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Life as a TV anchor requires stamina. But then if you want to achieve something, you have to give your job your best,? says Monita Rajpal.
Vibrant 20-something Monita Rajpal could have been another bright-eyed youngster back in India meeting her family in between long meetings. Only Rajpal, a graduate in radio and television arts from Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto, also happens to be CNN’s anchor for World News, and is in town to announce the launch of the Young Journalist Award.
And even if she is “dying to shop in GK and Sarojini Nagar and the shopping malls, work comes first”.
Rajpal has been with CNN for three odd years, after a brief stint as an assignment reporter for Citytv, Toronto, where she covered primetime nightly news, including federal elections, educational strikes and the city’s homeless. As someone who grew up admiring CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, she insists: “I never quite dreamt of being part of CNN. It was almost like a dream. I hadn’t quite believed I could do it.”
Rajpal grew up in Hong Kong, lived in Toronto, speaks fluent Cantonese, Punjabi and French, and gets a high “meeting and interviewing” people like former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Colombian President Andres Pastrana. She hates picking out any favourite subject: “I’d never like to single any interview as a favourite. It’s been challenging three years and I’m privileged to have been at the forefront of many breaking news stories.”
Rajpal who spends close to 12 hours in the Atlanta studio reading newspapers or netsurfing for an hour and a half, her favourites being The Economist and New Yorker) and sometimes 16 hours on field admits: “Life as a TV anchor requires stamina. But then if you want to achieve something, you have to give your job your best. I am enjoying myself completely and I do have a life of my own beyond our studios.” That’s when she hits the gym, catches films, reads Jeffrey Archer and hopes to be famous like her idol Amanpour.
