In an episode of the TV show Elementary, a surgeon prepares to perform a surgery. After he dons his gloves and mask, with his students watching from the back, he plays some funny music from speakers. The students are pleasantly surprised. The surgeon turns around and tells them that they will need to learn to take performing surgeries easy. That they should not let ‘it’ get to them. What he means is that if a surgeon puts herself under pressure because a life is at stake, she could make more mistakes and further endanger that life.

The protagonist in the Tamil film Doctor stands for a similar idea, and it taught me something about remaining a journalist. Journalism done properly can exact a particular psychological toll. Just the developments pouring in from different parts of the world add to the ordinary unhappiness of the human condition. Investigative journalism, news analyses, and perceptive and knowledgeable commentary can exacerbate adverse thoughts, and make one feel helpless and one’s work seem too small, even negligible, in the face of the world’s profound challenges.