There has been a never ending debate raging over whether women can have it all or if they need to sacrifice one element of their life in order to be achieve success in another since the 90’s. These women, have finally put the debate to bed by living their lives large and creating their own identities, separate from their illustrious families and well known husbands.
Balancing work, families and the myriad of roles that every woman essays in her life, the Super Wives have all carved out a niche for themselves in their respective field and shown the world that they can hold their own..
Q. Tell us a little bit about your life post-marriage, how have things changed for you ?
I worked in Human Resources for GE for around 18 years, prior to that I did my masters from the London School of Economics. I got married to Ashok Jaipuria in 2013, post which I decided to take a break from my career to build us a home and settle into my marriage. I had to learn how to manage a home for the first time in my life and I needed to dedicate some time to that. I got married around 43 because I was focused on my career before that and just did not have the time.
Q. How did your association with the Cosmo foundation start ?
Around 2-3 years ago I became a trustee on the board of the Cosmo Foundation and started expanding our efforts to the grassroots level. We built a lot of structure around our programmes. We have changed our focus during the lockdown, earlier we were based mainly out of Gujarat and Maharashtra, however the lockdown showed me how many people needed help in my immediate surroundings. The foundation distributed Covid-19 relief products, food and blankets at that time. We have a team of 80 people working for us and aside from that, we also ask our employees from the plants to volunteer their time. I want to promote this culture of volunteering for our time as well as money. It gives people a different perspective on their own lives and even improves people’s attitude towards working with the community.
Q. We would love to know a little bit more about the work the Cosmo Foundation is involved in.
We work with the locals in villages and coordinate with panchayats and gram panchayats on what they need at that specific time. This helps us reach out to the children and the community as a whole. On a more sustainable basis, we teach 10,000 kids every year, we educate them from grade Four to grade Twelve and we conduct programmes which focus on Math, English and Computer Science in order to increase their employability. We have various programmes which center on these kids, we teach them interviewing skills etc. in the last 9 months however, since schools are shut, we have tied up with other NGOs to bring about change on a larger basis. The NGOs have larger reach than we could get, we have also tied up with the Delhi Police, and they know the areas where there is need for a certain item or which areas are not going to be conducive to our efforts. We have been distributing blankets all over the city with their assistance. 
Q. How have you been combating the change in circumstances caused due to Covid ?
It opened our eyes to the fact that there was need on an unprecedented scale. We did continue to donate food, but we also started working majorly on distributing PPE kits, Sanitizers, Masks etc. The whole migrant situation was so heartbreaking, we decided to arrange 5 buses to take labourers home to their villages. We wanted to ensure that we continued reaching out to the community and helped out in any way we could. Daily wager suffered on an unprecedented level, they would tell us that either Covid would kill them or Hunger would. At that time we carried out a major drive to the Yamuna basti to distribute food and Covid essentials.
Q. Who are some of the women who inspire you ?
Kiran Modi from the Udayan foundation does some amazing work and has educated a lot of young children, we even started sponsoring 30 female students through the Shalini fellowship ourselves. The Programme has produced some amazing success stories and I hope more and more people reach out to the community and take the onus of changing things for the better.
