Kamakshi Ayyar is a journalist based in Mumbai, India, and a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. This essay was published in 2013 on Project Wordsworth (www.projectwordsworth.com), an experimental site created by Ayyar and a large group of her fellow Columbia graduate students. Project Wordsworth is designed to assess what the value of a good story is by inviting the reader to pay what the story is worth to them, with all proceeds going to the authors.
Reading the Genre