Barkha Dutt

There is a great deal of aura associated with Barkha Dutt. Right from her days with Star News where she rose to fame along with Rajdeep Sardesai to her present status as the top news anchor on NDTV, people across this country have been fascinated by her. We even have roles sketched out in Bollywood based on her. We had Preity Zinta playing the gutsy reporter in Lakshya and more recently some new bollywood lass called Shriya Saran claiming that her character in Mission Istanbul is loosely based on Barkha.

While she has risen to the top as perhaps India's most recognisable face in the electronic media, through the way there have been many people who claim that all was not clean in her rise to the top. I remember, earlier this year, the day we won the test match in Perth, I was over at someone's place for Brunch and there I was talking to the business editor of Indian Express. He told me how early in her career, Barkha Dutt used to come for a press conference, accuse one of the fellow journalists of misbehaving with her, create a bit of a ruckus and pretty much intimidate everyone around her. The others then tried to keep distance from her and in the process she found it pretty easy to grab attention, ask her questions, make an impact and leave the venue.

There are many who claim some of her reporting from Kashmir was staged but I am not sure how much credence one can give to those comments. Whether she is arrogant or not, well that is a simple one, YES she is. Have noticed it a couple of times myself during the recording of "We the People" in the G.K. studio where she used to shout at whoever was listening to her at the other end in the production room during the ad breaks in a very derogatory manner. Even eavesdropped on a couple of journalists in the NDTV office expressing their disapproval about her style of work. She might be all nice and charming on T.V. with politicians but I guess that is how you have to act to be able to get that valuable line out of them. But I won't blame her for her arrogance, after all any poor soul who has the misfortune of calling Modern School Barakhamba Road as their alma mater is automatically 'elevated' to the arrogant category.

But whatever maybe her flaws or however crooked might have been her rise to the top she managed to bring to our living rooms the reality of war when she camped herself in the forward areas, a trait she obviously imbibed from her mother who did war reporting herself. Her reports that came out of Nagapattinam after the tsunami did give me goosebumps, that was the strength of those reports that she sent after tragedy struck on that fateful day in December a few years back.

The most poignant memory of Barkha Dutt's reporting will be that of Captain Vikram Batra answering Barkha's question on his motivation to fight for the country by saying "Yeh Dil Maange More". Unfortunately the brave soldier became a martyr soon after that interview.