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Face to face with Nisha
BBC News anchor, Nisha Pillai, during an interview in New Delhi on Wednesday.
NISHA PILLAI joined the British Broadcasting Corporation (World) in October 1995 and is one of the main anchors on the channel presenting World News. Now while that is something almost everybody knows, her foray into the world of journalism is something not many would be aware of.
Here is her story, just in case you were not in the loop. Nisha's first job after leaving the London School of Economics was at Schroders Investment Bank as a graduate trainee. Her next job was with the Investors' Chronicle which gave her training in journalism. Later on she became a reporter for "Money Programme" of the BBC.
And in 1990, Nisha went to report for "Panorama'', the BBC's flagship current affairs programme, where she stayed for five years until 1995. Her most notable work for "Panorama'' was a nine-month investigation into the financial empire of the notorious newspaper baron Robert Maxwell who committed suicide five weeks after the programme was broadcast. And the programme, `The Max Factor', won a Royal Television Society award in London.
There has been no looking back for Nisha since. To her credit are assignments like live coverage of the September 11 attack as it happened in the United States, the fall of Baghdad, the Earth Summit in Johannesburg and Pakistan's 50th anniversary of independence. But among the most remarkable was her coverage of the September 11 terrorist attack in the US, claims Nisha.
"The attacks happened right in the middle of my shift. At first we got information about one of the towers being on fire. Then we were told that a plane had crashed into one of them. And a little later, a second plane crashed. By this time we were thinking `Oh my God! Just how many people have been killed and there was this sense of panic.' But I knew I had to keep calm and present news in a professional manner, controlling my fears,'' says Nisha who is currently in Delhi to co-present the BBC's programme "Asia Today'' on Thursday and Friday.
Yet another difficult assignment came six weeks later shortly after the start of the Afghan war. Nisha hosted a live discussion programme from Islamabad which brought the audience from Pakistan "face to face'' with an audience in New York. "And it was just so interesting to watch how much different the viewpoints of the groups were and how varied their perception of world events. It is interesting and at the same time, I knew that I was only a facilitator. The gap in comprehension between the two sides was striking,'' explains Nisha.
Other testing assignments came in the form of an interview with Bal Thackeray of the Shiv Sena.
Now mother of two young children, Nisha was born in Kolkata, spent her childhood in Mumbai, and then along with her family moved to London to do her schooling in a girls' school in Birmingham. She keeps herself updated by talking to people and by surfing the net. "My strong points include the fact that I am comfortable with economic reporting and my mental maths is good,'' explains Nisha.
By Bindu Shajan Perappadan
Photo: V.V. Krishnan
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Life
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