Evil Reporter Chick

Rena

Rena Golden

Hasan Zeya used to boast about how he was still practicing medicine into his early 80s. But at 84, he no longer is happy about his age. His daughter, Rena, passed away last week, days shy of her 52nd birthday.

“She did a bad thing. She cut ahead of me in the queue,” he tells me at her funeral Sunday.

Tears well in his eyes, though he keeps a brave front among the hundreds of people who have come to pay tribute to Rena. The weather, dreary and wet, matches the mood inside the inside Temple Kol Emeth.

Rena’s memorial was exactly how it should have been. A rabbi and grieving husband spoke of her incredible talent, compassion and ability to inspire. They spoke of a daughter, a wife, a mother, who gave her all to her family.

Rena worked for many years at CNN, a majority of her time spent as a leader at CNN International. The temple was filled with journalists who stood in awe of her.

Watch a birthday message from Dr. Zeya to Rena  on her birthday last year:

Dr. Zeya tells me how his own father had been a journalist in India but discouraged his son from ever becoming one. It was hard work and no money. But maybe that’s where Rena got her passion.

As a little girl, Rena would make her parents watch as she pretended to be a news anchor. She would hide under the table and appear from behind the tablecloth to the deliver the news.

Rena came to America on her sixth birthday. Dr. Zeya had wanted a better life for his family and moved to North Carolina from a remote part of the Indian state of Bihar. His family hailed from the place where Mahatma Gandhi launched his civil disobedience campaign in India — there’s a scene in the Oscar winning film that shows Gandhi arriving at that train station.

Dr. Zeya tells me he was happy to leave what he called the “most backward place in India.” For a variety of reasons.

He tells me he loved that in Chapel Hill, he could shower with hot water spewing from the faucets. And that he did not have to sweat through the entire summer like we did in India when the electricity went out and the fans stopped for hours. I felt connected with him — and to Rena — in a whole different way.

I never really spoke with Rena much about her early childhood in India. My connections to our homeland, of course, were much stronger since my parents chose to return there many years ago. But in a strange sort of way, it was comforting to know now that Rena had experienced life as I had there. She was only a year and half older than me.

My deepest connection to Rena was that when I first met her more than 20 years ago, she was the only other Indian woman I knew in mainstream journalism in the United States. Now, of course, there are many successful South Asian women practicing great journalism. But back then, there were few. Rena knew that and encouraged women like me to keep pushing forward.

As I speak with her father, I realize where she got a lot of her spunk, though he insists that it was she who inspired him.

Dr. Zeya tells me he never wanted to color his children’s thoughts about big things in life. Like religion. He wanted Rena to make up her own mind. It was exactly how my father had raised my brother and me. He never allowed organized religion to infiltrate our home. He wanted us to figure it out for ourselves.

Sunday afternoon, Dr. Zeya sat in the temple to hear Rabbi Steven Lebow tell the audience what Rena had said to him when it became apparent she was going to die.

She told him she didn’t fear death — she never had in her painful two-year battle against lymphoma. She worried only about what would happen to her children, Sabrina and Adam, and to the love of her life, her husband, Rob Golden.

She also told Rabbi Lebow that she wasn’t religious, though she considered herself deeply spiritual. It was a statement that made her father proud.

We spoke of religious tensions in India. Dr. Zeya sipped Sprite and launched a conversation on Islam. He believes followers of that faith must rethink their path to the future. It was not a discussion I’d expected to have at Rena’s funeral and at first, I was caught by surprise.

But on the long drive back home on 1-75, I decided otherwise. My conversation with Dr. Zeya was exactly what Rena would have wanted. Smart, forward-thinking, outside-the-box, provocative, even, and totally unexpected at a funeral. She would have liked that her father initiated an intelligent conversation with her friends and colleagues.

The rain came down harder. It was as though the entire world was mourning the loss of Rena Shaheen Zeya Golden.

Some like it hot

Killed in the name of honor

“All citizens are equal before law and are entitled to equal protection of law. There shall be no discrimination on the basis of sex alone.”


That’s what Pakistan’s constitution says. But the plight of women in Pakistan today is grim.  Last year almost a thousand women were murdered in honor killings, according to the Pakistan Human Rights Commission. The real number is feared to be much higher — many such killings are covered up by families.


Of the 943 cases documented by the commission’s staff, 93 were girls. 


Here’s why these women and girls were killed by husbands, brothers, fathers. They were accused of illicit relations or they voiced a desire to marry a man of their own choice.


Before being killed, at least 19 women were raped, 12 of them gang-raped.


They were shot, bludgeoned and even strangled to death. 



Only 20 of these women and girls were provided any medical aid before they died.


This is now. In Pakistan.


I don’t know the statistics for my native India or neighboring Afghanistan. But all three of these South Asian nations top the list for the worst countries in which to be a woman.


I was horrified to read the Pakistan report today. It probably won’t get much attention in the Western media. So I write this and ask you to think about how these women and girls lost their lives all in the name of saving a family’s honor.


Could there be anything more dishonorable?

Journalism and courage

Marie Colvin lost an eye in Sri Lanka. She was killed in Syria.

Today, journalists are mourning the deaths of two of their own.Marie Colvin of London’sSunday Times and French journalist Remi Olchik were killed Wednesday in thebesieged Syrian city of Homs.

Their deaths came a few days after we learnedNew York Times reporter Anthony Shadid died of an asthma attack, also in Syria.

Remi Olchlik was also killed in Homs.

They were courageous. Brave in the actionsthey took and even braver in what they told the world about atrocities andinjurites they witnessed firsthand.

They are worthy of headlines and deserving of tribute.

Chandrika Rai and his family were  bludgeoned to death in India.

So are journalists of lesser name who put their lives on the lineevery day reporting from their own countries.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reported this week thatIndian journalist Chandrika Rai , his wife and two teenage children werebludgeoned to death in their home in Umaria in the state of Madhya Pradesh.Rai, 42, worked for Hindi-language dailies and was investigating illegal coalmining in Umaria.

The committee quoted Shalabh Bhadoria, president of a MadhyaPradesh press freedoms group, who said that Rai’s death could be connected tothe kidnapping of a local official’s son. Rai apparently, had contradicted agovernment official’s claim that the two kidnapping suspects were not guilty.

The committee has asked for an investigation. Local journalistswore black arm bands this week in remembrance.

We hearof cases like Chandrika’s all too often. Journalists who go missing. Or are founddecapitated. 

Theytake enormous risks to tell the story. And unlike foreign journalists, localreporters do not have the luxury of “getting out” after they get thestory. They must remain in their communities and be ready to suffer theconsequences.

Kudos tomy colleagues across the world who take such risks every day of their lives.They are committed and passionate about what they do. On this awful day oftragedy, I salute them all.

Indianjournalist Barkha Dutt said on Twitter said this morning:  “For all those who sit at their computers& pass easy judgment Marie Colvins death in Syria grim reminder of courageneeded to go out there”

I secondthat thought.

A new Guiness record!

Thomas Oliver and Melissa Turner were part of the record-setting crowd.

I just read that the Tybee Island polar bear plunge on New Year’s Day officially broke a Guinness World Record.

“Guinness World Record now credits the Jan. 1 event as the largest ever gathering of people wearing swim caps,” reported the Savannah Morning News. “In all, 2,049 New Year’s beach-goers sported caps for the event, which also served as a fundraiser for the Tybee Post Theater — whom Guinness lists as the official record holder.”

Congratulations to my friends Thomas Oliver, Melissa Turner and Jill Vejnoska for taking the plunge that day and sporting their swim caps.

I am thrilled I was on hand to witness such a historic event.

Cool hands

Christmas is not a tradition I grew up with in India.

But who cannot love opening presents on a cold morning in front of a fire? Especially when the gifts include a pair of tomato red woolen gloves that come complete with special forefinger and thumb fabric that allows for — what else — easy maneuvering of the iPhone.

I don’t have to take my gloves off to use my keyboard anymore. Joy!

Yes, my husband got me these gloves and yes, I love them.

Perhaps because I go to work in the darkness of the early morning — at 6 a.m. to be precise — and they come in most handy not just for checking email on my phone but also maneuvering the controls in my Mini.

Now I’ve got the whole world in my hands.

Last U.S. soldiers leave Iraq

Time for reflection

I went with Georgia soldiers on a tour of the ruins at Ur, near Tallil Air Base in early 2006.

Spc. Jason Smith and me at Tallil.

The Iraq war isofficially ended Thursday for the United States.

Almost nine years after America“shocked and awed” Baghdad and young men andwomen from Maine to Hawaii began dying on foreign soil, the war isover.

CNN, like other news outlets, covered the last days for U.S. troops in Iraq. One of the stories aired wasfrom Camp Adder, otherwise known as Tallil AirBase, where I spent many weeks in 2005 and 2006.

Photos of Georgia’s fallen at a memorial at Tallil.

It is deserted now. A ghost town. Sand bags returned to thedesert. Empty trailers. Abandoned medical equipment.

The last hot meal served there was on Thanksgiving Day. I rememberhow I hated walking down to the chow hall to eat. It was such a hike in windand chill. So long and lonely that I often skipped dinner. Ate Ramen noodles inmy trailer instead.

That trailer was home for me. I set it up the best I could,thankful to be out of a dusty tent, sleeping on a real mattress instead of anArmy cot. Thankful to be in a place that was relatively safe and free from therocket and mortar attacks I’d lived through on other bases.

The last laundry service at Tallil was last week. How many timesdid I turn in my olive green bag with my last name and last four of my social.Three days later, I’d get back my cargo pants and cotton shirts and if I waslucky, all my socks and underwear.

The PX is shuttered. The barber shop gone. Soon it will be hard to tell that the Americans were even here.

I was at Tallil with the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48^thBrigade. At that time, there were other U.S. units stationed there, as wellas the Brits and the Italians. Everyone wanted to go eat at the Italian dininghall. They served Chianti.

I took to this Iraqi girl at a health center near Nasiriyah. She  was one of many Iraqis I remembered as the U.S. war formally came to an end Thursday.

Before the foreigners came, Saddam Hussein used Tallil for hiswarplanes. It was, unlike so many other U.S. camps that went up fromscratch, an established base with concrete buildings and paved roads.

Tallil, not far from Nasiriyah, was built in the shadows of the five-floorziggurat of Ur,the ancient Sumerian city that is also believed to be the birthplace ofAbraham.

The Mesopotamian wonder stood as reminder to the Americans of Iraq’sglorious past. It was so much more than the land of human misery they wereseeing.

I watched the  understatedflag-casing ceremony Thursday that marked the end of the U.S. military mission in Iraq.

I helped write the CNN.com story and as I did, memories camerushing back. Of my first trip to Iraq under Saddam; of the sufferingI had seen over the years of American soldiers as well as the Iraqi people.

Those who spoke out about war’s end, including President Obama,said they hoped the sacrifices made in war would not be in vain – that Iraqwould now be able to forge ahead.

What happens next remains a question mark but for me, today was aday of reflection. I clicked through 6,511 photographs in my Iraq album iniPhoto. I saw the faces of friends and enemies.

I saw joy and sorrow. Hope and despair. Highs and lows. And all thatcomes with war.

Read the CNN story here:

http://bit.ly/tonamr

Phoolpishi

Phoolpishi and Pishemashai on their 50th anniversary.

 I had just begin to cross the Atlantic yesterday when inCalifornia, my aunt lost her struggle with cancer.

I had hoped to return from India and be able to go visit her one more time. A deep sadness set in at the thought that I would never beable to see her again, hold her hand, share one last laugh.

She was my father’s youngest sister. My only other livingaunt, my Pishi in Kolkata, could barely stand to speak on the phone.

“Of us eight brothers and sisters,” she said in Bengali,“only four are still standing.”

A young Phoolpishi in Kolkata.

My eldest aunt died in the 1980s. Then, several yearslater, one of my father’s younger brothers died, quite suddenly. My fathersuffered from Alzeheimer’s for many years and was finally relieved of his agonyin 2001.

My aunt in California or Phoolpishi as I called her, wasdiagnosed with breast cancer a long time ago. She fought it and lived inremission for many years. She survived pneumonia in 2005, even after thedoctors warned my uncle and cousin Suman to prepare for the worst.

She was a fighter. Weak physically at times but steelyalways on the inside. So when we learned last July that her cancer had comeback, many of us believed she would get through this round, too.

But the prognosis was not good and somewhere deep inside,Phoolpishi knew her time on earth would end soon.

When I visited her in California, I sat on her bed forhours, talking about my childhood, our family and her only son, Suman.  She showed me the jewelry she hadinherited from her mother and her mother-in-law. She gave me two of her ownsaris, a gold necklace and one made from magenta Czech crystals.

“You will wear them, won’t you?” she asked.

“Of course, Phoolpishi,” I replied, not realizing then justhow precious they would become.

Suman and his son, Saraf, were the light of my aunt’slife. Her eyes brightened when we spoke of them. She worried for them. Whowould care for them if she was sick?

When Phoolpishi visited Suman in Washington or New York,she often stocked his refrigerator with home-cooked Bengali meals. When Ivisited her in 2006, she made chicken curry, even though she disliked chickenand wouldn’t eat it even if you paid her.

She insisted on wheeling herself into the kitchen  to make payesh for me.

This last time, she insisted she make payesh for me. It’sa traditional dessert eaten on birthdays. My birthday was two weeks away stillbut Phoolpishi was adamant.

“I don’t know when I will be able to make you payeshagain,” she said.

She wheeled herself into the kitchen, and made the payeshwith vermicelli and a special molasses from Bengal. I ate three heaping bowlsbut she was disappointed.

“Bhalo hoyeni,” she said. It’s not good.

I hugged her and told her I couldn’t remember the lasttime anyone had made payesh for my birthday since my mother fell ill in 1982.

Phoolpishi holding me in Kolkata, 1963

It was tough to leave California at the end of September.I knew then I would probably not see her well again. I knew I would probablylose another close connection to home; someone who strengthened my own roots;someone who had known me since I was born.

Now, on this bright winter day in Atlanta, I am sifting throughold-fashioned photo albums and remembering Phoolpishi.

With Saraf and Pishemashai  in 2005.

How she easily dozed off in a car as soon as it startedmoving – a trait shared by my father. How she loved to play bridge, as did myfather. How she shared with him another passion – Bengali mishtis or sweets.When Phoolpishi visited us in the 1980s in Florida, she and my father spenthours in the kitchen making sandesh and bhapa dahi.

Before they bought their flat in Kolkata, Phoolpishi andmy uncle, Pishemashai, stayed with my parents. My father was especially fond ofhis little sister and Phoolpishi was devastated when my father died. He hadspent several months with them in Concord during his illness.

It’s often in death that we think about how loved ones influence our lives. We sit and wish we had done more with them;spent more time; made a greater effort.

I visited her in September in California.

I am feeling all those things today. She was the only oneof my father’s generation who was in the United States. And yet, I saw her morewhen we both visited India together.

My grieving today is tinged with regret.  But I am thankful I was able to see herin September.

Before I left that Sunday morning for the BART station,she held my hand tight.

“I am very proud of you,” she told me.

And I, of you, Phoolpishi. Brave. Courageous. Generous. Kind.Inspiring.


You are free of your pain now. Free of the hard journey. Rest in peace.

A family photo taken in the early 1970s at my grandfather’s house in Kolkata. Phoolpishi is on the right on the front row. I am sitting in the middle of the front row. Suman is to my right.

Flying away

Fun in an English class with some of the 10th graders at Udaan.

In Hindi, udaan means flight. Like a bird flying off. Free to explore the world.

In my hometown of Kolkata, the Udaan Society is trying to help underpriveleged youth find that freedom through knowledge.

My childhood friend Vijay recently started a new weekend program at Udaan for students of all ages.

In a donated flat in Kolkata’s Alipur neighborhood, boys and girls and young men and women who live lives under India’s crushing poverty, find solace from the misery of their own homes within brightly lit rooms.

They are served lunch and encouraged to paint, dance, sing — activities they might not otherwise engage in their gloomy homes. Many don’t have both parents. Or their fathers are drug addicts. They come from uneducated families who are unable to teach them the importance of school.

The idea is to take them away from their environments to help provide a boost in their education. Teachers volunteer their time to help the students with math, English, business education.

With Saddam Hussein. I teased him about his name.

Vijay asked me to teach a few English classes there this time. Some were 5th and 6th graders. Others were high school students. All were eager to learn English, a vital language for good jobs in India.

I had found it extremely rewarding to teach last spring at the University of Georgia. Teaching at Udaan was something else.
I am posting a few photographs of some of the older students.

One told me he wanted to be an astronaut; another, an engineer.

The idea is to get the kids away from gloomy home environments.

I wish you well. And if any of you are reading this, remember always that you only get one chance in life to go to school in India. Please stick with it. So you, too, can take flight.

Fly away from that which you cannot control. Fly away from empty bellies and sickness. Fly way from the pain of poverty.
 
But most of all, never stop dreaming.