still some things I needed to figure out. Like why my sources were asking me to repeat my questions so often. If what I was saying wasn’t clear, I had to find an alternative. Back home, the alternative was to switch from English to Hindi—the national language—or Marathi—a regional language. The alternative here was to swiftly switch from my Indian accent to an acquired ‘sort-of-but-not-really-American’ accent. The fake accent had benefits. It gave me the confidence that my sources understood my questions clearly. My fear was that if I didn’t roll my R’s and soften my T’s, my sources would end up confused. I certainly didn’t want to sound like a call center operator in New Delhi. So no matter how reluctant I was to fake an accent, I needed to do it. No more, no less.
Wiser and more adaptable, I entered the second semester at NYU, speaking English, sort of the American way, but still with limited knowledge of the country’s current affairs. In India, it was easy to feel connected to news. Here, I felt detached from America’s ups and downs, which all seemed trivial compared to India’s problems. Then something changed. I took the editing class, in which we were graded on a current affairs quiz every Friday and soon I started needing my daily fix of all the news I could get. The fear of the quiz is long gone, but my growing affinity for Americans keeps me interested. I learned that as a journalism student—and a foreign one at that—I had to read articles and follow events even if I wasn’t interested in them. Because, if I didn’t, I would never be interested. And that of course would be my loss.
With that lesson, the second semester approached its end, and one of my first semester stories finally ran in a couple of newspapers. Even though my joy over this was overcome by just plain relief, at least I learned that getting something published was not an impossible dream.
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