Outlook SpeakOut | Yes, We Hear You

Dr Renu Khator is any way tall. But she loomed taller still as she rec­ounted her life story before a packed audience in New Delhi last week. The occasion was the Outlook Speakout event and she was delivering the second Vinod Mehta Memorial Lecture held annually to pay tribute to our founder-editor.

As Khator traced her remarkable journey바카라�from a girl born in Farrukhabad of Uttar Pradesh to the longest-serving Chancellor of the University of Houston System in the United States바카라�jaws dropped in disbelief and respect for her hit the roof. Till the age of 19, she couldn바카라�t speak even a word of English. But married off and sent to the US, she scripted her own success story. Besides watching programmes on television to learn English, she doggedly pursued her education. The rest is history.

In hindsight, there couldn바카라�t have possibly been a better person to deliver our event바카라�s most important speech than Khator. Her single-minded determination and unflinching doggedness to excel have lessons for all of us. It tells us that where there바카라�s a will there바카라�s a way. Since the overarching theme of this year바카라�s Outlook Speakout was women empowerment, Khator바카라�s address narrating her own journey to the top assumed greater significance.

is aimed at encouraging participants to speak out and also be outspoken. Khator바카라�s oration tugged many hearts and set the tone for the evening that witnessed several other women achievers narrate their own stories, perhaps not as dramatic as that of Khator but no less powerful.

Former beauty queen and Bollywood actress Sushmita Sen talked eloquently about how she scales challenges and strikes a balance between being a successful model-actor and an affectionate mother. Ekta Kapoor바카라�Indian television바카라�s first lady whose production house dominates the world of soap operas and largely determines the staple that Indian families get to watch바카라�also bared her soul recollecting her close brush with failure. She had borrowed money from her father, the famous actor Jeetendra, but struggled to succeed until she was down to the last few lakhs of rupees. The moral of her story: she had the heart and refused to give up.

If the idea of Outlook Speakout was to provide a voice to women, we more than succeeded. As the ladies spoke, one inspiring story competed with another and the auditorium was awash with personal accounts of what women바카라�48 percent of the Indian population바카라�are capable of. Gender inequality is a fact of life and large parts of India even today prefer a boy over a girl. Our mothers, sisters and wives face gross injustices, but as our achiever-participants forcefully pointed out, their indomitable spirit was far from broken.

Pincky Balhara, for that matter, packs tonnes of that in her slim frame. The 19-year-old student of Delhi바카라�s Gargi College has returned from the recently-concluded Asian Games with a silver in a combat sport, and is aiming higher, possibly an Olympic Gold. 바카라�When I travel, I want people to notice and say, there goes Pincky,바카라� she said. Purnima Devi Barman, a wildlife biologist from Assam, has already forced her husband to take note of her passion for her work. 바카라�He was exasperated, and I threatened to climb up a 100-feet high bamboo platform unl­ess he comes around,바카라� Barman recounted in jest, sending the crowd in splits.

Balhara and Barman were two among the several achievers Outlook felicitated. The others inc­luded former cricketer Jhulan Goswami, Karnataka바카라�s first woman IPS officer D Roopa Moudgil, wildlife conservationist Belinda Wright and naval officers Lieutenant Comman­ders Vartika Joshi and B. Aishwarya. Many others such as AAP leader Atishi, actress Parvathy, parliamentarian Ranjeet Ranjan, and Congress social media head Divya Spandana shared their take on challenges they routinely face.

The audience listened in silence and clapped enthusiastically in cycles as the ladies spoke. Union minister for textiles, Smriti Irani summed up the proceedings succinctly as the evening바카라�s guest of honour. 바카라�Women have never had a problem speaking up. They have a problem in being heard,바카라� she said. Everyone gathered readily agreed. It바카라�s about time the women achievers are heard and their feats emulated.