Dear Readers,

Welcome to the October edition of Eyra!

It has been an eventful month of Navratri, Goddesses and #MeToo! Why do I mention this? Because on the one hand, come Navratri, we start talking about treating all women as goddesses and worshiping them, and on the other hand, we continue to condone human rights violations against them, not even considering them as human beings.

Though the matters relating to #metoo cases are mostly sub-judice, my anguish arises from the public opinion shared on social media every day and people questioning the credibility of women voicing their ‘me too’ moments, albeit a bit delayed. Personally coming from a family full of girls where extra precaution was taken to protect us from unwanted hands, I was trained in voicing out any discomforting moments immediately, right from a very young age. Despite that, I have faced groping and molestation incidents which I could not voice back then! The reason being, that we live in a society which believes in ignoring eve-teasing rather than facing it head-on. We are always taught to look the other way, and not fight. So even after having an encouraging family who taught me to fight, I just could not. In this issue, we bring you a poem by Rashmi Trivedi on what a woman faces and the guts required to come out and share. We also bring you a very enlightening piece by Swapna Narayanan about how important it is to empower our daughter to speak up and educate our sons to respect women. This is one topic we cannot insist enough upon.

In respect of women at workplace, certain industries are considered more difficult than others; Media being one of the most ‘notorious’ ones. We bring you the life experiences of a television actress, Preethi Sanjiv, and how women everywhere face issues and need to hold their own.

We have also featured Rajalakshmi Lakshminarayanan, who talks about multi-tasking and balancing a family with whatever variety of work and fun activities you want to do.

Onto less intense topics, winter is arriving giving us more reason to take care of our skin, especially our hands and feet. Jayanti Krishnan brings you a piece on how to give those hands a young and soft look.

Hope you enjoy this month’s Eyra.

As always, please do get in touch with comments/questions/issues. We love hearing from you.

Happy Winters and Happy Diwali in advance!

Jyoti Shekar

Founder Editor, Eyra