BEYOND LIMITS

SEEMA KUMAR, FOUNDER

When Things Warm Up..

Summertime.

Hard to believe, but half a year has flown by. Much has changed since the beginning of the year, and the world seems to be in a different place. January’s Omicron surge, the lockdown and virtual Zoom meetings during two years of pandemic living, all feels like a bad dream. It’s as if we are waking up from a deep slumber, like Rip Van Winkle in Washington Irving’s story, who falls asleep after drinking a strange brew and wakes up 20 years later to a changed world, completely missing the American revolution.

We humans are extremely adaptable. Our collective resilience in coping and bouncing back from two traumatic years is remarkable. Yes, there are many scars and much suffering, but as a society we have learned to live with the new reality: moving from fear to freedom. The word COVID doesn’t invoke the same panic it once did, and for the vaccinated, testing “COVID-positive” seems to be a ho-hum hazard, an inconvenience, associated with living your normal daily life.

And so as we enter the summer solstice, the celebrations are in full swing. Proms, graduations and weddings, long postponed,

PHOTO CREDIT: SHRAVYA KAG are filling up the weekends. It’s all coming back to us now — how to safely live life again in a new world.

School’s out, the days are long and the weather, warm. It’s time to shed those pandemic pounds and get ready for June, as we celebrate Father’s Day, Pride Month, beach parties and backyard barbecues. And to get you ready, we bring you a selection of the SEEMA team’s recommendations for summer essentials. We bring you inspiration from body-building pioneers, race-car drivers, mountaineers, and fitness gurus who are breaking barriers and scaling new fitness heights. Plus, we have lots of tips on how to get your body beach ready.

Our cover star is Aditi Shah who has made a name for herself as a Peloton instructor, one of the few South Asian faces in the Peloton community, and who helped launch Peloton yoga and meditation in 2018. For her yoga goes beyond movement and is a practice that can bring freedom and joy to life.

Speaking of joy, check out a SEEMA teen’s take on how she celebrates Father’s Day. Plus we celebrate Pride Month with Anjali Patel’s take on LGBTQ inclusion in the workplace, and a peek into the queer South Asian life, which is replete with challenges but also filled with opportunity.

So enjoy June and our jam-packed issue to get you summer ready!