The day CNEB came to Laporiya

On Friday I was woken at 5.45am by my boss, Jagveer, banging on my bedroom door. I rolled out of bed wondering what was happening now. I was told that a news channel was coming to Laporiya to film a piece about the environmental work GVNML are doing and when they’d found out a volunteer from England was living in the village, they wanted to interview me as well. I was to be ready in 10 minutes. Quickly washing and geting dressed into my best Kurta, I managed to knock back two cups of chai before they arrived in true Indian fashion one hour later. The CNEB contingent consisted of a slightly tubby cameraman who looked dishevelled and annoyed to be out of the comfort of city life, a suave interview/presenter guy, and a young driver/general skivvy.
At first they were in a real rush to get their filming done, marching around the village and creating mock situations to include on their news feature. I was made to throw seed up in the air to feed the birds and was put in the middle of a group of village men I’d never met before. In a place where the locals had pledged oaths not to harm the birds or trees, these two men were throwing stones into the tops of trees and shouting to try and catch on film the parrots flying off. I couldn’t help but enjoy it when they’d be trying to disturb the birds to no avail, and a few minutes later when the camera was off all the birds would fly across the landscape in what would have been a perfect shot.

The interviewer was convinced I had come to GVNML to do ‘research’. No, I kept explaining, I’m a volunteer, sent by VSO to support their work and help them with their communications, but when the camera started rolling his first question to me was “What research are you doing in Laporiya?” He went on to ask “How do you feel about Laporiya?”, “What do you think of the community here?” Bearing in mind I had only been living here one week and this was the first time I’d been allowed out into the village proper, I found the whole thing quite amusing. They kept saying “this is an emotion interview”, which I took to mean they weren’t that concerned with the facts.
Later we went out in the jeep with Laxman to see some of the choukas (part of the water management system), and he explained how they worked. In the photo Laxman is drawing a diagram in the sand to camera. Again, they asked me “How do you FEEL about the chouka system, what do you understand by it?” They told me to say I was impressed with it, so dredging up my English Heritage media training I did what they asked and gave quite a good interview I think. Apparently it was being aired on national tv last night. A fine way to celebrate my first week in Laporiya!