On Conditions of work at PAWS magazine

Moving to Hyderabad has been largely good for me. Recently I shifted to Waterfront Apartments in Raidurgam from NISA as my mother was transferred to Chennai and I wanted to live closer to the PAWS office. I joined the organization on the 22nd of July, 2020. The magazine had shut down briefly due to the Covid induced lockdown. Here, my brief seems to be to find people to interview. If you were to leaf through the magazine you would find that we feature designers, artists, actors, chefs and businessman, real-estate agents, as well as spas and stuff.

Initially I would trawl Linkedin and write to people, occasionally I get a pointer as to what kind of profile I could look for, this last one I got was a dancer for example. These people are primarily from Hyderabad, Telangana and A.P so this does delimit the readership to an extent but as far as I know our magazine is distributed in three cities in the vicinity so I guess this does not make a significant difference in the sales of the hardcopy. Oh, and I get paid 25,000 rupees which is a significant increase from my earlier pay at the Statesman! My hours here are from 10:30 am to 6:30 pm. It is close to KBR park so I plan to go for a jog around its perimeter today evening.

It is interesting to learn what people do for a living. I occasionally get to communicate with people who may be setting up communities amidst forest farms for example, founders of startups, and innovators of new technologies such as Hydroponics. I guess it just may be a step ahead of the daily news but minus the impact value.

I secretly review books here too. I even managed to place on in the PAWS website - 'I Too Had A Dream' by Varghese Kurien. It is his memoir. He set-up Amul based on a cooperative farming plan which was so succesful that the government invited him to replicate it in other states. The full review is on the PAWS site in the creative section under book review - do check it out.

My bosses here are Sarvani Ponnam and Dinesh Akula. She is an ex-engineer and he is a journalist. I think he and my mother met at one of the Chevening Fellowship's get-togethers. The are largely agreeable people, though can be picky about who to feature in their magazine.