When some of my friends told me that they were organizing a lecture at a college in Kerala and Arfa Khanum Sherwani from The Wire had agreed to come, I was keen to make it but was not sure.
Though she has been a veteran TV reporter, I stumbled upon her videos only after she joined The Wire. I hardly followed Hindi TV channels pre-2014 and began exploring them after the doyens of English TV channels started singing Raag Darbari in praise of the new regime. It was then I discovered Ravish Kumar, Sakshi Joshi, and Punya Prasoon Bajpai, and tried to make amends by watching their old videos.
The way Arfa presented pressing issues in ‘Hum Bhi Bharat’ got me hooked on. Her shows were a mix of panel discussions and ground reports. They were a refreshing break from shouting matches that most mainstream TV channels had adapted to survive in the TRP-driven rat race.
The way she used to say the opening lines of her show ‘kahani us bharat ki jo karodon ke dilon me basta hai’ with the old Parliament house in the background, to me it appeared as an ode to the vanishing pluralistic India.
Soon I became a regular and began seeing her shows as and when I got notifications on my Facebook feed. Later she began figuring on top of my YouTube list of videos.
Arfa soon grew in stature and began getting invites from prestigious universities abroad and also picked up a few awards at home. The speeches she gave during those occasions drew large-scale views on YouTube.
Unlike most Hindi journalists, Arfa is conversant in English. So for BBC and Al Jazeera she became one of the go-to persons for discussions on India-specific issues.
After a few postponements the date of her lecture was finally fixed on January 18 and luckily I managed to be in Kerala.
She arrived late at night at Kozhikode on January 17 by flight from Delhi and my friends ushered her into a hotel. Meanwhile, the organisers were deliberating about who will accompany her to the college, located nearly 30 km from the hotel.
For me to be able to converse with a person whom I regularly see on online videos looked like something too good (and somewhat giddy) to be true. But I kept a low profile thinking that many would have already put their hats in the ring. However, I was surprised to know that there were not many takers.
I then decided to stick my neck out. And they readily agreed that myself and another guy would be accompanying her in the car to the college.
At the appointed time we reached the Taj hotel where she was staying. We gave her a call and waited in the lobby.
The wait was getting longer and the other organisers were making calls to enquire whether we had started. The route to the college had some stretches of slow-moving traffic due to the construction of an expressway.
After a while, Arfa Khanum Sherwani turned up in the lobby wearing a black sari. She had that immaculate appearance that we see during her shows – saree neatly worn, proper make-up, and not a single strand of hair here or there. But she appeared a bit shorter than I had assumed and I noticed she was wearing tallish heels.
When I approached and smiled at her, she realized I was the guy who had come to pick her up. “Hi I am Arfa,” she said. After I and my friend introduced ourselves, we got into the waiting Toyota Innova and left.
She apologized for the delay as she had a video call to attend that got stretched more than expected. It was regarding some conference she had been invited for in the US in the coming month.
The driver took the beach route as there was less traffic. She recalled the state election coverage she had done a few years ago and her visit to Calicut Beach then.
Early on, Arfa opened her laptop and began typing. I had to strike a balance between engaging her in a conversation and not interrupting her work.
I told her that I knew Hindi and watched her programmes regularly, and she gave a polite ‘thank you’ though she didn’t sound very convinced.
I then asked about how during her recent Rajasthan assembly election coverage, she managed to get a saffron hardliner to agree to be interviewed by her. This broke the ice, and she realized that my claim of watching her programmes was not hollow.
She explained how one of the staff members of the BJP leader gave her details about his whereabouts and she managed to track him down. He was an Adivasi and somewhat disgruntled with his leader.
When his followers realized he might find it difficult to answer her questions, they began shouting Jai Shri Ram slogans and disrupted the interview.
I then observed with concern how during her interview with college girls in Jaipur, one of them told her that ‘she did not want the country to be run by a bar dancer (referring to Sonia Gandhi)’. Arfa too said it was quite sad. The girl appeared to be a bright student, claiming to be an atheist and feminist, holding such views.
Meanwhile, our Innova was passing through the verdant countryside and Arfa was looking out with wonderment. We crossed a few bridges from where the sea looked visible.
Her attention was drawn to a huge water body and I explained to her that it was a temple pond, which older Kerala temples have.
I then remembered her visit to Dadri village a few years after the first lynching over beef happened during the Modi regime and the hostile reaction she encountered from the villagers.
She pointed out that she was going to speak about that in her speech. “It was four years after the incident and I had thought the situation must have cooled down and people may have let bygones be bygones. But I was wrong,” she said.
The discussion then drifted towards the forthcoming elections. She said that North is completely under BJP’s grip and many people see Narendra Modi as a Vishnu avatar.
We entered the stretch where the expressway was being built. There are long stretches of cavernous pits with traffic being diverted to two narrow stretches on both sides.
Traffic moved at a slow pace with restless drivers resorting to high-decibel honkings, and the whole area had turned into a dust bowl. I was wishing this stretch got covered without any major traffic hold-ups.
Once we got out of that stretch, it was a fairly smooth drive. We soon covered the rest of the distance at a good pace and arrived at the college some 20 minutes behind schedule.
I was entering a college campus in Kerala after nearly three decades and nothing much seems to have changed. The presence of flags and banners of various student unions on the walls gave the impression that the rough and tumble of campus politics continues to exist.
After she got out of the van, her attention was drawn to a notice board with Joseph Stalin’s picture. She took a photo of it and asked a random college student who happened to be there, “Who is this?” Pat came the answer, “It is comrade Joseph Stalin.”
She exclaimed, “Hmm only in Kerala!” The yesteryear Soviet leader, who is looked upon with fear and trepidation, and long forgotten in other places, continues to be a popular icon among Kerala’s college students.
Shortly afterwards we were ushered into the principal’s room. I was a bit reluctant but college teachers insisted that I too should go. After some small talk and tea, we went to the auditorium where Arfa was to deliver her lecture.
The auditorium was of modest size with a capacity of around 300 people and though it was not packed, almost in every row some seats were occupied. In her lecture, Arfa spoke of the growing polarization of India and peppered it with some personal anecdotes.
“I cannot go to a public park or a gym in Delhi,” she said. Arfa also spoke at length about the online trolling, and how her being a journalist and a Muslim puts her at a double disadvantage.
She said she even avoids announcing her public functions on social media, but made this one an exception “because I know Kerala is a safe space”. This, of course, drew a spontaneous applause.
The lecture was followed by a question-answer session, but the mike provided to the audience was in no mood to oblige and displayed its reluctance by emitting some grating noises. It was then decided that those wanting to ask questions should come near the stage and ask.
Once it was over, she left to have lunch. I too was offered but had some urgent errand at my home in Calicut, so left by bus.
By evening I was free and decided to join them. I called up my friends to check their whereabouts, and they told me they were at Paragon – the iconic restaurant every celeb visitor to Calicut stops by.
When I reached there they had already ordered food. When the food came she began taking pictures of each dish after asking what it was. There was a dark brownish dish on a plate and when she was told it was beef fry, she desisted from taking its picture!
The plan for the next day was to visit Wayanad. I got picked up on the way and as we raced to the outskirts of Kozhikode, she began marveling at the greenery and wondered what the AQI may be in the area. All through the trip Delhi’s toxic AQI was there at the back of her mind and every now and then she would thank herself to be out of it for a few days.
At some places, we decided to stop by so that she could get photographed. A couple of times she handed over her iPhone to me to take her pictures. I dutifully obliged, but at the back of my mind, I was psyched out by my abysmal record in this department.
She wore a T-shirt, cargos, and sneakers. She was quite a natural in front of camera, used to put forth her best smile and pose with poise and in an uninhibited manner. “The only thing common between Narendra Modi and me is the love for camera,” she remarked.
She recounted how The Wire was raided a couple of years ago. The policemen who came to the Wire office sounded apologetic. A couple of them even told Arfa that they watch her programmes regularly, while some others claimed they have never heard of this publication before.
As the car winded its way through the ghats and entered Wayanad district she was very excited because it happened to be Rahul Gandhi’s constituency. We stopped by Wilton restaurant for lunch.
She was again bowled over by the food and wondered how the bill was ‘a fraction’ of what it would be in Delhi. The only explanation we could put forth was lower rents, beyond which we could not come up with anything plausible.
We then moved to the famed Pookot Lake. I had gone there in 1988 as a student and back then it had not made to Kerala’s tourism map. The lake had a pristine and wild look untouched by any governmental or even human intervention.
There was a white painter living in a small cottage nearby. He told us he hails from Scotland and showed us his paintings, mostly landscape ones with the lake acting as his muse.
But now it has acquired a touristy look with boats of various sizes out on the lake, a walking track. At the entrance, we had a bevy of shacks selling sundry snacks to exotic ‘forest produce’, which range from honey to herbal remedies.
The journey down the ghats was smooth and the sumptuous Wilton food made me fall asleep. By the time I woke up we had crossed the ghats. After about 45 minutes I was near my home. I took leave while my friend went to drop her at the hotel.
As I got out of the car and walked home, I still found it hard to believe that I had interacted with a celeb anchor whom I never thought I would ever meet.
