Dear Readers,

Welcome to the February edition of Eyra!

We are well into the New Year. I hope that it started great for all of you and that you have already started your journey of achieving this year’s goals.

Our new year’s resolution at Eyra was to make a difference in women’s lives by inspiring them, nurturing them and helping them achieve their dreams.

We started this magazine to make women understand their worth enough to love, respect and most importantly, protect themselves.

Feminism comes not by extending privileges, but by essentially treating women as equals, as capable human beings, as people with dignity. All this, without putting pressure on them to be good at whatever they do and justify the “freedom” they get by staying home or working outside.

How can you do that? Through empathy. Understand what being a woman is, and then it will be easy to treat her fairly, as a human being. This actually applies to both men for women and women for women.

This brings to mind the current Hero, the real life Pad man, Arunachalam Muruganantham. Now he truly exercised empathy, to the extent very few men and woman can reach. Even then it is difficult to understand for him what we women go through in terms of pain and internal discomfort, but it is praiseworthy that someone tried to not only understand the problem but also find appropriate solution for women.

If we have more empathy in the world, we can reach new heights of humanity, instead of going in the other direction.

Speaking of movies, we witnessed an amazing controversy relating to the movie Padmavat. Why was it a cause of concern? Why were people getting so agitated with a movie? There have been debates about Jauhar. In the first place, there should not be any questions of her ‘honour’. What is honour, but a manmade term?

I recently heard a lecture which beautifully highlighted the importance of words. Words help us bring knowledge, traditions and customs through time. But is it always accurate? Probably not, since it depends on the narrator, on what interpretation he has passed on to the future generations. Not everybody has the exact same skill and style to paint a picture through words.

Coming back to Padmavat, in the first place there should not be such atrocities on women. There should not be any risk of her being forced against her wishes. And if in case, god forbid, such a situation arises, she should be well equipped to fight for herself. Not end her life and be glorified for it. And I personally believe that princesses were given training in warfare. Then should they not be able to use it in time of need?

In this issue, you will read a lot many articles, among others, the story of a woman’s struggle highlighting her thought process for dealing with the situation. Also, how fictional characters can have as much of an impact in our lives as the real ones out there. The current trend is of short films and we bring you an analysis of four such short films, from which we can learn a lot. Isn’t it amazing how these 10 minute stories can draw characters as well as the original 3 hour reel that we are used to?

Now that’s the power of words.

Do let us know your views, thoughts, opinions at eyramagazine@gmail.com.

And help us celebrate ‘You’ in full glory!

Enjoy reading!

Jyoti Shekar

Founder Editor, Eyra