Determined to get to the end of her eight-month undercover investigation in Gujarat, journalist Rana Ayyub, who conducted a sting operation that ‘Tehelka’ withheld from publication in 2010, hasn’t given up.
Her belief in her work makes her want to reach out to as many people as possible. Besides attending promotional events about her self-published book Gujarat Files, the journalist released the Punjabi version of her text in Patiala last month.
In Chandigarh’s Pracheen Kala Kendra on Sunday to talk about publishing the text in 18 languages, including Punjabi, an emotional Rana was seen engaging closely with the senior citizens here.
As an octogenarian who travelled five hours in a bus to attend the event in Chandigarh recited a two-page poem in praise of her book, Rana said the Punjabi version gave her a ‘different kind of empathy’ from those connected to the region. “Be it here in Chandigarh or in Patiala last month, I have witnessed that Sikhs relate their own 1984 struggle to the Gujarat riots,” said Ayyub, adding that she was content that ‘the larger point was being conveyed on how the state machinery was now thinking of things they perhaps had been overlooking’.
Despite being mocked at for having been able to conduct this investigation simply because she was ‘pretty’, she said she was happy that there were others who were at least picking up the regional language text to read it to know what happened. “Elderly women have come and cried to me saying that the text reminded them of their own struggle during the Sikh riots,” Ayyub told HT.
{{/usCountry}}Despite being mocked at for having been able to conduct this investigation simply because she was ‘pretty’, she said she was happy that there were others who were at least picking up the regional language text to read it to know what happened. “Elderly women have come and cried to me saying that the text reminded them of their own struggle during the Sikh riots,” Ayyub told HT.
{{/usCountry}}Meanwhile, the self-published author and journalist is also in talks with a Bollywood director about making a film on her investigation. Confirming the same, Rana Ayyub said she was in talks with a ‘very prominent director to convert the book into a film.’