To celebrate the achievement of the 170 children gaining admission to university, Asha held two functions: a sort of pre-cursor function at the Australian High Commission and the main function for hundreds of people, including the Home Minister. A week before the functions were to be held, a teacher from England arrived, called Sam. As it turns out, he was to become my replacement at Mayapuri, although we didn’t know that at the time. With Sam fresh off the plane from England, and me in my grubby salwar kameez after spending all day in an industrial zone, it was announced by Asha that Sam and I would form the media relations team for Asha. We were to start inviting all the journalists in Delhi to the main function on 15th November.
This was a whole new learning experience for me. Having previously worked for the Department of Defence in Australia, I had spent years assiduously avoiding media attention and treating all journalists with suspicion. The nicest thing I would have said about journalists was that they were all drunks and liars so they probably couldn’t help the rubbish that they were writing. Asha in its wisdom thought I would be good at currying their favour.
So for a week, I spent each morning teaching in Mayapuri, then took an auto-rickshaw back to the office, arriving at about 2pm or so. Sam spent all morning on the phone and the internet, trying to set up meetings with journalists, who were always completely non-committal about their availability. At about 3pm, Sam and I would pile into a car with Jibin (who knew where all the journalists were to be found) and Bimal (our driver), then we would spend the next 5 or 6 hours going from office to office, spinning our yarn. Sam did most of the talking in English, whilst I stood around holding press releases and folders, trying to look intelligent (or potentially violent if they didn’t look like they were listening to Sam). Jibin did all the talking in Hindi to get us past all the security guards, while Bimal drove round and round waiting for us to finish. There is never anywhere to park in Delhi.
We had been instructed to be ‘politely pushy’ and not take ‘no’ for an answer. We were not to leave the media offices until we spoke to someone who looked like they cared, and took our press release from us with a commitment to attend the function. By a combination of this approach, plus good humour, downright sneakiness (Jibin often knew where the back doors were) and a bit of luck, we were able to tell our story to about 60 newspapers, TV stations and agencies.
The one glaring exception was the BBC, which has an office in Delhi. Despite all our best efforts, we never got past the guards at the front desk. This is particularly funny because Sam’s father actually works for the BBC and had given him contact names and phone numbers. All to no avail. In India, things usually get done thought knowing someone, but apparently that doesn’t apply at the BBC.
The event at the Australian High Commission went off really well, with several of the new university students telling their stories. The Australian High Commissioner, Peter Varghese, pledged 1,000,000 rupees towards Asha's Higher Education Program. He also presented Asha with a cheque for 200,000 rupees. This money had been collected personally by the Australian athletes during the Commonwealth Games, and was a series of private donations. It was tremendously generous of them, especially given how poorly-paid most Aussie athletes are, but the money has gone to an incredibly good cause. It made me proud to be Australian – this was better than all those gold medals. Thank you Australian Commonwealth Games team and thank you Australian High Commission. :-)
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