Shobha Warrier: The little master of Indian journalism

Do what you love doing with integrity and diligence. Choose to stay ordinary. And be willing to go unnoticed. Your sincerity will then lead you onward.

By the happynesswalas™, Vaani and AVIS

22-minute read
Synopsis
Good, qualitative and fact-based journalism is scarce these days. This is why we believe that Shobha Warrier is an important journalist. The hallmark of her illustrious 43-year career is how she has been practicing her craft: Ethically, sincerely, staying steadfastly rooted to honest and factual reportage – no matter who she is writing about or what she is writing about.
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Shobha may also well be India’s first woman journalist to write for an online portal. Her story reminds us that a stellar career does not happen to anyone by chance. You build it step by step. You build it by learning from your mistakes. You build it by continuously doing what you love doing while being uncompromising on your values.

All pictures used in this blog post are courtesy of Shobha Warrier.

​Style guide: Vaani and AVIS spell Life with a capital ‘L’ and Happiness with a capital ‘H’. This is because both of them believe that Life is the greatest teacher and Happiness is the biggest wealth. However, when quoting the subjects of their writings, they use these two words without the accentuated capitalization of their first letters.

Shobha Warrier in 2022.

Journalism’s core purpose is to bring the truth to people. A good journalist stays true to this purpose. And Shobha Warrier is a very good journalist. Read on to get to know her journey. 

It was Christmas Eve, sometime in the 1970s.

A cake arrived in the Warrier family’s home in Thiruvananthapuram. It was delivered in Shobha’s father’s name. And he, Dwarakanath, was away at work. He was, at that time, the superintending engineer heading the purchase department at Kerala’s state-run electricity board. Shobha’s mother, Santha, told her and her siblings that a decision on the cake would be taken after their father returned from work.

Dwarakanath came home in some time. When he realized that the cake had been sent by a vendor of the electricity board, he decided to return it. His reasoning was simple: It would be unethical for him as the head of the purchase department to accept a gift from a vendor. Even if the gift was just a Christmas cake.

Shobha recalls now that she and her siblings were mildly upset when the cake was sent back. But Papa Warrier cheered them up soon. He went out and bought a cake so that the family could celebrate Christmas together.

Importantly, Dwarakanath’s  decision to return the apparently inconsequential gift that evening ended up playing a big part in shaping Shobha’s Life.

Almost half a century later, it is Shobha’s integrity that shines through in all that she has done and continues to do. The hallmark of her illustrious decades-long career as a journalist is how she has been practicing her craft: Ethically, sincerely, staying steadfastly rooted to honest and factual reportage – no matter who she is writing about or what she is writing about.

“When I look back and ask myself where my sense of ethics comes from, I believe that this value was seeded in me that evening, when that Christmas cake was returned. I have grown up seeing my father being unflinchingly honest in all his professional and personal dealings. I seem to have subconsciously followed his example,” says Shobha.

Good, qualitative, ethical and fact-based journalism is scarce these days. This is why we believe that Shobha Warrier is an important journalist. This is also why we are telling her story. 

Standing tall
Now, Shobha is a very modest, private person. She is not the type of journalist who screams ‘look at me, look at what I have to say’ from social media handles or television screens. She also has a short stature. However, her achievements are certainly not diminutive. They speak for themselves. And so, even if she may not want to see herself that way, she has the credentials to stand tall – alongside other accomplished and renowned personalities in Indian media today.

These facts about her remarkable career are enough evidence for the point we are making.

She is a veteran journalist; she’s been in the field for 43 years now. 30 of those years have been with Rediff, which began operations in 1996 as a full-fledged internet-based services portal. It offered ecommerce, ticketing, email and news. Shobha joined Rediff’s founding news team in 1995, several months ahead of its launch. This was way before established Indian media houses had woken up to the power of the internet. So even if she is not the foremost, she is certainly among the first crop of online journalists in India. Besides, there’s a very good chance that she may well be India’s first woman journalist to write for an online portal. Importantly, having stayed on there, she is presently Rediff’s senior editorial director.

Over these past three decades she has met thousands of interesting people and chronicled their stories. Some of them are the rich, powerful and famous – celebrities, politicians, artists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, bureaucrats, cops, doctors, scientists, sportspeople, musicians and actors. Some are newsmakers – some are high achievers in their fields and others are controversial figures. And some of the other people that she has met are those who are trying to make sense of their unique lives and experiences; these include transgenders, homosexuals and sex workers.
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She has written five books in English in the last 13 years. These are apart from three of her books in Malayalam that were published in the 1990s. Each of the Malayalam books was a collection of short stories.
She has won two awards: The Lalithambika Antharjanam Award in 1996 for her Malayalam work Jalavidya; and the Villgro Journalist Of The Year Award in 2011 for the stories on social entrepreneurs that she wrote for Rediff. 

A very good journalist
Our world has changed a lot since Shobha joined Rediff. The news media space too has seen huge upheavals. Fake news, biased reporting and editorial content that is paid for have made journalism a sham.

But despite all that’s been happening around her, Shobha has chosen to be true to herself and to her role as a journalist.

For instance, she refused a lucrative opportunity to write the biography of a famous Indian entrepreneur some years back. The reason was simple: The entrepreneur and his team were keen that she write the book ‘within the framework’ that they had ‘devised’. She told them bluntly that she did not appreciate being instructed on how to tell a story. “It wasn’t a hard decision to make. That’s not how I like to work,” informs Shobha.

We quite know how Shobha works – we have been interviewed twice by her for Rediff. She is methodical, gentle, curious – and totally nonjudgmental.

The first time we spoke to her was in July 1999 for this story. We were running imagequity+®, Asia’s first reputation management firm, back then. imagequity+® went bankrupt in end-2007 (read more about our journey here). In August 2019, 20 years after she had first interviewed us, Shobha spoke to us again. Café Coffee Day’s V.G. Siddhartha had died by suicide in July that year – unable to deal with the stresses of managing of his debt-laden business. So Shobha wanted to know how we both had learned to cope with our own enduring bankruptcy: How we had learned to be happy despite our challenging circumstances, how we had transformed from being ‘failed entrepreneurs’ to being the happynesswalas™ that we are today. Read her second story on us here.

Even as we spoke to her the second time and shared our learnings we noticed that Shobha’s unbiased sense of inquiry remained intact.

The first time she was talking to promising entrepreneurs who had launched a breakthrough concept – TrM® (Total Reputation Management) in corporate India. The second time she was talking to the same entrepreneurs who had, in a worldly sense, failed and were facing a grim Life situation – calmly, strongly.
Yet, she brought no judgment or opinion of her own into either conversation with us. Therefore both stories turned out pretty well. They were objective, the way good interviews lead to good stories. This is what good reportage is all about.

You see, writing will most likely be critiqued. That is, there can be varying opinions on how a story is written or told. But reporting must be beyond being questioned. It must be honest, factual and precise.

Over the years, Shobha has grown to practicing good reporting as an art form. This is how she explains her approach to telling stories: “I have my own opinions and ideology. But I don’t let these get in the way of my storytelling. I just ask questions that I am keen to ask. These are questions that I believe our readers will be keen to ask too. I don’t sit in judgment of whether the answers to those questions are right or wrong. That’s not my job as a journalist. I let the readers draw their own conclusions.”

Specifically, Shobha’s storytelling, her reporting, follows the classic copybook style: One, every story she does is factual. Two, for her, the story comes first – always, followed by the subject. She doesn’t quite count herself in – no, never. Three, she prepares well before each interview, spending quality time researching about the subject. Four, it doesn’t matter to her whether her subject is famous or unknown. Her focus is only on asking the subject the right questions. Five, she asks all those questions without bringing herself into the picture. And, similarly, she writes her story without lacing it with her opinions or judgment.

Truth be told, only a few journalists follow the copybook style these days. Shobha is not just one of them, she is a master of that style too. Which is why we call her the little master of Indian journalism.

Yes, you can say we borrowed that phrase from cricket. From how fans around the world hail Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar, as the little masters of cricket’s copybook style.

Having worked with the news media ourselves, from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, we both have been trained in journalism’s copybook style too. In fact, every self-respecting and well-meaning journalist in the world has been groomed only on this style’s timeless principles. So what makes Shobha special then?  Well, she is special because she continues to practice this style. Not because she is a veteran journalist. But because, like us and several others, she believes that this is the only way journalism must be done.
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Journalism’s core purpose is to bring the truth to people. A good journalist stays true to this purpose. And Shobha is a very good journalist. 

Writer first
Interestingly though, Shobha never really set out to be a journalist. It was writing short stories in Malayalam that came naturally to her. She says that she has been writing them ‘forever’, from when she was a child.

Born in Chengannur, near Alappuzha, Shobha grew up in different parts of Kerala. This is because her father’s job with the state’s electricity board required the family to move to a new town with him every few years. Each new place gave her an opportunity to experience Life with wonder and amazement – just the way children are known to relate to the world around them. These experiences soon found expression in her short stories.

She was only seven when her first short story was published. This was in the late 1960s. Her granduncle had chanced upon the story and arranged for it to be published in Swarajya, a well-known monthly magazine of that time.

Doesn’t she qualify to be called a child prodigy then –  quite like the legendary Kamal Haasan who acted in his first film when he was barely five?  Predictably, Shobha doesn’t answer that question. She prefers to smile and quietly look away.  
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She goes on to tell us that she had written scores of Malayalam short stories by the time she was 14. One of them, on love, on a beloved pining for her lover, was published in the Manorama Weekly, a leading Malayalam magazine from the Malayala Manorama Group. Shobha laughs while recalling that memory: “I don’t think I really knew what love is at that time. But I still wrote on love. That’s how much you can say I love writing.” She then adds: “Writing is a part of me. I have been writing forever. Nobody encouraged me. I hadn’t seen anyone in my family or anyone around me writing. I wrote because I enjoyed imagining stories and sharing them.” 

A friend, guide and mentor arrives
Around when she was finishing high school, she had to make a choice on what she wanted to do next. She informs us that she had this ‘burning desire’ to be a doctor. The inspiration appears to have come from her mother’s unfulfilled ambition: Santha originally wanted to be a doctor; but she couldn’t study to be one because her parents got her married instead. “I may have got that urge to serve society, to heal people, from my mother, from thinking of her unrealized dream,” says Shobha.

But she too ended up not going to medical school. Because she couldn’t get the qualifying grades. So she chose to study zoology at the Government College for Women in Thiruvananthapuram.

While at college, Shobha continued to write short stories. Significantly, she was also thinking of ‘not marrying at all’. Her parents appeared to be fine with this choice of hers. They were happy to see her want to be independent. But even as she had a few months of her final year at college left, a marriage proposal arrived for her. Her father gently asked her to consider it. But he did not force her.

The proposal was from the family of a young man named Soman Wariyar. He was a national science topper who was working at a leading bank. Shobha and Soman felt an instant connection at their first meeting. So she spontaneously agreed to marry him.

Their wedding happened two days after the last exam of her final year at college. Shobha was just 19. But she believes that she chose right: “Soman was the best thing that happened to me. Over the years, he became my best friend, my guide, my mentor, my everything. His support for whatever I have done all my Life has been the biggest reason why I have been able to do so much.”
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As the young couple began a beautiful journey of companionship, Soman’s job took them to new cities across India. Again, each city and its people led Shobha to write more short stories. So more of her work began getting published in newspapers and magazines. 

Accidental journalist
In 1982, the bank that Soman worked for offered him a posting at its branch in  Thiruvananthapuram. Shobha was excited to come back to the city that she knew so well. She quickly went about meeting old friends and making some new connections.

One day she received a phone call from N.R.S. Babu, the editor of Kalakaumudi, a leading political and literary magazine in Kerala. Babu had already published several of Shobha’s short stories. He said that he was keen to meet her; he invited her to his office.

When they met, Babu strongly urged Shobha to consider becoming a journalist. Shobha was surprised. She had never thought of being a journalist. She was also unsure about what the job entailed. But she quickly agreed to give the opportunity a shot.

Babu immediately commissioned her to write a piece on the reading habits of young people. He wanted her story to explore if TV was drawing people away from books. It must be emphasized here that this was in the early 1980s. TV was then the ‘new’ medium that was taking over the homes and lives of people across India – and Thiruvananthapuram was no exception.

In a few days, Shobha went back to Babu’s office and gave him the handwritten manuscript of her article. (Remember: There were no computers at that time. People either wrote their letters and reports by hand or typed them using typewriters.) Taking one quick look at her story Babu rejected it summarily. He felt that the story was a compilation of ‘slogans on placards that declared what each person quoted in the article was reading’. He told Shobha to rewrite the whole piece: “Tell it like the way you would tell a short story. You are a good writer. Go back and rework it.”

Shobha still remembers how hurt she felt. It seemed to her that Babu was being ‘brutal’ by dismissing her entire effort. But she took it up as a challenge to improve herself. She handwrote a fresh draft of the article. Then she rewrote, by hand again, a final draft, making a few, minor changes.

When she went to meet Babu with her rewritten story, she was both confident and apprehensive. What would he say this time? As Babu read it in front of her she watched his expressions change: From detachment to engagement to contentment. Looking up from the manuscript, Babu beamed a smile. He said that he had decided to run the story on the cover of the next edition of Kalakaumudi. 

“My first story as a journalist appeared on the cover of one of Kerala’s top publications. It was big moment for me to see the printed copies of the magazine on display at all the newspaper stalls. I was surely an accidental journalist. But I instantly began loving being one,” says Shobha excitedly. Her voice, even after all these years, sounds as if she is recalling something that happened just yesterday.

She then adds: “I will never forget that I am a journalist today only because Babu Sir pushed me to become one. He could have simply given up on me when my first draft did not match his expectations. But in plainly asking me to rewrite the whole article, he hurt my pride. That made me want to do better. That push is what has kept me going till today.”

It is indeed commendable that Shobha looks at her Life this way.
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In our view, the story of her first effort as a journalist comes packed with important learnings: A good guru will always recognize a disciple’s potential, even if the disciple does not know it themselves. A good guru will also push a disciple hard – forcing them endlessly to try their hardest. When the guru’s vision for the disciple and the disciple’s understanding of themselves are in sync, infinite possibilities for creative growth emerge.
In the case of Babu and Shobha it started with a powerful cover story on her debut. A few thousand stories and over four decades years later, Shobha is still going strong, waiting to tell so many more stories. 

The nonstop learner
One important factor that contributes to a person’s growth and long continuance in any field is their willingness to accept their mistakes and learn from them.

Interestingly, for Shobha, her third story as a journalist taught her this priceless Life lesson.

It happened like this.

She was writing a story on the inmates of a home for destitute people in Thiruvananthapuram. One of the persons she spoke to was  a man who was on a wheelchair. He was differently abled: He was just about two feet tall. He couldn’t walk or talk. He wore thick glasses as his eyesight was very poor. He needed to be carried by another person whenever he was not in his wheelchair. Also, the wheelchair had to be wheeled around by someone else; he couldn’t do it himself. He communicated only by writing – illegibly – on paper.

During the course of her interview, Shobha asked this man this question: “Did you ever ask God, ‘Why was I born like this?’”

As soon as she had spoken those words, Shobha realized that she had blundered. She immediately tried to make amends: She said sorry multiple times. And she sought his forgiveness. But she intuitively knew that whatever she said was going to be inadequate.

The man looked back at her silently for a long time. He wore an amused look on his face. Then, even as he smiled, he wrote: “You silly girl, you are being conscientious. You will never be a great journalist if you remain thus.”

Shobha remembers making two important resolutions at that very moment. First, she resolved that she must never judge anyone. And, most certainly, she must never let her opinion reflect in how she interviewed someone or how she presented her story. Second, she resolved that she must strive hard to prove the man’s cynicism wrong. She realized that this was going to be possible only if she stayed conscientious – only if she stayed with the facts, with the truth; only if she remained uncompromising on her integrity as a journalist.

Now, not many people with several decades of experience and expertise will be willing to talk openly about how they failed miserably at something that they did. When someone does that, what they are actually telling you is that a stellar career does not happen to anyone by chance. You build it step by step. You build it by learning from stumbling, falling and picking yourself up – again and again and again. You build it by learning to continuously keep moving forward.
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To us, Shobha’s integrity is not just about how she approaches her craft. It is also about her willingness to be a nonstop learner. 

Malayalam literature’s loss, English journalism’s gain
Shobha’s career as an independent journalist blossomed all through the 1980s and the early 1990s. She was now writing for some popular English publications too. These included Savvy, Eve’s Weekly and The Sunday Observer.

During this time, three books by her were published in Malayalam: Ramakundam, Meghana and Jalavidya. All of them were collections of short stories. Some of  her short stories were translated into Telugu and Kannada as well. But, somehow, a sense of discontentment kept growing in Shobha. She felt that the process of having her short stories published was getting to be very tedious. It required convincing editors of Malayalam publications every single time – of her talent, of the worth of each of her writings. She also began to notice that editors were branding her work as pennezhuthu, as writing by a woman.   Now, a man’s writing was never called aanezhuthu. So Shobha found this unnecessary bias irritating. She says it angered her. Therefore she decided to move away from that world.

Meanwhile, two unrelated events occurred that ended up changing  the course of Shobha’s career forever.

The first event was triggered when the commissioning editor of a Mumbai-based publication asked her to do a story on a family that had lost their child in a tragedy. Shobha was asked to focus on how the family was ‘struggling with their grief – what they were going through, what they were feeling’. Shobha refused to do the story. She remembers telling the editor this: “I am not willing to sensationalize a family’s grief in the name of writing human interest stories.” She actually went a step further and decided not to ever write for the publication again.

This is when the second event happened: A career-defining opportunity from Rediff came calling in November 1995.

Shobha was writing stories for The Sunday Observer around then. So she was regularly in touch with Nikhil Lakshman, the chief editor of that newspaper. Nikhil reached out to her saying that he was joining Rediff’s founding team. Rediff was being set up by the legendary adman Ajit Balakrishnan. Would she be interested in joining the news team at Rediff, Nikhil asked in a handwritten letter to her. The letter arrived the way mail came in those days – it was delivered by the postal department.

Shobha had enjoyed working with Nikhil. She didn’t have to think much. She immediately accepted the offer to join Rediff.

“Nikhil’s letter was special in many ways. It was handwritten. And it spoke of this team setting out to do something totally unheard of at that time. They were launching an internet-based business offering a bunch of services, including news. I still have that letter with me. It is precious. Imagine a handwritten letter announcing the setting up of India’s foremost internet business service,” exclaims Shobha, her eyes lighting up.

Working with Ajit and Nikhil, Shobha evolved as a newsperson. She regards Ajit as ‘a visionary who was always ahead of his time’. She says that while he was in the know of all that happened in the Rediff newsroom, Ajit did not interfere with the portal’s editorial policies and decisions. Nikhil handled all of that as the editor-in-chief. “I am grateful to Nikhil for trusting me as a journalist and for giving me the chance to meet so many interesting people,” says Shobha.

She has written several remarkable stories while at Rediff.

Her first news interview for Rediff was with the legendary poet Kamala Das; it was also the first news interview that Rediff carried when it launched in 1996. (Read the interview here.)

Also, all her five books in English are evidence of the vast body of work she has done for Rediff. Battlefield India: 25 Years Of Politricks And Economix, which was launched in 2022, carries her writings between 1997 (the year marking the 50th anniversary of India’s independence) and 2022. Reviewers have hailed the book as a chronicle of modern India’s politics, ideas, policies, people and events. Among those interviewed by Shobha in this book are former president of India R. Venkataraman, former union minister and the political force behind the Green Revolution in India, C. Subramaniam, the eminent agronomist Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, the sharply critical cartoonist Abu Abraham, the inimitable political commentator Cho Ramaswamy and the eloquent parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor.

Well-known economic and political commentator M.R. Venkatesh, writing for Rediff in 2022, had this to say about the book: “I have been a silent admirer of Shobhaji…despite her legendary ability to extract information in the most pleasing manner, she remains one of the most unheralded personalities of Indian journalism. Luckily she is not a dentist. Otherwise, (as) I often tell her, she would extract your wisdom tooth without administering anaesthesia. This book must be read by all (those) who are keen to have a grasp of contemporary politics, especially journalists and, of course, students of law, politics and economics. It is a pity that Shobhaji is one of the vanishing breed of classical journalists, (those) who conduct themselves in the most dignified manner without imposing their views.”
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Two of her earlier books – DreamChasers and She Means Business – had profiled  South India’s top entrepreneurs, both men and women. Writing about DreamChasers, renowned academic and innovator Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala describes it thus: “It stands out amongst the plethora of books on startups that appear today. It gives entrepreneurship a context and a new meaning.”

Stay ordinary, stay grounded
Interestingly, Shobha confesses that she had no plans to write books in English. As part of her writings for Rediff, she contributed to the reporter’s diary section on the portal. This section allowed Rediff’s journalists to share their personal experiences and learnings from their reporting assignments. Sometime in the early 2010s, Shobha’s close friend and fellow journalist Papri Sri Raman moved to Vitasta Publishing as a commissioning editor. Papri invited Shobha to compile her diary writings as a book. That’s how her first book in English, Diary of a Journalist: The Little Flower Girl and Others, was born.

“Just as I was an accidental journalist, I ended up being an accidental author in English. I am happily accidental, you see,” jokes Shobha.

There is a lot of humility and deep sincerity hiding behind that joke. And for those who seek it, there’s also another learning from her Life available here.

Yes, we say this from having known Shobha closely.

Plus, we have been to the launches of two of her books. On both occasions we found Shobha patiently looking into the minor details. This, even when she could have had someone else handle all the logistics. To us, it almost appeared as if it wasn’t her book being launched but that she was there supporting her publisher with the launch of another author’s book.

Yet, when it was showtime, Shobha went up on stage and shared it with her powerful,  famous and often wealthy guests. She did this with great dignity and no pomp.
 
So this is what anyone can learn from the way Shobha lives her Life: Stay ordinary. Be willing to go unnoticed. It doesn’t matter even if you are a veteran journalist and an accomplished author (or a superstar in any field for that matter). Stay grounded – always.

However, one person was always extremely proud of Shobha. And he never hid his feelings. That person was Soman.
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At the launch of Diary of a Journalist: The Little Flower Girl and Others at the Delhi Book Fair in 2012, Soman won many hearts. He walked around introducing himself to everyone as Shobha Warrier’s husband. He genuinely felt that Shobha deserved her new identity as a published author in English; he was delighted to quietly be by her side even as she received all the attention.

Shobha with Kerala's Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and other dignitaries at the launch of her book 'DreamChasers' in 2017.

Shobha at the launch of her book 'Battlefield India' in 2022. With her are: (from left to right) Asian College of Jounalism's Sashi Kumar, The Hindu Group's N. Ram, Rediff's founder Ajit Balakrishnan and veteran journalist B.R.P. Bhaskar.

Shobha and Soman at Buckingham Palace in London in 2012.

Losing herself to telling stories
Tragically, Soman passed away in February 2014. He had been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer in August 2013. He spent his last days in Thiruvananthapuram, under the care of eminent anaesthesiologist and intensivist-turned-palliative care physician Dr. M.R. Rajagopal.

“Soman was extremely supportive of everything I did. I miss him,” says Shobha.

In March 2019, Shobha spoke to us both for an edition of the happyness conversations™. This is a conversation series where we explore the journeys of people who have chosen to be happy despite their circumstances and challenges. As we listened to Shobha that evening, we understood how she had resiliently coped with the ‘shock and unfairness’ of having to lose Soman. You can watch that conversation here.

More recently, when we spoke to her for this story, she again talked to us about that dark phase in her Life: “I realized I had to face my new reality. I had to move past my grief. So I decided to go back to work by the end of February 2014. I asked Dr. Rajagopal if I could tail him for a day. I wanted to tell the stories of some of his patients – all of them were facing the inevitable. Through writing that report for Rediff, I came to terms with my own Life. Writing that story helped me begin the slow process of healing myself.”  

It certainly takes a lot for anyone to move past their grief, particularly after losing someone very close to them. But then Shobha is a tough lady. She appears to constantly draw from a bottomless reservoir of strength within her.

This inner strength is what has made her remain rooted to ethical standards in today’s morally bankrupt news media environment. This is what makes her say no to debatable opportunities when most others in her position may have surely said yes. This is what made her embrace the internet as a medium long before it had even arrived on the scene in a big way. This is what makes her remain so unassuming – and often invisible too – even when she is constantly interacting with the movers and shakers in society. This is what makes her live alone in Chennai (her son, Siddhu, lives in London with his wife and two daughters) and want to continue to do what she loves doing. Over 40 years since she started off, this inner strength is what keeps her relevant today.

But Shobha, true to her nature, shrugs off all those perspectives about her. Instead  she remarks: “I am a dinosaur in journalism. But I will keep going on. I love meeting people and listening to their stories. I love telling these stories. It makes me happy. It gives me a lot of joy and fulfillment.”

That inner joy is what matters in Life ultimately. It is a person’s true wealth. For anyone seeking that priceless treasure, Shobha’s Life can surely be an inspiration; she can be their lighthouse. 

[Vaani and AVIS are the happynesswalas™. They are expert writers and biographers, accomplished speakers and conversationalists, and culture specialists. To know their fascinating story, click here.

This is not a commissioned story. To commission a profile like this one, click here. To commission a biography, click here. To commission a biography of your parents, click here.]