My Half of the Sky by Raimedhi Indrani;

Author:Raimedhi, Indrani;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SAGE Publications India Pvt, Ltd.
Published: 2015-07-08T10:47:56+00:00

7

Mapping the Truth:

Teresa Rehman

Dusk falls gently and the lights bathe the interiors of the university campus quarters with a golden glow. Inside one such house, a young woman quietly goes about preparing supper. Her hair is swept back with a scrunch, and she stirs the bubbling gravy over the gas stove, absently wondering whether her husband would be late returning from work.

Little Tamara is sprawled on the carpet in front of the TV, whooping with glee at the antics of Scooby Doo, while baby Kyra is sleeping snugly in her cot. It is a cozy, domestic scene, with the comforting minutiae of everyday life. And yet, the young wife and mother knows what a fragile thing this peace is, and how, even as she winds down her household for the night, somewhere there are guns blazing, grenades tearing open human bodies, and homes built with love and toil going up in flames.

This young woman has had experiences that most can only imagine, reporting fearlessly from one of the most troubled hotspots of the world—Northeast India.

Life for Teresa Rehman often seems to be lifted straight from the pages of a thriller. She remembers traveling deep into Hebron in interior Nagaland, escorted by a man with an AK 47 to meet Th Muivah, chief of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, Issak Muivah. All along the way she pestered the man with questions, which he deftly sidestepped. Her one to one with Muivah was a resounding success. She was able to probe deeply into his ideology, his strategy, and his hopes for the future of Nagaland. He was amazed to find that this intense and fearless young woman knew all about his love for pork and his gradual conversion to vegetarianism.

If one day she is caught in the crossfire between the Indian Army and the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland—Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM) faction in Nagaland, the next day she is unearthing why so many tea-garden laborers are dying of tuberculosis. As she listens to a disconsolate Manipuri woman describe how her school-going son was kidnapped by militants to work as a child soldier, an armed officer bursts into the hut, demanding to see her ID. Faced with a barrage of questions, a much-feared insurgent leader mutters to his aide, “This reporter is very cunning.”

This backhanded compliment aside, Teresa Rehman’s work as a journalist has been widely acknowledged. She was honored with the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award 2008–2009 for the category, “Reporting on the JK and the Northeast (print),” the Sanskriti Award 2009 for Excellence in Journalism, and the Seventh Sarojini Naidu Prize for Best Reporting on Panchayati Raj by the Hunger Project. Also awarded the Wash, Kunjabala Devi, and Laadli awards, she has widely traveled and has worked with leading media houses of India like India Today, the Telegraph, and Tehelka.

On a lazy summer afternoon, surrounded by books, cushions, magazines, her laptop, and packets of takeaway Chinese, Teresa leads me to where it all began. “My early years were spent in the lap of pristine nature in a quaint place—Sumer in Meghalaya.

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