That was the time NDTV was just about starting and Barkha took up a job with the channel. "There was no looking back after that," she says. She was a 1997 winner of the Inlaks Scholarship, which sends six Indians abroad annually for graduate work. Barkha took two years off from work and got a master's in journalism from University of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, New York.
Meeting Barkha, one thinks she is indeed her mother’s daughter. Her mother’s story of war reporting begins years before Barkha was born. At the time of the Indo-Pak war in 1965, Prabha Behl, a bright young reporter with the Hindustan Times, sought permission to cover the war for her newspaper. Those were the subdued sixties and women were still struggling hard to make a place for themselves in a man’s world. The editor said a firm "No" to Prabha. "We don’t send women reporters to the war front." But Prabha was a competent reporter and she found a way out for herself. She took leave from office and went to stay with her grandparents in Amritsar. Recounting this, Barkha says: "There, she made contacts and went to the