“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you are born that way.” – Ernest Hemingway
With twelve books, eighty short stories, over 500 columns, poetry, interviews with famous personalities, author, journalist and columnist Indrani Raimedhi has lived a life dedicated passionately to the written word. Vladimir Nabokov has once said that all the raw material a write recquires happens before the age of fifteen. And it could not be more true of Indrani, who grew up in picturesque Shillong, living with her parents and younger brother in a quaint cottage that overlooked the panoramic hills, the ramparts of Tripura Castle, nodding pine groves and a stream whose song still resonates in her heart. She was a student of St Marys Convent Indrani’s writing was quickly noticed in junior school itself, with her essays always read out in class.
In 1974 the family relocated to Guwahati and a heart-broken Indrani felt herself an exile from the magic kingdom of her childhood. Books, writing and schoolwork masked her essential loneliness and insecurity. Her writing continued to attract attention in St. Mary’s High School, Guwahati. She was soon winning prizes for writing at the state and national level.
Completing her matriculation in 1977, she enrolled in Cotton College where her winning run continued, with her short story winning the first prize at the Freshers’ Social. With her brother Jaideep, she brought out seven volumes of a magazine named Panorama.
Even before her graduation in English Honours, Indrani was writing regularly for The Sentinal, doing middles, full page feature stories and interviews. Her marriage to artist/business man in 1984 and the birth of two children did not deter her from doing what she knew best. After a brief stint at Don Bosco School, she began writing for the prestigious daily The Assam Tribune, the highest circulated daily in the region. In 1989 she was hired as a sub editor-cum-reporter and made her way up to Features Editor, her designation today. Editing copy, overseeing layout, meeting deadlines during the day, she wrote at night, filling the still hours with stories that explored the human condition. She fashioned brief and intensely compact dramas out of the unwieldy material of human experience. For the writer in her, nothing is what is seems, Indrani has come out with five collections of short stories. They are – The Second Coming, The Concubines Room, The Night Journey, The Stranger’s Touch and A Season of Waiting. Her children books are The Adventures of Ankur and Tales of a Faraway Land. The first was taught in several schools in India and abroad. Her abridged books Alice in Wonderland and The Invisible Man were taught as text in schools across Assam.
Throughout her long innings as a journalist, what Indrani has enjoyed the most has been interviewing eminent personalities. Working at a pre-internet era when information was not available at the click of a mouse, Indrani, with her voracious reading, confidence and the ability to think on her feet, did elaborate interviews of the Grand Old man of Indian letters Khushwant Singh, celebrated Urdu Shayari Ali Sardar Jaffri, legendary dramatist Vijay Tendulkar, Punjabi poet Amrita Pritam, journalist Kuldip Nayyar, travel author Paul Theroux, conflict resolution expert Susan Koecis, singer Remo Fernandez and many others.
When not interviewing celebrities, chasing deadlines, poring over copy, agonising over a short story, Indrani found another calling-being a motivational speaker and holding creative writing workshop at schools and colleges. Drawing from her favourite authors, she awoke in students the possibilities of creating prose that sang to the mesmerised reader. She was also Resource Person of Indira Gandhi Open University for its Phone-in Programme, AIR Guwahati on Creative Writing.
By now, having completed 25 years in journalism, she was ready to explore the possibilities of non-fiction. In 2015 Sage, an international publisher brought out Indrani’s My Half of the Sky – 12 Life Stories of Courage. The twelve women from India’s North East were survivors and pathfinders, doers and dreamers, leaving in their wake surging inspiration and hope. Boxer Mary Kom, anti-human trafficking activist Hasina Kharbih, woman rights activist Monisha Behal, disability crusader Urmee Mazumdar, visually impaired educationist Bertha Dkhar, anti-witchcraft crusdader Bimbala Rabha, firebrand journalist Monalisa Changhija, HIV activist Jahnabi Goswami, the world’s first woman mahout Parbati Barua, award winning film director Manju Bora, path-breaking journalist Teresa Rehman and novelist Rita Choudhury are featured in this book.
In 2017 Indrani came up with her second non-fiction work Crime, Justice and Women. It is a bold expose of the circumstances that drive women to crime and destroy families. Based on extensive interviews with women convicts and under trials in several jails of Assam, the book offers a gripping account of human motives and passions. It underscores the bleak fact that empowerment is still a distant dream for India’s poor, unlettered women. At its heart is a sincere attempt to look at the seamy underbelly of Indian society and see how women struggle to cope with neglect, deprivation and live’s blighted by crime.
The second part of the book is an exploration of the experiences of several ULFA rebel women leaders and their days of waging war against the State. The author encompasses the stories of women rebels in Indi’s Red Corridor as well as in Kashmir and Sri Lanka for a wider understanding of women in revolt and as to whether they are victims or perpetrators.
The final part of the book is one of hope and affirmation. Women police officers, lawyers, a judge, and a forensic expert offer inspirational accounts of how they struggle to defend the law against the most daunting odds. In this way, the book comes full circle.
Combing investigative reportage, gender studies and the compelling power of creative non-fiction, this is a book that will engage the readers from the very first page.
In 1995, on an impulse, Indrani began her column ‘The Third Eye’. From parenting to the Paranormal, what women want to the mystery of the abandoned shoes, she has her quirky, contemplative and at times downright brazen take on everything under the sun. She compiled a selection from this vast body of wars in book form title ‘Just Between Us’. Eminent author and Padma Shri Arup Kr Datta described her as an outstanding writer in the book’s preface.
Through she always feel her work to be its own reward, she was pleasantly surprised to be awarded The Kunjabala Award for Investigative Reporting on Women’s Issues, the Yamin Hazarika Award for Woman of Substance, the NEEDS Excellence Award and the Kalpavriksh Award for ‘Woman who Inspire’. She was also selected to visit Belgium, UK and Germany in an AINEF European Union Gender Project in 2005.
Today Indrani continues to work in the paper which made her what she is. She lives in Guwahati with her husband Ambika who has been always supportive. She is the mother of Shankar Brata Raimedhi and Sidhartha Samrat Raimedhi.
“A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.” – Sidney Sheldon