National Youth Day: Meet The Inspiring Young Women Shaping India!

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India celebrates National Youth Day on January 12. This date was chosen to honour Swami Vivekananda’s birthday, one of India’s greatest spiritual and social leaders. He saw hope for the future in every child and believed that with “muscles of iron” and “nerves of steel” they could bring about social change.

Today, almost 50 per cent of India’s population is under the age of 25. The future of the country rides on their shoulders — making celebrations that empower young people so important.

Here is a quick list of some of those super inspiring youth to get you some instant motivation and inspiration!

Priya Kumar

Priya Kumar is a dynamic speaker with an entertaining style of delivering a speech. She started her career as a tuition teacher and gradually became a motivational speaker. She is famous for her interactive sessions and speaks at various seminars, conferences, and events worldwide with a unique speaking style.

Priya has won many awards and has written nine books like “The calling” to date. At the age of 24, she became one of the youngest motivational speakers, and since then she’s changing the lives of millions through her thoughts.

Devangi Nishar Parekh

Founder and co-owner of AZA, Devangi runs this multi-designer store along with her mother, Dr Alka Nishar. This mother-daughter duo is definitely an inspiration as their chain, and their designer label is currently one of the most well-established ones in the country right now.

Aditi Gupta

Women, especially young girls who have just started to menstruate or are about to start, are quite uneducated about what is actually happening to them. Hygiene is one of the most critical factors in this ignorance. Aditi Gupta, through Menstrupedia, a book series aimed to educate women and girls about their periods, has proven to be a phenomenal youth icon for the young generation of India.

P.V. Sindhu

Apart from the obvious beloved sports, cricket, there are players from other sports, who can be called Indian youth icons too. One of the most inspirational out of these is badminton ace PV Sindhu, who at the young age of 19, became India’s first medalist in women’s singles at the World Championships.

Dipa Karmakar

This young athlete managed to get a cricket-obsessed country hooked to gymnastics. She won her first bronze medal in 2014 at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. It was the first time an Indian female gymnast was able to achieve this honour.

K Manisha

Apart from being a lecturer at the Nandha College of Nursing in Tamil Nadu’s Erode district, Manisha runs an NGO called Jeevitham Foundation. Over months, she has tirelessly rescued and rehabilitated nearly 150 beggars, drug addicts, destitute, and those afflicted with terrible diseases.

Haimanti Sen

Sen is the founder of the NGO Junoon and can be found at Mumbai’s Kandivali station skywalk, teaching the alphabet, numbers, words, communication, and art and craft to over 15 kids, free of cost.

These kids are the children of the beggars who live in a slum in the vicinity. Since May 2018, Haimanti has been on a mission to equip them with the necessary skills that will enable her to enrol them in a regular school under the Right to Education act.

Parikul Bharadwaj

Being the youngest social worker in the country, this teen has been working along with her doctor’s parents in the high altitude Kedarnath region, tending to pilgrims and tourists, and providing them with medical attention. She also won the National Bravery Award for saving the lives of the two pilgrims.

Bhargsetu Sharma

When she was 20 years old, Bhargsetu swam for 12 minutes underwater and performed CPR for 21 minutes, to save a young man who was drowning in the MahiSagar river. She won several awards at the state level for her bravery and is the recipient of the prestigious Raksha Mantri Padak 2019.

Bhargsetu is also the founder of Humans with Humanity, an animal rescue, and welfare community through which she has rescued more than 3800 animals.

Ira Singhal

This UPSC topper is the first physically challenged woman to top the civil services exam in the general category. Ira topped civil services in her fourth attempt, and when asked if she ever felt of giving up, the reply was, “I wanted to work with people directly, and it was very clear in my mind. I was very clear what I wanted out of life.”

And what’s the change that she wants to bring in? “The mindset of people in our country needs to change. People are judged for little things. People make perceptions about others based on what they see. Nobody goes into depth. Nobody explores people’s potential,” she says.

National Youth Day is just a reminder to the youth of our nation that we, as a country, are relying on them and they have got all the means and ways to shape this beautifully, in their own unbiased way.

Infano salutes these wonderful young women and several others who are constantly moving forward, building a road to their dreams, and inspiring several others on the way!

Featured Image: L-R: Devangi Nishar Parekh, P.V. Sindhu, Bhargsetu Sharma, Aditi Gupta, Ira Singhal

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A popular name in the television industry, Sriti Jha has wooed her audiences with her endearing performances in blockbuster shows like Dil Se Di Dua, Saubhagyavati Bhava and Kumkum Bhagya for many years.

Sriti Jha is yet again winning hearts and this time the reason is more personal. An old video of Sriti reciting her poem ‘Confessions of a Romantic Asexual’ has gone viral. The video is from Spoken Fest held in Mumbai in January 2020. It has Sriti Jha candidly and confidently sharing her experiences about being an asexual.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CJ9EZqRhoIl/?utm_source=ig_embed

Most of us have little knowledge about asexuality. It is what the ‘A’ stands for in LGBTQIA. The poem touches upon most of the curious questions and misconceptions we have about asexuality.

What is Asexuality?

Asexuality is a sexual orientation, just like homosexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality. It describes a lack of sexual attraction. Asexual people may experience romantic attraction, but they do not feel the urge to act on these feelings sexually. They have the same emotional needs as everyone else, but no sexual yearning.

“You can feel all the butterflies,
And your heart skip a beat for someone,
And yet not want to do “it”.
Does that make your love any less?
Does that make you incomplete? “
–Excerpt from ‘Confessions of a Romantic Asexual’

Abstinence, Celibacy, Asexuality – it is not the same

Abstinence is about deciding not to have sex. This is usually temporary. For example, many people decide to abstain from having sex before marriage.

Celibacy is a voluntary vow of sexual abstinence. In some cases, it can also be a promise to remain unmarried. In most cases this is usually for religious reasons and is often a lifelong commitment.

Abstinence and celibacy are choices. Being asexual is not a choice, it is who you are and that is what makes it completely different from abstinence and celibacy.

This is not to prove me greater.
I do not celebrate celibacy,
I am not a sex hater”
–Excerpt from ‘Confessions of a Romantic Asexual’

Not a medical condition or any hidden “cause”

One tends to find reasons for every feeling that does not conform to the “normal”. Feeling sexually attracted to someone might seem natural to the majority of the people. Lack of this sexual attraction is often labelled as a medical condition or perceived as an outcome of past trauma or fear.

There may be various reasons of low sexual attraction in certain people, but what asexual people feel is not a medical condition. It is not genetic. It is not due to trauma. It is not due to stress. It is normal. And there is nothing to be fixed.

“When I said “no” I meant “no,”
They said you’ve got to try a little more,”
–Excerpt from ‘Confessions of a Romantic Asexual’

Love? Relationship? – Is it possible when you an Asexual?

Love, sex, relationship are words we use so frequently with each other, that it is difficult for us to imagine removing one (that is, sex) completely from the equation. An asexual person might not experience sexual attraction, but they might still experience romantic attraction. Relationship with an asexual person is likely to involve love, closeness, fun, trust, humour and excitement just like sexual relationships. Asexual people are perfectly capable of intimacy and love, just not in sexual ways.

“I had felt wow in hugs and kisses.
I had felt wow every time fingers had run through my tresses.
But beyond a point, when it went, I was left alone.
So I learned to lie in words in moans.”
–Excerpt from ‘Confessions of a Romantic Asexual’

The poem strikes the right chords, so much so that we tend to forget momentarily how taboo this topic is. The poem gives us an understanding of what an asexual person goes through. Most of all, it does not leave us feeling sorry for the poet. It leaves us admiring the courage that Sriti Jha showed in opening up to the world and asking for acceptance and nothing else – for her and for others like her. As she defiantly ends her poem –

“I am asexual,

I’m not the only one

I am everything I need to

Better recognize me now.”