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I have been blessed with good friends in my life and work, who have only good intentions for me, have stood by me, and offered me help and support without expecting anything in return.
I want to acknowledge and celebrate my friendship with three of my workplace friends here – for making me a writer.
I first want to thank Marissa Pinto (my colleague when I was training engineering students in soft skills), for recognizing my writing abilities and offering me an opportunity to write in a book that she was curating, along with a friend of hers, during the lockdown of Covid-19. Called Quaran-time (commonly mistaken to be a religious book “Quran time”), it is a collection of poems, short stories and essays in English and Hindi, written by 100 different writers. I had submitted a poem and an essay for this book, and was waiting the wait to see my name in print for the first time ever. When I actually got to see it, it was an out-of-the-world feeling for me, my dream of being a writer manifested in a small way. I’m ever grateful to my friend for this collaboration which means a lot me. Thank you, dear Marissa!
The next person I want to thank is one of the best work friends I’ve ever made – Mukul Rani Parajuli. A law professor, we used to share the same cubicle at our office. We hit it off instantly and became close friends with time. I found her to be quite simple and humble for all her achievements. But the one thing that was the most major inspiration for me was her writing. Her works were published in reputed academic journals, and she has also mentioned that during her hospital isolation due to travelling between states during Covid-19, she made use of that time to write an academic piece! And when we were casually chatting in our cubicle, she received a parcel at work and as we were curiously unwrapping it, it turned out be the-best-researcher award by an organization for her work. What better inspiration could I ask for?
I want to thank Bovina Arunan for introducing me to this wonderful platform, Women’s Web. When I had just written my first article, which was a mandate for us academicians to be eligible for our performance appraisals, I was looking for platforms to publish it. On her suggestion, I sent my first ever article to Women’s Web, and was desperately hoping for some good news, as it mattered for my career progress. After a wait of a couple of months when I had gotten used to seeing the publishing status of my article as “pending”, one fine day, I was surprised to find the status changed to “scheduled”. I was elated, as it meant my post was approved and scheduled for publication, and within a week, my article was published! And as they say, the rest is history, and I have so far contributed 6 articles to Women’s Web and would want to contribute many more.
I’ve never imagined I would turn out to be a writer someday, although I’ve wanted to (for my love for books), and I would like to give a name for these happy developments in my life – “serendipity”! I once again thank these friends for directly or indirectly making me a writer, and I’m ever grateful to Women’s Web for giving a space for my voice.
Sukanya Raghunathan is a leadership trainer and a faculty of management. A mother of an eleven-year old girl, she also teaches Carnatic music and her hobbies include singing, dancing, playing keyboard, reading fiction/non- read more...
This post has published with none or minimal editorial intervention. Women's Web is an open platform that publishes a diversity of views, individual posts do not necessarily represent the platform's views and opinions at all times.
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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