SEEMA Magazine

MARCH 2021

INSIDE

THE CLIMATE GUARDIAN

PLUS

COVID SHEROES

25

WOMEN ACHIEVERS FROM MUSIC, FOOD & SCIENCE

Authentically

HERSELF

TINA SUGANDH

Maison de Papillon’s Spring/Summer catalog consists of sustainably sourced textural variations from around the world.

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Elevated, sustainable luxury has now become a reality. Join us in reimagining the future of fashion.

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On the cover Authentically Herself Tina Sugandh page 10

Dr. Sadaf Jaffer page 8

CONTENTS

4

CONTRIBUTORS

5

BEYOND LIMITS

PIONEERS IN DIVERSE FIELDS 6

Anahita Dhondhy page 48

Women Who Choose to Challenge

POLITICS

Frontlines

44 The Roar of a Winner

22 ‘Just Do It’

46 Living with Pandas

ENVIRONMENT

56 Just the Way She Moves

24 The Climate Guardian

FOOD

MUSIC 27 The Voice That Makes

You Love Music All Over Again

8 Upping the Ante

28 The Talented Ms Nagral

10 On the Cover:

Tina Sugandh:

Authentically Herself

GENDER EQUALITY

STEM 14 Trailblazing a New Path

in STEM

32 Speaking for the Voiceless 34 Changing Women’s Lives—at 19

THE ARTS

MEDICINE

38 ‘Think of Creativity as

19 On the Bleeding Edge of

the Pandemic

20 Destressing on the

a Code to Live’

42 Just What the Doctor Ordered

48 The Way Back Home 51 Reviving a Culinary Heritage

LITERATURE 54 At 17, Meera Dasgupta

Has a Way With Words

ENTREPRENEURS 16 Choosing to Challenge 58 “Learning to Code Builds

Other Life Skills” 60 The Vernacular Option

HOROSCOPE 63 Forecast with Farzana

MEET OUR

CONTRIBUTORS FOUNDER AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

SEEMA KUMAR CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

RUPA MANEK CREATIVE DIRECTOR

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HB DESIGN EDITORIAL COORDINATOR

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@seemanetwork

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SEEMA™ ISSUE 003 | MARCH 2021 EMPOWERING SOUTH ASIAN WOMEN GLOBALLY SEEMA KUMAR, FOUNDER

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ON THE COVER: TINA SUGANDH (PAGE 10).

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EDIT | SEEMA

GOING

BEYOND LIMITS

I

nternational Women’s Day and the month of March, both of which celebrates women’s history, holds a special spot in my heart – for obvious reasons. I like the idea of celebrating and reflecting on what it means to a woman today

– warts and all.

But there is another reason I hold this month dear. It is a month of personal anniversaries – of my wedding, of the launch of the SEEMA magazine platform two years ago, and of the first-ever SEEMA Summit a year ago, bringing together an impressive array of South Asian women who gathered with a collective purpose a few days before lockdown. To this day many of us remember the SEEMA Summit fondly, as the last large in-person gathering we had been to in ages. It seems that eons have passed, even though that was less than a year ago.

March also marks spring for us in the United States.

The clock turns forward, bringing more daylight into our lives. The snow begins to melt, and popping up from the quiescent earth are snowdrops and crocuses – tiny surprises of delight. There is the debauchery of St. Patrick’s Day to look forward to – with the luck of the Irish and the rare four leaf clover. For South Asians March is also the month of Holi, the festival of color, which also celebrates the arrival of spring, the end of winter, the harvest season, and the blossoming of love.

It is a reason to celebrate the many prismatic shades of life, literally by throwing colors on yourself and others, to meet others, play and laugh, forget and forgive, and repair broken relationships.

At SEEMA we feel that March brings it all together.

It is a time to emerge out of hibernation, much like those snowdrops or crocuses, to test our many dormant aspirations as women.

It is the perfect time to watch things grow, to reflect, to INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 2021 choose, to challenge.

That’s why this month’s issue focuses on women who are charting new paths, choosing to test new grounds.

Our upcoming virtual SEEMA Summit 2021 will bring together the finest of all that is South Asian and feminine, to celebrate International Women’s Day and join those in the global movement who choose to challenge, and redefine what it means to be leaders in our community. In this issue, and at the SEEMA summit, we feature South Asian women leaders from London to LA, and Mumbai to Manhattan, Melbourne and beyond. Via live sessions and streamed taped content on SEEMA.com, our platform INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY | 2021 brings together the pick of South Asian women. Our topics – and the people we feature – reflect themes that SEEMA regularly covers while empowering women and fostering female entrepreneurs.

SEEMA represents a growing global community that speaks for women who break barriers, influence change and create a better future for our next generation. We want to bring your their stories. So I invite you to read and be inspired by the 25? women of all ages and persuasions featured in this issue.

Let us reimagine what it means to be a South Asian woman and celebrate our shared success in every community around the world.

Choose to Challenge

C hoose to

CHALLENGE

SEEMA KUMAR, FOUNDER MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 5

PIONEERS | SEEMA

25

Women Who Choose to Challenge

An International Women’s Day ode to women who redefine what it means to be a leader of our communnity.

Their journeys... their struggles... their triumphs...

These are their stories #IWD2021 #ChooseToChallenge

6 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 7

PIONEERS | SEEMA

Upping the Ante DR. SADAF JAFFER, ACADEMIC AND POLITICIAN, IS NOW RUNNING FOR STATE OFFICE IN NEW JERSEY ALPANA VARMA

D

r Sadaf Jaffer, the first South Asian American woman mayor in New Jersey, now plans to run for state assembly.

If she wins, Jaffer, whose second term as mayor of Montgomery Township expired on December 31, 2020, could thus become the

8 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

first woman of South Asian origin and the first Muslim American to serve in the state legislature. She will be contesting as a Democrat from Legislative District 16.

Jaffer told SEEMA over the phone, “To me, elected office is a calling. It always comes down to whether I have the community’s support to pursue an office to

represent them.” She added that in contesting she was responding to calls from members of the community asking her to represent them.

“There are not enough South Asian women involved in politics and so we don’t get our perspective represented,” she says. She points out that more than 10 per

cent of New Jersey’s population is Asian American, a significant number of whom are of South Asian origin.

“We need that representation,’ she says. “Representation matters and I was proud to encourage increased civic engagement and participation from diverse communities as the first South Asian woman in New Jersey, and the first Muslim woman to become a mayor in the United States.”

She gave an example of how during the pandemic, she got to know that there were undocumented people from minority communities who hesitated to go to food pantries. It turned out that other mayors had never heard of that.

As the only non-white mayor in the state, she was particularly tuned in to the concerns and troubles of minorities.

Jaffer discussed how women from the community reached out to her to discuss the domestic violence they endured. She allocated funds and arranged support for them as she found out that the problem was endemic to the community.

She continues, “There are times when being a mother has informed my advice. For example, when I insisted a shaded structure be created in the playground of a daycare, so that children can play even when the sun is strong. Others may not [understand it].

But I know it from my experience.”

Jaffer is running on the platform of prosperity for all through green jobs and equitable economic policies, promoting civil and human rights and inclu-

siveness in public health. To help the economy, she wants to focus on innovation and the Made in New Jersey initiative, among other things promoting agro-tourism in the state.

Jaffer wants increased funding in education while still reducing property tax. To ensure civil and human rights for workers, she would seek to enforce living wages, safe working conditions and equitable schedules. She also stands for increased recruitment of women and minorities in law enforcement.

According to her, the pandemic has shown the great disparities between those who have resources and access to vaccines and those who do not. She would like there to be more resources and training for those who need it, and consequences for those who create disparities in health care. She also believes that teachers should get priority in the vaccination process.

On the abysmal representation of South Asian women in state and how the recent special elections in New York district 24 in which

four women of South Asian origin contested and none won, Jaffer told SEEMA, “Running is not just about winning. Although we all want to win, the real goal is to get the community activated. You learn so much as you raise issues. It is all about building a movement.”

Jaffer herself lost the first time she ran in the local elections, winning the second time around.

“It’s trial and error. You learn through experience. One should not get discouraged,” she says.

Citing the case of Vice-President Kamala Harris, Jaffer says, “This is a hopeful time for our community and it’s clear that we can make it to the highest echelons of power.”

She also shared with SEEMA her love for wearing saris, “Wearing traditional South Asian clothing gives me confidence because I feel I can rely on the strength of my ancestors,” she says.

“The attire is part of my identity.”

For her swearing-in ceremony as mayor, she wore a red sari.

Outside politics, Jaffer is a postdoctoral research associate in South Asian studies at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.

She teaches courses on South Asian, Islamic and Asian American Studies.

She earned a bachelor’s degree from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a PhD at Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

She was born in Chicago, to a mother born in Karachi, Pakistan, and a father in Aden, Yemen.

Both parents, though, are originally from the Kutch region of Gujarat.

MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 9

PIONEERS | SEEMA

ALL PICTURES CREDIT: TINA SUGANDH

Authentically Herself

10 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

TINA SUGANDH: TALENTED, BRAZEN, AND HAPPY

O

ctober 17, 1977, was a breezy and sunny day in the mid-80s in Mumbai, India.

And on that day, a star was born. A newborn baby girl came to life. She had a great start with an adoring family, including a mom, dad, and older sister. They named this little star Tina Sugandh.

Today, Tina is a Bravo reality star, accomplished musician, activist, and entrepreneur. And for most people, she has it all, but her road wasn’t straight and had many bumps along the way. Yet she is still fiercely positive and keen on self-improvement, self-awareness, and family has always been her true north. Take a journey behind the curtains of this remarkable, talented woman.

LOOKING BEHIND THE CURTAIN “Life is beautiful, and I am happy,” states this 43-year-old mother of three.

Significant shifts in Tina’s life started when the Sugandh family of four moved from Mumbai to New Jersey when she was just five months old. Her mother was a marketing executive, and her dad was a senior professor. Tina says her elder sister, Seema, is “super-intelligent, altruistic, and perfect in every way.” Being the youngest family member, Sugandh had a relatively traditional daily life during the week with her parents at regular jobs and a typical school experience.

DIANA ROHINI LAVIGNE But the weekends proved to be a place for the family to come together and become a traveling musical act. Each member of her family was a musical talent. Sugandh describes her sister’s breathtaking voice, her father’s talent as multi-faceted, including comedy and playing the ‘dholak,’ and her mother’s mastering of the harmonium and angelic voice with pride. Her weekends became a place for powerful family time and a heavy dose of Indian culture. The family group sang in several languages, even if the kids didn’t always understand all the words.

She missed out on sports and friends’ parties, but she isn’t bothered by it.

“I got a huge dose of culture every weekend, and I am so grateful for it,“ Sugandh explained.

tles. The Beatles were a significant musical influence in her home growing up. And if you are impressed, stand back and wait for more. She has worked with top artists, including Jay Jay French (Founder of Twisted Sister), Fat Joe, Timbaland, and Gwen Stefani, Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, the E Street Band (Bruce Springsteen), and worldwide known producers of everyone from Shakira and Brittany to Metallica.

She was signed with Bravo, Holly-

CELEBRITY STATUS Tina identifies with all types of music, ranging from heavy metal to classical Indian.

Sugandh has played with Ringo Starr – yes, that one from the BeaMARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 11

PIONEERS | SEEMA She says, “It is hard as an Indian (in the music industry). You need to break barriers. Sometimes it is hard to be first.”

Sugandh’s style was hard to put into one box. She was a mixture of many things. She mixed Bollywood music with pop, played the guitar and the tabla, and mixed English and Hindi lyrics. Once a leading music executive tried to convince her to be one thing strictly. But Tina felt firmly committed to doing it her way and remained authentic to her style of artistry. She was a pioneer and accepted that challenge.

WE ARE FAMILY In 2011, she married Tarz Ludwigsen and, a few years later, started having kids. She now has a full house with three kids (Tarz, Song, Snow), five dogs, and two businesses between her and her husband.

While she tragically lost her mother to breast cancer, she strives to be as beautiful a person as her mom was.

She says, “If I can be even half as good as the radiant, always-positive, sunshine-filled mommy that I was raised by, I know I will raise some very happy kiddos.”

wood Records, Sony, and Warner Music.

It might be easy to write Sugandh off as another self-absorbed celebrity with only glitz and glamour on her mind, but you would be dead wrong. She is uniquely herself. Armed with an honor’s degree in biology from Rutgers University and an acceptance letter into medical school, she found herself at crossroads in her early 20s. At this pivotal point in her life, she had to choose between attending medical school or accepting a record deal. When approaching her parents about the decision, her parents assured her she should follow her heart. And she easily chose to become a musical artist with Hollywood Records. What Sugandh didn’t know at the time was that the entertainment industry was brutal and often heartless. After three years and almost investing $1M into a record, her record label unceremoniously dropped her from the label as they placed their marketing budget on other musical talents signed. It was a wake-up call for her.

“It was devastating. It was shocking,” Sugandh says.

“I couldn’t stop crying. But after I got done crying, and crying, and crying, you get back on the horse.” She was soon signed to Sony.

12 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

FACING LIFE’S CHALLENGES HEAD ON Fame attracts critics. She has been called all sorts of nasty names which live online for a lifetime. And some of them, Tina might embrace like highly opinionated, bossy, dramatic, and bold. But for each intended insult, there are many strong words that friends, family, and followers call her like driven, fun, hard-working, strong, resilient, real, exciting, inspirational, energetic, and unique.

“My Instagram has become all about helping others to tune out the negativity, which includes ignoring the

social media trolls that endlessly judge and blame. This (tuning out negativity) has been something I’ve been successfully working on for years, and it’s made my life so much more peaceful to tune all that noise out as much as I possibly can,” she shares.

Being open and real with her followers is very important to her. She says she knows her openness has helped many moms with their personal journey.

“I’ve been inspired by those that share the real side of things,” she says. “But it also means I get hated on and blamed for everything from when I had a three-pound preemie to when my son was diagnosed with kidney disease. However, every reputable doctor will tell you that neither of those things was preventable at all. But people can be cruel, and if I hadn’t spent years working on that place of peace where I understand that mean people are just unhappy in their own lives, these comments would hit hard. I want that place of peace for everyone, as it’s a beautiful place to live.”

She has the courage to be disliked without being drawn into the negative energy of it. How does she do it? Laughter. When she reads negative personal attacks on her, she laughs it off these days. She even goes so far as to genuinely send love towards those haters. She adds, “Happy people don’t tend to tear others down.”

Her challenges have been many, but each time she comes out stronger. Five miscarriages, being dropped by a record label, having a three-pound newborn, living under cameras for a reality show for years, the onslaught of internet trolls and haters, having a child diagnosed with kidney disease, tensions with her traditional father, the tragic death of her mother, and her struggles with fertility are just some of her public struggles. And yet, she marches on stronger and stronger.

One example of her turning around a challenge to a good thing for others happened after her miscarriages.

When women have miscarriages, Tina explained that many women blame themselves. Even families and loved ones blame the mother. But the reality is 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, so it is a normal occurrence, but it isn’t talked about openly enough. Tina wants to change this and feels one of the most important things she has done was come out to talk about her five miscarriages openly on Andy Cohen’s show, “Watch What Happens Live.”

THE ACCIDENTAL ENTREPRENEUR Where is she now, and what is next? While she is reluctant to speculate what the next ten years will look like, today, Tina is proud to be an entrepreneur in the skincare sector.

“This is the last thing I ever thought I’d be doing,“ shared Tina. She was on bed-rest during pregnancy and wanted to spend time doing something productive and helpful

instead of just watching that hospital television, and that’s how “Mom On Top Shop” was born.

“I co-created a truly natural vegan, organic cream, and scrub with a world-renowned skin-healing physician. The product ended up being the only thing that completely faded all my deep, dark pregnancy PUPPS (Pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy, a rash during pregnancy) scars. So how could I not jar it up and share it with everyone?” she explains. “I didn’t want to feel 90 years old just because I was pregnant. I wanted to feel sexy and vibrant.”

She chose a more vibrant and energetic look for the products, and the feedback has been tremendously positive. Her best sellers, Bake it and Shake it, have many glowing reviews. She works hard at juggling her company’s responsibilities, Mom On Top Shop, and still prioritizes her family.

HAPPINESS BLOOMING Tina has an adaptive mindset and focuses on essential things in life. Happiness. She adds, “I believe success is happiness. It’s hard to be happy.

It takes work. And it takes focusing on the positive, especially last year and this year.”

Tina Sugandh is perfectly imperfect, and this works for her and promises a positive impact to those who follow her.

MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 13

PIONEERS | SEEMA

T

Trailblazing a New Path in STEM

here was a time when a “woman who worked” evoked several unpleasant notions: that it was improper, her husband (or parents) couldn’t provide for her, that she was neglecting her domestic life, and worse. Any woman who wanted to pursue her passion and intellect for science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM), had to make her way against the grain, taking risks and often putting up with a lot of barriers visible and invisible. Maybe they wouldn’t get paid equally. Or maybe they had to put up with colleagues making derisive comments or undermining their participation.

The story of women in STEM has always, and continues to be one of great courage and perseverance.

Research shows that women who enter Ph.D. programs in which they have no female peers are 12 percentage points less likely to graduate than men in the same program. Even today, according to UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) data, less than 30% of the world’s researchers are women. It remains a remarkable achievement for a woman, particularly a woman of color, to make a happy, rewarding career in STEM today.

Take for example, the starting salaries of engineering graduates: on average, women with engineering degrees earn less than $61,000 annually, while men earn above $65,000 annually. Just maybe, 14 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

PRATIKA YASHASWI

that’s why only 38% of women who major in computers go on to work in computer fields, and only 24% of those who majored in engineering work in the engineering field.

Research also shows that women in STEM are seldom in positions of power and leadership; and more likely than men to work in the lower-paying “STEM periphery” — roles in which they can apply STEM skills and expertise, but aren’t traditional STEM occupations.

STEM disciplines are about pushing boundaries, expanding the frontiers of knowledge, and in many cases, saving the world: but women in STEM have to shatter glass ceilings, constantly prove themselves, and smash the patriarchy while they’re at it. And for those who make the choice to partner up and have children while pursuing the careers they’ve been dreaming about, the challenges to remain working are immense — and this is true for women in every field.

Fortunately, there is no dearth of women who are up to the challenge.

Swati Mohan has played key roles on teams that put spacecrafts on the Moon, Saturn and more recently, on Mars. While working on the Mars 2020 mission, Mohan gave birth to her second child.

SEEMA has also recognized a few of the most iconic South Asian achievers recently: physicistphysician Dr Anita Goel, biotech entrepreneur Sangeeta Bhatia, and the wonderful multi-hyphenated

Maya Ajmera, who is, among other things, CEO of the Society for Science & the Public. These women, beyond their achievements in their own fields, are also fantastic advocates for young women in science.

Although women’s participation in science and technology professions is increasing, there is a tremendous amount of work to be done. Gendered notions of STEM professions start young. Studies involving school-age children show a worrying trend: that their image of a “scientist” is usually a middle-aged or elderly man in a white lab-coat; and that they perceive science to be a “masculine” profession. “I don’t look like your typical scientist,” 15-year-old Gitanjali Rao, TIME’s first ever “Kid of the Year” told Angelina Jolie in an interview. “Everything I see on TV is that it’s an older, usually white man as a scientist... It’s not easy when you don’t see anyone else like you.” Children need to see female and female-identifying scientists, engineers and doctors on TV, in movies and even around them.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. With several organizations and individuals committed to empowering women, investing in research and scholarships, and expanding diversity and inclusion initiatives, things are improving steadily. But, it’s still a revolution, a battle. And luckily, women are experts at the time-tested technique of winning: lifting each other up.

Anita Goel, physicistphysician, chairman and CEO, Nanobiosym® (NBS) Research institute

“What Seema created with the SEEMA magazine and the SEEMA movement is a great encouragement in STEM and in many other ways for South Asians, by helping to inspire and set role models for the younger generation and integrating one’s heritage with one’s work and passions. All of our journeys are shaped by those types of experiences and to bring it all together creates a richness in the human experience and such an interesting canvas for people to see innovation and contribution for human society from all walks of life and cultures.”

Kaneenika Sinha, mathematician

“When I was in college...I started attending workshops outside of the college curriculum conducted by people who were researchers in the field of mathematics.

That’s really when I realized that you can actually “do” mathematics for a living, and decided to pursue it.

Maya Ajmera, CEO of the Society for Science & the Public “What we look

towards is making sure the next generation of young people in this country are STEM ambassadors.

Everything from our outreach and equity programs to Science News, they are the ones that we have to reach. What we realized is that science teachers needed excellent, evidencebased content for teaching. They didn’t know which sources to trust, and their textbooks are really old. In 2015, we piloted a program called ‘Science News in High Schools.’ After five years, we’re now in over 5,000 high schools across the country.”

Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, founder and CEO, Drawbridge

“Startups typically attract people who are very ambitious, somewhat of a misfit in other companies, who want to create an impact, be creative and entrepreneurial. This profile typically belongs to the old boys of the game,” says Sivaramakrishnan. Her advice to women wishing to make a mark in the tech world is to “be comfortable with the uncomfortable”.

MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 15

PIONEERS | SEEMA

Choosing to Challenge

PROJECT BY SHIVANI KHANNA 16 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

WOMEN ARE LEAVING THEIR IMPRIMATUR ON ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

C

ome March and the buzz around International Women’s Day gets louder. And women who need no one day to celebrate their femininity are breaking gender stereotypes, becoming entrepreneurs in traditionally male sectors. We speak to three such women to understand their journey and the lessons they have learned.

AASHITA CHADHA, CFO AND CO-FOUNDER, THE KARIGHARS Before co-founding The KariGhars, Chadha, who has a bachelor’s degree in electronics from the University of Pune, worked as an engineer in reputed IT firms such as Tata Consultancy Services.

BINDU GOPAL RAO “As a child, I loved to design new things and come up with ideas to tackle problems at hand uniquely....

My love for all things new and artistic was passed down by my mother. She encouraged me to think outside the box and tackle all issues with a touch of inventiveness,” Chadha says.

But it was her own experience while getting her house designed by an interior designer that sent her down another path in design.

“The field needs a robust level of professionalism and transparency, which, we have observed, is missing,” Chadha says, describing the stress she experienced 12 years ago when getting her own house done.

So she and her husband started ‘The KariGhars,’ a company that does turnkey projects for villas and apartments. They also customize wardrobes, entertainment units, modular kitchens and built-in furniture to fit the space and style of a project. She admits that when she started a decade ago, it was tough to get people to take her seriously.

“It was an uphill task to make the men, especially laborers and craftsmen, take orders from a lady boss,’ Chadha says. “But now things have changed significantly, and women are being heard. What you bring to the table is important, and gender bias is definitely a thing of the past.”

Celebrating the freedom to #ChoosetoChallenge she says that she would challenge the existing gender norms and dichotomies that exist in the world.

“Being successful in my professional

while balancing it with my personal life and family is a testament to the fact that women are more than just pretty faces who also do household work,” she says.

As an entrepreneur and interior designer, she plans to focus on implementing sustainable and eco-friendly designs in every home.

She tells young women seeking to be entrepreneurs to not shy away from risks if they really believe in what they do.

“Shed your inhibitions and conquer the world with your skills and humility,” Chadha tells them.

Still, it has been a stressful year, one dominated by the pandemic.

Chadha says that over the year she has learned to “live in the moment.

The future, whatever it may be, will be good only if we make the most of the present.”

SHIVANI KHANNA, CO- FOUNDER AND PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT, STUDIO CRYPT The institutional and residential architect has made a name for directing an environmentally conscious architectural practice, producing aesthetically versatile architectural spaces, emphasizing an understated luxury, while still being mindful of the need for sustainability. Armed with a master’s degree in sustainability from the University of Auckland, Khanna’s interest in entrepreneurship in architecture and design was sparked in high school when she saw her father begin constructing his house.

She was hooked by architecture MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 17

PIONEERS | SEEMA learned many unwritten rules of business from her father.

Her advice to young women who are aspiring entrepreneurs is to be a disruptor, saying, “You need to be an element of change since women are intrinsically perfectionists and efficient multi-taskers.”

SHIVANI KHANNA

and design when she realized its significance. Studio Crypt was established in 2018.

“We intend to break the misconception of ‘luxury for the rich,’” she says, describing her team members as holding their high in a male-dominated field. “The team at Studio Crypt is on a mission to design affluent buildings and spaces. We also undertake development in rural areas, with the most recent being designing the Sainik Dwar for the village of Kutubpur in U.P.” As an architectural practice that celebrates sustainable construction design, Khanna’s firm provides environmentally sound, energy efficient, solutions that keep climate change in mind.

As someone who believes that a good entrepreneur needs a good support system at professional and personal life, she says her family is her cheerleader.

Her inspirations are other noteworthy women architects, such as Anupama Kundoo and Brinda Somaya. “My greatest learning comes from working with noted architect Sanjay Prakash in my formative years,” she says, adding that she 18 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

SUJATA CHITALWALA, PRINCIPAL DESIGNER AT DESIGNERS GROUP Chitalwala initially trained as a textile designer when she graduated with a degree in interior designing from Rachana Sansad college in Mumbai, India.

“I always had an eye for aesthetics and a flair for people management,” she says.” This has helped me position myself perfectly in the Designers Group, managing and guiding the design team.” Her work ethic resonates with the values she learned in childhood: to hold on to her roots and practice pragmatism.

“This has led me to appreciate a simpler approach towards design,” she says. “I firmly believe that simplicity creates a space for creativity to shine.”

She started Designers Group in 1989 with her husband Khozema Chitalwala, aiming to make it a holistic consultancy for the hospitality sector.

SUJATA CHITALWALA

Being a principal female leader is a challenge, Chitalwala says, adding that defying social expectations, and balancing work and family life are questions that need to be addressed.

“Women entrepreneurs are still way too few in architecture,” she says. “The perception in the industry about women has seen a massive transformation over the years. I realize it was a culture that has been hundreds of years in the making, but it only takes a few progressive thought leaders to fix it in their office.”

On the Bleeding Edge of the Pandemic SOPHIA FRANCIS, A REGISTERED NURSE, ON SOLDIERING ON AT AN UNDERSTAFFED HOSPITAL DURING A PANDEMIC

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NIRVANI WILLIAMS

egistered nurse, Sophia Francis, does not want to be called a hero. She just wants you to wash your hands.

“There have been times where I’ve come home from work and my hands are burning because I washed them so much,” she says. “It shouldn’t be this extreme for everyone, but you should wash your hands before or after being out in public.

That’s number one.”

She confronted Covid right after the virus landed in the U.S. last March. She was then working at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland, when the first patients were rushed into the intensive care unit, coughing profusely and gasping for air. Doctors and nurses were not just scared and overwhelmed, they were merely trying to stay alive.

By March 26, 2020, the United States officially became the country hardest hit by the pandemic, with 81,321 confirmed cases and more than 1,000 deaths. This was more than the number of reported cases in China, Italy, or any other country.

While terrified at the number of Covid patients coming in, Francis persisted through the bleakness with inadequate personal protection equipment, better known as PPE, to fend off the virus.

“There were several shifts where we would have to reuse the same

isolation gown. They’re supposed to be for one-time use, but we would have to carefully put them on and take them off because there was not enough PPE,” Francis said on a phone call with SEEMA. As happens in many Indian families, she lives with her elderly mother, who wanted her to quit her dangerous job, but Francis was determined to keep working.“I can’t just leave my co-workers hanging like that,” she says. “When it comes to health care workers, we all tend to [look] for our team members... They’re going to be short another nurse. Before the pandemic, hospitals always needed more nurses... The pandemic just exacerbated that.”

In April, then President Trump announced that each state’s governor would “call the shots” on how to handle the pandemic and reopen.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan,

mobilized and provided hospitals in both Maryland and the Washington metro area with sufficient masks and supplies. These supplies allowed Francis to protect both herself and her mother.

While hospitals once competed for equipment, now they compete for nurses. Most nurses are leaving their permanent positions in hospitals to become travel contract nurses and get paid three to four times more than they did as staff. Now Francis works the night shift as a local contract nurse at Prince George’s Hospital Center in Cheverly, Maryland.

The surge in Covid-19 cases since the fall has turned hospital staffing into a national bidding war, with hospitals willing to pay exorbitant wages to secure the nurses they need. That threatens to send more nurses to affluent areas, leaving rural hospitals and urban public hospitals short-staffed as the pandemic worsens and others unable to care for critically ill patients. Francis says hospitals were always short of nurses; the pandemic just made the problem worse.

“Covid is real,” she stresses. “I’ve seen young patients in their 20s with Covid on life support. Health care workers don’t want to be called heroes. We want to see you do your part by social distancing, wearing your mask, and washing your hands.”

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PIONEERS | SEEMA

Destressing on the Frontlines 20 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

DR KAVITHA RAM AND HER TEAM USE DANCE TO GET PAST THE COVID BLUES AT WORK

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BRIAN SODOMA

very physician makes a commitment to placing the welfare of others ahead of their own.

But in the face of a pandemic, doctors and other healthcare workers have found themselves exhausted, and emotionally and physically drained.

Frontline workers are one of the hardest hit people in the country, Dr. Kavitha Ram, has seen the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic in her role as the director of obstetrics, and the director of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Residency Program at Jamaica Hospital in Queens, New York.

“We’re all sort of struggling with ways to achieve wellness with some of us working 60-80-hour weeks in very high-stress situations,” she says.

“As a residency program director, this experience has taught me that teaching wellness to residents and other physicians is important, too.”

Through her own efforts to reduce stress, she tapped into childhood memories of learning Indian dance.

This experience then taught her how to help professionals around her find healthy ways to relieve stress.

earned a master’s degree in clinical research training. So, Ram was excited to oversee and teach residents as they navigated their first experiences outside medical school.

She was also eager to practice in Queens, one of the most diverse communities in the country, with a huge Asian population.

Within a few months of being on the job, however, New York became the epicenter for the COVID-19 pandemic. Priorities shifted and everyone on her team – physicians, nurses, midwives and her 13 residents – went from focusing on traditional OB/GYN care to alleviating some of the burden on emergency room staff, who were overwhelmed with coronavirus cases.

“That was a challenge – getting the team out in the front lines and making sure they’re protected, dealing with the acuity of the medical issues surrounding COVID and pregnancy,” Ram says. “We had to pull together, stay focused and safe, and deliver care while we worried about our own families.” As the pandemic wore on, Ram noted the toll being taken on by her residents and the other professionals.

NAVIGATING THE PANDEMIC Dr. Ram had been practicing medicine for nearly 20 years before she earned her position at Jamaica Hospital in October 2019. A lover of education – a trait passed down by two highly educated parents with science backgrounds – she also

TAPPING INTO CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES To reduce her own stress, Ram began taking yoga classes and meditating. These experiences rekindled memories of her childhood. Growing up in the U.S. with immigrant parents, she spent her summers

at what was her parents’ home in Chennai before they immigrated to America in the 1960s.

In India, she immersed herself in the culture, taking Kuchipudi dance classes for eight to nine hours a day under the guidance of her guru, Dr. Vempati Chinna Satyam.

“Doing yoga brought me back to dance. It’s great to focus on moving your body instead of keeping all that energy in your head space,” Ram said.

Ram began taking virtual Kuchipudi dance classes at a studio, ironically one located in the community where she works. She then initiated yoga classes and a variety of dance workshops for staff and residents at the hospital. She also brings some Kuchipudi to her team.

Given the community’s diversity, learning different types of dance has helped foster a connection between the healthcare practitioners and the residents they serve.

Dr. Ram says her career goals are to continue to find creative ways to teach future medical professionals how to think fast in high-stress situations. At the same time, she thinks it’s important for medical professionals to continue to teach one another about personal wellness so that they can deliver the best care possible to patients.

“To me, it’s all about education.

That’s always been my passion,” she says. “It’s what keeps me going, what brought me to where I am. It’s the fun part of my job.”

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PIONEERS | SEEMA

‘Just Do It’ HOLISTIC SPECIALIST DR. BINDIYA GANDHI ENCOURAGES YOUNG WOMEN TO TAKE TO A MEDICAL CAREER JORDANA WEISS

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ot only does Dr. Bindiya Gandhi have board certification in family medicine, she is also trained and certified in integrative and holistic medicine, which takes every aspect of the patient’s life into account to ensure wellness. In addition to working directly with patients at her practice, Revive Atlanta MD, Gandhi shares her passionate about her work in wellness and integrative medicine on social media. She regularly broadcasts live on Instagram and Facebook, publishes articles in outlets like The Washington Post and Vogue, and is a frequent guest contributor on networks like ABC and Fox 5.

A DOCTOR’S EDUCATION Gandhi completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Georgia before heading to the American University of Antigua to pursue her medical degree.

“I was an astute, inquisitive, and curious student,” she says.

“School was fun for me... I knew early on I wanted to pursue a career as a doctor.”

She joined numerous medical efforts, working with Mission to the World to provide medical care to, among others, people in Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras.

Her varied experiences and training has made her a resource not only for the people of Atlanta but for a lot of her followers on social media. We spoke to Gandhi about her journey towards functional medicine, how she balances life as a doctor and a mom, and her attitude towards medicine during COVID-19.

HOW DID YOU BECOME INTERESTED IN FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE? I became interested in functional medicine in medical school when I

WHAT’S A BIG UPCOMING PROJECT? I am getting ready to launch my new podcast, which I’m really excited about. I have some amazing guests, and we have great conversations that I’m happy to share with everyone. My goal in life is to educate, inspire, and help transform the lives of many people, so they can be healthy and reach their true potential.

began to feel like there was more to treating patients than medications.

At that time, I also had my own health journey, which validated my need to pursue functional medicine.

I had undiagnosed celiac disease, and had been to numerous doctors (the conventional route) with no help or support. Working with a functional medicine practitioner helped me figure out that not only did I have celiac disease, I also had a few other things going that were contributing to why I was feeling the way I was.

My conventional doctors had just brushed it off, treating me like a hypochondriac medical student.

WITH SO MANY THINGS GOING ON, WHAT DOES YOUR MORNING ROUTINE LOOK LIKE? I get up every morning before my kids and meditate for 10 minutes.

I have a gratitude practice, which includes journaling. I read positive affirmations and inspirational quotes, then I drink warm lemon water before I get my day going.

It’s very therapeutic for me to be in the right frame of mind before my day starts and gets hectic with young kids and a busy practice.

HOW HAS YOUR PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL LIFE CHANGED SINCE COVID? My kids are now at home, which has been challenging. Business initially slowed down for us but is picking up again. All in our family got COVID, so we were helping my father-in-law with rehab. It’s been a challenging year, as it has been for many, but we’re making it work, with a positive attitude.

WITH THE COUNTRY’S RENEWED FOCUS ON SCIENCE SINCE THE RISE OF COVID-19, HAS YOUR ROLE CHANGED? I get a lot of people asking me for advice about COVID, since I do a lot of interviews and social media talks about it. They trust me when it comes to virus science, vaccines, and even prevention.

WHAT IS YOUR ADVICE TO YOUNG PEOPLE, GIRLS IN PARTICULAR, WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN PURSUING A CAREER IN MEDICINE? I say, do it! Don’t let anyone or anything hold you back from achieving your goals and your dreams. There are so many amazing female doctors doing big things right now. That can be you one day, if you are determined and put in the effort.

You can follow Dr. Bindiya on Instagram, Facebook, or visit her blog.

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PIONEERS | SEEMA

The Climate Guardian ALL PHOTOS COURTESY: SUNRISE MOVEMENT 24 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

VARSHINI PRAKASH IS DRIVING A PRINCIPLED ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT – AND CHANGING THE CONVERSATION ON CLIMATE CHANGE

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or someone who is just 27, Varshini Prakash, leader of the Sunrise Movement, has had an outsize influence on national environmental policy. A CNN headline early this year said, “The Sunrise Movement’ is an early winner in the Biden transition,” referring to measures the administration would announce a month later to combat climate change.

Prakash and seven others launched the youth driven advocacy group, a grassroots effort to hold elected leaders accountable for climate change in 2017. They had been appalled by the signs of climate change around the world, and came up with a plan to address it.

“I grew up watching floods worsen in places that matter so much to me,” she says, ruefully. “I especially remember watching floods in Chennai in southern India, where my family is from.” She knew the power of nature if the right measures were not taken. The tsunami that hit Tamil Nadu, Hurricane Katrina that hit Louisiana, all left a deep impression on her as a child in Boston, where she was born and raised. ”I realized that our movements, our politicians and our media were not taking action commensurate to the scale of the crisis,” she says. “Our generation is the first to

ALPANA VARMA face the negative impact, but will be the last to do something significant on it.”

Prakash really dove into the environmental movement while studying the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where student action led to fossil fuel divestment. That was also when she delivered her first speech to a group of 100. Now, she is commended for her oratory skills, her booming voice firing up crowds of thousands.

The movement had swift success getting members of the Democratic Party to come behind a program called the Green New Deal. The name harks back to New Deal that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt put in place between 1933 and 1939 – a series of programs to help America recover from the hardships of the Great Depression.

The Green New Deal combines Roosevelt’s economic approach with pressing issues of today, such as, renewable energy and resource efficiency. Much more than merely an environmental package, the new program calls for achieving social aims, such as job creation,

racial justice and reducing income inequality. That is why the group campaigns for a $15 minimum wage, canceling student debt, and Medicare for all, among others. The members believe that without taking on inequalities and injustices, an elite form of environmentalism is futile.

The group first shot to fame when its members staged a sit-in at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office on Capitol Hill shortly before she reclaimed the speakership after the 2018 midterm elections.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, then newly minted as a representative, joined the group, while senior sena-

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PIONEERS | SEEMA tor Bernie Sanders lent his support.

They demanded that all members of the Democratic leadership refuse donations from the fossil fuel industry, and that Pelosi should work to build consensus in the House over Green New Deal legislation to be passed once the Democrats regained control of the government.

Pelosi welcomed the protests on Twitter. Since then, the group has emerged as an activist powerhouse with growing political clout. It is closely allied with groups like the Justice Democrats in backing progressive primary challengers.

Members of the Sunrise Movement are typically 20-somethings all the way down to teenagers. With more than 400 hubs and membership is in the tens of thousands, it trains organizers for protests and rallies. Young people who join the group attend Sunrise 101, a threepart online orientation, training at one of these hubs and practice communal living at “movement houses.”

The spirit of community, stirring passion with songs and storytelling, is meant to keep the group cohesive and engaged.

Prakash explains to SEEMA the strategy that went into this: “[We] studied historic and contemporary social movements by talking with experts, and looked at how people had achieved the scale of transformation that we needed to solve the climate crisis... We … came out of it with a four-year strategy to build what is now the Sunrise Movement.”

In early 2019, the group’s main goals were to pressure the Democratic National Congress to hold a single issue presidential debate on climate crisis. Given the growing influence of the movement on youth, then presidential candidate Joe Biden had begun making overtures to them, but the group was loyal to his rival, Bernie Sanders. Only after 26 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

Sanders dropped out of the race, did Prakash and another member, Evan Weber, respond to Biden.

By late 2020, they were pushing the Climate Mandate campaign by putting pressure on Biden to pick a “climate cabinet” that would work towards a Green New Deal, which had moved from being a fringe policy proposal that could not be ignored by a viable 2020 Democratic candidate.

Prakash also co-edited the book, “Winning the Green New Deal, Why We Must, How We Can,” which was published last August.

In 2019, she made it to the Time 100 list of most influential people.

Jay Inslee, governor of Washington state, said in his endorsement, “I’ve been fighting climate change for 25 years, and I’ve never seen a movement for climate action like the one we are witnessing today. A new generation is speaking with moral clarity about the need for bold action to defeat the climate crisis, with a new focus and intensity.”

He described Prakash as “one of those visionary leaders who are fighting for their futures [who] have permanently fixed climate change into the nation’s conscience as a moral imperative, an issue of economic justice and a way to create millions of jobs across America… I find the leadership of Varshini and the Sunrise Movement to be some of the greatest sources for hope in our fight against the climate crisis.”

By 2020, she and Weber were on the Forbes 30 under 30 list.

Thanks in part to pressures from

the Sunrise Movement, Biden has announced the boldest-ever moves on climate change. Among those he has picked for the effort are Gina McCarthy as White House national climate advisor, with Ali Zaidi to assist her; Michael Regan to head the Environment Protection Agency, and John Kerry to be presidential envoy for climate. He rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement Pact, and is making historic investments in clean energy and pushing for the rapid deployment of clean energy innovations. The appointment of Deb Haarland as secretary of the interior, and Jennifer Granholm as secretary of energy are also big victories for the Sunrise Movement.

Asked if the Sunrise Movement was satisfied with these measures, she tells SEEMA, “President Biden’s actions mark a historic step forward.” But she included a note of caution.

“But this must be just the beginning,” sshe says. “We have no time to waste. The climate crisis, compounded by the pandemic, racial injustice and decades of Republican obstruction and destructive policies, demands that we make up for lost time to match the scale and urgency of this movement.”

The Voice That Makes You Love Music all Over Again INDIE ARTIST CHHAVI SODHANI ON HER LIFELONG FASCINATION FOR MUSIC

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er first single, “Banna Re” crossed over 12 million streams on JioSaavn alone. A singer, song writer, lyricist, music producer and poet- Chhavi Sodhani is no ordinary musician. Whether as an independent artist or as a musical duo, “Parindey,” with her sister Pragya Sodhani, her brand of music, as told to Artists Original, “echoes originality and honesty”.

Sodhani had an early initiation into music, which her grandfather and parents loved. They also encouraged both her and sister Pragya to learn it.

“Music was like a religion in our house”, Sodhani said in an interview with Artists Original. At just 7 years of age, she gave her first public performance in Hyderabad and never looked back, recording various children’s albums.

Honored at the “Bachpan Utsav” in Andhra Pradesh as a child prodigy of 11,

NUPUR BHATNAGAR Sodhani’s has many accomplishments to her credit. Her biggest perhaps is the ‘Excellence in Art’ scholarship she got from Pandit Jasraj, her hero.

Originally from Hyderabad, Sodhani moved to Mumbai to continue her musical training. She found voice at college musical festivals such as Malhar and Umang, among others, and won many awards.

Sodhani became a household name in India as one of the top 12 finalists of “Fame Gurukul,” a reality TV show on Sony TV. She was picked from hundreds of thousands of singers across India. The recognition catapulted her into the league of famous singers, leading to extensive tours across the globe.

Performing live on stage “makes you so connected with yourself”, she said on Artists Original.

When she had to deal with a voice impediment, she explored other avenues and

found succor in composing, writing and music production. She feels it was all part of a bigger picture- her destiny – to enable her to become a “wholesome musician.”

Sodhani has created waves as a composer. Recently, at the LA LGBT International Film Festival, she won the “Best Music” award for a short Australian-Indian Film, “Yaman.” With a Pakistani film in the offing, she has many regional films and web series to her musical repertoire.

“Jaag,” Sodhani’s last hit has garnered over 605,000 views on YouTube. It showcases her talent for spoken word poetry, which she is truly passionate about.

Speaking of her motivation, she says. “’Jaag’ is a fluid fusion of music and spoken word poetry,” she says. “I truly believe in the uniqueness of each individual, the need to awaken, to seek one’s own purpose and to unapologetically chase your dreams.”

To listen to more tracks - jiosaavn.com

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PIONEERS | SEEMA

The Talented Ms Nagral

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RADHIKA IYENGAR

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rising music icon, Avanti Nagral’s songs are infused with lyrics that are honest, thoughtful and intentional. They have an unfettered realness, which resonates with over 48 thousand Instagram followers. Her music covers a spectrum of subjects, including mental health, empowering fellow women, grappling with personal insecurities, and long-distance romances.

The 23-year-old polyglot (she’s sung in English, Hindi, Marathi and Punjabi), became the first to enroll in Harvard and Berklee College of Music’s coveted dual degree program. She has spoken on women issues at a United Nations panel discussion, is concerned about global healthcare, and even established her own digital production house called Golden Milk Media.

A multi-hyphenated career woman, Nagral gets candid with SEEMA about music, celebrating the self, squashing societal expectations and flouting barriers, whether they are social or psychological.

YOUR LATEST SONG, SUN TOH LO IS BASED ON YOUNG PEOPLE TRYING TO COPE WITH MENTAL HEALTH. YOU’VE BRAVELY USED YOUR MUSIC TO START A CONVERSATION AROUND A SUBJECT WHICH IS NOT TOO POPULAR AMONG THE SOUTH ASIAN COMMUNITY AND DIASPORA. WHAT PROMPTED YOU TO WRITE THIS SONG? That’s a great question. It’s something I’ve always cared about. I’ve

had several health issues through my life personally, many of them have been physical health-related.

When your physical health is at an all-time low, often, so is your mental health. And I’ve always felt that I’ve been fortunate to have access to healthcare and counselors. But there are so many people who don’t have this kind of access, and for whom, even sharing that they’re not feeling okay gets met with backlash.

I found this especially during the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown. There are so many people who’ve been silently suffering. And suffering doesn’t have to be diagnosed as a clinical disorder. Suffering doesn’t have to be extreme.

But it’s the little moments, the ups and the downs, and not being able to find an outlet—to not be able to share with your loved ones what you are going through.

As you know, a majority of my audience is very young. I had already been doing a lot of work in spreading awareness, but I wondered how I could ensure that it reached people as a message which they could relate to, because sometimes, people can’t say what they are experiencing, but it reflects in their body language. Sometimes, it’s easier for people to relate to things when they are expressed through art and music. That’s why, for me, it was really important that the song was also in Hindi. My hope is that the song can be something you could send to somebody and have them understand what you’re going through. Have them understand that all you want from them is to listen.

I GET A SENSE THAT MANY OF THE SONGS THAT YOU WRITE STEM FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. HOW EASY OR CHALLENGING HAS IT BEEN FOR YOU BE SO OPEN WITH YOUR FEELINGS? It’s definitely not easy, but I think there’s so much beauty in vulnerability, yet we shy away from that. We think that we have to put on our game face. In fact, today, everybody has to do that. Social media has created a public persona for everyone. We have an online self and an offline self. While it’s great that sometimes you can put on a front and keep distance, often it takes away that human connection and that humanity. So, for me, I’ve always tried as best as possible to be very similar in real life as I am online. It was a very conscious choice not to make a persona, because I felt like, the more authentic and relatable we are, the more we can speak to somebody and speak to their heart. Every single one of us has a story that deserves to be told. And if I have the privilege of having a voice – a singing voice – that can hopefully do justice to my own story, but also tell the stories of others, then I feel it’s a duty and responsibility.

WHAT IS YOUR SONG-WRITING PROCESS? It really depends. For instance, I wrote the song Thank u (pls), a day after a breakup. It was just my way of expressing catharsis. I was feeling sad as one does, but I was also feeling very grateful to the person for the things that I learned from them. The lyrics came from that place. For me, music has always MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 29

PIONEERS | SEEMA been cathartic, and writing has given me that ability to express myself.

Sometimes, however, you also need an objective lens.

There are a few of my songs where I’ve collaborated with other writers, where the process has been either slightly tweaking the lyrics or enhancing the melody.

In the case of Sun to Lo, my Hindi vocabulary is not as good — I cannot write such deep and beautiful lyrics.

Therefore, I collaborated with a lyricist, where we were very intentional about the concept. I think, just being able to build it from there and bring in different experiences, makes a huge difference.

Also, if you are talking about love, heartbreak, longing, loss, mental health, and don’t share your personal experiences, you don’t bring that same depth to the table.

YOU EXPERIENCED INSECURITIES AND LOW SELF-ESTEEM WHEN YOU WERE A YOUNG GIRL. DO YOU STILL FEEL INSECURE IN AN INDUSTRY WHICH IS, TO A CERTAIN DEGREE, HIGHLY SUPERFICIAL? HOW DID YOU TACKLE THAT? I would love to meet somebody who doesn’t experience insecurities. They would be my role model, because I definitely do feel insecure on a daily basis. Sometimes, it’s superficial things about our bodies; things about our outward appearance. We will often have that little voice inside us that tells us we’re not “good enough”. I found myself, in fact, becoming even more insecure over the past year due to social media. Audiences and numbers go hand-in-hand, and it’s amazing how much impact those numbers 30 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

can have on you. Often, I’ll find myself constantly comparing.

When that happens, I have to nip it in the bud and say, “Hey, I’m not in competition with anybody else.

I’m in competition with myself and that is the competition of growth”.

I just need to feel like I’m constantly growing. That can mean in any space, right? Today, I’m focusing on my personal growth. Tomorrow, I’m going to focus on professional growth. The day after, on relationship growth. As long as I’m growing, that’s what makes a huge difference.

Also, sometimes the best catharsis is crying, because it helps get it all out. The other day, I found myself getting incredibly jealous of somebody online and it bothered me. And I was obsessively checking their post. So, I really needed to just get myself into a space where I was centered. I had a good cry, I took a shower and tried to center myself. Sometimes, removing yourself from the situation is the best. Basically, when you hear that voice in your head, try surrounding yourself with people. Try talking to your family or your closest friends.

It’s important to build a support system around you.

WOMEN’S ISSUES ARE ALSO AT THE CORE OF YOUR WORK. YOUR SONG ‘TREATED’ EXPLORED THEMES OF WOMEN’S SELF-ESTEEM, AS WELL AS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. IN 2019, YOU SPOKE AT THE UNITED NATIONS PANEL ON THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN AND YOUNG GIRLS IN THE MEDIA. WHY IS THIS SUBJECT CLOSE TO YOUR HEART? I believe everybody has a voice and deserves a seat at the table. For too long, because of patriarchal structures, women and girls have not been afforded the same opportunities. As a woman who has grown up with arguably so much privilege, in terms of socio-economic background, I’ve had access to higher education and have a supportive and open-minded family. I don’t take any of those lightly. So, if I have had those privileges, I feel it’s almost a duty to bring others along with me and say, “Hey, this is possible, we can create a world

for ourselves.”

I’m also an older sister and I wear that identity on my sleeve.

So, when I see younger women and the opportunities that they have, I feel somewhat responsible. Think about 13-year-olds today. They have so much access to information and opportunity, and if not used correctly, if they’re not pushed in the right direction, or if they’re not given the same opportunities, then you will have that perpetuation in another generation. That’s why it’s important.

WHAT ABOUT REPRESENTATION? I think that’s extremely important as well, because it’s not just that I want to see someone with the same skin color on screen, that is important too. But what is important is knowing that voices like yours and mine are heard; knowing that there are more and more people in decision-making roles who can represent you. I’ve interacted with

so many young girls today and they’re brilliant. So, to be able to encourage that potential is important. When I write, I often write as if I’m writing to a younger version of myself, something I wish I could have taught myself. When I speak, I try to create space for young people to have their own voices, because too often, especially in South Asian communities, we think that children are meant to be seen, not heard. And that amplifies with younger women, because of the conditioning.

So, making sure that we have the ability to be vocal is crucial. That’s why I’m intentional about using the word equity, because I recognize that, just by virtue of many things, both genders are never going to be equal, primarily because physical aspects, right? Those are just facts: an average woman is shorter, not as strong. So, if we can’t have that exact equality, we can have equity.

We can make sure that opportunity is never the barrier. At the same time, we must all lift each other along the way and succeed together.

HARVARD GAVE YOU A GRANT TO WORK WITH SOUTH ASIAN TRADITIONAL INSTRUMENTALISTS. COULD YOU ELBORATE? I got a grant from them to research and record with traditional instrumentalists.

I’m trained in classical music and my guruji

is Dr. Prabha Atre, an absolute legend. I started training in classical when I moved to India. While I thought what I’m learning was absolutely cool, none of my classmates in school found it so. I felt that this is an ancient form of art that’s being passed on and was surprised that there were so many people who shunned it. I realized that they didn’t have that kind of exposure while growing up. It was seen as “uncool,” since it was not easily accessible to them. For me, it became important to preserve these sounds. The question was, how do you preserve the old, while also making it accessible to the newer generation, so that it feels invested and motivated to take it forward?

So, you’ll notice that most of my music has some element of that, whether it’s alaap in the back, or the tabla or sarangi, or other instruments, because I want those sounds to feel familiar. When I was doing this project, I intentionally recorded with instrumentalists, whose sounds are not necessarily familiar. For example, I recorded with a belabahar player. Belabahar is a cross between a violin and a sarangi, and there are only four left in the world, which is insane when you think about it. I have so much respect for people who are preserving this tradition.

Then, I was in Nepal for a couple of days, and there’s this particular kind of Nepali dholki called the damar. We recorded with that as well. It was just really beautiful. To be able to support these artists and make their work somewhat accessible is important.

You’ll be hearing some of those sounds on my upcoming projects.

I also hope to be able to finally piece together the mini-documentary we created.

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PIONEERS | SEEMA

Speaking for the Voiceless

SHRUTI KAPOOR DRIVES A MOVEMENT TO PROTECT GIRLS AND WOMEN FROM SEXUAL ASSAULT AND ABUSE

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very physician makes a commitment to placing the welfare of others ahead of their own. But in the face of a pandemic, doctors and other healthcare workers have found themselves exhausted, and emotionally and physically drained.

A successful economist at World Bank, she was looking for her next career role when the 2012 Delhi

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SEEMA KUMAR gang rape of Nirbhaya came as a wake-up call.

“I remember waking up and reading about it and just feeling a sense of anger, frustration and helplessness,” she says. Kapoor also vividly recalled an incident from her own life – abuse she had experienced as a teenage girl at the hands of a relative, which she had kept secret.

“It took me my entire life, to

come out publicly and speak about the abuse that I had experienced,” says Kapoor.

Raised in Kanpur, a small industrial city in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Kapoor grew up in a close knit family that put a high value on education. Her introduction to gender equality came early in life from her mom. Unlike many South Asian families, where boys and men get the best deal, Kapoor’s

mom strove to ensure that Kapoor and her brothers got the same treatment.

EQUALITY, EQUAL RIGHTS “From an early age, I learned the concept of equality, equal rights,” Kapoor says. “Just because I was a girl didn’t mean that I couldn’t have access to something or that I couldn’t study.”

Kapoor graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Mumbai, and arrived in the U.S. to do a master’s program – and never looked back.

“I got a great opportunity to start working at the World Bank in D.C. It was very exciting,” she says.

Kapoor eventually left the World Bank to do a PhD in economics at University of California, Riverside.

Then, in 2012, Kapoor and her husband moved to New York. She was looking for her next role when the gang rape happened in Delhi.

The Delhi incident not only enraged Kapoor, but drove her to action. She founded Sayfty a non-profit organization to teach women and girls how to recognize the difference between safe and unsafe physical contact from relatives and loved ones. “I spent the first 18 years of my life in India. I know what women and girls go through on a daily basis when it comes to their personal safety – the kind of harassment they … experience, whether at homes or on the streets.”

She knew that a much-needed conversation on women’s safety and sexual harassment was missing in Indian homes.

One in three women worldwide experiences some form of sexual abuse during their lifetimes. The prevalence of child sexual abuse is difficult to determine because it is often not reported, according to the National Experts of Victims of Crime. Most experts agree it is far greater than what is reported.

In the South Asian context, this

is compounded by stigma, says Kapoor. “It’s our conditioning,” she says. “There is…shame and guilt associated with sexual abuse or harassment, and … we are not encouraged to talk about these things. It took me years to … publicly say that I have been abused…, [that] what happened to me was not my fault.

Parents and adults can have conversations with children early on to prevent child sexual abuse from happening.”

Child sexual abuse or sexual violence often happen close to home, research shows, and the perpetrator is often someone within the family.

Sayfty’s mission is to educate and empower women and girls against gender-based violence by getting them comfortable talking about their experiences.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT “When we experience sexual harassment or street harassment, we are often told to ignore it, to keep our mouths shut, to walk away from it,”says Kapoor. Sayfty encourages women and girls open up and understand it is not their fault. The organization also teaches parents how to have conversations with their children at a young age, awkward as they might be.

“I started teaching [my daughter] at the age of four about private parts of the body. We teach children to learn about eyes, nose, and ears, but we don’t talk about private parts...

Teach children early on to distinguish between safe and an unsafe touch. Safe touch is something that feels warm and comfortable, and unsafe touches are something that you don’t feel comfortable with,” says Kapoor.

Besides guilt and shame, she says, children fear grown-ups’ reactions. “[They wonder], Will they scold me? Will they say it’s my fault? But if you regularly have these conversations with your children, you are go-

ing to build the trust that will allow them also to share their experiences if ever that happens.”

Given that in 99% of child sexual abuse cases, the perpetrator is someone known to the victim, she urges parents to keep their eyes and ears open. “Don’t assume that, you know, everybody in your family can be trusted,” she says. “It is often happening right in front of you, and you don’t even know it. Or you are in denial.” COVID has exacerbated gender violence. Domestic violence cases have increased in many countries, including in India and the U.S., with the maximum number of cases being reported in 2020.

Because victims are stuck inside and unable to get the help they need, “what has happened with COVID that is home is no longer a safe space for many women. Imagine being locked up with your family, in your own house with your [abuser],” says Kapoor.

The lack of access to help and the lockdown has made it a tough year for survivors of sexual abuse and domestic violence.

“I think my message to each one of you, anybody who’s reading this, is that you can make a difference. You may feel, I’m just a person, I don’t have a platform, I don’t have an organization. What difference can I make? But I think each one of us are influencers in our own way.”

She advocates a zero tolerance policy towards violence against women and girls. “Which means don’t send me WhatsApp messages that are sexist and nature, I’m not going to be laughing at these jokes, or consuming ads or movies that objectify women.”

She urges all influencers to use their voice within their own circles.

“I think that has a lot of power,” she says. “Don’t ignore violence against women and girls. Speak up against it every time you think about it.”

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Changing Women’s Lives – at 19 34 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

PRANJAL JAIN TURNED A BRUSH WITH BULLYING INTO A TEACHING MOMENT FOR HERSELF. A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE GRATEFUL FOR THAT

BHARGAVI KULKARNI

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eing bullied in her early years made Pranjal Jain aware of her school’s inability to provide her with support she needed at the time. So, ever since the age of 12, Pranjal has been busy organizing.

“The Internet was pretty new then,” she recalls. “We were still getting our bearings, especially socially.” She experienced a disconnect between her struggles and the school and the community that could have helped her. To her dismay, she found she was not the only victim of bullying, and it motivated her to form an anti-bullying curriculum.

That was the beginning of her activism. “Ever since I realized the power of my voice and the ability to make a change, I have been organizing on a national level since 2017,” she tells SEEMA. “I firmly believe we need to educate young people so that they are equipped with the knowledge required to be successful,” Jain says.

She recalls a time when she began her menstrual equity workshop.

“None of my peers knew what it was about,” she says. “It was so scary. I was shaking. I felt very vulnerable,” she adds. “But my vulnerability was my strength. My peers … understood and they opened up.

Through my curriculum my classmates noticed where they needed menstrual equity in their lives.”

This is when Jain understood that “grassroots is where the change happens in our communities. Bottom-up organizing is the only way real change happens.”

In 2016, after seeing a spike of despair among fellow people of color in her community, Jain decided to take action.

“I organized a post-2016 election ‘healing event’ focusing on acceptance of people of all races, genders, and sexualities in our community,” Jain says. It was the very first event she organized “while wearing the hat of a social justice organizer.”

Ever since, she has organized several events, campaigns, and projects focusing on different aspects of justice for the people she cares about.

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lift my community, especially immigrants and undocumented people, and people of color,” she says.

Jain is currently a sophomore at Cornell University, majoring in labor and industry relations. She also works part-time as the director of digital media for Alysa Cisneros, city council member of Sunnyvale, California.

GLOBAL GIRLHOOD

Jain started ‘Global Girlhood’ a little over a year ago. On its website, it is described as “a womxn-led organization that inspires storytelling, fostering intercultural dialogue, and representing the heights to which womxn soar.” The term ‘womxn’ is the most recent of several alternative political spellings of the English word ‘woman.’ ‘Womxn’ is used

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particularly by intersectional feminists, to avoid perceived sexism in the standard spelling and to explicitly include or highlight transgender women and nonbinary people.

Jain conceptualized Global Girlhood two years before it was established. “I was 17 when I came about the idea, and realized the importance of it, as it was born out of my past,” she says. “Growing up, especially as a former undocumented immigrant, a South Asian woman, and living in America as a hyphenated person, I thought I don’t really have anyone accessible in my life with a background and values similar to mine.”

She lamented that she didn’t have a “direct female role model” who was doing the kind of work that she wanted to do. “So I always grew up

thinking that there were no powerful women.” But at the age of 17, she realized it was impossible to have no women role models. And that is when Jain went to Jaipur, the city where she was born.

“I interviewed the women in Jaipur, because I was curious to learn more about them,” she says. “Those are the women from where I come from and I wanted to learn that if I am the way I am is a direct result of these women.”

After her interviews via social media, she says, “I realized that Jaipur is filled with powerful women once I lifted the veil of western narratives around empowerment and fixed perspectives.” She owes this eye-opening understanding to the power of digital media.

“So I would like to think of Global Girlhood as a platform that encapsulates those experiences for me, and I call it my love letter to the world,” she says.

Sharing Stories of Empowerment Jain says Global Girlhood aims to revolutionize representation in media, education and leadership.

“Our modus operandi is, we have a journalist sort of structure where we ask women to go out into their local communities and interview other women who inspire them,” she says. “And we take those stories to women in other communities and we ask them for their responses.”

By doing this, Jain says, “we are fostering intercultural dialogue and sustaining those lasting connections. As we publish these stories on social media, we change the algorithm and add representation to the platform. And it’s amazing.”

Jain notes that she did not want Global Girlhood to play into that savior complex.

“When we are sharing these stories, when we are going into these communities, we are never ever

focusing on the negatives or the barriers, but instead focus on uplifting women in the community,” she says.

Instead of “demonizing” women, Jain argues, “we celebrate women and their role in society. That’s a more powerful narrative – the one that celebrates who she is.”

She provides an example: “If someone had to leave school and marry at 13, then have babies and start a family, but later found a passion that she nurtured, Global Girlhood celebrates that and uplifts these women and decolonizes those perspectives. We don’t have to demonize women for their actions because they were based on the society they lived in and the opportunities that were available to them at the time. That’s a powerful narrative, one that does justice to the community she belongs to and the person that she is.”

RADICAL SISTERHOOD

“The idea is that you are always going to be there for the women in your life, regardless of what’s happening in your life,” Jain says.

“You are always going to go out of your way to uplift them and you are always going to center them in the work that you do; like taking their names in the rooms they are not in, giving them opportunities, believing in them, being a support system for them, adding a lot of transparency, trust and communication with your sisters.” It’s “a direct manifestation of what is happening in my life,” she says. “I am who I am, where I am, because of the women who have believed in me and invested in me.”

Jain says the best place to find the sisterhood is within Global Girlhood’s leadership team. “Our board is completely Gen Z-led and I think we are really pioneering what global citizenship looks like,” she says. “I have yet to meet women who are more invested, sup-

portive, kinder than the women on our team. It’s just an amazing feeling to be with them.”

A BROWN GIRL IN AMERICA

Jain’s multifaceted identity as a brown woman, immigrant and American has greatly impacted the work she does and strives to do in her community. “As a brown girl, everything I do, I do as an Indian woman,” she says. Sometimes, I am the only young woman in the room,” she says, and adds, “I am doing this for younger girls, to show them, that they can be in these spaces too and that they are not limited.”

Jain came to this country when she was six months old, and acquired her passport when she was seven. “I learned that I was an immigrant at age 15, which is about the time of the end of Obama’s presidency,” she says.

“I was an undocumented immigrant for seven years, and as I built solidarity with other immigrants, I learned more about myself and I will always carry the lessons I learned with me,” she says.

“As I piece together everything and understand how it fits my narrative, I imbibe the culture and all the other stuff in my life, and now it shapes the way I navigate my hyphenated identity.”

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PLEASURE PILLARS, 2001-2002 DRY PIGMENT AND WATER COLOR ON WASLI PAPER

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‘Think of Creativity as a Code to Live’ ARTIST SHAZIA SIKANDER DISCUSSES HER CUTTING-EDGE WORK – AND THE COMPLEX IDEAS THAT POWER IT

HEENA KAUSAR

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hile growing up as an introverted child, Pakistani-American artist Shazia Sikander fell back on drawing as a refuge at times she felt too shy to speak. For Sikander, art was a thinking tool, and continues to be fundamental to creative thinking.

“I use it as a means to collaborate with other languages, like painting, music, animation, and writing,” she says.

Sikander, who moved to the U.S. in 1993, specializes in Indo-Persian miniature paintings, and “examines colonial archives to readdress orientalist narratives in western art history.” She became interested in the traditional art practices of South Asia and how Eurocentric art history had constructed its narrative.

“Studying the provenance of the objects themselves, one could get an understanding of the violent

colonial impact. Many of the illuminated books have been torn and dismembered to be sold for profit,” she says.

Sikander said her interest in reimagining the past and re-reading the historical works was initially sparked by her own lack of general knowledge about the visual histories of the region.

“The more I became attuned to miniature painting’s complicated provenance, the more it yielded to new narratives,” she says.

Sikander grew up in Pakistan in the 1980s under a military dictatorship. She said this was also a time of diminishing women’s rights, human rights, the emergence of certain blasphemy laws, polarized public and private spaces, all geared towards discouraging dissent and creative expression.

However, this emerging stifling culture was contrary to the intrin-

HEADSHOT PHOTO CREDIT: MATIN_MAULAWIZADA

sic mix of secular, spiritual Muslimness that she experienced in her immediate family and community.

“Going in the direction of art and humanities was quite organic and intuitive as a young adult,” she says. Sikander completed her B.F.A. from the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan, before moving to the U.S. She pursued an M.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design, then MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 39

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PROMISCUOUS INTIMACIES BRONZE SCULPTURE, 2020

participated in the Glassell School of Art’s CORE Program at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Sikander has received a MacArthur Fellowship (2006) and the State Department Medal of Arts (2012).

She recently created her first sculpture, “Promiscuous Intimacies.” She said that the intertwined female bodies “evoke non-heteronormative desires 40 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

that are often cast as foreign and inauthentic, and instead challenge the viewer to imagine a different present and future.”

The sculpture was on display at Sean Kelly Gallery, which held an exhibition of her work last November. She has two upcoming books that will be released in April. One is a children’s book titled “Roots and Wings How

Shazia Sikander Became An Artist”; another, “Shahzia Sikander Extraordinary Realities,” will chart her development as an artist in Lahore and the U.S. Sikander has a nuanced view of the meaning of her work, which includes paintings, video animations, mosaics and sculpture.

“The future resides in the overlapping diasporas. Imagination is needed to cross boundaries,” she says. “As a Pakistani American, I think of my work as part of the on-going cultural birthing of what it means to be an American.”

Sikander believes that artists help in bringing in new ways of thinking, reframing history, and imagining new possibilities as part of the broader processes of transformation in a society.

“Often missing in such societal shifts are representations and voices of women, both as victims of expunged narratives and as leading voices, to offer counter perspectives to our prevalent hyper-masculinized histories and ways of being,” she says.

Sikander said that a broader understanding of feminism and social justice is part of the process of moving forward, and that her work is engaged in these crossovers.

“I enjoy making paintings where the female protagonists are proactive, playful, confident, intelligent, and connected to the past in imaginative ways,” she says.

Sikander’s advice to young women aspiring to be artists is to develop great intuition, not just skills, and to read. She also suggests that they should seek, build and participate in a community of like-minded people, and remain curious.

As she concludes, “But above all think of creativity as a code to live, as a means to problem-solve and connect heart and mind and people.”

THE WORLD IS YOURS, THE WORLD IS MINE INK AND GOUACHE ON PAPER. CREATED FOR AN OP-ED FOR NYTIMES

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PICTURED: SANDY SIDHU AS NAZNEEN KHAN -(PHOTO BY: IAN WATSON/EONE/NBC)

Just What the Doctor Ordered JARED WADE

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andy Sidhu is perhaps experiencing a sense of familial deja vu. As Nazneen Khan on the NBC drama “Nurses,” Sandy Sidhu is replicating in fiction her own mother’s

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journey to Canada while putting her own academic achievements to work. The Canadian series centers around a group of nurses in a busy Toronto hospital. Sidhu says the cast immediately felt a “special chemistry” on set. Though this is her first starring role on a

IN A STORY PARALLELING HER MOTHER’S REAL-LIFE JOURNEY, CANADIAN ACTOR SANDY SIDHU IS STARRING ON NBC AS AN IMMIGRANT INDIAN NURSE show, Sidhu would definitely be one to know.

Before taking up acting professionally, Sidhu earned a degree in cell biology and genetics from the University of British Columbia. For many, this is the stepping stone to the Medical College

Admission Test. But Sidhu’s heart was not in it. She was already taking acting classes on the side and knew that the spotlight — and not science or medicine — was her calling.

“I had another path clearly laid out for me, and I never wanted to take it,” she said.

ART STARTS IMITATING LIFE After years of uncertainty, her fork-in-the-road choice is now looking very astute. The British Columbia-born actor is even able to use her education in a show that, much like the Canadian medical series “Transplant,” was picked up

by NBC after pandemic production shutdowns left it with little original content to air.

Sidhu knows the additional reach of the U.S. network broadcast will amplify her visibility, but the role itself has been the greatest gift.

Sidhu’s character, Nazneen, immigrates from India to Canada to be a nurse — just like Sidhu’s real-life mom, who still works in a hospital.

“I had very personal reasons for wanting to honor this role,” said Sidhu. “And this is my first lead. So when I found out I booked job, I felt like a kid in a candy store.”

This isn’t the first time her academic bonafides have overlapped with her acting. Sidhu’s mini-breakout came in an award-winning, star-making, ratings-drawing series known everywhere, from Hollywood to Mumbai.

“If I were to look at the moment in my career where everything really changed for doors opening, it was after ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’” she said. Sidhu had only appeared in one episode, playing a lawyer, not a health care worker.

Still, from her mother to her degree to her first major series to her current role on “Nurses,” there has been a lot of connective tissue guiding Sidhu’s journey.

THE SCARY, UNCERTAIN PATH Getting to this point wasn’t easy.

About three years ago, Sidhu had serious doubts about her choices.

She took a hard look in the mirror and asked herself if she really wanted to do this. Would it all be worth it even if the elusive notion of making it might never come?

“I’m an individual who has the capacity to be successful in something else that I may not love as much,” she said. But the fulfillment and sense of achievement she got from her craft easily won out. “That feeling I get isn’t worth giving up on.”

Not long after, and perhaps as a direct result of mentally committing to being an actor no matter what, more work — and more-rewarding work — started to come her way. Those parts which eventually led to more significant roles, in “Grey’s Anatomy,” and now “Nurses,” brought in much-needed income, confidence, and relief.

Back when she dropped the option of going into medicine, Sidhu admits fearing her parents would be disappointed with her chasing a dream instead of professional stability.

“There is so much guilt that comes with being first-generation Canadian,” said Sidhu. “Your parents work so hard to provide for you and build you this amazing life. And then you want to go and be an artist?” So she nervously avoided the conversation for weeks.

But when she brought it up, they were her biggest supporters. Her mom told her to go for it, saying, “Just make sure you work very, very hard.”

A grateful Sidhu says, “I grew up with an incredibly compassionate, empathetic, and loving mother, who

PICTURED: “NURSES” KEY ART -- (PHOTO BY: NBCUNIVERSAL)

is also a nurse and genuinely loves her job…. “What I didn’t realize was that my parents knew me better than I did,” she said. “They weren’t shocked.”

ENCOURAGING OTHERS TO FOLLOW THEIR HEART For years, after many small roles and gigs taken for a paycheck, Sidhu felt she was on the cusp of a larger project. There was always one problem: the casting directors just didn’t really know who she was. Experience spawns experience, and Sidhu didn’t have eye-popping credits.

“It’s a big gift for the producers to take a chance on me and allow me to play Nazneen … It’s not only been a dream role but it’s put me in a different bracket in the industry,” Sidhu says. She knows this break was not guaranteed.

“It can look from the outside like there is a clear trajectory and clear upward mobility, but when you’re actually walking that path ..., you have no idea if it’s going to pan out,” she says.

Sidhu says she has reached a point where the fulfillment has made the struggle worth it. This has prompted her to encourage everyone she meets to follow their instincts and pursue their passion.

“It’s scary trusting something that you can’t explain,” she says. Whatever it was, that it was always driving her this way “There is just that whisper in your heart that tends to get louder and louder. And then it becomes something that you realize is your answer.”

At that point, Sidhu says, “you just have to have the courage to follow through with it.”

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The Roar of a Winner

Radha directs actor Mahesh Dattani, who is an award-winning playwright and director in his own right.

RADHA BHARADWAJ DISCUSSES “SPACE MOMS,” HER CINEMATIC TRIBUTE TO THE WOMEN BEHIND THE INDIAN SPACE PROGRAM

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ike her film “Space MOMs,” Radha Bharadwaj’s story is, as she puts it, “not the cry of a victim; it's the roar of a winner.” Bharadwaj, with her husband by her side as lead producer, dug deep into her Indian heritage to unearth a gem with unique sparkle. Instead of exploiting the stereotypical oppressed victim woman trope, Bharadwaj chooses to embrace what she dubs “indigenous pride.” Her philosophy makes the experience a launchpad from which Indians — and all indigenous cul-

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ADAM CARPENTER tures — can propel themselves into the stratosphere, and beyond.

STANDING ON SHOULDERS, BOOSTING OTHERS UP Bharadwaj credits “hard knocks” to be her mentors. However, she also nods to Hollywood giants Ron Howard, Oliver Stone, and Brian Grazer. Stone read the script and recommended it to Imagine Entertainment, while founders Howard and Grazer let the young rookie fresh out of India make the film.

In some ways, Bharadwaj had no choice but to pay their kindness-

es forward. Her vision for “Space MOMs” was specific: Redesign the indigenous success narrative. Further, she had to do it in the context of a challenging genre: science-fact.

To help everyone on the vast team deliver on the film’s promise, she dug in, molding, coaching, guiding young and old through everything from acting to production and post-production.

CHANGING THE NARRATIVE The Western-dominated film industry has nestled itself into an all-too-comfortable couch of

pro-colonial culture. Far too often, Bharadwaj notes, film-watchers are fed images of “victimized women, poverty, caste, and religious strife.”

“Space MOMs” takes off in a different direction.

Bharadwaj explains, “‘Space MOMs” is one of the few films that treats the everyday life and aspirations of average Indians with respect.” The dominant thread woven through the fabric of the modern Indian story is not drawn from the colonial spool. Rather, it comes from family.

“Our familial bonds, the push to excellence by parents who sacrifice everything so we can get a good education: These are part and parcel of what it means to be Indian,” Bharadwaj argues. “It's a big reason why so many Indians do well in STEM and management. Why so many top CEOs in the U.S. are of Indian descent.”

According to her, Indian success isn’t a by-product of a post-colonialized drive to overcome the manacles of the oppressor.

“Hundreds of millions of people have had the same upbringing that I had, the same upbringing that the Mars engineers had,” Bharadwaj says, adding that the ramifications of these millions of foundational families have been underrepresented on the big screen. Bharadwaj explains that this discrepancy is

Radha, in costume, directs her crew in Space MOMs.

the catalyst igniting her film’s success: “We never see it depicted on film or television. That's a key reason why people respond so emotionally to ‘Space MOMs.’”

GIVING PEOPLE A NEW VOICE “Space MOMs” has been heartily embraced, and the response has been overwhelming, particularly because the love comes Radha, playing the role of the schoolteacher from so many corners of Farzana in Space MOMs, uses her laptop to teach the globe. her students about India’s Mars Orbiter Mission.

“It's not just Indians who see the importance of a film like ‘Space MOMs.’ I'm seeing the same reaction from others as tives as the Hollywood folk.” well,” Bharadwaj says. The acclaim She explains that Bollywood is comes from a pantheon of cultural subject to the same self-loathing icons and innovators. She admits tropes — vestiges of colonial rule: that her film has been dubbed a “Colonial attitudes are hard to “must-see from stalwarts like the eradicate. The former slave is first woman of color in space, Dr. forever contorting himself/herself Mae Jemison, the Geena Davis Insti- into degrading positions to please tute on Gender in Media, former the master.”

U.S. Ambassador Curtis Chin, and Bharadwaj and Cohen decided to many others.” bootstrap the venture themselves.

They spent two years raising money.

ROCKETING THROUGH THE Since the project lifted off in 2021, CHALLENGES the acclaim that “Space MOMs” has While seeking funding, whenever garnered vindicates their efforts.

Bharadwaj and her husband, David The movie has been lauded as the Cohen, presented the idea to Holkind of tool Bharadwaj worked to lywood, the producers kept looking create, a message that, as she puts it, for the same, preencourages “a fair depiction” of Indictable, degrading dian and “other ancient civilizations motifs. She expethat also excelled in the sciences, rienced the same like the civilization of Egypt or that challenge thousands of the Mayans and Incas.” of miles away from As Bharadwaj put it, “I want Sunset Boulevard.

‘Space MOMs’ to speak for all of us, Bharadwaj recounts, and show that intellectual achieve“a Bollywood comment is not the exclusive domain of pany that wanted certain races or peoples.” to partner with me to make this film For a list of platforms where wanted the exact you can watch Space MOMs, visit same victim narrahttps://geni.us/SpaceMOMs MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 45

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Living with Pandas

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FILMMAKER GUNJAN MENON WANTS TO DRIVE WILDLIFE CONSERVATION BY GETTING THE WORLD ON BOARD DEEPA PADMANABAN

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ward-winning wildlife filmmaker Gunjan Menon knew she wanted to focus on conservation stories and not just film pretty pictures, when, as a teenager, she realized that the wildlife she grew up watching in documentaries were under threat.

As a child, she loved taking videos of animals with her father’s camera in her backyard in Delhi and remembers reading a book on rain forests her grandfather gave her.

“Once my brother and I even rescued a grounded fruit bat pup and saved his life,” she recalled.

Gunjan decided to merge her two interests, photography and wildlife. and did a master’s degree in wildlife filmmaking at the University of West of England, in Bristol, U.K. Men, used to dominate wildlife filmmaking, which is physically challenging. It calls for navigating tough terrains and waiting patiently for hours to catch a glimpse of the animal. But women like Menon are showing they are equipped to overcome these obstacles.

For her master’s thesis, a 13-minute film, Menon trekked up to 12,000 feet in the Himalayas to shoot. The film depicted the work of a young Nepali woman, Menuka Bhattrai, in conserving the red panda, also known as firefox, a highly endangered species facing threats from poaching and fragmented habitats.

“People didn’t even know red pandas existed, so pushing for their conservation was going to be hard

unless I told the story through the eyes of a character who my audience could connect with,” says Menon.

“Once I met Menuka, I was extremely inspired by her and decided to make her the central character of my film.”

Bhattrai, the first woman forest guardian to join the Red Panda Network, an NGO working to conserve the animal, faced a lot of criticism for taking up a man’s job. Menon could relate to that.

Menon and Bhattrai trekked for 4-5 hours every day just to reach the panda’s habitat. Bad weather plagued them on most days, and leeches feasted on them at night.

“The terrain was unforgiving,” Menon says “But it was all worth it when I finally locked eyes with a panda cub.”

“The Firefox Guardian,” released in 2018, won more than 30 awards and nominations in 15 countries. But Menon says that, more than the awards, she is thrilled that it was instrumental in helping conserve red pandas and getting people to think about protecting wildlife.

“A six-year-old’s father from Oregon told me she wanted to be a conservationist like Menuka when she grows up,” says Menon. “Stories like these make me tear up because reassert the power of filmmaking, and assure me I’m on the right track.”

She feels most documentaries romanticize the truth, shying away from the crises at hand – the planet’s sixth mass extinction, and climate change.

“I want to tell truthful stories, films that bring hope, cinema that can

inspire,” Menon says. “That’s perhaps the main difference between simply taking pretty pictures of wildlife and being able to tell conservation stories.”

These stories need not always be gloomy, Menon says. “I experiment with cross-genres so that these films can reach the masses. We can’t keep preaching to the choir if we really want to change the world with our stories.”

In spite of the many challenges of the job – no set schedule, no steady income, no job security – Menon believes filmmaking can really bring behavioral change among people, push policies and inspire a call to action.

She has recently completed a web series about how local people co-exist with wild animals in the Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary in Rajasthan, She is now working on a film about a species declared extinct in the wild.

With her husband, Menon recently also started “Beyond Premieres,” an organization aiming to help bridge the gap between wildlife filmmakers and grassroots NGOs in bringing conservation issues to the fore.

“We also wish to train emerging filmmakers on how to create an impact with their work so our tribe can help solve conservation issues, one little step at a time,” she says.

Menon hopes more women will enter her field.

“I want to tell all aspiring young girls, don’t ever think you can’t do this,” she says. And so she is conducting a free virtual workshop on wildlife filmmaking for teenage girls on March 6.

MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 47

PIONEERS | SEEMA

The

Way Back Home

48 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

CHEF ANAHITA DHONDHY WANTED TO MAKE HER NAME IN WESTERN CUISINE; INSTEAD, SHE HAS BECOME A GAMECHANGER IN THE INDIAN VARIETY ANUBHUTI KRISHNA

Imagine a young chef riding the wave of success, traveling across the globe, winning awards and taking the culinary world by storm… Then the pandemic strikes. The restaurant she has so lovingly built is shut for months, the team she has nurtured is forced to disband, and the chef herself has to sit at home.

Anahita Dhondhy may not be the only one who faced this situation in 2020 but she surely is one of the few who turned this adversity on its head and created opportunity out of it.

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graduate from the Institute of Hotel Management, Aurangabad, and a Grande diploma holder from Le Cordon Bleu London, Anahita Dhondhy is a darling of the media, a role model for young women, and a chef partner at SodaBottleOpenerWala, Gurgaon.

Dhondhy is one of the most recognizable Indian chefs worldwide. An advocate of local, seasonal and regional produce and champion of making Indian cuisine cool, she has been in the limelight since her career began seven years ago.

Ironically, while Dhondhy today is the face of modern Indian cuisine worldwide, she grew up dreaming of cooking modern European cuisine.

“I had always wanted to work with modern European and French cuisine, and loved working with pastry,” says Dhondhy with a smile. “During my time at Cordon Blue, however, I really missed home food.” This longing led her to cook Indian every night, eventually MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 49

PIONEERS | SEEMA paving the way for her to open the first mainstream Bombay Irani café in India as a chef manager. Her Parsi roots, her passion to revive the dying culinary heritage of the community, and her hard work, all ensured that in just a couple of years she became not just one of the most popular chefs in the country but also the face of India in culinary forums across the globe. By 2019 she had won umpteen awards and had featured in the elite Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list.

Dhondhy says she did not work for the awards, but for the reward of working in her kitchen and bonding with her community.

“My connection with my followers, my guests who became friends, and the culinary community at large saw me through the lockdown,” she says. The community she had built over the past seven years really responded to a new idea she had.

“I was seriously missing cooking so when the lockdown eased, I decided to start a home kitchen with mum,” Dhondhy says. This turned into reality a long-standing dream she had – of sharing her Parsi culinary heritage, and to cook with her mother. Soon Anahita and Nilufer’s Weekend Kitchen became the talk of the town – and social media – and the weekend meals started selling out days in advance.

The kitchen, now in its sixth month, started with Parsi staples like Dhansak and Vaghrela Chawal, but expanded to Western offerings like Moussaka and fresh bread rolls.

Every meal was accompanied with sides and desserts. The experience, Dhondhy says, was both humbling and encouraging.

“As a chef there is nothing I wanted more than cooking, and as a manager it was important that I did not become a burden on my 50 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

resources,” she says. Which is why even though her restaurant is open now, Dhondhy continues to run the kitchen and uses most of her restaurant resources to pay the staff.

How has this change affected her?

“The pandemic has made everyone in sit up and rethink. At the moment being relevant and helping your community is what matters most, apart from taking care of your team,” she says, adding that this viewpoint has helped her appreciate her people, her craft and her life

even more.

“That I can do what I love and have the liberty to play around with my menus, ingredients, and offerings is means a lot at this time,” Dhondhy says.

She has a word of caution for other women hoping to make it good in the food business.

“Working with food may look glamorous but it is real hard work,” Dhondhy says. “So if you want to make it big, you should be prepared to work hard for it.”

Reviving a Culinary Heritage

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PIONEERS | SEEMA

CHEF VANSHIKA BHATIA MAY BE FAMOUS FOR HER INTERNATIONAL FARE, BUT SHE IS ALSO BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO THE ENDANGERED BANWALI CUISINE ANUBHUTI KRISHNA

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bout eight years ago, when Chef Vanshika Bhatia’s parents asked her which business school she wanted to go to, they were in for a surprise.

Neither did their child want to pursue a management degree, nor did she want to join family business.

She wanted to go to a culinary school.

Bhatia, who was born in Kanpur, educated in London, and trained in Copenhagen, Dubai and Bangkok, is now a famous chef, baker and entrepreneur. Yes, Bhatia’s is a name to reckon with in the culinary circuits across the globe. But her passion to preserve her native cuisine, Banwali, to promote Indian food globally (using native Indian ingredients and not buckling to trends), make her one of a kind.

“I come from a large business family, so it was assumed that I will go to a business school. I, however, had other plans,” says Bhatia, who also tells us how she used to bake all night during school exams to de-stress.

“I could never sit in a class or do well academically but doing new things interested me,” she says. So when her parents agreed to her going to culinary school, she wisely decided to avoid a long-term culi52 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

nary program.

“I joined Le Cordon Blue, London for a short nine-month course, a crash course in everything about restaurants and kitchens,” Bhatia says. The course – and her hunger to learn – took Bhatia to Noma, Copenhagen, right after she passed

out, a feat few are able to achieve.

From there she went to work at Junoon in Dubai, Gaggan in Bangkok, and Olive in Delhi.

It was at these kitchens that Bhatia, who had learned French cuisine at Le Cordon Bleu and cooked world cuisine at Noma, learned about the nuances of Indian cuisine.

Watching chefs she considers masters of the craft work with Indian food sparked her interest in it.

Soon after she took a break from a full-time job and traveled throughout India to understand the nuances of the different cuisines, ingredients, and the variety of pressures that influenced local food. Her new learning found expression in a sprawling wood- and copper-accented restaurant in India, Together At 12th.

“The biggest power of food is to bring people together. I wanted that to reflect in my place,” Bhatia says. The restaurant’s cuisine relied on Indian ingredients cooked using French techniques and a very strong sense of culinary ethics.

Her experiences across the globe had taught Bhatia the importance of using local, seasonal, regional produce. Soon she was liaising with urban farmers, reducing kitchen waste and turning excess into preserves. “I want to make bread with the distillery discard of grains,” she says, as she showcases ravioli she has stuffed with discarded fruit skin and dip made of hemp seeds.

“It is important for chefs to be more responsible in our kitchens,” Bhatia says. “I may not be able to force other chefs to do that, but I

can control my practices and hope to make a difference.”

To ensure her guests eat freshly grown, clean and mostly organic food Bhatia has spend more and rely on a smaller sliver of profit. She does not seem to mind.

“I am satisfied that I feed my guests good food and they keep coming back for more,” she says.

What Bhatia is not satisfied about is that native cuisine is losing to globalization.

“We should not let our history die,” she says. “The West celebrates its heritage and so should India.”

So while Bhatia is an active part of many international chef forums and is constantly collaborating with international chefs, she also falls back on her own heritage.

“My family came to India during Partition from a town in Pakistan called Bannu,” Bhatia says. “A distinct close-knit community, the Bannuwals, once had their own language, culture and food, but all of that is slowly being lost. While the language is already gone – neither my parents nor I speak it – I want to save the cuisine from vanishing, and I am trying to do that by learning about it from family elders and documenting it.”

Does that mean Banwali cuisine will find its way to her menu?

“My menu is freestyle, so that we can add or remove anything. So you never know,” she says. For now she is mastering the Banwali recipes, sharing them selflessly and enjoying them at home.

Bhatia is sanguine about her future. “I want my restaurant to be self-sustaining with its own farm and dairy,” she says. “I also want to start smaller brands simultaneously which are all made with clean, organic and local produce. And at 40 I want to retire from active service. I will be tired by then.”

MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 53

PIONEERS | SEEMA As she puts it, “We need many more female voices to tell authentic stories.”

At 17, Meera Dasgupta Has a Way With Words THE 2020 UNITED STATES YOUTH POET LAUREATE IS A CHANGE-MAKER AND A FIERCE ADVOCATE FOR STUDENTS AND GENDER EQUALITY

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t 17, she’s a wordsmith, change-maker, and a fierce advocate for students’ voices and gender equality. Meet Meera Dasgupta, the 2020 United States Youth Poet Laureate.

Dasgupta, a senior at Stuyvesant High School, is the youngest national youth poet laureate. A 2020 United Nations Global Goals ambassador, a Federal Hall fellow, and winner of the Climate Speaks program and the Scholastic Arts and Writing award, Dasgupta has also performed at several pres-tigious venues around 54 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

BHARGAVI KULKARNI the country. In a Zoom call with SEEMA, she spoke about her role as a youth poet laureate, her activism, her future plans, and about Amanda Gorman, the young poet who dazzled the nation at President Joe Biden’s inauguration.

LIFE AS A NATIONAL YOUTH POET LAUREATE “The youth poet laureate has many opportunities, and there’s definitely some leeway in terms of what we can do, which is why no one’s tenure is the same,” Dasgupta tells SEEMA. Among other things, Dasgupta has

published a book, writes a blog, publishes poems, holds workshops and gives interviews on different platforms.

However, some of her engagements have been affected by the pandemic.

“A lot of spoken words are [about] getting feedback from the audience – people clapping along,” she says, adding that performing virtually has its advantages.

“I have been able to speak with people who I wouldn’t have been able to speak with before,” Das-gupta says. She has also mentored a girl in South Africa in public speaking.

THE INTERSECTION OF POETRY AND ACTIVISM “I really utilized my activism in spaces with womxn, empowering women within these spaces, and also within the intersections of my identity, not only as an Indian American, but as an Indian American woman in New York City – and in America,” she says.

That pushed her to work “not only in the women’s movement, but also in climate justice, racial justice, different social justice movements.”

Calling herself “erratic,” she says, “If I see something that I feel is an issue in the world, I would send an email a second later.” She gives an example: “I saw someone on Facebook talking about mental health being affected by the pandemic. I emailed a senator a minute later, just randomly, to discuss that issue and to see if some positive change can come from that.”

Before she was a poet, Dasgupta participated in various advocacy groups. It was in elementary school that she says she first realized that she likes to work with others.

“I would always help people excessively,” she says. “I mean, when someone would drop a pencil or a scissor across the room… My activism definitely started as a result of that experience.”

THE POWER OF POETRY “Poetry is very much story-telling in a way,” she says. “In some forms of art, the art itself, and the performance, allows people to take a different form of identity.”

Dasgupta has been told that she’s a different person on stage.

“I close my eyes and suddenly something else happens,” she says.

Dasgupta says there is a misconception that poetry is for an audience, but argues that it could also be a way of being vulnerable, and learning about oneself and healing.

Poetry helps with her activism as well. When she is writing, Dasgupta

says, she learns “how to utilize certain words and lyricisms which can evoke a certain meaning … It has helped me in rais-ing awareness in civic engagement, uplifting youth voices in marginalized communities, within my local space and globally,” she says.

Dasgupta found her true calling as a member of the Stuyvesant Speech Team, interpreting and per-forming spoken word poems. She started writing poetry, or spoken word poetry, less than two years ago before becoming the youth poet laureate.

She recalls that soon after she had begun writing, a young girl in the audience asked if she could perform.

Though not on the lineup, Dasgupta was allowed to read a poem about her time in the foster care system, and how that related to empowerment.

Dasgupta says, “It was one of the most powerful moments of the night.”

FUTURE PLANS “More than what I am going to be doing in 10 years, I think more about who I am going to be,” Dasgupta says.

“I want to be the person who continues to push boundaries, and to try to change the world.”

She believes that while New York City celebrates progressive values and pushes boundaries, there is much work to be done, “within traditional values and trying to find intergenerational conversa-tions.” She wants to talk more people in the country and abroad to “learn about this network of people who’re already doing the work and how I can help.”In college, she wants to major in political science.

ON AMANDA GORMAN Dasgupta says she’s not surprised with Gorman’s “sudden ascent” after the performance on Inau-guration Day. She says it was heartening that Gorman was recognized for her work.

“She’s been recognized for a long time by so many leaders within our community, but not within the gener-

al population,” she says, adding, “Not a lot of people knew what a National Youth Poet Laureate was – or even what spoken word poetry was – before Amanda. I would tell people about the title and they would say: ‘What is that?’”

ON BEING COMPARED TO GORMAN “I try to consider myself unique,” she says, “but I definitely look to Amanda as an inspiration.” In April 2017, Gorman became the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate.

Dasgupta says that Gorman’s Inauguration Day poem was able “to instill hope within so many people during a time which has definitely been a transitional period, not only in America, but glob-ally, not only in terms of the pandemic but in terms of unification and acknowledgment of history.”

To see someone on the stage who resembles so many in her neighborhood has allowed her “to find spaces within my own circle and spheres,” she says. “Perhaps one day I will be at that stage as well ... and I’ll be someone who can inspire others.... Rather than see who I’m going to be, I try to find people who I want to stand besides some day ... People like Amanda and Kamala Harris...”

HER ADVICE TO YOUNG WOMXN “When I was younger, I never saw people like me or who look like me in positions of leadership,” Dasgupta says. “Because it was something I never saw, I never thought that I could be in a posi-tion that I am in today.”

She urges Indian American girls to find their passion.

“Try to educate yourself, foster that curiosity, and read the words of people who came before … Also [those] of people who are from other countries,” she says. “I feel like, being in this bubble, it is kind of difficult to get out ...

Find all these aspects for yourself.”

MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 55

PIONEERS | SEEMA

Just the Way She Moves FROM A SMALL TOWN TO THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE, MEENAL SAJWAN DESCRIBES HOW KATHAK DANCE HELPED HER FIND HER FEET

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ast July Meenal Sajwan completed a four-and-a-half year stay in Mexico.

She was on assignment by the Indian Council for Cultural Affairs to teach Kathak dance at the Indian Culture Center in Mexico City, and to perform at cultural events the Indian embassy orga-nized throughout that country.

56 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

ALPANA VARMA For Sajwan, that was the culmination of a journey lined with hurdles and huge demands for courage. But all the forces in the universe conspire with those with determination.

Growing up in the small town of Haldwani, at the foothills of the Himalayas, Sajwan’s family was quite orthodox. Girls like her were brought up to follow the rules, with little say in their

own lives. Sajwan says she had no exposure to Kathak in her childhood. In fact, there was so little awareness of any of the classical performing arts that her town did not even have an auditorium. She would watch Bollywood movies and imitate what she saw with her friends. She also got to dance at weddings in the neighborhood.

But, sometimes, in the movies, she also got a glimpse of classical

dance, by Hema Malini or Sridevi.

That piqued her curiosity.

When Sajwan graduated from college, in the time she was expected to take up a job in preparation for a traditional marriage, she happened upon a dance teacher and began taking lessons without informing her family. The dance classes changed her life. Sajwan told her teacher, she would like to pursue Kathak professionally. Her teacher told her she would have to audition at the Kathak Kendra in Delhi if she hoped to gain admission.

All hell broke lose at home when she told the family of her plans. Finally, after Sajwan went on a hunger strike, her parents relented. She received permission to go to Kathak Kendra for a year, relying on a limited financial support of Rs 1,500 per month. This was 18 years ago. The metropolis that is Delhi intimidated her, and the wide streets were too daunting to cross, but she found a home in the Kathak Ken-dra hostel, and she put in her 10-12 hours of daily practice.

She considered herself fortunate to have trained under Guru Kishan Maharaj, son of the legendary Birju Maharaj of the Lucknow gharana. By now, dance had acquired spiritual meaning.

It is a ‘puja’ (ritual), a ‘sadhna’ (discipline) a devotion and a disciplined and methodical pursuit to attain something,” she says. At the end of her first year at dance school, Sajwan’s hard work bore fruit: she received a scholarship for the rest of her six-year training at Kathak Kendra. She had barely begun her second year of training when her parents began arranging her marriage. She imposed the condition

that she would only marry someone who would support her devotion to dance. Soon she met Ganesh, a software engineer working in Gurgaon.

The caste was right and Ganesh was pleased to meet someone who had dreams of her own. He pledged his support. Things fell into place and the wedding was solemnized before Sajwan’s 23rd birthday. By the time Sajwan completed her remaining four years of training and received her diploma, she had a baby, too.

She set up Satrang Kala Foundation, a dance academy in which she taught Kathak, but had other teachers for Bharatanatyam, Ku-chipudi and Odissi. She says she was not daunted by the challenges of managing a staff, students, keeping the parents of her pupils happy, and the administrative and creative work involved, all while also taking care of an infant. In fact, her supportive husband egged her to do more.

She applied, auditioned and was accepted for a for an Indian Council for Cultural Affairs position to go abroad. But it was 10 months before

she learned she would be sent to Mexico. The news was met with alarm and distress in her family.

It was admittedly with some trepidation that she set foot on Mexican soil, along with her daughter and husband to help her settle down.

Everyone she met in Mexico had a lofty image that India was the land of spirituality. Sajwan concluded that she had to go out of India to connect deeply with her own roots.

The love of her students and the applause of the audiences stirred her soul. Despite not knowing Spanish, she felt she could connect with people who understood everything she had to convey. This is what art does, she says: it builds bridges.

Sajwan credits the then ambassador of India, Muktesh Pardeshi, for striving tirelessly to promote Indian culture in Mexico.

His efforts led to India being designated the guest country for major cultural events such as the Cervantino Festival in Guanajuato, the Book Festival in Guadalajara and the NAO festival in Acapulco.

“His tenure saw the golden period of India culture in Mexico – and of Indo-Mexican friendship,” Sajwan says. There were numerous occasions, such as the Festival of Friends (where all countries would showcase their food and culture in the heart of Mexico City every year), events at international schools or joining in local folk dances derived from the Spanish flamenco.

Sajwan says she takes pride in representing her country and teaching its art form to foreigners.

As she puts it, all Indians need to be made aware of the richness of their culture – and the depth of their roots.

MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 57

PIONEERS | SEEMA

“Learning to Code Builds Other Life Skills” MOM AND ENTREPRENEUR ASHNI DWARKADAS ON HEADING HACKBERRY, THE INDIAN CODING AND DIGITAL LITERACY PLATFORM

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oding has become literal child’s play with the inception and roll out of Hackberry, India’s digital solution to the coding education.

Often deemed as the new robotics, coding is globally packaged and presented to millennial parents as an essential 21st century skill. There’s also been a surge in online coding classes globally during the surfeit of virtual time provided by pandemic quarantines. When Ashni Dwarkadas learned that India lacked such classes, she put her entrepreneurial prowess to work.

“Learning how to code is like learning how to read and write in computer language,” she says. “Coding is the language of creativity that empowers children to create for the future.”

SEEMA had the privilege of engaging

58 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

MELANIE FOURIE with this prolific mom and business woman in an exclusive interview.

WAS A CAREER IN STEM ALWAYS SOMETHING THAT YOU GRAVITATED TOWARD, OR DID YOU HAVE OTHER ASPIRATIONS? I did my undergraduate degree and my MBA from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. While there, I met a lot of interesting and very intelligent people, and saw some amazing work in tech, but I was always more inclined towards finance. After my MBA, I worked for several years in investment banking at a financial firm in Mumbai, India. I discovered that it wasn’t for me, and so quit that to work on an entrepreneurial idea.

WHERE DID YOU GROW UP AND WHAT WAS IT LIKE THERE?

I grew up in Mumbai, India. My father ran a small business, and my mum ran a preschool. Education was very important in my family, and my parents always urged me to dream big and work hard.

Prior to Hackberry, you also started Koffeeplace, an inspiring and collaborative online platform for women seeking career guidance. How did that come about?

I decided to break from work when my daughter, Dia, was born in 2011.

Three years and one more baby later, I connected with an old school friend.

The conversation led to future plans.

Anisha, my friend, was looking for inspiration, guidance, and direction for the next step in her career. I shared how difficult it was to stay in touch with my career when I was on a break, and how challenging it was to even begin the journey back to work. That’s

how the idea for Koffeeplace was born.

HOW ABOUT THE CONCEPT FOR HACKBERY? Anisha was looking for a coding class for her then 7-year-old daughter, but couldn’t find anything she liked. I didn’t even know that young kids could learn to code, and was intrigued. After a little research, we both realized the tremendous opportunity in this space, and decided to jump in. We quickly developed a program for the 6-10 age group and piloted with a group of kids who were close friends and family.

After a few successful pilots, we decided to roll out Hackberry, an education company with a focus on developing a curriculum that was entirely concept-based. We now work with kids as young as 4 and offer a large range of programs suited to learners up to 15 years of age. We’ve just developed a very excited edtech platform as a solution for schools that would like to implement a high quality coding program at their schools. Through Teachberry, schools can train existing teachers, have access to effective, proven curriculum and teaching materials, and assessment tools.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR CHILDREN TO LEARN TO CODE? Coding is basically how we communicate with computers, and what we use to build and run websites, apps, video games and so much more. Coding is an essential skill that prepares children for the future. Kids go from being consumers of technology, to using technology for creating and innovating. Learning how machines work, and how to interact with them, will be an essential skill for the future generation, no matter what career path they choose. And just like any other essential skill – math, language, and so on – it’s best learned early. And its not just that. Learning to code builds other life skills that are translatable to everything else. It drives innova-

tion and creativity, builds confidence, develops problem-solving and computational thinking skills, and translates to success in areas like reading, math and science.

HACKBERRY COLLABORATES WITH SCHOOLS AND YOUR COURSES FORMS PART OF THEIR CURRICULUM. COULD YOU PERHAPS ABOUT THAT? Hackberry has been working with several Mumbai-based schools to deliver a coding curriculum. Our focus has been to teach foundational coding concepts students from grades 1 through 6, and build computational thinking. We’ve delivered our programs as a part of school’s curriculum, and as after school programs offered to interested students.

We’ve just launched Teachberry, a platform that allows schools to license our proven, effective curriculum, and implement this high-quality, cost-effective coding curriculum at their schools quickly and easily.

We provide schools with everything that they would need to begin teaching coding – from training modules for teachers, teaching resources (including lesson plans, PowerPoint slides, videos and more), and assessments. Our platform also tracks student progress by mapping assessments to learning outcomes. We’re very excited about this product, and we hope to bring coding to every classroom across the country.

WHAT IS A TYPICAL DAY LIKE FOR YOU? These days, an early morning walk followed by breakfast, set up the kids for home schooling, and then get to work.

We all have designated work spaces in the house now! Mornings are for work plus helping my younger son with any school task that he needs assistance.

After lunch is usually reserved for online meetings. My cofounder, Anisha, and I connect multiple times in a day, and we’ve set up regular team meetings over Zoom, too, so we can all stay

and feel connected. In the evenings, once I wrap up work, I take the kids outdoors to play, and spend some time with them. Dinner is with family.

DO YOU HAVE A SUPPORT SYSTEM, AND HOW DO YOU BALANCE YOUR HOME LIFE WITH WORK? At home, my husband, my in-laws, and the rest if our family have always been very supportive. They have pushed me to work hard, cheered me on, been proud of what I am doing, and always been there to help out in any way that I’ve needed.

HOW HAS THE PANDEMIC AFFECTED HACKBERRY? FOR INSTANCE, HAS THE QUARANTINE LEAD TO A SURGE IN ENROLLMENTS FOR ONLINE CLASSES? The pandemic has actually made us revisit our entire business. While before, we worked in physical classrooms, we had to reimagine how to move forward in the online space.

We spent the first few months revisiting our curriculum and making it suitable for an online classroom.

Once we launched classes online, we immediately saw the scope and scalability of a business like this. We now had the potential to reach students everywhere! And we could access teaching talent from everywhere too!

We also developed Teachberry – our platform for schools to license our curriculum – with a vision to making coding education accessible easily to every classroom.

WHAT IS THE WAY FORWARD? My kids continue to be an inspiration for many new programs at Hackberry. I would love to see our Teachberry platform bring coding to students across the country, at schools and beyond. We would love for this powerful skill to be accessible to everyone – and that’s what we are working towards.

MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 58

PIONEERS | SEEMA

The Vernacular Option Aneesha Jyoti, the co-founder of Language Curry.

The biggest challenge was dispelling the ‘myth’ that there is no need to learn Indian languages if you know English. This was the first question we posed to expats, NRIs, and urban migrants. The answer was a resounding ‘NO.’ Fast forward to 2021 and we have over 350k downloads from 170+ countries.

Vatsala Sharma, one of Language Curry's founders 60 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

TWO MOMS HAVE CREATED AN APP THAT TEACHES THE WORLD HOW TO SPEAK INDIA'S REGIONAL LANGUAGES.

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ccording to BBC News, India is the world’s second-largest English-speaking country, with roughly 10% of its population and more than 125 million Indians speaking the language. It’s the official language of corporate business, higher education, the higher judiciary, and the media. However, since the official language of government is Hindi and since there are a wealth of regional languages, the country has no national language. So it helps if Indians can understand each other’s mother tongue.

This was the problem that friends Vatsala Sharma and Aneesha Jyoti decided to address when, in 2018, they put together an app, Language Curry. It currently teaches seven regional Indian languages, using English as the medium. The startup also offers translations and live sessions. SEEMA interviewed the two moms.

COULD YOU TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELF? VATSALA: I grew up in Delhi, a melting pot of Indian culture. I was always fascinated by languages, since my friends were Bengali/ Tamil or Punjabi. After becoming a chartered accountant, I joined Standard Chartered Bank and had worked there for eight years when the entrepreneurial bug bit me.

The trigger was my love for my

MELANIE FOURIE son. I wanted to justify my time apart from him (in work) to do something I really enjoy and thrive in. So I turned in my papers and became an entrepreneur.

ANEESHA: I grew up in India till I was 17 and then my family immigrated to Canada. It was a huge move for us, and my parents were very particular that my sister and I should not lose connect with our culture. They ensured we still speak in our mother tongue at home and remain confident of our Indian roots. I lived in Canada for more than nine years and moved back to India in 2011 to do my MBA at ISB Hyderabad.

HOW DID THE CONCEPT OF LANGUAGE CURRY COME ABOUT? VATSALA: Aneesha discussed the idea with me, sharing her experiences as an NRI. The issue touched a chord, since many of my cousins in the U.S. could relate to Aneesha's experience. But there was another deeper reason. My mother is from Rajasthan, and like many would speak to her parents in Marwari (a Rajasthani language), and to us in Hindi. As a result, while I know the language (having heard her speak to elders), I did not have the conversational skills/confidence to speak it.

When I grew up, and saw people of various regions (even Rajasthani) connecting with others through a common language, I would feel a sense of 'not belonging.' We started researching the issue and

met hundreds of people who had different motivations to learn Indian languages. There were mothers of children who got admission in Bangalore, expats who had just moved in, or those who had married an Indian. We finally started working on the app in 2018.

ANEESHA: My stay in Canada, my interaction with Canadian Indians as well as non-Indians, made me realize that many wanted to connect with India for cultural reasons. The first connect to any culture is language. This is what inspired the idea of Language Curry. The idea stewed in my brain for many years until I met my two co-founders, Vatsala Sharma and Puneet Sharma, who were equally passionate about India.

DO YOU HAVE A BACKGROUND IN LINGUISTICS? IF NOT, WHERE DID THE LOVE FOR LANGUAGES STEM FROM? VATSALA: No. I have always loved languages while growing up, and studied English, Hindi and Sanskrit. But like many South Asian children, I chose a safe 'commerce' (if not science) field.

Being in Delhi I was exposed to people from various regions in India, and knew a bit of Punjabi and Bengali as well. So I guess the nine-year-old girl who would be lost in the world of books and fiction finally found her way back.

In a way my lack of linguistics experience has proven to be an advantage, since I can view lanMARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 61

PIONEERS | SEEMA guage from a layman/consumer's perspective. That is why we have been able to break languages into very small bite-sized capsules to make anyone learn them on our platform, quickly and efficiently.

Our team, comprising linguists, language experts, and speakers, ensures a holistic product with a focus on grammar that is super easy to understand.

Aneesha: I have an engineering and MBA background, but my paternal grandfather had a PhD in linguistics and would often encourage me to write and be proud of our languages. I often think it's him conspiring from the heavens above and guiding me.

WHAT WERE SOME CHALLENGES YOU FACED WHEN YOU FIRST STARTED LANGUAGE CURRY? Vatsala: The biggest challenge was dispelling the 'myth' that there is no need to learn Indian languages if you know English. This was the first question we posed to expats, NRIs, and urban migrants.

The answer was a resounding 'NO.' From getting discounts on auto fare, to staving off a molestation attempt, knowing the local language helped many people.

We met a Japanese expat who put it perfectly, “When you speak to Indians in their language, there is a smile which touches their eyes."

Fast forward to 2021 and we have over 350k downloads from 170+ countries.

Aneesha: Because not much research has been done on Indian languages being taught colloquially, it was tough to find the right teachers to develop content.

We learned how the best language-learning apps operated, and then worked with teachers to develop a structure for language learning. This took us over six 62 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

months initially. We are still continuously improving.

HOW HAS THE COMPANY BEEN COPING WITH THE PANDEMIC? Vatsala: The pandemic hit just when we were fundraising. Our personal lives were upended, too, with everyone in the family being forced to live together 24/7. But we took up the challenge, working till about 4 each morning, managing with five hours of sleep and loads and loads of coffee.

We had been working on introducing live courses for our learners for a few months already, so we accelerated the Live Learning launch and started monetizing the app.

Aneesha: COVID was a boom for the Edtech sector. People took to online learning, so it helped us professionally. The only challenge was on the personal front. As mothers we had to manage homes, work, and children. The best hours for work were taken away due to children’s live classes, the home chores, and having to entertain our kids.

DO YOU HAVE A SPECIFIC WORK ETHIC? Vatsala: Empower your colleagues. In today's times it is insulting to employees to micromanage them. I believe the best work is delivered when one is given the freedom to take risks and make decisions.

Aneesha: Persistence and hard work - these two are essential for entrepreneurship. No journey will be smooth but if you know you have given it your best, you can sleep in peace.

DO YOU HAVE A MESSAGE FOR OTHER SOUTH ASIAN WOMEN, ESPECIALLY THE ENTREPRENEURS?

Vatsala: Women in general, and South Asian women in particular, are the ultimate multi-taskers, perhaps living up to the image of Ma Durga.

It’s important for women to take out time for themselves, and not set up extremely high standards for each and every aspect of their life.

It’s OK if the laundry is not folded, or the children had one meal out of a packet while you were meeting a deadline, or even out for a run. We are human, not goddesses (although we would like to be one).

Aneesha: Never shy away from giving your dreams a chance. Our rich culture and family system provides us with a strong support system. It's an asset if you think wisely and are resilient. There are so many inspirational South Asian women in India and globally today who guiding lights for all of us.

HOW DO YOU RELAX OR UNWIND IN YOUR SPARE TIME? Vatsala: I turn to my two boys, who are 7 and 4, respectively, for instant relaxation. Their fierce hugs melt away all the stress. I am also an avid reader and amateur painter.

Aneesha: Spare time is a blessing when you are an entrepreneur. I go for a walk and zone out in nature, read a book, or go shopping.

WILL THERE BE NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN LANGUAGE CURRY? Vatsala: Yes, more languages, and loads of gamification. We have an arsenal of interesting and efficient ways to learn languages.

Aneesha: Yes there are many exciting features in the works to help learners learn better and have fun along the way. We aspire to be a global brand for Indian languages and culture.

HOROSCOPE | SEEMA

FORECAST WITH FARZANA Feb 21 – Mar 20

This month is a reminder for you to be more responsible. Your actions affect those around you. By showing compassion, taking care of yourself and staying true to your feelings, you can attain a balance between the heart and head. Share your wisdom to elevate others. If called to pursue a creative project or line of work be open to where it may lead. Go with the flow. Expect to re-evaluate and restructure your finances. If you’re thinking of taking a relationship to a deeper level, go ahead.

Mar 21 Apr 19

Home is where your story begins this month. You may find yourself seeking reassurance about a family matter, considering a move, home improvement, or setting up a home with your partner. While things may seem daunting, breathe easy. All is likely to end well and you’ll be proud of everything you have achieved. So celebrate it with joy, family meet-ups, homecomings, and by inviting your closest friends over for an intimate dinner and conversation. Cherish this special time with your loved ones.

This is a potent week for taking new steps forward. Those working in events, property and design may see a positive change.

Apr 20 May 20

You have the space and experience to cast your net into a sea full of infinite possibilities as you enter a more creative and productive phase of your life. Invest in learning, art, and beautiful, ornate objects.

Align with yourself and who you are – unabashedly. Give wings to those unconventional ideas. Relationships find comfort in deeper emotional engagement. Career potentialities open up when you step into yourself emotionally, and rise above the superficiality around you. It is a busy time for travel, soirees and events.

May 21 Jun 20

Look forward to positive new beginnings, recognition, success, emotional stability, and better health and finances. This could translate to something new from a career perspective, provided you are open to receiving. It is a favorable time to start work on a new project or venture. Don’t be surprised if you receive an unexpected bounty – a surprise gift, a scholarship, or an inheritance. Strike a balance between being a social butterfly and having alone time. In the area of love, infuse freshness in an existing relationship; if you’re solo, embark on a new one.

Jun 21 Jul 22

If the situation seems confusing, now; sit still instead of forcing your way into things before they are ready. If you are waiting on an answer in a relationship, career or a financial decision, it may, unfortunately, take longer than expected. Make a candid assessment of your relationships so you can establish healthier bonds with others. Best not to take people at face value. Be aware that no matter what you are going through, there is always something to be thankful for.

Seek out your blessings. Patience is the seed you need to sow; it will sprout into blooms of abundance in time.

Jul 23 Aug 22

Are you ready to take a few courageous leaps in the dark and try something new, different, and fun?

Spice things up in your love life to keep the flame alive. Pathways of creative inspiration may appear. So use your creative talents to see the bigger dream on the horizon that further your career. You could find yourself having to work on three-sided relationships, even ones that are aggravating, to achieve your goal. Embrace changes at work. Don't be apprehensive. Be more intentional about your priorities to create the reality you seek.

MARCH 2021 | SEEMA.COM | 63

HOROSCOPE | SEEMA

Aug 23 Sept 22

You may feel stuck between a rock and a hard place, uncertain about what to choose.

In love and money, there is vulnerability and a need for security. If you are overwhelmed balancing drama and conflict, then shed your ego and communicate. Pause and ask yourself, ‘What other information is available to me to make this decision?’ Leave facts aside and follow your faith and intuition. Go with your heart and trust all is in divine order. You have the power to take charge and shine.

Sept 23 Oct 22

Enjoy new confidence in your life, for good fortune is on your side.

Socialize, travel, meet new people, and get out and about. Let yourself be swept away by imagination, romance, and possibilities. Now is not the time to turn your back on possible new avenues of income or adventure. Victory is yours if you keep your ego in check and share credit with the team.

This is not a time to be whiny, clingy, or needy in a relationship. Love is on the horizon for those looking for one. Your health and well-being are likely to be at a high point.

Oct 23 Nov 21

Friendships, family, romantic partnerships, and work partnerships 64 | SEEMA.COM | MARCH 2021

all demand your attention. Strike a balance with yourself, your relationships, goals and aspirations. Before seeking peace in your relationships, take a hard look at where you've been selling yourself short, so you can take your rightful place in the spotlight. Set your sights high, but don't have unreasonable expectations of yourself or others that can't possibly be meet. Keep doing what you do; your accomplishments will not be overlooked.

Invest in healthier routines for your well-being and work life. The keyword for your victory is co-operation.

Nov 22 Dec 21

Expect a more spontaneous, freedom-loving, non-conformist side of you that prompts you to express yourself more creatively and authentically. The energy of living in the moment and taking a chance might sound crazy to others. At work, your ideas maybe ahead of time and encourage you to seek a new position – or even "go off on your own" and start your own business. Vet and weigh your options carefully. This need for adventure may show up in the people you date, as you find yourself attracted to those that are not your usual type.

Dec 22 - Jan 19

You may feel like you are ‘tar-walking,’ with each step demanding more energy, time, and patience than usual.

Although the situation seems challenging, it is not permanent. Know that whatever comes up is preparing you for change. The

tides are turning, and will take you ahead.

Heal your soul by working on overcoming any regret or guilt that you have about the past. There is help available from forces both seen and unseen. Reconsider people, skills, and situations that you may have dismissed.

Remember, when love is right, you don't have to do back flips to make it work. If you need financial help, don’t be too proud to ask for it.

Jan 20 – Feb 20

There is female energy surging within you – and visiting the ocean or paying attention to your dreams may provide you with transformative insights.

Try looking within for answers rather than relying on intellect. From a relationship perspective, it’s a month of revelation, discovery and unraveling of secrets. Ignore workplace gossip; certainly, don't get involved in it. Live day-to-day instead of obsessing about what is going to happen on the career front. For what is meant for you will sashay towards you. You are in a grand moment of becoming.

This isn’t the time to rock the boat, so slow down and be patient.

Disclaimer: This is a broad analysis. On a personal level, your experiences may differ based on numerological numbers influencing your personal chart.

Farzana Suri is a Victory Coach who coaches people through their life's challenges to take the leap to victory, using the science of numerology.

For a personalised forecast, you may contact Farzana at surifarzana@gmail.com or visit her website www.farzanasuri.com

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