Ten years ago today, I was a producer with CNBC. I lived in Manhattan and had just finished the overnight shift. I took the network transport back to the city from Ft. Lee, NJ (where CNBC was based at the time, now it is in Secaucus, NJ). I came to my apt., which was on the Upper West Side, and made two pieces of toast and turned on the TV, something I rarely did. I usually just put in my ear plugs and tried to sleep during the day, as I worked nights. I saw everything happening with the twin towers on TV. There was no way for me to get back to work, because the bridges and tunnels had been closed. The first phone call I got was from my cousin, Anjali Bajaj Dooley, who wanted to make sure I was ok. Later that day I had dozens of phone calls and emails from friends and relatives from India, who wanted to make sure I was ok. That night I had no idea how to get back to Ft. Lee. I walked outside my apt. and the streets were bare. As I walked to the subway, I saw someone just stop and shake the hand of a police officer for doing all he could to keep the city safe. I took the subway (subways and bridges were open again) to the George Washington Bridge and walked across the bridge to get to Ft. Lee. Have you ever walked across the George Washington Bridge? As soon as I got to the newsroom I called my parents. Dad was traveling at the time, and mom had his contact information. I finally got in touch with him, and he, too, was in shock with the news. I remember him feeling sad as he appreciated the beauty the twin towers added to the New York skyline.
The next month was filled with emotionally draining 16 hour/day shifts trying to understand the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the aftermath of the demolished World Trade Center. My newscasts were filled with a minimum of four live shots from Ground Zero, The Pentagon, Afghanistan and the State Dept. These were live shots that were available to me with a simple phone call. The resources available at the network for the Sept. 11th coverage made my experience with CNBC the highlight of my television news career.
Another memory: When I was looking for a place to live in New York, I was going to rent an apt. in Battery Park (a neighborhood on the south end of Manhattan). My father came with me to help me find a place to live. We saw many places in the Wall Street area, but finally I settled on something on the Upper West Side. Had I lived in Battery Park, I would have had to evacuate my apt. after Sept. 11 as it would have been nearby to the twin towers.
Today I’m in Bangalore, India listening to the drum beats of the procession for the 10th day immersion of Ganesh Chaturthi. There’s some coverage of the 10 year anniversary in the newspapers and on television. But being on the other side of the world, I feel a greater sense of remembrance from Facebook and of course, U.S. news websites.
Indira S. Somani, Ph.D. is an Independent Documentary Filmmaker. After a 26-year-career as a television newscast producer and broadcast journalism professor, Somani moved to LA and enrolled in the MFA in Directing/Production, Documentary film program at UCLA. Currently in production is a personal documentary about her role as a caregiver for her Mom who battles depression. The film reveals how much Somani and her mother rely on each other for emotional support. Other films Somani has directed and produced include Life on the Ganges (2017), a 10- minute documentary directed, produced and filmed in Varanasi, India, during Dev Diwali, when people from all over India travel there to bathe in the Ganges River. The film screened in film festivals in the U.S., India and Europe and won Best Short Documentary at the Berlin Independent Film Festival, and the Cannes Short Film Festival. Another film Somani directed, produced and wrote was, Crossing Lines (2007), a 30-minute personal essay documentary about her struggle to stay connected to India after the loss of her father and to maintain and preserve her Indian cultural identity. The film won numerous awards, screened in film festivals nationally and internationally, aired on PBS affiliates through NETA from 2008-2011, and has been used by more than 100 universities as a tool to teach intercultural communication in the classroom. Both films are in distribution through New Day films.
Somani’s doctoral research studied the media habits and effects of satellite television on the Indian diaspora, specifically the generation of the Asian Indians in the Washington, DC metro area, who migrated to the U.S. between 1960 and 1972. She expanded her research to study the media habits, acculturation, and social identity of the same generation in the New York-New Jersey area, San Francisco, Houston and Chicago. For the fall of 2011, Somani was awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship to study the Western influence of Indian programming in India.
While teaching at Howard University’s School of Communications from 2012-2021, Somani’s research shifted to study Black Broadcast Journalists and how race had an impact on their success in the newsroom. She has been published in several academic journals and has also co-authored two book chapters.
Somani’s academic career was preceded by 10 years as a television news producer, most notably with CNBC and WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C. Somani has also been a leader of the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), where she has also won several “Outstanding” awards for her coverage of South Asians in North America. Prior to teaching at Howard, Somani taught journalism at Washington and Lee University (Lexington, VA) and American University’s School of Communication (Washington, DC). Somani earned her Master’s in Journalism from the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University in 1993, and her Ph.D. from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park in 2008. Somani is expected to earn her MFA in Directing/Production from UCLA by Dec. of 2022.