KAMALA THIAGARAJAN
WRITER & FREELANCE JOURNALIST
Hi and welcome to my website!
Based in Madurai, South India, I'm a freelance journalist with twenty years of reporting experience. My articles delve into a wide range of issues, exploring science, climate change, environmental policy, health, human rights and culture.
My work has taken me on many an incredible journey through wild desolate caves that Jain monks once made their homes in, to ancient excavation sites in the heart of rural India and to the blinding heat of salt mines that are on the throes of climate change.
I have been published in The New York Times, NPR, The Guardian, British Medical Journal, HAKAI magazine, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg News, South China Morning Post, Atlas Obscura, Reader’s Digest, BBC.com, The Diplomat (Australia), Morning Calm (South Korea), Christian Science Monitor and many others.
In 2023, I was awarded the Pulitzer Center's grant on crisis reporting. My project involved chronicling the lives of India's seaweed diving women, their triumphs, heartaches, and challenges for NPR. You can read about it here.
Look up my work which finds a place in Lonely Planet's anthology "You Only Live Once" (2023) featuring diverse travel experiences and adventures from around the world.
My Covid coverage from India:
In April 2020, I wrote about how an Indian state told Covid positive people that a selfie an hour would keep the police away, and what legal activists had to say about these extreme surveillance measures.
I contributed to global reports for NPR: on how problem solvers tackled pandemic challenges in their neighborhoods and an obituary for Dr Simeon Hercules, a neurosurgeon and one of India’s first frontline warriors against Covid-19, whose peaceful burial was thwarted by deep stigma of the disease.
For the British Medical Journal, I reported on how Covid-19 was exposing the high cost of India’s reliance on private health care, how India is at the center of global vaccine manufacturing, but a lack of transparency has threatened public trust in its own vaccine, and of everything we currently know about Covaxin, India’s own home-grown Covid-19 vaccine.
When India’s rising infections set new pandemic records in April 2021, I reported on the factors that fueled the surge of the more deadly, second wave and of how mothers and babies were being indiscriminately affected during rigid lockdowns. For the New Arab, I wrote on India's Covid tragedy and how it could have been avoided.
In 2021, I reported on how hasty international travel bans were disrupting lives in India, a spate of black fungus infections that keep adding to the country's Covid woes, how people are marking their vaccine milestones in interesting ways (dancing on a frozen lake anyone?) and why that matters, on vaccine inequity that divides the world and hurts us all, and the growing tragedy and risks faced by India's Covid orphaned children.
Since Jan 2021, the Indian government has faced a rather daunting task--the need to vaccinate 1.3 billion people, roughly one-sixth of the world's population. For Medical News Today, I reported on Cowin, the tech portal behind India's vaccination efforts.
In September, 2021, for NPR I wrote about why the Nipah virus could emerge a global concern.
No matter how grim the situation, I believe in the power of bitter coffee and bright sunshine. And for me, the most gripping stories are always the ones that are true to life.
Thank you for reading!