Nightingale 2.0 How Eleven Women Showed Grit, Guts and Gumption + Grace

6th February 2021, at the D Rangaswamy Memorial Lecture, was the launch of the book Nightingale 2.0 How Eleven Women Showed Grit, Guts and Gumption. Time 11am IST

Here is the YouTube link. https://youtu.be/zrg16uEX1SM

First version of women who are mostly 60+, this book are stories of those who are 40+; and the reason for bringing  this book out, is to show there are outstanding women who have overcome odds.  This book talk about women from different strata of the society.  All these women have shown enormous Grit, Gut and Gumption.  People who have been part of the journey had a team of young writers. Writing desk worked on the schedule, and brought out engaging stories of the nightingales. It has great feel to it, brought out by Malai Selvam; the cover has a great Moral. We might make quick early steps, but the distance from good to great is short, but has a great hurdles. These 11 women are:

1) Sarika Jain: Having polio effected leg, did not get on her way, first women CA IRS.

2) Rima Dhawan: Single mother at 44, motor rally. 

3) Vidya Lakshmi: Investment Analyst to MD in 10 years.

4) Rajani Gopala Krishna: 90% of eye sight gone, got into corporate world, and was into social work, who said she doesn't have a vision?

5) Petchi Thangavel: Daughter of vegetable vendor, now into her own practice. 

6) Sridevi Balasubramanian: A corporate CA turned, Chef. She gave her corporate career.

7) Annapoorna Venkataramanan: MD in a banking career. 

8) Seethalakshmi Subramanian: Bharatanatyam dancer with a corporate life. 

9) Sudha Suresh: Micro Finance Industry. 

10) Vidya Subramanian: Accountancy and Music. Gave up corporate career abroad, to take up teaching music in India.

11)  Pragnya Mohan: Young Athlete. 

The tales tell you what it takes to make it big.

The writing desk had Sudha Athreya a civil engineer, Balaji Swaminathan a freelancer, Valambal Subramanian a school teacher from Bengaluru, Balaji Sridharan from Canada, Shivanath Pandit a Journalist from Goa, CA Siddharth Ranjan from Bhubaneshwar and CA Geetha Renganathan from Chennai designed by N Malaiselvan. 

Read these stories of 11 outstanding women video brought out by voice artist Harish Sahas. 

Justice Doctor Anitha Suman  gave the memorial lecture and released the book. Sivakumar Sir said, this would give a back ground to Justice Anitha Suman to give her talk, but she said, this has made her speechless. Hot from the press, had a quick read in 48 hours, but very inspiring and want to re-read. 

Fond memories of D Rangaswami and that generation and life lesson and mentorship they provided, they were the giants of the profession. There had been series of arbitration, where he was the only Arbitrator. Natural choice for today's talk would have been tax or public issue, but have deliberately chosen the technical subject, being the need of the hour. Rajesh Chakraborty, in the success story of the state bank of India, had similar title.  

Women who gave wings to their dreams in varied profession, with CA as the base. Kudose to all of them. Their second inning was a great success. May their tribe increase. We are an amalgam of hope, aspiration and culmination of many generation of women before us. All of us can relate to some such people in our life, may be our own mothers, without which we would not be who we are today. 125 years divided into 5 stages and speak of millennium women. Our tradition says Women must be regarded as Shakthi, Rigveda places women on equal platform as men. First charter of Women was Yajurveda. Brahmacharya Sutra say, Women should get same education as men. Another say, Parents should impart knowledge to their children. Merge your intellectual with your partner, and be part of legislation. Emphasis was on parity. Something went wrong over the years, But today, women have come forward to redefined themselves.  We use the word empowerment in a light sense. It's our responsibility to not only develop ourselves but to create ripple effect to enable this to those who do not have the privilege.  Women should be placed on a pedestal. Change of mindset translate into actual change in society as well. 

A very enriching session. Congratulations to the team, looking forward for many more. Why nightingale? May be the song is sweet - the songs these women had to sing, and reference to Florence Nightingale symbolizing compassion, strength and care. 

One more Grace - Grace of force - science /nature/almighty whatever you believe in, Grace that each of us should show.