Hello readers,

Welcome to the February issue of Eyra.

What a month we have had! On one hand, while we are all inching back to normalcy leaving the pandemic behind, we lost some great stalwarts of music and are currently witnessing a war!

Wars break human spirit and leave deep scars in the hearts of the most impacted. The heart wrenching picture of a father bidding goodbye to his young daughter in Ukraine, as he sends her to a safe zone is something that will stay in my mind forever. As does the image of the red t-shirt boy afloat a sea as his family tried to escape from Syria. 

Life still goes on. Nothing stops. However events like these remind us how fragile life is. 

In this issue we have added a new section – Life’s Musings – where we intend to publish reader stories/experiences and how they see life. Last two years a lot of us lost many of our loved ones. And we often received some pieces by email that never found space in Eyra. We decided to build out a home for such pieces as they are deep, poignant and touch a chord somewhere in our hearts. In this issue, we have a gentleman who has embraced the current uncertainty in his life, owing to health issue, with a sense of calm and poise that is admirable. Read on at While I Wait…

Eyra is expanding its horizons. 

We bring to you a piece by one of our readers, who is also a singer, where she pays her respects to the icon that we lost a few days earlier – Lata Mangeshkar. In the Voice That Lives On – Lata Mangeshkar, she outlines how each of the Navarasas (of Natya Shastra) can be experienced in Lata Ji’s songs. If you are a music aficionado, do not miss this piece.

Our next piece is on the pressure that all single women in our society face – the pressure of marriage. In A Suitable Man or A Suitable Life?, one of our readers brings to the fore the closed mindset around us and based on her own personal experience urges us to change our perspective and look at things differently. 

Talking about changing perspectives, our next article touches upon the the hiring practices in the industry and the kind of questions women candidates get asked when they appear for a job interview. Read (Un)employability to get a perspective that while we may have taken some baby steps, there is still a long way to go. The change that you can bring in, is by changing your interview strategy whenever an unmarried or recently married woman, or a young mother comes for an interview discussion with you. 

Continuing further, our Young Voices section has a piece titled – Seeing the World Properly – that urges us to stop and think, pushes us to accept that nothing is ever black and white, and reminds us that – often – our opinions exist in an intellectual vacuum that may be far removed from the ground reality.

As we inch into spring across the country, the seasonal change will bring with it the usual bout of health issues such as cold, cough and asthma. In Pranayama – The Elixir of Life, we bring you a short insight into the immense benefits of pranayama and how to do it effectively.   

Happy Reading!

Cheers,

Swapna Narayanan

Chief Editor 

*All images used in this article are either Eyra’s own design or widely and freely available on the internet.*