Episode 25: Breathing White Dust, Selling Red Gold: A Chronicle of Sand and the Mining Mafia of Bundelkhand

Shubham Mani Tripathi of Kanpur was an avid user of Facebook. After the Coronavirus lockdown in March, he promptly updated his profile picture with a Tricolour filter, hashtagged #ImStayingHome. Newly wed at the start of 2020, his wife Rashi would comment lavishly on his photos with gifs and emojis.  In November 2019 soon after he joined the Kampu Mail as a reporter, he updated his cover photo to the Kanpur newspaper’s header. Shubham carried his role as a journalist onto his Facebook profile — posting frequently about his sentiments on the army, phone vlogs from the field, advice to fellow journalists, his thoughts on sarcastic comments against the government (don’t do it), alongside birthday wishes to various “bade bhaiya” several