Dear readers,

Welcome to the July edition of Eyra with a brand new look!

Six issues, overwhelming feedback, gratifying experience, humbling comments and a very clear focus from our end made us revisit the drawing board and look back as well as look ahead.

Eyra was a thought, a dream, an idea that once shaped, took its time to get seeded, worked on and spring out its first leaf. As has been proven time and again, a passionate heart and hard working mind can always do wonders. And that is what happened with us. While we sat ruminating on how much we have evolved we looked back at how our blend of stories profiled a diverse set of women – Sai Kavitha, Manasi Mahadik, Ruma Chakravarty, Vasanthi Hariprakash, Raji Borthakur, Jasdeep Kaur – each of them a go-getter in their sphere, we were only motivated to do more. A special Women’s Day issue profiling some inspiring women and a heartening Young Voices section showcasing the heart-wrenching thoughts of the youth of our country only propelled us to bring out these voices with more élan.

Any initiative must constantly look at reinventing itself to do better, to do more.

So, as an organic progression, we embarked on the journey to redesign our magazine to give you – the readers – a better, improvised and holistic experience. We now have an improvised look and additional functionalities to enable you to subscribe easily, search effortlessly and enjoy the content with a stronger visual look.

Additionally, we have also opened up our doors for other writers. We have started accepting submissions.

And we begin right away.

This issue has two articles written by seasoned strong voices who pen in their views on some key women issues. While Rashmi Trivedi pens a strong poem on how women should be treated as ordinary women and not as goddesses, which just increases expectations and forces a so-called ‘moral and ethical’ code on us, we also have an interesting, though disturbing, article from Victor Chakraborty on the correlation between sports season and its impact on women.

In the Beautiful You section, this time around, we present to you a short step by step instructions on eye makeup. Eyes, as they say, are the core pillar of our face and a well done eye makeup can significantly enhance a face.

We also bring to you a passionate classical singer – Balakrishnan Raghavan – who composes and sets to music the verses written by some liberal women poets a few centuries ago. It is so heartening to see that the words of stalwarts like Andal, Muddupalani, Akka Mahadevi, Sule Sankavva are inspiring this man to bring their voices out for the world to hear.

Last few days saw some new mothers – Serena Williams, Jacinda Arden – take on the world boldly and not let go of their professional commitments. Inspired, we have an article on how working after motherhood is a clearly personal choice but should be a well thought out decision.

Read on to know more…

And, as always, do send us your feedback/views/thoughts and opinions. We love to hear from you.

Happy Reading!

Swapna Narayanan

Chief Editor, Eyra