BAVI­TA GOPAULCHAN

At nine years old, Bavi­ta Gopaulchan knew she was go­ing to be a jour­nal­ist. Af­ter a deeply trau­mat­ic oc­cur­rence for her fam­i­ly, where the or­deal cov­ered was mis­rep­re­sent­ed by the me­dia, she un­der­stood the pow­er har­nessed by every jour­nal­ist to ei­ther bring aware­ness to vic­tims’ sto­ries or to make peo­ple vic­tims them­selves of neg­a­tive press. From that ten­der age, Gopaulchan made her­self a promise, to hold that jour­nal­is­tic pow­er dear to her heart and ex­e­cute her dream job with ut­most in­tegri­ty. Her dreams are re­alised, she now serves as a se­nior pro­duc­er at CNC3 and is al­so the mid­day news an­chor.

Born as the last child of three in a hum­ble com­mu­ni­ty in Long­denville, Ch­agua­nas, Gopaulchan at­tend­ed faith-based pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools and cred­its these school cul­tures for help­ing form her char­ac­ter, ground­ed in spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and mould­ed by key val­ues. While go­ing to UWI to pur­sue an­oth­er of her pas­sions–Lin­guis­tics–she kept the dream of work­ing in the me­dia alive. Things be­gan to align one day while she was in the tem­ple, and she got a call from a ra­dio sta­tion invit­ing her to come in to dis­cuss a po­si­tion in broad­cast­ing.

“I re­mem­ber the icon­ic an­chors of my child­hood, like Roger Sant and Shelly Dass,” Gopaulchan re­calls, “I used to take per­fume bot­tles and pre­tend I was an­chor­ing like them.” Af­ter land­ing the ini­tial role on the ra­dio, she was told that she had “a voice for ra­dio but a face for tele­vi­sion”, prompt­ing her to dive deep­er in­to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing on-screen. Even­tu­al­ly, she joined IETV as an an­chor, soak­ing up the chal­lenges and ex­cite­ment that be­ing a first-time an­chor held. Be­com­ing an an­chor was the first in­stal­ment of ful­fill­ing her two-part dream of work­ing in the me­dia.

The sec­ond el­e­ment of this two-part dream was to work at CNC3. Af­ter spend­ing some time at IETV, she au­di­tioned at CNC3 and was hired. “Some­times it’s un­be­liev­able,” she mus­es, “Here I am at the sta­tion I want­ed to work at my en­tire life.” The process of find­ing the sto­ries is just as ful­fill­ing for Gopaulchan as telling the sto­ries. Re­mem­ber­ing her most pow­er­ful sto­ry was easy for her, as three years ago some­one called the news­room to en­cour­age the sta­tion to in­ter­view a moth­er in To­co, des­per­ate­ly im­pov­er­ished and in need of help.

Be­liev­ing that high­light­ing her sto­ry could gar­ner her the sup­port she need­ed, Gopaulchan round­ed up a cam­era­man and head­ed to To­co, ready to ren­der all the help she could. When they ar­rived, trekking through a mud track to get to the house, the woman’s liv­ing con­di­tions were very dif­fi­cult, and she had no elec­tric­i­ty or wa­ter in a one-bed­room board house with her three chil­dren. The re­al shock for Gopaul, how­ev­er, was when the woman opened the door. There she was, “with the bright­est smile I’ve ever seen, wel­com­ing me and ush­er­ing me in­side”.

Al­though faced with these var­i­ous chal­lenges, the sub­ject of the in­ter­view re­mained end­less­ly cheer­ful and grate­ful for all she had, still feel­ing blessed to have a roof to cov­er her fam­i­ly’s heads and love to sus­tain them. “I’ve nev­er prayed so hard over any sto­ry I’ve cov­ered,” she says, re­mem­ber­ing her own fam­i­ly be­ing mis­rep­re­sent­ed many years be­fore, “I need­ed guid­ance to re­lay that sto­ry ho­n­ourably and au­then­ti­cal­ly.” Do­na­tions poured in as soon as the sto­ry aired, and Gopaulchan still stays in touch with the woman from To­co af­ter all these years.

“I love be­ing an an­chor,” she re­flects, “be­cause every day, peo­ple in­vite me in­to their homes.” The process can be hec­tic, as dur­ing the day she trans­forms from her role as pro­duc­er to an­chor and then back again. But for Gopaulchan, the hec­tic sched­ule feels worth­while when peo­ple ap­proach her in pub­lic say­ing, “I have lunch with you!”

She feels ho­n­oured to con­nect so close­ly with the sta­tion’s view­ers and to gar­ner pub­lic trust in her pre­sen­ta­tion of the news. Gopaulchan, how­ev­er, has a deep dark se­cret. “I’m painful­ly shy and re­served,” and her rel­a­tives and close friends are al­ways shocked that she went from be­ing too timid to walk in­to rooms with 20 peo­ple, to ef­fec­tive­ly speak­ing in front of thou­sands every day. Her nat­ur­al state as an in­tro­vert is in di­rect op­po­si­tion to her ca­reer, but she re­mains charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty she ac­cept­ed as a nine year old to brave­ly speak out for peo­ple who do not have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak for them­selves.

As a se­nior pro­duc­er and an­chor at CNC3, Bavi­ta Gopaulchan is the guardian of the news­cast and does not take her role light­ly. She keeps her ear firm­ly pressed to the ground to en­sure she is abreast of the is­sues rel­e­vant to the pub­lic. “I lis­ten, I ob­serve, and I learn,” she says, “I use my plat­form to bridge gaps and for­mu­late di­gestible sto­ries that peo­ple want to hear.” What’s next for Gopaulchan? Af­ter ful­fill­ing her bi­par­tite dream of be­ing an an­chor, and a me­dia woman at CNC3, she is bask­ing in her re­al­i­sa­tion of the dream. She wants to con­tin­ue to learn the fun­da­men­tals from the stal­warts in the me­dia in­dus­try while al­so stay­ing in tune with new trends that she learns from the younger peo­ple in the in­dus­try. Chan­nelling her knowl­edge in­to ex­cel­lent me­dia prod­ucts, she hopes to con­tin­ue to be a dri­ving force at CNC3, mak­ing the sta­tion even bet­ter, year af­ter year.