It had never happened before - an Indian and a Chinese anchor sitting next to each other - one bound by protocol and state control, and the other bound essentially by the belief that asking questions, any question, was my democratic birth right.
It was a strange coincidence - just an hour after anchoring a show on road safety in our country, I was out on a shoot, chatting with my cameraperson Ashok Mahale, when he nonchalantly told me something really special - something I thought I would share.
The Indian Air Force today briefly landed a Mirage 2000 fighter-bomber on the Yamuna Expressway in Uttar Pradesh to validate the capability of the jet to land on civilian roads in the event of an emergency.
In nearly two decades of covering extreme conflict and natural disasters, I have often asked myself whether it's right to be asking questions to people who have been badly affected - orphans, widows, people who have lost their near and dear ones.
More than 15 years ago, when I reported from the snout of the Siachen glacier for the first time, the Indian Army's Siachen base camp was nothing more than a military outpost in the most unimaginably desolate surrounding.
