2025 stares down at me from my wall. A glossy calendar with a small, shiny, blue and orange kingfisher sits pretty on it. It has only just replaced last year’s calendar. Year 2024 is past, but it will continue to be a watershed year for me.
It was a year I took a big leap of faith. I quit my job at the beginning of the year and returned to being an independent environmental journalist. It wasn’t a planned move. Twenty-five years into journalism, I wanted to pause and reflect and take stock of where I was headed.
I belong to an age of print journalism. The internet is an insatiable monster needing to be fed story after story. Algorithms need to be cracked and SEO (search engine optimization) tools mastered in an increasingly mad rush to create and sell content. Doomscroling on social media is driving people, especially young adults, to depression and other health concerns.
How does one promote a story of a tribal woman who started making and selling honey after she learnt how to on YouTube that she watched on her husband’s phone? How will that fare against endless podcasts of Bollywood glitterati that effortlessly rule the algorithms? Soni Murmu, the Santhal tribal woman in a forest at the Bihar-Jharkhand border, will never grab even 1/1000th of the eyeballs (and likes and shares, and advertisements) an Alia Bhatt or a Kartik Aaryan, will fetch.
But, to shine a light, however briefly, on people like Murmu, who do not matter either to the State or the mainstream media (unless it is partnered content), has given me enormous satisfaction. These citizens lead an unglamorous life in media-dark corners of the country. They attract neither hashtags, nor any investors. But I strongly feel the stories of these unconventional protagonists, their everyday wins and losses, need to be recorded, for posterity.
Journalism is a shrinking space. Environmental journalism more so. It isn’t uncommon to be branded as anti-national for speaking out in favour of the environment and demanding protection for our forests, rivers, wetlands, flora and fauna.
A year ago, I decided to take a ‘period of pause’ to travel to the hinterlands, have chai with strangers and learn from them. Publishing stories could come later. I had spent the past 20 years looking for stories. Now, I wanted to travel to rediscover myself; and wander where my heart desired in search of experiences that would surely touch my soul. Travelling this way is a humbling experience, and there is learning at every twist and turn that no University can impart.
My journey of self-(re)discovery took me from tribal villages in north Maharashtra to villages along the Indo-Bangladesh border in Barak Valley of Assam, to hamlets in the basin of Narmada river in Madhya Pradesh, and the flood-hit villages in North Bihar.
Then there were twelve exhilarating days spent in the Everest region in Nepal in May 2024. Though my childhood was spent in the lap of the mountains in a small hill town of Jammu & Kashmir, I never imagined I would one day find myself at the Everest Base Camp (EBC).
Along with a bunch of climate journalists from the SAARC countries, I travelled to the Everest region as part of a Himalayan Climate Boot Camp organised by the Nepal Forum of Science Journalists to report on the impacts of climate change in the eco-fragile region.
Stories aside, the 12 days spent on the sacred land of the Sherpa community taught me the importance of mental strength and spirituality. ‘What you seek is seeking you’ — I used to read it in books, but experienced it first hand when I stood 5,364 metres above mean sea level at the EBC, breathless, exhausted but oh so liberated!
Every trip I have undertaken in 2024 has illuminated the dark space inside my head. I liken it to driving on a foggy day in the mountains. Move along a few metres, then the next few and so on as each stretch of road becomes visible gradually. That is all one needs to do, take small steps at a time and proceed ahead. Meanwhile, writing also kept me going. I wrote when I felt happy, I wrote when I felt not-so-happy, and either way, it brought me solace.
I owe gratitude to 2024. It has been a year of both tribulations and rediscovery which has strengthened my resolve to continue my journey as an old-fashioned foot soldier of environmental and rural journalism. We are an endangered species and might be extinct soon. But till then, we will continue to speak, write and fight for the environment, and for the voiceless vulnerable communities who are facing the maximum brunt of climate change. So 2025, I am ready for you and welcome you with open arms.
(Nidhi Jamwal is a journalist based in Mumbai. She writes on environment, climate, and rural issues. Follow her on X @JamwalNidhi)
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