Soon after we moved back to India from the US, someone from Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate team reached out to me.
They had stumbled across a hard-hitting post of mine titled “Rape: Myths and Reality”, and they wanted me to appear on the show as an expert.
So did I accept this amazing opportunity to be on national television with one of India’s biggest superstars and talk about how sexual assault can shape a woman’s entire life?
Of course not. I choked out a “no,” slammed the phone, crawled into bed, and curled up into a stress-ball under the sheets.
Sigh.
Before that, in the mid-to-late '90s, I had a solid career as a tech consultant in the US — the Silicon Valley boom years. Income hikes of 20–25% weren’t unusual. I worked ten months of the year and spent the other two traveling. Life had been good to me, and I wanted to give back.
I trained as a rape crisis counselor with Bay Area Women Against Rape. I took phone calls from survivors. And when we returned to India, I poured what I’d learned into writing that essay — the one that got me noticed by Aamir Khan’s team.
Fast forward to 2023.
I’m back in the US. Reading Shonda Rhimes' Year of Yes. (If you don’t know her — she’s the creator of Grey’s Anatomy, Bridgerton, and How to Get Away With Murder.) A woman of phenomenal talent.
We have a few things in common, Shonda and I:
- We’re the same age.
- We’re both writers (though there’s a Grand Canyon between our successes).
- We’ve both said “no” to opportunities because of stage fright.
I didn’t call 2023 my Year of Yes. I called it 23 and Me. Tacky? Sure. But it worked.
So thank you, Shonda Rhimes, for being honest. And Aamir Khan — if you ever return to gritty, world-changing television, I’m available.