Two years ago, at Leo Burnett’s Mumbai office, a small group of creative executives, helmed by Nitesh Tiwari, brainstormed over cracking a one-of a-kind idea for their client, HDFC. A week later, the film was on the story board and its protagonist, Toolika Sharma, was born.
The 46-second film—for HDFC Standard Life Insurance—told a simple but sensitive story of a young, ambitious, aspiring woman who decides to—at the spur of the moment, with a mere signing off a cheque—buy her father a brand new car.
From a communication point of view, Tiwari says, “It really does not make a difference if it is a boy or a girl but the fact of the matter is if you use a girl, there is a certain element of tenderness and caring that comes through.
Plus, our objective was to portray the client as a progressive, thinking company. Casting the woman as the hero was our way of sending home a message that a girl can do as well as a boy.” It’s true. In May, this year, when plus two exam results were announced, a bulk of media reports was dedicated to how girls had, yet again, beaten the boys.
In the ICSE and ISC board exams, girls outscored the boys. Even in Tamil Nadu’s Krishnagiri and Dharmapuri districts, for example, the girls had proved their mettle. In Chennai, three visually-challenged girls Vennila, Sangeetha and Devi Durga—from the Little Flower Convent School topped geography. In Delhi, visually-challenged Rinku Shekhawat from Rajasthan, also a national-level chess champion and an athlete, scored 94 per cent in humanities.
In March, at the Open Nationals, Rohini Rau, a Chennai-based national level sailor—and the first Indian woman to win an international medal in an Olympic class Laser Radial—finished second. Rohini also holds the rare distinction of sailing, competitively, alongside men, mostly from the Army and the Navy. “But honestly that never mattered,” she says with a cool confidence that springs both from her experience in the sport—14 years, to be exact—but also her tryst across the world with it, for she has sailed in Europe, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
“When I’m in water, they—men or women— are all my competitors. That’s all that matters,” Rohini says. You know she means business. Last week, Rohini began a gruelling camp– three hours in water and two hours in the gym—that’ll enable her to ace the qualifiers for the 2012 Olympics at the Perth World Championship in December. To steer clear of all distractions, including academics, Rohini has even taken a break from her MBBS degree.
“I just want to do as well as I can,” she says. Her parent —Jayraj and Aysha—have been her anchors. “She made winning a habit from her early kindergarten days,” Jayraj says, “That made it easy on us, as parents; so all we had to do was keep nudging her to push harder and point her in the right direction.”
Anuradha Menon, aka Lola Kutty, a popular VJ on Channel V, who lives in Mumbai, credits her parents for being “extremely supportive of my rather hatke choice of career. I mean, I don’tthink many parents would have encouraged their child to go to drama school but mine did,” she says, “In Chennai, that is my hometown, I will always be Minnie and Mohan Menon’s daughter; outside the city, they are Lola Kutty’sparents. And I know they are proud!” she says.
Read between the lines and there lies a story; a story of pride, acceptance, recognition, reward, success… A story of celebration.
It’s the story of the rise of the daughter. It is reflective of the perceptible and positive shift in society’s perception of daughters, as a whole. The girl child is standing tall, proud and on an equal footing with her male sibling. Finally. “There has definitely been a change in the way girl children are perceived in an urban context,” notes Sriram Aiyar of Nalandaway, an NGO that works with children from challenging situations from the poorest districts in India, helping them raise their voices and issues through dance, music, theatre, etc. “In rural areas though, even though perceptions have evolved over the years, issues do exist.”
To address them, Nalandaway launched an online fundraising campaign called the Kanamma project that is focused on the issue of marginalised girl children. “Our objective is to enable a marginalised girl child become creative, independent, empowered and a contributing member of the community.” Look at Geetarani Swain.
Among the first women recruits of the Traffic Police of the Bhubaneswar Cuttack Commissionerate of Police, 27-year-old Geetarani guards important junctions in the city with as much discipline as smartness. She is the recipient of the Chief Minister’s Award for best conduct of traffic in the capital. Hailing from a lower middle-class family in a remote village of Jagatsinghpur district (Orissa), Geeta avers that despite her socio-economic background, her parents “were never sad about having five daughters and no son.
In fact, I think they are very proud to see me do well in life.” Asha Hans, Executive Vice-president of the Shanta Memorial Rehabilitation Centre, Bhubaneswar, notes that there is a perceptible change in the way girls are being treated across India, and not only in the urban context.
“I mean, look at the Adivasi movement, the Disability movement and the Peasants’ movement; they have all gained momentum due to the involvement of women activists. Today, a young panchayat woman fighting against an honour killing is as empowered in her environment as the woman Speaker of Parliament. Given the opportunity and a supporting system they are ready to fly.’’ After a course in design at the Srishti School of Art Design and Technology near Bangalore, at 22, Ashni Biyani joined the Innovations and Incubations division of the Future Group before becoming its Executive Director.
“I think as a creative person I am constantly looking at infusing freshness into the group,” she says. Ashni hasn’t had it easy. With great power, comes great responsibility. “Comparisons are inevitable,” she says, referring to her father, Kishore Biyani, who founded the group, “But after a point, if you are good at what you do, people learn to look beyond that.”
A packed day ahead of her, Dr Uma Ram, obstetrician and gynaecologist at Chennai-based Seethapathy Clinic, reveals how educated couples, these days, hardly differentiate between a boy and a girl. “In fact, in cases, where people are happy to have just one child, they prefer a girl because they often feel girls are more caring,” she says, “What’s also fascinating is that couples who adopt often seem to pick girl babies and not because there are more girls available for adoption.” “In my family,” Upasna Kamineni, Executive Director, Apollo Hospitals and Vice President, Apollo Philanthropy, writes in an email interview from Hyderabad, “It’s a privilege to be a girl child.” Why not? The Apollo Group of Hospitals, founded by Dr Prathap C Reddy and ably managed by his three enterprising daughters, is a case study in healthcare enterprise.
“We are a family full of successful women,” she says, “The women in my family are not only my inspiration but also an inspiration to the Apollo family and women across the world. I think what I really admire about them is the way they have achieved a perfect work-life balance.” Like Upasna, Hyderabad-based accessory designer Suhani Pittie acknowledges the rise of this daughters’ phenomenon to the changing mindsets of women in Indian families.
“Mothers, aunts, mothers-in-law, they are all being very supportive of their daughters; letting them pursue their dreams,” she says. How else would she have at 17, have launched her own brand Zoya seven years ago? Zoya, by the way, is now retailed across the country in 21 highfashion stores and has even earned recognition at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York.
Talking of role-models, Dr Priya Selvaraj of Chennai-based G G Hospital, still recalls how her parents Selvaraj and Kamala, both doctors, founded the hospital in 1982. “I saw my parents grow gradually from humble beginnings,” she says, “I knew from day one when I stepped into the hospital to help my parents run it and assist my mother’s line of work— infertility—I knew I had to live up to the whole challenge.
To tell you the truth, I had to swallow a lot of ego; my mom kicked butt but as days went by, I got a grip of things. I began earning the trust of my mother’s patients, old and new, and in the field of medicine we are in, that’s a big deal.”
Priya is currently working on some cutting-edge innovation in infertility.
“The next step,” she says, “is freezingm ovarian tissue or transplanting it.” Back in college—Sri Ramachandra Medical College, Chennai—her professor sparked off her interest in “freezing eggs”. In 2005, Priya began researching the subject. “Three years later, it resulted in the first birth,” she says. There are others like Kavitha Lankesh, one of the few women directors in the Kannada film industry, who holds her father, Lankesh, a versatile writer in Kannada, in high regard.
“My father never advised, goaded or coerced us to choose a particular profession. He just taught us to be good human beings and believe in whatever we did,” she says. She has done just that. Kavitha’s most priced film is Manja that had Nandita Das in the lead role. “When we were growing up, he didn’t care about our marks in tests, etc. But when he could afford some money, he’d give us a blank cheque to be spent on books. Since then, I have not been able to go to bed without a book.”
There are other go-getters like Divya Ramachandran, CEO of Chennai-based IT&ITes firm, Helios and Matheson’s US division. Currently shuttling between New York and Chennai, 31-yearold Divya is also a mother. But with a reliable support system—her mother— she is, needless to say, not only a young CEO but also the only family member in a company that has grown from 553 people in 2004 to 4,500 as of date. “As kids, both my sister and I, had no idea that one of us, would, at some point, even consider joining the company. We went ahead and pursued our individual interests.”
That manifestation of freedom in choice of career and life is really the underlying success of women across industries. Two-and-a-half years ago, Lavanya Nalli, President, Nalli Silks and granddaughter of the founder of Nalli Silks, Nalli Kuppuswamy Chetti, went to pursue her master’s at Harvard Business School. But that was after she pioneered Nalli Next, a subbrand of Nalli that catered to a newer profile of saree shoppers. “We had the benefit of a brand and the latitude to craft it for a younger generation that had a distinct purchasing pattern. From the response of the first store—off Chennai’s TTK Road—Lavanya went national with the brand; Nalli Next is housed in Mumbai’s Oberoi Mall and
has a standalone store opposite the Garuda Mall in Bangalore.
In the US, following her master’s, Lavanya interned at McKinsey in Chicago.
“It was a fantastic experience; honestly, I didn’t think there would be lessons for me to learn in retail over there but I did. I realised there were some common threads,” she says. There’s a job waiting for her there. “So when I got back a month ago, I discussed it with my father and granddad,” she says, “I said I’d like to go. It isn’t as if I’d have any regrets being here either but if I have the option, I’d like to exercise it. Plus, every project, I am convinced, unlocks certain learnings in us.”
The drive to learn and make a difference is also visible in academics. Kalavathi Amarachelvam, a career counselor from Chennai, says: “Young women, these days, are doing what it takes to make themselves more employable.” Needless to say, IT is hugely popular as a career option. There’s a spurt in the number of girls opting for courses in aviation and aeronautical engineering.
Anand Verghese, Pro Chancellor of Chennai-based Hindustan Institute of Educational Institutions that offers a degree in aeronautics engineering, sees the increase in the number of girls opting for the programme as “very encouraging.” The aviation industry needs talent and if girls are able to perform better, the opportunities are a myriad,” he says.
“The good news though is there are a lot of young girls from towns and rural areas looking at courses in teaching, healthcare, particularly nursing, radiography, lab technology, to name a few,” Kalavathi adds.
We still have a long way to go though, as Achu Oommen, daughter of Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and a political activist, notes. “In the lower strata of society and rural areas, women continue to suffer and make all the sacrifices for the menfolk. A male chauvinistic attitude persists and this is true not only in Kerala but across India.”
The need to make a difference was really the starting point for Achu joining politics even as a college student. “I wanted to do something for people who needed help,” she says, “From a very young age, I saw my father active in politics; he has been my inspiration.” The important thing is, mindsets are changing. A classic example of that is G Ethiraj who works as a clerk in the printing department of a newspaper organisation in Chennai. He is pinning his hopes on his older daughter Anupriya who topped her school, Jaygopal Garodia Hindu Vidyalaya (in Chennai), with a 474 out of 500 in the matriculation exam. She is now in class XII, hoping to become a computer science engineer. How will Ethiraj muscle up the finances? “I’ll figure it out,” he says, “Friends, well-wishers, a loan or a trust… I’ll make it happen, somehow.”
- With Y Maheswara Reddy (Bangalore), S Anil (Kochi), Kasturi Ray (Bhubaneswar), Varsha Ban (Hyderabad).
