Sankarshan Thakur once called me and asked, “What happened, Teresa? You vanished, huh?” And we both laughed. At times, I was out of network coverage area while I was in the back of beyond, chasing stories. I was in the hinterland of the country, with my pen, notebook and a vintage mobile phone – often straying into unexplored terrains, pursuing militant leaders, looking for tales beyond the violent strife that ravaged the region for decades.
As the Principal Correspondent covering the Northeast for Tehelka, I reported to Sankarshan, the then Executive Editor of the news magazine. Based in the country’s capital, he was like the quiet anchor and a mentor who inspired fledgling reporters like me to thresh out some of the finest narratives in Indian journalism from the under-reported and peripheral regions of the country.
