Why I never went beyond being a correspondent in 10 years?
It has been 10 years that I worked in journalism. 2003 May when I started as a rookie (lesser than a trainee) when I worked for free for nine months at Mid-Day Pune. From the 10 th month onwards they started paying me Rs 3000…my first salary ever! I was 18 then. Mid-Day was a fortnightly and I was learning everything from Rupa Chapalgaonkar -the only editorial person there. We worked like pals…sometimes even stayed in the office when work deadlines burnt our asses. Mind you –fortnightly or weekly deadlines are deadlier than daily deadlines. Then came the big break (seemed big that time) at Sakaal group with The Maharashtra Herald. I was 19 when they took me up as a trainee with Madhav Gokhale as my boss. I was there for four years when it was revamped into Sakaal Times. As Madhav Gokhale continued to be my boss, I was assigned various assignments from writing on macro-level civic issues to handling beats like education and health. But this is not about my career graph. This ...