You can take the girl out of the newsroom, but you can’t take the newsroom out of the girl. I think that applies to me, even though I said during this sabbatical I wanted to do stuff other than ‘news.’ One of the souvenirs I like to pick up when I travel is a local newspaper. You could say I am a journalist’s journalist so it’s difficult to ‘stop’ but almost everyday in Jaipur, I was reading the Times of India and taking photos of some of the more interesting headlines and stories.

Some of them were kind surprising, and others just plain hilarious. For instance, one day, on the front page, yes, PAGE 1, there was a story in big font, across five columns of a broadsheet headlined: “Sunny Leone II? U.S. porn star half-Indian.” It took up about a third of the page, with a picture of said half-Indian porn star. At least it was below the fold. In the same edition however, on page four, there was a story headlined: “Four held for selling minor girl for 70,000 Rps.” This story was two columns wide and at the most was a 200 word brief. I’m not sure if it’s a different news culture, but I found that hilarious and sad at the same time.

Another day, the whole front page was dedicated to inspiring people to vote in the upcoming federal election. There was no picture and no story in a traditional column format, just a letter from the editors, with the headline in very large font: “The power of one.” I picked it up immediately and read that the Times of India would be covering the election regularly in a series called “dance of democracy.” I kept it as one of my newspaper souvenirs. Inside, I learned that it takes nine days to run an election in this country of more than one billion people. Each region votes on separate days. I suppose that makes sense, since in Canada there are 30 million people (not all of whom are electors) and an election only takes a few hours to tabulate preliminary results, or at least to declare a winner. Multiply that by nine… that’s still only 270 million people. Crazy. I was happy the paper focused on women as well. There was a short story and pull out box regarding elected women. The headline was “India fails floor test on women in parliament.” It noted that India is 111^th in the world for the percentage of women in its elected legislative house. There are approximately only 90 women in both houses of parliament with more than 600 seats. India (and Canada!) lags behind Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal and Ecaudor, all of which crack the top 10. Canada ranks 54 and the U.S. is 83, according the Times of India.

Other interesting headlines:

– “Goons shoot, wound two for trying to stop stalking” (um, are they saying the people trying to stop the stalking are goons for shooting?)

– “76 MPs face serious charges” (This was a very small throw on the front page in small font to a story on page 7. I would love to see how a headline like that would play out in Canada.)

– An editorial with the headline “Repeal Repressive Law” (The law they were referring to was sedition charges against Kashmiri students for cheering on a Pakistani cricket team. The subhead was: “Charging Kashmiri students with sedition for cheering a cricket team shows scope for abuse.”

– “India 3^rd among most dangerous countries” (Front page news.)

– “Twenty injured as overloaded jeep skids” (I’m not sure what’s more crazy… the fact that there were 20 people who were injured, or the fact that the story mentions, “The overloaded vehicle had at least 35 to 45 passengers seated, some even on the roof while some were hanging from both sides” or that the reporter described it as a “mishap.”)

Ah… this is probably why I had to apply for a journalist visa… haha. Looking forward to reading the Nepali news.

–Bea