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Beauty and beasts
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Karishma Manchanda has found time to dabble in many things, from selling anti-aging creams to photographing tigers
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CAREER SHIFTS: Karishma Manchanda has tried it all
You want to be many things in life, all at once. Just that everybody can't be everything. But Karishma Manchanda seems to have managed that — more or less. A beautician, a filmmaker, and a photographer, she has earlier been a news anchor too.
Sound background
Karishma studied journalism, film and broadcasting at the University of Cardiff. The International School, Mussoorie, where she studied, had a news-reading club, and that had already laid a strong foundation. "I was one among the news readers on a one-hour bulletin the club had. I felt I could move towards media. That is how I got to Cardiff," says Karishma.
While there, Karishma worked with BBC Radio, Wales, for a year as radio presenter during weekends. She was also with BBC, London, as researcher for its popular programmes BBC Holiday and BBC Watchdog for three months. The experience paid off. After the BBC stint, she was roped in as reporter by NDTV where her high point was covering the Oscars at LA. "I was sent as a one-person team. I had to carry the lens, the camera and a heavy tripod. It wasn't easy. Luckily, Prannoy (Roy) helped me out. Though other channels came with more people, I managed seven exclusive reports," recalls Karishma.
She met the affable Aamir Khan at the event because Lagaan had been nominated for the Oscars. He was a help too. He got her access to various people and programmes. Before the awards were announced, she had promised not to rush to him for sound bites if he did not make it. Lagaan did not, and all the channels got their reports. "My bosses were hollering. I had promised Aamir I wouldn't meet him. I didn't for a long time. After much pressure, at 3 a.m. I decided to call him. He was very nice about it and said, `Get me connected.' It was a wonderful experience."
While working at NDTV, Karishma did a one-and-a-half-year course in photography in New Delhi and wrote a proposal on Alzheimer's disease to eventually make a film on it. The course taught her lighting and other skills. She also learnt wildlife photography.
Two years later she left NDTV, and Barkha and Rajdeep "who always had unkempt hair but whom we loved so much" and Prannoy — ever the gentleman — "who never ever gets impatient". And then it was a dramatic career shift — into the area of beauty care. "My mother had beauty clinics in Bangalore and in Bombay. They needed to be managed. I was confident I could take time off to do other things."
Karishma has moved on to cosmetics, but she takes her photography and filming seriously. She has, for instance, shot some wonderful pictures of tigers at Kanha in Madhya Pradesh. "I would get up at 4 a.m. and wait. You have to because you don't sight them easily. And once when I did, it was so deep in the grass I could get only as close as to be able to shoot its skin! After weeks of waiting I photographed one tiger." Meanwhile, she approached the WHO for support for a film on Alzheimer's. The World Health Oraganisation approved her proposal. After months of work, the film is ready. Titled Drifting Through The Time, the film captures the condition of those suffering from Alzheimer's through the voices of patients themselves. "I did not want a voice-over. I wanted patients to speak. That's when people will know what Alzheimer's means. I went to Kochi, which has the only Alzheimer's care centre in the entire country. The United Kingdom, on the other hand, has centres at every nook and corner," says Karishma.
The film has been screened in Kochi and will soon be screened in Mumbai and Delhi. Karishma says Amitabh Bachchan, who recently acted in Black, has been approached to inaugurate the screening.
Contradiction?
Even as she is the middle of it all, Karishma gets on with her work at Berkowitz Cosmetic and Skin Clinic in Indiranagar. Is this contradictory, you wonder — Alzheimer's and beauty care? Karishma is unperturbed. "I am interested in health and after what I saw in the U.K., I decided I should do something. And I've also learnt we live in a world where we need to present ourselves. I was told in a channel that I needed to wear spectacles to be presentable as an anchor! What does that mean?"
Karishma can be contacted on 25293090.
PRASHANTH G.N.
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