Sulogna Mehta is a journalist and a creative writer with around 15 years of professional experience in national media. She wants to establish herself as an author in the near future. This Journalist started as a trainee with The Statesman, had two stints of four years with Deccan Chronicle Hyderabad (both features and hard news reportage), and another nine years with The Times of India, Vizag.

I am currently writing features for Deccan Chronicle while pursuing my own creative writings on various online platforms, and aim to bring out my first book of fiction within a year.
Profession: 
Journalist

Hobbies and Interests: 
Hobbies include reading fiction, poetry, creative writing, learning languages, travelling as much as I can (both real and virtual), listening to world music, watching thrillers and detective movies, certain adventure sports and spending time in historic and cultural places like museums and art galleries & hiking in scenic natural environment.

Achievements during the early days of career: 
Consistent first prizes for studies and general proficiency, several inter-school and inter-college awards for excellence in essay writing, quiz and literature, Jaycee Prize for Literature and Poetry, Mascom Trustees’ Award for Best Editing etc.

Consistent first prizes for studies and general proficiency, several inter-school and inter-college awards for excellence in essay writing, quiz and literature, Jaycee Prize for Literature and Poetry, Mascom Trustees’ Award for Best Editing etc.

Education: 
She did her Post Graduation (PG) in journalism from Malayala Manorama’s institute in Kerala.
Early days of career: I started out at The Statesman in mid 2006 as a business intern and then a feature writer. In early 2007, I shifted to Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad in their features section, where I had to do reporting, editing copies and collecting matters for making pages daily.

It was a glamour world, interviewing celebrities, a new story daily, interacting with new people, going to new places to cover art, culture, literature, music, fashion, film etc. I was sent for my first foreign trip to Malaysia In 2008 and wrote on their tourism.

After a couple of years with DC, I quit my job for about a year to pursue my dream of attempting India’s one of the toughest exams - the Civil Services exam. I couldn’t clear it, but no regrets. I joined back DC on Doctors’ Day - July 1, 2010. This time my recruiter and mentor (who recognized my reporting potential) put me to hard news reporting, especially health and science, instead of features.

From the world of glamour, Page 3 and celebs, I daily started making rounds of the government hospitals and health departments in Hyderabad, building my contacts and sources. When I went back home, the peculiar smell of hospitals stayed with me. I could still hear the honking of ambulances, see the dead bodies and the wailing of relatives of patients who have lost their loved ones.

Those made an impression in my mind and I decided - real power of journalism to make a change and impact lies here. I got involved with health reporting while my DC bureau chief (another helpful mentor) was training me how to weave investigative health reporting with political reportage.
However, in September 2012, I shifted to Vizag when The Times of India just launched and started printing from Port City. I still retained my medical and health beat.

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Key to success:
I didn’t chase success ever. Persistence, consistency, doing my duty with honesty and following or working hard for a cause I stood for, be it medical-health issues, environment or heritage brought me whatever little recognition I could achieve.

Inspiration: I don’t look up to one person for inspiration. It can be several people, there can be something positive to learn from each, even from a child. And of course the various moods & creations of Nature inspire me the most.

Struggles: 
Though I was used to hostel life in Plus 2 and during PG in Kerala, I lived all alone in new cities like Hyderabad or Visakhapatnam for years (parents visited at times), juggling between 24x7 office works and household chores all by myself, often faced acute loneliness. Being a teetotaler, who neither smokes nor drinks, neither party nor go to pubs, it’s not easy to find friends to hang out with in today’s world.

So I mostly remained a loner and learnt to love solitude. Workplace politics, ungratefulness, backstabbing baffled me too. (Though I never entered any rat race and just did my duties sincerely, always longing for a life beyond office).

Thoughts on Women’s Life: 
Women – a wonderful creation of God full of contrasts and paradoxes, mystery and simplicity. Courageous yet compassionate, her beauty lies in her strength beyond the apparent vulnerability and accepting the challenges that life brings.

Advice to women: Educate yourself beyond literacy and strive to become economically independent. Stay strong emotionally and health-wise. Love yourself and take care of your physical and mental well-being despite your hectic, multi-tasking schedule. Remember that you can’t please every person in your life how much you try. So remain balanced and moderate in approach rather than investing 100 % of your emotions on unworthy people.

Motivate, praise and uplift other women and fellow beings rather than constantly criticising and belittling. If you want to live a life beyond 24/7 or beyond boring 9 am to 5 pm and realise your realistic dreams, you need to take calculated risks and come out of your comfort zone.

Crimes against women have increased in recent times. What would you say about that?
As women are striving hard for equal rights and opportunities and making their mark in all sectors, including the male-dominated fields, the natural outcome of it is power politics and suppression and violence against women in a patriarchal society, where subjugation and exploitation of women have been rooted in history and in certain culture and traditions.

The more the women struggle for equality and human rights, the more violent and regressive mindsets come into the fore. And it is not only chauvinistic and uneducated men who are involved in the crimes, but women participate in harassing and torturing other women too.

There needs to be a drastic change in mindset among families, stepping away from gender stereotyping and discriminating between the sons and daughters. Educate the sons to respect their counterparts as fellow humans rather than blaming the daughters.

Simultaneously prompt legal remedies and justice should be available to the victim of violence rather than humiliating and dehumanising a victim by police, lawyers and politicians (which is common in our society). Otherwise crime against women will not come down.

Favourite Book: 
There are plenty…All the crime thrillers of Agatha Christie, classics like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Ruskin Bond’s short stories etc.

Where do you aim to see yourself in the next five years?
In the next five years, I aim to see myself as an established author and travelling around India and the world.

What are your thoughts about feminism?
I think without humanism, feminism cannot be successful. Both men and women have to look at women as human beings, not aliens or sub-humans, which many cultures and societies still do unfortunately. Supporting and standing for women’s causes is excellent, especially in societies where women have faced and are still facing oppression and exploitation in various forms.

Some of the greatest propounders of feminism have been men like Raja Rammohan Roy, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, Kesav Chandra Sen. A progressive society should consider men and women as complementary to each other and equal opportunities and respect should be given to both. It can happen if they rise above petty conflicts and competitions as male and female and rather champion humanity and equality among humans.

Message to Hello Vizag readers
Read, watch, pick up positivity even if you are surrounded by an ocean of negative news. Learn and experience something new every day.