Meet the Mentor: Shreya Katyayini!

Meet the Mentor is a series of profiles on our stunning mentors at the Media-Makers Fellowship - journalists, creators and media professionals who help train student creators through the fellowship.

“Film sets are big equalizers”, believes Shreya - 250-300 people from all parts of India and

all walks of life bring stories to life together. Shreya is a cinephile; but after 4-5 years of working as an assistant director on Bombay film sets, she felt the “urge to tell her own story”, as she puts it.

Shreya prefers non-fiction over fiction. Interestingly enough, she never set out to be a journalist and still feels uncomfortable calling herself a “journalist”.

“With moving time, we reinvent that profession as per our abilities. Even if I can't write, I still want to tell stories that matter to me. So I'm going to use my camera to tell them”, shared Shreya.

Born and schooled in Patna, she’s drawn to the stories of Bihar and wants the world

to live them. She also sees that as a way of rediscovering her own roots and it brings her a lot of joy.

Shreya wants the world to see her stories the way her eyes do, free of stereotypes. “I try to put them out as they unfold”, mentions Shreya.

As to why the stories of Bihar, she shared

“I do feel a sense of familiarity with the people and how they speak, because Bhojpuri is a beautiful language. There's so much essence that cannot be translated exactly like most other languages.”

Her stories follow the theme of religious harmony, as opposed to the current religious divide. “It just affects me a lot, because that's not how I grew up”, says Shreya, who

grew up in a religiously diverse city.

She found one of her most popular stories in a two-inch column in a local newspaper. For the

unversed, Mari Masjid in Bihar is taken care of by the Hindu residents of the village, who see it as their responsibility to preserve the masjid.

“It is so refreshing to see that it is so ingrained in their culture that they see it as the norm”, Shreya recalls.

Her joy of working in the video medium is that she never knows how a story will turn out until she actually edits it. Shreya’s favorite part about her job is that it requires her to travel to discover stories and also herself in the process. What she doesn’t like, however, is that it gets lonely. There’s a thin line between solitude and loneliness.

After years of pondering about where she comes in, Shreya’s finally realized that her voice comes in when she decides how to piece it all together. Her profession makes her feel that she matters. Her two cents to budding journalists would be to get into this field only if they truly want to share stories with the world.

Written by Parnika Sahu

Parnika wrote this article while working as an Intern at the Media Makers Fellowship.

This article was created for the program zine, The DIY Digest.

This zine was established to showcase the work of students and interns at the Media-Makers Fellowship's April '24 cohort.