On the newsbeat in Bangalore

BANGALORE swallowed me whole and then spat me back out.

During my internship experience I was challenged, confused and fascinated as I tried to make sense of the city and India, and find stories for the Deccan Herald in a whirlwind six weeks.

The hardest thing about the internship was actually getting a good night's sleep. There seemed to be a constant stream of religious festivals that were even celebrated in our workplace. But eventually the Muslim call to prayer became background noise and the Hindu rituals a part of my new, everyday life.

While everything in India seemed opposite to New Zealand, the one familiar thing was the newsroom and its reporters. It was a bigger team, the workday schedule starts later and the topics are quite different, but over the daily chai break I found out that reporters face the same obstacles.

During the day, they could be sent on assignments around the city, trickling back into the office around 4pm, working until 10 or 11pm. But most of the work was actually done after 5pm and the people they were ringing for comment or information expected calls then.

Sometimes I was assigned a story to cover by the city chief editor, but mostly I was left to my own devices.

Coming up with fresh story ideas was a challenge and I constantly had to remind myself to ask - why would a Bangalorean care about this?

Some of the topics I covered were: the Indian cricket team playing a match with Usain Bolt, a group of Australians selling solar lights to slum dwellers, documentary making, a woman who found a cockroach in her McDonald's fries and a film festival about water issues.

Creative voices

Even though English is spoken in India, interviewing had its hiccups - some people only spoke Kannada and my accent and my subjects' accents could often be a barrier to communication, especially when trying to set up interviews on the phone.

Political news dominated the newspaper but most of it went over my head, so I focused on the many different cultural and arts events in the area, which I didn't expect in a place known as the "Silicon Valley of India". I met filmmakers, writers, artists and other creative people who provided a great lens to see Indian culture through and also tap me into the topics currently on Bangaloreans' minds.

One issue I wanted to write about since I arrived was gender equality because of something I experienced shortly after landing in Bangalore.

The morning after I arrived, my new flatmate asked me if I wanted to visit a local high school. We drove through the thick of the city to meet Bharat Kumar Jallu, who was telling a class of 14-year-olds about how he walked from the bottom of India to the top with a banner saying "Stop violence against women. Be the change you want to see in the world", to raise awareness about the issues women face in Indian society.

Gender injustice

One thing that stuck with me was when he asked the girls if they felt equal to their brothers, and they all replied "no". One said when a piece of food is shared between her and her brother, he always gets a bigger half. Girls are expected to do all the chores and stay at home and look after the other children - sometimes at the expense of being educated.

Thanks to Bharat and my flatmate, I learned about some of the work being done to try to change this situation.

My flatmate's project to girls from poorer families in school made for a good story.

Corruption among authority figures was often front page news at the Deccan Herald and I picked the brains of my fellow reporters to learn how they tackled this subject. This reinforced for me what my job as a journalist is really about - holding people to account.

On returning home, I feel more confident in my work, perhaps because in Bangalore I couldn't rely on anyone else except myself.

Ultimately, my knowledge of India has really been strengthened although there's a lot more to learn.

Before this opportunity, I honestly had never given much thought to India - it has made me think a lot more about the ethnic make-up of New Zealand and how I might play a role in highlighting and examining the different cultures we have here.

-Visit www.asianz.org.nz/our-work/media for more information on the internships.