Lalita du Perron talks to Arfa Khanum Sherwani about her JS Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford and her long-standing work with the Indian independent news outlet The Wire (thewire.in).

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Lalita du Perron: Today, I am so excited to welcome to the Podcast, Arfa Khanam Sherwani, who is a renowned journalist in India. She's the senior editor of the Wire, and today we'll be talking about her, her work at the Wire, and her work as a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford. Arfa, welcome to the podcast. How are you?

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Arfa Khanum: Thank you so much. I am very good. I mean, it's beginning to get a little chilly in California. I don't think I was ready for it. I just have a few sweaters, so I'll have to soon go shopping.

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Lalita du Perron: I know people say the weather in the Bay Area is always perfect, but I beg to disagree.

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Lalita du Perron: I think many, many of our listeners know who you are and what you do. But I also don't think everybody does. So why don't we start with a very basic introduction to yourself?

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Lalita du Perron: What would you like people to know about Arfa Khanum Sherwani.

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Arfa Khanum: Hi. So Lalita and Lalita's audience, the people who are listening to this podcast and I learned a new name today. One of my colleagues, she was doing her backstory, and she said, she doesn't say audience. She says community.

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Lalita du Perron: Oh, I love that.

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Arfa Khanum: Community. I love that. I thought, maybe I will also change, since I am a student here, and I will, you know, kind of adopt to a new vocabulary. I don't think ever in my life, in the last 24 years of my journalism, I have kept not just a room, but a whole floor for learning. So I will say hello to your community people who are with us here on this podcast, listening to us.

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Arfa Khanum: I am a political journalist based out of New Delhi. Right now I'm on sabbatical from the Wire where I am a senior editor, and I also lead their multimedia team.

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Arfa Khanum: I come from a small town called Khurja, in Uttar Pradesh. It is in the western part of Uttar Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state or province in India, and it is also the most political.

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Arfa Khanum: My little town is called a pottery town. We have dozens of blue potteries. We have dozens of potteries where we make blue pots, Iranian style blue pots. So I'm also

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Arfa Khanum: kind of pretty proud to belong to that town, although I can't say that my childhood was full of glory, or, you know, kind of joyous memories. I'm mentioning this here on this professional broadcast, because this is where the birth of a political person took place. I was born

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Arfa Khanum: at the age of 12, born as a political person who, you see today, who has a hard political lens to look at everything that I can see around me. I have been a survivor of communal riots. Very early on in my life I saw injustice. I saw inequality. I saw discrimination happening to women.

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Arfa Khanum: To a women and minorities, and women from lower caste groups, too. And I felt like,

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Arfa Khanum: there was no voice.

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Arfa Khanum: There was no voice. People like me had no voice. So I had no voice, and people like me had no voice. I did not read myself in newspapers. I did not watch myself on TV. So there was a certain restlessness in me. And, as I said, at the age of 12, when Babri Masjid, a mosque which stood in Ayodhya for over 500 years. It was brought down.

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Arfa Khanum: And there were communal riots, you know all across India, and my little town, too, also fell victim to that communal violence. There were several hours of me when I was separated from my family, and I had to literally run for my life. I don't like to tell this story,

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Arfa Khanum: you know, often. But here at Stanford, I've also learned one of the things, which is vulnerability and the power vulnerability carries. All my life I've spent wearing this armor of, you know, courage and bravery and toughness. But here I have learned that there is certain power that vulnerability carries. So this was the making of this political person, and later on in my late teens, I realized, this is what I

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Arfa Khanum: wanted to do with my life. Then I wanted to become a journalist.

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Lalita du Perron: How does one become a journalist? You know? I remember I had that same, of course, a very different background, but I had that same desire, because I always loved to write. And the advice I was given when I was like thinking about university and all that as a teenager in the Netherlands was,

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Lalita du Perron: study something, don't study journalism, study something, and then become a journalist of that. And I guess that didn't happen. What was your trajectory? And what was the advice you were given when you decided you wanted to become a journalist?

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Arfa Khanum: Well, you know, you shouldn't be surprised that when I was starting off there were in India especially, and you are a long time India watcher, you know. You know political and media trajectory in India. But for your international community and audience, people who are listening to us, this was the time when I was beginning to think about journalism and what I wanted to do with that restlessness in me. With that

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Arfa Khanum: demand that was coming from me, that what I wanted to do with my life, there were not many news channels. In fact, I'm one of the people from the Golden generation who happened to be one of the first people to go on air in the privatized media sphere.

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Arfa Khanum: It used to be only government controlled earlier. And then, you know, the government allowed for indirect investment into news. And this is how you saw multiple news channels. So it was in the early 2000s that I was fortunate to go on air. I was fortunate to be on TV. I was not so much of a per writing person. I was more of a speaking person, and this started as early at the age of six.

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Arfa Khanum: My father wanted to see me in a larger public role.

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Arfa Khanum: My mother wanted me to become independent financially, socially, be my own master, and she used to say that you can actually, you know, she wanted to see me as a doctor or a teacher. But my father saw a different kind of a future for me. He did not know it's going to be journalism or anything else. He just loved to see me speaking.

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Arfa Khanum: And I started off speaking when I was six, which was in kindergarten. And I used to participate in annual, you know, functions in school. And it happened that even when I was not even 10 years of age, I had zero hesitation in appearing before a large crowd. You know I could speak on any subject, any given subject. So this was in making.

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Arfa Khanum: My difficult circumstances and my father's training, and you know this, this whole thing that I was learning. The person you see right now is the culmination of all of that. So I am... I want to write. Sometimes I write, but mostly I am more of a speaker than writer.

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Lalita du Perron: Understood. And that's a really great childhood story, and I love that your parents had this vision for you, and that you've made it come true. Tell us about the Wire, because I feel for many of us who are, as you call us, India watchers, the Wire plays an enormously important role.

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Lalita du Perron: But tell us what the Wire news outlet is, and what it does, and how that has changed over the years.

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Arfa Khanum: So I'll take your question in two parts.

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Lalita du Perron: Okay.

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Arfa Khanum: What the Wire means for the community in India, for the political space that we are in, the political moment that we are in India, and also what the Wire means to me as a professional, as an individual. So, first of all,

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Arfa Khanum: the Wire in the current, you know, political and social landscape that we are in, and also media landscape that we are in. So the Wire started in 2015. It was started by three people. Three very experienced journalists and editors committed to the cause of democracy, secularism, and free speech. They had been a part

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Arfa Khanum: of the major leading newspapers, and they were leading editors in their own newspapers, and they came together and founded the Wire. Very soon, within just a couple of years of its establishment, it became

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Arfa Khanum: the voice for resistance and trust. When I'm saying this, I'm trying to be truthful as much as I can. I may have a certain bias towards my organization, because, first of all, I'm so proud to be a part of it. But I can say that the Wire perhaps, was

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Arfa Khanum: the voice for several years before they met a few other websites and Youtube channels and individual Youtubers. And they came to the foreground.

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Arfa Khanum: And I think the Wire created an environment

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Arfa Khanum: for, you know, a press freedom, the courage it shows, the determination it showed, and, you know, challenging and confronting, and many a times, winning

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Arfa Khanum: after challenging the most powerful men and women in the world, who were notorious even in their previous life. Before you know, kind of

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Arfa Khanum: taking over their roles at the central level. I'm talking about Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister, Amit Shah. What they did to media, when you know, Narendra Modi used to be the Chief Minister, and you know Amit Shah used to be the Home Minister. They crushed the media even in Gujarat, and they replicated the same thing at a larger national scale.

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Arfa Khanum: But,

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Arfa Khanum: so the Wire for several years actually was the only voice of resistance. And then there were other websites, and the more the merrier.

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Arfa Khanum: Now, it's a nice bouquet of, I would say, independent news websites and individual Youtubers too. And we saw some of the effect of that free voice in the last election, which is 2024 election, when it was not just the message of the ruling party that went to people, but the opposition successfully, even if you know, to a limited

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Arfa Khanum: number of audience and voters. They were successfully able to take their political message to people, and that is perhaps one of the reasons why we saw the election results the way they were so. I'll tell you. The Wire is a platform. And this is anecdotal, which I'm going to tell you, is that there are many people who tell me that they send their stories, investigative

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Arfa Khanum: pieces, or sometimes opinion pieces, and when nobody publishes them, they come to the Wire. And the Wire will be a platform which will publish it.

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Lalita du Perron: I know.

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Arfa Khanum: It is that it has become anchor, some kind of an anchor, which is holding it all together. I feel this is what the Wire means to the country, to our readers and viewers, and the reader and viewer community, and to me.

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Arfa Khanum: You know, the kind of past I just mentioned to you who I am and where I come from, when I came to New Delhi in search of, you know, a life and a livelihood. It gave me more than I could

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Arfa Khanum: asked for, and more than I had asked for, this whole progressive place. I came from a small town which was kind of conflict ridden, and I saw discrimination and inequality. I told you everything about my background, and when I came to New Delhi, it was like this nice, bright sun was shining over the national capital, and there were many people who helped me become who I am today. But at the same time,

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Arfa Khanum: there was a demand from me that I have to take out and carve out some pieces of me which

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Arfa Khanum: did not look good.

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Arfa Khanum: So, for example, in newsrooms, they would like me as a Muslim woman who was a reporter or an anchor, but I was supposed to fit into a box.

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Lalita du Perron: Okay.

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Arfa Khanum: And I was not supposed to flutter my arms, or, you know, speak my mind. They liked me as a decorative piece that they could use for, let's say, calling themselves a liberal kind of a progressive platform. But they didn't like my agency. They didn't like my independence, and there came a point where

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Arfa Khanum: I started to air that, and the environment around me became uncomfortable, after a point, vicious. So much so that I had to actually leave a major news network. The Wire was finally a place in 2017, when I joined the Wire, where I finally felt at home.

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Arfa Khanum: And you know, the diversity that I brought to the table,

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Arfa Khanum: it was tolerated. And many a times it was celebrated.

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Arfa Khanum: So, it is my happy place. It is where you know my craft and my talent and everything that I knew started shining. Because I got independence. I got confidence. There were people who were ready to believe in me.

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Arfa Khanum: And that's why, you know, in just a matter of few years, the Wire and me, we've grown this huge community of viewers who trust, who come to us when they are in doubt. When they have already read a few news websites and watched a few bulletins, they still come to the Wire to kind of verify that.

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Lalita du Perron: Right.

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Arfa Khanum: So I'm really happy that we we've been able to create this place.

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Lalita du Perron: Okay, I have so many questions. Let's see, I want to start with fluttering your arms. Is that a metaphor where you're literally not allowed to move your arms?

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Arfa Khanum: Yeah, actually like, you know, when I'm saying, fluttering my arms, which means denying my independence to me. So while

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Arfa Khanum: accepting me, tolerating me, but making me, turning me into, you know, a sculpture, a statue which just looks good.

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Lalita du Perron: Yeah.

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Arfa Khanum: But I'm not allowed to be free.

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Lalita du Perron: Yeah.

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Arfa Khanum: I'm not allowed to be myself.

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Arfa Khanum: I mean, I understand every organization has certain discipline and guidelines, but I could see very much that other people being allowed to be who they were, because their views were considered mainstream. I came from a different background. I had a different upbringing. I had a different worldview.

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Arfa Khanum: That was not tolerated. And there were incidents which made me feel like an alien in my own workplace, which I was so proud of.

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Arfa Khanum: A very progressive, secular 21st Century newsroom, which sometimes I had to pinch myself to believe whether I belong there or not. So it was all great that they, you know, gave me a job, and they gave me good assignments, too. I was also on air, which is considered, you know,

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Arfa Khanum: kind of quite a privilege. But then, when I started to become a person with, you know, not just an employee doing her job and doing her shift,

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Arfa Khanum: when I started to kind of own up to

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Arfa Khanum: my own kind of political views, or the way I understood the world,

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Arfa Khanum: it was rejected, refused, and I was punished.

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Lalita du Perron: Yeah, yeah, I think everyone who

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Lalita du Perron: is marginalized in some way in mainstream workplaces can relate to this. That there always comes that moment where we are expected to be grateful that we got to where we did. And you said, tolerated as opposed to celebrated. And now you're in a place where you're actually celebrated for who you are. And would that everyone have that experience. When you said flutter your arms, I was thinking about

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Lalita du Perron: where I always go back, I guess, is female singers of Hindustani music, which is what my work has been on, who literally are told in their training, don't move your arms on stage, because that refers back to the wife culture. And that's the last thing that we want to talk about. So that's where the question came from.

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Arfa Khanum: That just added something new to my knowledge. Thank you.

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Lalita du Perron: It's fascinating that you use that metaphor because you used it as a metaphor. But I think for women performers it's literal. Keep your arms alongside your body because you don't want to look like a dancer, because that brings back the wife culture that we are not going to discuss in modern kind of middle class milieus.

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Lalita du Perron: Tell us a little bit about the media landscape of India. I think of India as a place where people still read newspapers.

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Lalita du Perron: I mean, I think for a long time, India was the only place where the readership of newspapers went up as more and more people became able to read, and desiring to read newspapers.

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Lalita du Perron: But now, of course, there's the Internet. I think smartphones have really... lots of people have Whatsapp, which is also kind of its own news channel, I guess. So, can you clarify a little bit how most people, many people, different groups, get their news in India?

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Arfa Khanum: Yeah, interesting question. Actually, I feel there are three things which bring Indians together, and no matter who you are, you know, India has several fault lines: caste, religion, region, language. But there is one thing that brings all of them together is, if you're discussing religion, or you are discussing politics, or you're discussing cricket.

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Arfa Khanum: These three things really is... they are just common amongst all Indians. So, politics being one, India still continues to be a country where some of the newspapers are dying, but others are surviving and thriving, and we continue to add more readers to our readership community. Newspapers are also going more hyper local.

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Arfa Khanum: So that's also one of the ways why newspapers are not just surviving but thriving. But I mean, except the fact that

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Arfa Khanum: the funding model has changed a lot. So newspapers or news channels hugely depend on two things. One is the Government of India. The Government is actually the largest sponsor, news sponsor, in India. And that tells you the whole story. Two, would be, of course, the corporations. And only those corporations are surviving which are

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Arfa Khanum: close to the regime. I mean, we say here in India, it's become a popular kind of a slogan that four people are running this country. Two are politician, and two are businessmen, and the four of them are from Gujarat. So you know, these are four powerful people. Two again, corporations and businessmen, and two politicians. So I think

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Arfa Khanum: the whole model and the structure of news in India is broken. Because

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Arfa Khanum: the journalists are not serving people, because this is not where the money is coming from. They are serving their advertisers. They are serving their sponsors, which is the government of India and the corporations that the government likes. And precisely this is the fact and one of the reasons. Besides ideological allegiance, and besides the whole, you know, this project of radicalization, religious and social, that has also gotten to

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Arfa Khanum: journalists. And this thing has

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Arfa Khanum: far worse effect on Hindi journalism.

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Arfa Khanum: And that's why, you know now, people are even saying that it's no more Hindi journalism. It's Hindu journalism.

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Lalita du Perron: If you

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Arfa Khanum: are actually reporting and writing and speaking for the majority community, there is complete marginalization, political and social. So you know, religious minorities and lower caste groups have been thrown on the margins of Indian democracy, and only a certain privileged section is being served. Whether it's politics, whether it's government schemes or it is news. So now in that scenario, when

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Arfa Khanum: you know, journalists are more and more sounding like

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Arfa Khanum: the government's propaganda machinery, the byproduct of this media takeover by these four people

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Arfa Khanum: is the emergence of the platforms like the Wire.

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Arfa Khanum: And there are few others. This is one of the happy byproducts, that if we were not pressed so much, if there was not so much of censorship and pressures and intimidation,

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Arfa Khanum: perhaps these great men and women who now run these organizations would have never left the legacy media organizations and have never founded these independent, progressive media places. So I would say, majority of people are still watching news on TV, on Youtube. But there is a big section now which is growing every day, which is shifting from TV to Youtube, which is shifting from newspapers to

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Arfa Khanum: websites. And let me also add here that perhaps the same people are also watching news, but they have another way

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Arfa Khanum: of verifying and confirming, and get another point of view from alternate media platforms.

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Lalita du Perron: Yeah, funding model is the word, the phrase you used.

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Lalita du Perron: And I want to ask how that relates to what you call independent media. And I think we all know what independent media means.

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Lalita du Perron: Not mainstream and kind of free thinking, I guess.

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Lalita du Perron: But you still need funding. So how can an independent media outlet remain independent and also survive?

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Arfa Khanum: That's a big question, actually, and also a challenge. I don't think we've been able to solve this question, but somehow

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Arfa Khanum: we are surviving, and we are floating. For now I will count this as a win.

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Arfa Khanum: People like me are not paid even 10-15% of the market value that I carry. My organization is a not for profit organization, and it is not just me. It is not my story. It is also the story of

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Arfa Khanum: several individuals, really driven, passionate individuals, who are committed to the cause of democracy and free speech, who continue to sacrifice their quality of life for the work that they get to do.

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Arfa Khanum: So they sacrifice the money they would have earned otherwise. But they get their professional freedom, and also, perhaps some satisfaction that people like me are able to sleep peacefully at night, thinking that I'm doing what I was supposed to do, or in my case I'm doing what I was born to do.

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Arfa Khanum: So this is how, I mean, I don't know how long it can survive. But different models have worked for different news organizations. For the Wire, donations have worked. We have subscriptions and memberships. And also the Wire is read a lot and also watched a lot on Youtube channel. So we get some of the Youtube revenue. We get revenue from, let's say, Google views

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Arfa Khanum: on a website. And then there are individual donations. And then there are these small men and women who might pay something as little as say, $2 a month.

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Arfa Khanum: And you know, our lowest membership is ₹89, which is, $1 and 5 cents, perhaps.

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Lalita du Perron: Yeah, something like that.

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Arfa Khanum: Yeah, so you can pay as little as that and still be a subscriber, a supporter, a community of the Wire. I would say, for now, we are afloat. We are surviving and I am hopeful there will be a day when we will thrive, too.

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Lalita du Perron: How does the government push back against you?

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Arfa Khanum: In many, many different ways. Starting from online trolling to fighting police cases to even physical intimidation. In case of people like me, I mean,

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Arfa Khanum: my face is my greatest strength. This is a brand that I've built in the last 24 years. But this is right now my greatest vulnerability.

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Lalita du Perron: Yeah.

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Arfa Khanum: I'm a marked person. And I'm someone... my USP, which is Unique Selling Point, is that I still go out. I do not confine myself just to kind of the four walls of studios. I go out and I like to talk to people. I go out whenever there is a chance, and I will cover elections from the ground zero.

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Arfa Khanum: It is becoming increasingly difficult for people like me to go to the ground and stay unharmed.

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Arfa Khanum: And harm could be

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Arfa Khanum: not direct. Let's say threat from police or administration, or, you know, trying to send me to jail. All of that is still kind of a legal process that one can kind of try and figure out. But

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Arfa Khanum: people like me have also been established as enemy of the country, the anti-national people, the anti-Hindu people. Also unpopular religious identity doesn't help.

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Arfa Khanum: Yeah.

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Arfa Khanum: So it's easy for these people to brand me as an anti-Hindu person as opposed to someone, let's say, who came from the majority religion.

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Arfa Khanum: So it's becoming increasingly difficult. First of all, as I said, online trolling, which is vicious, which is filthy, which doesn't let you remain in a healthy mental state. Then there is physical intimidation of, you know, dragging you to courts, dragging you to, you know, police stations, or perhaps jail. And three, which is the most dangerous, is the the physical threat.

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Lalita du Perron: Yeah, I'm not remotely surprised these things are happening to you. But I'm sorry, and I wish it were different, as no doubt you do. Are you worried, sitting here in California, that you can't go back to India?

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Arfa Khanum: Not yet. I think... so fear is not something that's part of my vocabulary or my dictionary. Let me put it another way: it's not a luxury that I can afford.

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Lalita du Perron: Yeah.

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Arfa Khanum: Even if I'm fearful, even if I'm apprehensive,

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Arfa Khanum: even if I'm unsure, I will still do it.

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Lalita du Perron: You said earlier that you've learned in your time at Stanford, and we're going to talk about your time at Stanford next, to be vulnerable. And I was thinking, when you said that, vulnerability comes with enormous privilege. Most of the world cannot afford to be vulnerable, and that seems to be what you're saying. When you're in India, you can't connect with those feelings, because then you cannot do your work. So the privilege that Stanford affords maybe allows for that space.

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Lalita du Perron: I was incredibly happy to find out that you were here on this fellowship, because nobody ever reached out to us. And so absolute credit to the John S. Knight Fellowship selection committee to have seen your value and the importance that you bring to scholars and readers and people in India. I said that wrong;

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Lalita du Perron: the value you bring to everybody engaged in and with India and South Asia, without even fact checking with, you know, the Center for South Asia, and other people. That makes me really happy, actually, that your worth is seen beyond the kind of area studies field of experts on India. Tell us about the Fellowship and what your time at Stanford is like for you, and what you're doing?

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Arfa Khanum: Thank you very much for your kind words. They fill my heart. Well, only the other day I was talking to one of the directors, and I said, do you have even any idea who have you brought here?

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Arfa Khanum: I am a complete outlier. I am somebody who is unemployable in India.

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Lalita du Perron: Right.

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Arfa Khanum: I am someone the major news networks cannot touch me. I'm an untouchable, because the moment they will even think about hiring somebody like me, all their, you know, funding sources will dry up. They cannot afford someone like me. And I was having this moment of self-doubt, and they were like,

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Arfa Khanum: believe us, we've done all the fact checking we could do, and we have brought you intentionally. Your selection is not accidental. It's intentional.

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Lalita du Perron: I love this. Props to them.

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Arfa Khanum: I was so happy to know that. It kind of made me reassured

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Arfa Khanum: of who I am and what I want to do. One of the things that I'm doing here, and you know,

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Arfa Khanum: I told you that I speak a lot. I talk a lot. It takes me efforts to kind of stop myself from speaking. This is how I process things, too. But then here,

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Arfa Khanum: I am doing it differently. I'm listening more and talking less.

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Arfa Khanum: I'm allowing myself this space and time, and giving myself permission, to change myself and the way I operate in fundamental ways. I am operating more from a place where there is confidence, comfort, and trust.

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Arfa Khanum: And

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Arfa Khanum: sometimes I'm surprised when I'm talking to my cohort. We are 13 people. So there are 12 other people than me. And sometimes, the resonance and the reflections that we have together, with each other, sometimes feel like all of these 13 people are just one person.

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Lalita du Perron: Hmm.

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Arfa Khanum: So these are, you know, kind of beautiful days, magical days, other than

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Arfa Khanum: my research question, which was how to survive authoritarian regimes and big tech

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Arfa Khanum: to tell the tale for another day. It may sound like a weight question, but this...

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Lalita du Perron: It's the only question actually, right now. It's literally the only question. So give us the answer already. We're ready. We want to hear it, Arfa.

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Arfa Khanum: So I'm also learning from other people, and other than that I do very many things that I have not done in the last two decades. I'm part of a dance class, and twice a week, I give myself permission to be there. And the dance is called the Liquid Flow.

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Arfa Khanum: So this is like a holistic 360 experience. Well, there I am learning from the experiences of other people who are part of my cohort. Then I am talking to my advisors on my research question, and also couple of things that I learned here is the diverse media space that exists here beyond

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Arfa Khanum: the legacy media. Beyond these kind of

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Arfa Khanum: legendary old news organizations. There are also smaller newsrooms. There are also community run newsrooms. There are not for profit newsrooms. I think this is what is adding a lot to my knowledge. One of the interesting things I also did was to watch the media here cover the presidential elections which

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Arfa Khanum: just concluded a few days ago. I think this is the destiny for journalists. So I just covered, like in June, I wrapped up my coverage of the Lok Sabha elections in India, and here I come within a few weeks, and there is another, perhaps the most important election in the whole world.

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Arfa Khanum: So I think these are one of the interesting things that I'm doing, talking to people and also listening to experts trying to understand the media trends in the United States. And the things that I can pick up from here to take back home.

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Lalita du Perron: Fascinating. Well, I'm hoping that the learning goes both ways, because

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Lalita du Perron: the United States locates itself, as you know, always at the top of these hierarchies, and I think we have mixed, and sometimes not very mixed, feelings about how the United States positions itself. So I'd like to think that the journalists you meet that work in the United States realize how much they can learn from someone like you and the place that you hold in Indian media.

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Arfa Khanum: So I think, yes, that's also part of the thing. And I feel sometimes when I'm sharing myself, it's a completely unfiltered version of me that's here at Stanford.

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Lalita du Perron: Yeah.

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Arfa Khanum: And sometimes it worries me that is this the new person that I'm going to become? And are people going to tolerate me when I go back home?

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Arfa Khanum: Because I am literally saying anything and everything, and finding not just an audience, but also a good reception

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Arfa Khanum: within the cohort that there is. So whenever we are even talking casually about something... all of us are political beings and we start talking about politics and how media functions there. So one of the things I wanted to do and ideas I wanted to test

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Arfa Khanum: when I have come here to Stanford is the top of the top. You might have mixed feelings about that, but then to me, I feel like it's the top of the top. Besides all the imperfections that America has, and America just showed in the last election,

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Arfa Khanum: still, there are many things that work in America. Many systems work in America, while there would be many other which wouldn't. So I came here with an open mind and heart to learn, but also to test my own ideas and to test the things that I think of now experimenting. So one of the things that changes in me is that now it's been 24 years of me existing in the media space. You would think, are you tired? Are you exhausted?

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Arfa Khanum: Where is it leading? You're doing a good thing, but you're doing more of the good things every day. What are the new things? So here one of the things that I am trying to do is to experiment with my ideas and create this new chapter of my life and profession.

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Arfa Khanum: So hopefully I get enough energy, I get enough resources, and I get enough ideas

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Arfa Khanum: to create something which I have never done before.

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Lalita du Perron: I hope that will work out for you, Arfa. Thank you so much for talking to me today and telling us about you, about the Wire, about your work in India, and also your project at Stanford. Where can we find out what the next road will take you to? And how can people follow the Wire if they're not subscribers?

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Arfa Khanum: Well, I think for that you'll have to wait until this holiday is over, which is June next year. So this is, I think, still in incubation.

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Arfa Khanum: I am trying to have also some free time, and not stressing myself over something. This is the first sabbatical of my entire life.

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Lalita du Perron: You should go on hikes, and we can talk about that off air. You should definitely go. My best ideas come when I'm out in the woods. I don't know how great those ideas are, but they're nevertheless my best. But if people want to follow you on social media, where can they find you?

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Arfa Khanum: Well, yes, on social media, I am there on Twitter with my name Arfa Khanum Sherwani. My Twitter handle is Khanumarfa, and they can find me also on Youtube, the Wire's Youtube Channel. If you type the Wire News, instead of just the Wire, it will directly take you to the Wire.

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Lalita du Perron: Correct. Yeah.

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Arfa Khanum: Yeah, also the website, the Wire.in. So these are some of the addresses, some of the places where you can find me.

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Lalita du Perron: We will make sure to add this to the show notes. Thank you so much for everything that you have done since 2017, and everything that you continue to do. I think it's hard for me to say, as a person living in the United States always engaged with India, how important it is to know that you are out there doing the work you do, and I cannot thank you enough.

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Arfa Khanum: Thank you very much for your questions. Really thoughtful, and I enjoyed, thoroughly enjoyed this session.

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Lalita du Perron: As always, I want to thank Soham Shiva for creating the intro and outro to the SASSPod, and Kailathi Singh and Nilofar Saraj for editing.