‘Tekdi’ (टेकड़ी) in Hindi means a little hill also (arguably) referred to as ‘स्त्री’ टेकड़ी/टेकरी. To us however, it has come to represent a beautiful metaphor. The initial bit of uneasiness that once overcome, can actually lead to simple honest and even powerful conversations of change. …

When our country went into lockdown back in March 2020, we at Varitra Foundation had just completed putting together a roadmap for the whole year. Being our third year, we were hoping that it would be finally a good time to look back at all that we have achieved, assess…

Excerpts my keynote address at eSpire’20 by Mantra4Change — Collaboration for me has always been such a positive and powerful note and a notion which has been an integral value in my own work and journey with my social startup — Varitra Foundation. …

Background - In 2015, I was pursuing my post-grad in Communication for Development from Xavier’s Institute of Communications (XIC), Mumbai when a group of us decided to work on an action-research project to study gender through the lesser-approached lens of ‘Masculinity’. We planned to engage in the underbelly of the…

Decided to document my childhood dreams today … — I would have easily dreamt a thousand dreams — all while I was in primary school and the thought alone instantly lifted my spirits. The show “Subah Sawere”used to run on DD every single morning while I ate my breakfast before school and I had declared to anyone who’d hear…

Nobody can fully know the magnitude of anything that a person may have lived through. It’s like the sweat at the back of your neck. You yourself wouldn’t be able to fully explain it if you had to. When I first stepped into social sector, I saw how common it…

*Warning – A Long Read* Before I begin this one, allow me to throw these words at you — Haryana, joint families, a single girl-child. This should pretty much give some idea towards how this story will pan out. …

(TW – Mental Health, Suicide) Like many, I read the heartbreaking news of one of my favourite actor’s death today. It was a little more difficult to process because it was a case of suicide. The comments section was understandably flooded with “yet another bright life lost” and “gone too…

The mother of all questions — co-leading and how? We have been in this journey together for 30 months now. Right from the first moment with my co-founder who was then my ex-colleague declaring his idea out loud and with an infectious liveliness while we both were still at our…