Aruti Naya traces the journey of Shazia Ilmi from a middle class Muslim home to the electronic media

For Shazia Ilmi, Senior Anchor, Star TV, Chandigarh was a pleasant surprise, coming as she was after almost a decade. As she puts it, “The city compares favourably with any metro, it is amazing.”

In the city for the programme Match ke mujrim, for Star, which had to be hurriedly refocused because there were no mujrims! The audience was the students on the PU campus at Gandhi Bhavan, who went berserk after the cricket team’s win as Shazia talked to them after the match. “Each of them wanted the name of their department mentioned. Syed Kirmani and Bishan Singh Bedi who were on the live show could barely get a word in, says she.

Thirty-three-year-old Shazia has very good memories of the city because for this student of St. Bede’s, the city was a frequent stopover during the journey to the college in Shimla after the vacations. Shazia’s journey from a girl from a conservative Muslim family of Kanpur to a profession in the electronic media with a high visibility quotient was not easy. She had to persist and doggedly keep doing what she wanted to because no woman in her entire clan had ever worked. In fact, her mother still wears a burqa.

It was her father, the founder-editor of the oldest and largest-selling Urdu daily from Kanpur, Siyasat Jadid, who was her role model and Shazia always wanted to be a journalist. After schooling from St. Mary’s in Kanpur and Nainital and college from St. Bede’s, Shimla, it was mass communication from Jamia Millia Islamia and finally a diploma in broadcast journalism from University of Wales, Cardiff.

The youngest in a family of four brothers and two sisters, she was expected to marry comfortably and settle down or at best (since she was academically bright) become an IAS officer. But as she puts it, “When you have so many problems with the system, how can you become a part of it? Freedom is not economic alone, it is the freedom to make a choice and do what you want to from your heart.”

Five years hence Shazia sees herself in politics. Covering politics was very stimulating for her, especially elections in Bihar and Maharashtra. She travelled through the length and breadth of the states to get the views of people especially at the grassroots for the programme Maratha Express. She is also into programming, writing and production.

Shazia does not believe that “it is not a natural progression for an idealist to become a cynic. In fact, you can retain your idealism.” And she did not view marriage as a passport to a better life and even to happiness.

Icons who she looks up to, Kalpana Chawla and Kiran Bedi because, “They won respect for being action-oriented and decisive.”

Shazia is upbeat about the changes being wrought by the electronic media, it is changing the way the young are looking at themselves. The resonance of this changed perception echoes even in the bylanes of Chamnganj, Kanpur, when Rabia, who has never stepped out, tells her “Shazia baaji, please find out about Frankfinn, I want to become an airhostess,” At least, girls are thinking and dreaming.

In Kanpur Shazia baaji is an icon. Married to investment banker Sajid Mallik, half-Gujarati Muslim and half-Tamil Iyer, Shazia is emotionally dependent upon her extremely supportive husband. Shazia is not overtly religious but is into spirituality and meditation, still seeking answers. How does she distress, “I do not distress. Stress suits me fine and brings out the best in me.”

source: http://www.tribuneindia.com / The Tribune / Home> Lifestyle / Chandigarh – Sunday October 30th, 2005