Talk to Me

Estrogen is exhilarating. ‘Sistahs’ are the new club. In certain sections of urban India, women power now translates into new bonding-and-business opportunities, as much an acknowledgement of a basic gender affinity as an assertion of growing financial and creative independence from a trenchantly male-dominated society. It’s a self-propagating safe space, created and nurtured by women, where she is simultaneously purveyor, product and purchaser.

Over the past few months, Bangalore – always the trailblazer when it comes to online-led trends – has seen the crystallisation of a number of women’s forums that move away from the more common retail connect to seek to give her the space to remove the mask, speak her mind, rediscover and reconnect with her essential self. Of these, the most novel, perhaps, launched in mid-April before a packed house of achievers and those who want to be like them. Conversations with Namu Kini, a chat-show that brings together three high-profile women, may have drawn the inevitable comparisons with Oprah but, make no mistake, Kini, 35, is on to something promising.

“I was in high school when (Biocon founder) Kiran Mazumdar was invited to speak to the graduating seniors. She was in her late 30s, Biocon was just beginning to win international recognition. Not only was her talk inspirational, but her sense of humour and down-to-earth personality made her someone I could relate to,” says Kini. “She was one of my first role models, I truly felt like ‘if she can make it, why can’t I?’”

Namu Kini

That feeling stayed with her till, years later, Kini decided to turn her contemporary art gallery Kynkyny—which she set up in 2004 with her husband Vivek Radhakrishnan—into a culture hub by inviting guests over for an informal, all-encompassing chat. “At the very first event in 2012, Nidhi Jaipuria, an educationist and author in Bangalore, connected with Saba Ghole, a Boston-based designer and education entrepreneur,” she recalls. “After the main event, the two of them wound up on a tiny bench in the gallery, talking about their mutual love for design, creativity and education. Six months down the line, the two are working together in an innovative collaboration that will bring NuVu Studio, a magnet innovation centre based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to India.”

The new-improved Conversations is bigger in every sense but looks to maintain the same buzz. The first edition featured guests who may not be household names but are certainly well-regarded in their own fields: founder and managing partner at K Law, Naina Krishna Murthy, advertising guru Sadiqa Peerbhoy and social entrepreneur Jane Chen.

The one-on-one chats varied in their degree of engagement—Kini was visibly comfortable with Krishna Murthy, less so with the much older Peerbhoy and occasionally out of depth with Chen—but energy levels among the Rs2000-a-seat all-women audience were buoyant. They laughed when Krishna Murthy described her leadership skills, first evidenced as a playground bully, went “awww” as Peerbhoy described her family as her greatest achievement, notwithstanding 40-odd years in various creative fields, and cheered uninhibitedly as Chen showed pictures of babies who live today because of Embrace, a low-cost infant-warmer.

After the chat sessions, the audience mingled with the three guests and amongst themselves, the feel-good factor driven by wine and the promise of a lavish dinner. One guest, a veteran of several women’s career conferences, gushed that this was the first time she had attended an all-woman “conference” that considered issues of PTA meetings and domestic support at par with workplace harassment or raising seed funds.

However palpable the positive vibes, the networking of the monthly talk show—the next one is May 17—is a by-product of her venture. “Conversations with Namu Kini (CNK) is an online venture, most of my sponsorship (the Embassy group being the biggest) is for the online space,” she says. “My portal goes live in a month or so. I’m looking at it as a platform where women will come together as my shows go online. My audience doesn’t watch television but they are on their laptops a good part of the day. So that’s where I will be.”

It would be interesting to see how the excitement of a live CNK show translates into the intensely personal experience that is available online. The swish of silk (there’s a dress code), the whiff of white wine (the entry charge includes wine and dinner), the gleam in the eye all added a certain je ne sais quoi at the inauguration, sealing the idea of a forum that kicks old boys’ clubs in the ass. The masks are off, but the mystery endures.

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.