Nandini Ray - I am your host Nandini Ray. Today we will be addressing and identifying the correlation between gender inequality and Intimate Partner Violence. Does gender inequality increase the risk of intimate partner violence?

To discuss this important question today we have Sonya Pelia with us. Sonya is the Maitri Board President, a gender equality activist. She has been with Maitri for over 26 years and has worked with many survivors of Domestic Violence. She runs a parallel career track as a level marketing executive in high tech companies in Silicon Valley and she is a recipient of numerous awards. Welcome to our show Sonia.

Sonya Pelia: Thank you so much, Nandini. I am really thrilled and honored to be on your program. This is a wonderful moment for Maitri where we have our own radio program. Thank you to your team.

Nandini Ray - You know Sonya, I am so excited that we are doing this show for the community and on these very important community issues. You know, Domestic Violence is a dark topic and no one wants to talk about it. But if you see the statistics, it’s scary, according to the National Domestic Violence hotline. on average 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in this country. On average 24 people per minute are huge and I think it’s high time that we as community members, we need to do something, we need to start thinking deeply about this issue and we need to try and find out a solution.

So let’s start with a question that I have in mind today, that is does gender inequality increase the Risk of Intimate Partner Violence? Do you think so?

Sonya Pelia: You raise a very interesting point Nandini. In the last 29 years of Maitri, we have come so far yet have so much further to and of the good things that have happened in the academia is that our community in other parts of the world people are beginning to understand that there is a serious problem. The statistics you mention is staggering and 2 interesting studies have come out talking about the link between Gender Inequality and Intimate Partner Violence and you know sometimes people say Oh, it’s not in the South Asian community, it’s more in the mainstream. But the 2 studies that I found out very fascinating one was based in India or South Asia and the other was done in the European Union and both the studies found the patriarchal culture and cultures where there is tremendous amount of gender inequality there is much higher levels of Intimate Partner Violence and much more forms of Intimate Partner Violence.

Interestingly India is one of the countries where gender inequality at the workplace will take 1000 years to catch up. In the US, it’s something like I believe 78 years. When you start tying all these pieces together, it starts to make sense why there is so much Domestic Violence or Intimate Partner Violence in almost every culture that we know of.

Nandini Ray: Thank you, Sonya, for sharing this kind of research and statistics. I’m happy that at least people are thinking of these things seriously, about this issue seriously and doing something about it. You know gender inequality in our society is pervasive and everywhere we see you find gender inequality and most of the time our relationships often mirror this as a norm. I have a friend who has twins: a boy and a girl, they are the same age, same parents, same household but I have noticed that what they are asking to do the girl they are not asking to do the same things with the boy and sometimes I feel why? I’m sure they love their children equally but there are some norms, some cultural restrictions are there...Oh, you are a girl so you have to do this thing like kitchen work. They ask their girl, their daughter to do that but their son is watching TV.

How do we bring equality into our relationship if it’s all around us? Media you know our cultural upbringing everything is telling us, Oh, this is a girl’s job or girl’s role, and this is a boy’s job or boy’s role.

Sonya Pelia: You bring up a very interesting point Nandini. I think the cultural norms are so inculcated in all of us, so inculcated through popular media, through our religious tenants, religious teachings perhaps, through messages we get through our families again and again that I think for most people they are not even aware sometimes of the gender biases they are bringing into their relationships whether with their partners or with their children and then when you layer in the fact that we are an immigrant community and we have come to a new culture which is very different from our own culture, the food, the language, the expectations we have of each other and now you have added more complexity to the situation and one of the things that I wonder about and I know this has been discussed by many of us that how much self-examination do we do? Are we really caught in the bunkers of the decade that we arrived in this country? Are we making our homes such that every morning our partner and our children cross a boundary or border, they leave the house they enter a foreign country in the evening they come back they enter another country? Is this what we are doing and how many of us are aware of this? I think to make any important systematic change in culture, society, community our own personal relationships, we need to take a really good hard look at our own biases and question even if we don’t think they are biases. So the example that you give of your friends where the son is watching TV I can give you a very interesting example, dating is prohibited for the people I know. Their sons are allowed to date but the girls are not allowed to date. So I asked one day to a friend of mine why was her son having a girlfriend and the daughter did not have a boyfriend or was she not interested? and my friend said we don’t trust the boys here. So did she include her son in this? That her son has the freedom to do whatever he likes but her daughter was never given to me the confidence to be the fullest person that she is so I feel people when they say these things, I don’t think they look at it in a black and white situation just because something has been done forever doesn’t make it right and I would encourage everyone listening today to say the next action to do with your partner, with your children, your friend, your niece, your nephew is it gender-biased? Is this something you are saying because it’s a boy or a girl, question yourself, think about what you are saying, think about what you are telling your children, your partner, what expectations do you have? Are they all mixed up in terms of adopting the best parts of this culture, and not expecting to change sometimes I wonder if you act on gender biases without even consciously thinking that they are doing any biases.

Nandini Ray: Do you think they are doing whatever they are learning generation after generation that it is a cultural norm, it is a social norm and we have to work on that? You know, as a mom I would teach my daughter something but that specific teaching I'm not even thinking of teaching my son? I will ask my girl hey learn how to cook because you have to cook when you have a family but maybe I am not teaching my son like that. Are we doing it unconsciously because it is our cultural training?

Sonya Pelia: I think to change is very hard, I think to realize the thoughts that you had, the cultural conditioning you have is not right. I think it’s a really difficult thing to do. I consider myself as a feminist, I was a feminist when I was 13 years old. I didn’t know that there was a word called a feminist. My father was a huge feminist and he made all of his daughter’s feminists but sometimes when I am in a situation where perhaps gender roles are being discussed, I notice that I don’t speak up and why I don’t speak up? I should speak up and say I don’t think this is right. The reason people are scared to go against the norms is that they think people may not like them perhaps they think people will judge them but I feel if we all need to change this; we all need to be fearless.

Nandini Ray: You are right, it’s so hard to change gender role expectations, it’s really hard especially in our community. I know someone who told me that and surprisingly the story I am going to share, the lady is an engineer and she and her husband both are engineers and both are earning the same salary but when they are coming back from their work the expectations are different from the wife and the husband and the lady told me that “the mother in law, she is not even here, she’s from another country and she’s calling her son and telling that “what are you making tea? What are you changing diaper? What’s wrong with you? You are a man, what is your wife doing? They don’t understand that both of us are doing the same kind of job, both our expectations from our office is the same but when he’s back from his office he is allowed to do whatever he wants to do and I am not even allowed to do it and on top of that long-distance abuse is creating a stress in our relationship.

Sometimes he gets verbally and one or 2 times even physical abuse happened. It’s so sad and she also told me that forget about my mother in law who is been provoking her son to punish me or talk to me or to teach me what is my duty. Once I shared my feelings with my own mom, my own mother and she told me that you know, you are a wife, you are a mother and it is your duty to make hot rotis for your husband every day when he’s back from his office. It is your duty to take care of your children” and I was like thinking, why is that? why don’t people understand that culture can change based on socio-cultural atmosphere. What is happening in India or Pakistan or Bangladesh may not happen here you know. I don’t know how to articulate this thing because I am from India and in India, upper-middle-class or Middle-class families, they can afford maids, they can afford chauffeurs for the car but here you have to do everything and what’s worry if your husband is helping you in your household chores or taking care of the children? Why this is not accepted in many of our houses.

Sonya Pelia: You raise so many points Nandini in that question and story that we probably can spend the next 3 or 4 shows unpacking what you have just said. I think that when you have a culture clash or a gender clash where women in a generation have become wage earners and they have become wage earners at these level which has put them in parity at least some of them and some of them parity with men, the old order is threatened and the old order is threatened because here you have women who are making decisions they become software engineers, they are directors at companies and this is true in home countries too. It’s not here that women are highly educated and yet the previous generation perhaps has not moved with our time so there is a lot of stress in that. I think even having a maid or a chauffeur is not relevant perhaps as much to the question of gender inequality or gender parity. It’s the expectations we hold. If we look at the cultures, our grandmothers or great grandmothers grew up, they were not educated they stayed home a blessing in India, I am from India myself, is may you be a mother of a 100 sons why not be may you be a mother of a 100 daughters?

If you consider the fact that in India when you leave your natal home to get married and you move to your husband’s home, it is said that you know now only your arthi or your death bed should leave your husband’s house so there is so much of this kind of old back traditional this is how we’ve done things and this is how things should happen but it sounds like if men try to change they are still being encompassed in the patriarchal and told that change is bad for them. But what if we looked at the statistics South Asian teens have the highest suicide rates than women. What is bringing all of this up, it’s not happiness, it’s not living the best lives they can.

If a couple, say a heterosexual couple for the example that you have mentioned if the two of them are walking hand in hand, how come when they reach the house, that link is broken between them and they are supposed to get into their gender roles. I don’t think he can be happy either expecting his wife to perform these activities or actions whereas he wants to help her. So I think for me when I look at what people expect out of gender roles what wives should do, what good wives should do, good sons should do, good sons-in-law should do these are all putting so much pressure without providing any kind of support, any kind of opening for them to be vulnerable, to say I value listening to music, I want to be a musician perhaps. I want to be a partner an equal partner, I want to change my child’s diapers I want to be the father that I did not have and yet you have all of this social pressure including his own mother pushing him into a box, into a box that perhaps worked. I’m honestly not sure if it even worked in those times. I remember both my grandmothers saying to me and both were uneducated one grandmother could read at a 4th-grade level and the other grandmother could not read at all and they both said in their next life I would like to go to a college, I would like to be a man, I would like to get educated, I’d like to have a job so clearly people have aspirations, they don’t want to be boxed into these expectations which are very toxic in the end. Would I be happy if I was home earlier than my husband and he comes in after a 12-hour day and I sit on the couch and say Hey you need to make tea and dinner now or if I get home after a 12-hour day and he’s sitting on the couch and says well now you need to make dinner or tea for me. I think partnerships and relationships are really that.

Nandini Ray: Ya, you’re so right Sonya, mutual understanding, mutual respect, and love these are the foundations of a healthy relationship. Don’t you think so?

Sonya Pelia: Absolutely and always I’m amazed when people say, “I’m not a feminist because I don’t think men and women are equal” and when you start unpacking it and when you ask them does that mean that you will take a lesser role in your relationship they’ll say no because I want to have a partnership. If you want a partnership, there is give and take, you can’t always say if you want equality then a man needs to be only nurturing towards you or taking care of you but you can also be nurturing towards a man and take care of him. It can be both ways and that’s a partnership that’s a relationship.

Nandini Ray: So Sonya so far we have been discussing the correlation between gender inequality and Intimate Partner Violence. But now let’s start our conversation understanding Intimate Partner Violence because many times I’ve seen that people when you’re talking about domestic violence, Intimate Partner Violence, they understand the violence part, if there is physical violence, they understand that it is happening. It is easy to prove that if you have broken ribs, black eyes but there are other types of abuse and violence in relationships that many times it’s hard to prove in court, hard to show to even your friends, your best friend so how can people identify abuse in their relationship?

Sonya Pelia: I think for our community in particular as you said it’s always been the physical violence and so verbal abuse, emotional abuse, financial control, long-distance abuse, isolation has always been minimized and I think people don't realize how much damage can happen over the course of time with an example let's take verbal abuse. If someone is telling you you're ugly, you're not worth anything, you are stupid, you don't say anything smart and if someone gives you this message day in and day out eventually you will start believing them, not just eventually probably pretty soon you will start believing them.

Let's say that someone is emotionally abusive withholding affection, saying they don't like you, they don't love you anymore, they don't love the children. These are very systematic abuses which cause PTSD which is Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. They actually have adverse health reactions and in children, in particular, there is an ace index which is adverse childhood experiences which measures the impact on your health when you are a young adult based on the abuse you suffered as a child and a lot of times these children have suffered emotional verbal abuse and not physical abuse.

But let's think about being an immigrant in this country. Financial control, what if your partner is controlling all of your resources refuses to give you a credit card, you don't have a checkbook, you don't have cash on you and yet you have a job. How can you navigate through this with any kind of security, confidence and to be the best you can be?

Nandini Ray: And you know what I'm sorry to cut you off but sometimes I've seen the verbal abuse especially, it is so normalized in relationships, it's culturally normal. I was talking to somebody and she told me that “you know I have seen my dad yelling at my mom every time every day which is normal in relationships isn't it?” So I was thinking you know, is it really?

Sonya Pelia: I don't think so. It is normalized and the other spectrum of it. You're talking of somebody yelling at another person and constant. Yes. Not one time but repeatedly. When I first joined Maitri, we had a volunteer who was killed by her husband and then he killed himself. And left 2 children behind and the reporter, the Indian reporter who interviewed me said he must have loved her so much that he could not let her go. We are not in a movie, we are not in a fantasy drama, this is real life. This is how normalized violence is and one we did not even touch on marital rape. Yes, there is a thing called marital rape. What if your partner forces you to have sex against your will just because you are in a marriage with somebody or you are in a long term relationship with somebody that is marital rape, that is intimate partner violence of the worst kind. This is somebody you love, you trust, you have a life together and yet he is inflicting that huge amount of violence on you.

I think it is so important for people to understand that IPV, Intimate Partner Violence or Domestic Violence does not begin and end with physical violence. There is financial control, there is immigration control. What if your children were born here and you weren't and you don't have a way to work here? You will be held hostage in the situation here because you can't leave your children and move back to the home country, that is another form of violence right? It's the green card club, I remember this was a phrase used by a Latina woman a long time ago saying this happens to Mexican women who come from Mexico here. I think it happens to all immigrant women. I know that at Maitri we experience this all the time where women don't have possession of their legal documents and they are caught in this horrific situation of isolation and abuse and they can't see a way out.

Nandini Ray: So, so, frustrating. You know what I see many times, if children they see things abuse/ inequality, they feel that is the normal thing, I mean sometimes if you go to someone's house and you see a lot of gender biases, gender inequality present in that household and I'm pretty sure that those children think that is normal to treat your sister this way or that way or treat your brother this way or that way, that thing is a learned behavior and exactly same way with IPV. Don't you think so? That whenever one child is seeing domestic violence happening every day at home, it is possible that they think it is normal, it is normal in the marital relationship and they learn that that abusive relationship is normal behavior. What do you think Sonya?

Sonya Pelia: Absolutely, in fact, I think there was a study with Santa Clara county many years ago that found out that 88% of the batterers stopped after they were taught that physical violence is wrong. So clearly it's a learned behavior but I remember one case we had a South Asian woman, she had a 7-year-old son and the point which she left the husband with the son was when the son started calling her the same name and saying the same exact things that the father was saying to the mother and then she lived in our transitional house for a year and a half and I remember we had a male volunteer and he would meet them on the weekends to show positive masculinity. How men behave, how real men behave as gentlemen, not as that and it was very interesting because the 7-year-old really worshipped his father and would say to the volunteer that Well, my father says this or my father believes this, or my father say this to my mother and this volunteer of ours Gaurav would say that's not how real men behave and it was interesting over the course of a year and a half that this boy actually completely turned around with his behavior.

Now think of this that you have a child, you have a boy and a girl perhaps 2 boys. I don't know children growing up in a house where the father is only verbally abusive, not even physically abusive and is abusive to the children, is abusive to the mother, abusive to his own mother perhaps who knows right what relationship building are they learning? What are they understanding the dynamics of the relationship, you undermine people, you say nasty things to them, you disrespect people verbally, so it's learned behavior and how can you teach respect, how can you teach gender parity if your children are growing up in that atmosphere? And I know so many women who call Maitri even men for that matter call and say who want to stay in the relationship, who want to be with the children not realizing how much damage is being done to those children and how they will perpetuate IPV in their own relationships.

Nandini Ray: I think as adult community members we have a huge responsibility to setup good role models for our children and to as you said over and over, have open communication and learn what they are thinking about our relationships, with them, with the family, in school, in the community and what do they think? Are they safe? Are they loved? and you know what, it takes a village to raise our children. You were talking about individuals, what we can do as community members that are very much needed but I'm also sometimes confused. I also have 2 boys and the messages they are getting from the community, the media, from everywhere else that if you are a man, man up. If you're a boy, be tough, be aggressive, be dominating, have power. So how can I as a mother tell them that this is not true? If you want to be a man then be respectful to everybody and be happy and you know sometimes I'm very confused that how I raise this awareness in the community that everyone should be on the same page, that everyone should work hard to prevent gender violence, gender bias.

Sonya Pelia: I would say the first thing, I have a 19-year old by the way and she just went to college a year ago and the most interesting thing that happened for me once she was in our lives was to have these conversations and they are not comfortable but if you judge a child in a conversation they will never open up to you and it happened to me once or twice where I realized I said something that was judgmental when she was sharing it with me and I made a rule after that, so I would suggest for your sons once a week, once every 2 weeks you're in the car, you're driving them to their swimming class, you're driving them to dance class, I don't know what your sons like but something and have a conversation about what they think of gender roles, what do they think of gender relationships. Are there situations during the course of the day where they felt uncomfortable and I think once you give the freedom to your children to realize that you will not judge them, you will not say "Oh stupid boy" and this is very popular in the South Asian culture. Stupid boy stupid girl why did you say this? This is what good girls say, this is what good boys say. If you start having really open conversations, your sons will be empowered to teach others and this is how you make a change. It's not one of us. I notice this with my nephews and nieces and I also have a nephew and niece who live somewhere in Sacramento and it's interesting once we were having this dialogue about you know bullying in school, the uniform expectations in school, how boys behave, how girls behave, etc. etc. and I did not allow any of the parents in the room to speak and I told them if any of you speak, I will ask you to leave the room and at the end of 45 minutes I cannot tell you how much knowledge and wisdom came from the 5 teenagers in that room, talking of the stresses and the emotional weight on them from the horrible expectations we set on our children and we set them unconsciously. We'll tell our daughters to yank your blouse up, we'll tell the boy your jeans are very low. We'll tell the boy don't put mousse on your hair. I know these are small things I am saying buy think of the number of times we say these things to our children. If you have an honest dialogue with them and sometimes they'll tell you things that you're not happy about but then you have google baba right, google it and find the correct response to it but open a dialogue, open a dialogue with your partner, open a dialogue with your nephew, your niece, open a dialogue with your friend, if she says something really conservative, ask her to try and understand this why she says this, present a different viewpoint and I really think we can change people. I truly believe that or I would not have stayed with Maitri for over 26 years now.

Nandini Ray: If anyone is going through this kind of situation and want to seek help, what do they do or how do they seek help?

Sonya Pelia: I think now there are so many ways of getting help, it is very gratifying that at least there are so many ways, you don't have to struggle on your own. I would say talk first to a trusted friend, talk to a trusted neighbor, talk to a trusted co-worker so you at least have somebody who is listening to your story and tell you no you're not crazy, it's not in your head, you are really experiencing something wrong. You can, if you have access to the internet you can google our number and contact not just us but there is much Domestic Violence, Intimate Partner Violence agencies that deal with this kind of crisis situation. You can look up online what are the signs, are you in a dangerous situation? I will give two cautions. If you do talk to your doctor or your nurse, if you had physical incidences of violence or marital rape and talk to your physician, they are mandated to report it in California which means they will call the police and if you're not ready to leave the relationship or to get the police involved, I would suggest a little caution there and the same goes for 911. Now the thing with 911 if you call the police, they will, they are required to take action and I know it can be a challenge if you are not ready to take action. But if you are in a dangerous situation, it could be a way to get help very quickly. But I would suggest starting talking out with friends with somebody you trust who is not going to say well this is how relationships are, this is how South Asian relationships are, so what if he wacked you one, he's your husband. He wants to have sex with you, he can have sex anytime with you. These are not the people who are your trusted advisors.

Nandini Ray: I would suggest there are 5 agencies in Santa Clara County, the Domestic Violence agencies and they are providing free and confidential help. So I think people should call these agencies, get some support and their rights and their options. They can call Maitri if they want to talk to someone in their own language as South Asian and can understand your culture call Maitri or other local agencies, whatever you think is doable for you. You don't even have to share your real name to discuss your cases with Maitri. So we are almost out of time and you know I wish we could continue this discussion for another 4 hours. So the last question I have for you, do you have any suggestions for community members. What should they do in changing gender bias, social and cultural norms that support power dynamics in Intimate Partner Relationships?

Sonya Pelia: I think number 1 we should treat our sons and daughters equally and what I mean by equal. Equal opportunity, equal expectations, equal responsibilities. We should talk about toxic masculinity all the time. What makes it toxic, it's not the man themselves but it's the things we expect them to do. We should talk about openly with our children, what do they want to do? We should talk with our partners whether your partner is your husband, or your partner is your wife, what are your aspirations in life? Having this active communication, having this always active in the back of your mind, in the front of your mind, when you have this conversation are you encouraging people to be the best they can be? Rather than say there is a box, please fit into this. Boys don't cry, girls cry, girls can't bat, they throw like a girl, girls wear pink, boys wear blue. What if we stop talking about these things and we started having the same expectations, the same values for both the genders in our relationship.

Nandini: Maitri has been out in the community doing proactive work, you know addressing and identifying gender views, gender violence, and gender inequality. I want you to share the history of community engagements aiming prevention, how has it changed?

Sonya Pelia: It's been so gratifying I can't tell you, where we started out with the community engagement, addressing gender inequality, IPV to now where we are. I still remember the first booth I went to, it was at Gandhi Mela in San Francisco. I stood at that booth for 8 hours with our flier in multiple languages with our helpline number, not one person out of the 5000 people at this fair that day stopped by. I remember another one we did there was one of the other volunteers. Anu and I were sitting and eating samosas. Finally, we gave up that anyone was going to come to our booth and we were eating samosas and this guy comes up and starts ranting at us and your know when you have a samosa in your mouth and it's hard to swallow it quickly and give a response back, but we finally did and that was the only engagement we had in the 8 hours.

And now when we go and we talk about gender inequality, we talk about elder abuse, perhaps we talk about how the community resources that are available, we literally get dozens of people to stop by the booth, take fliers, ask us how they can help us. They want to tell us oh you helped my friend's cousin and you helped my cousins, sisters, uncles, friends, niece something. But they want to engage in dialogue, they want to understand this problem, why do we have this problem? And you know to me to make a societal change, that is the first step. And I think when we now go into the community, we do panels, we do workshops, we work with religious organizations. I find that there is already a predisposition to listening to what we have to say, to understand the challenges of gender inequality and where they lead to. So that is really gratifying and really so pleasant to be at that stage.

Nandini Ray: For Maitri is been seeing as a trusted source in the community, Right?

Sonya Pelia: Absolutely, I remember 20 years ago when we tried to do our youth program, we've been trying to do the youth healthy communication, gender inequality program for over 20 years. My daughter is now 19 1/2 and I know I started the program before she was born and when we would go to colleges to do these programs, you would be astonished by the number of 18, 19, 20 years old South Asians would not participate in the program. I still remember this young man at Berkeley he had sat through the entire workshop and we had told everyone you don't need to be part of this workshop, to talk about these topics. He stayed and kept the exercise form piece upside down o his desk and I said you don't need to be there and he sat with his arms folded but today I know, this is not how it is. When we do our panels, we have an amazing program called engaging boys and men that you can see on our Face Book page. We have a constant request from our youth, we have young people so enthusiastic about taking up the cause of gender inequality, dedicating their annual event at their High School, Arangetram, doing a fundraiser, you know showing up at events and saying how can I help, how can I be part of this? So clearly we are not only a trusted source of information in the community but we hit a cord with our youth which is where you can make substantial change.

Nandini Ray: I would also like to add here, we are getting calls from men that they have starting Maitri that is not only helping women, that can also help us, men. They are also calling Maitri, isn't it?

Sonya Pelia; And that to me is not just heartening but I also feel sometimes very sad that men who are abused in Intimate Partner relationships don't feel safe to call us. You know there is so much shame for them, so much macho-ness involved, so much judgment involved. I can just imagine how agonizing it must be for them to admit to their friends or perhaps to their parents or their siblings that they are emotionally, verbally and physically abused. I remember this one gentleman I worked with maybe 8 to 9 years ago and he said to me. He said my mother said what kind of a man are you? Hit her back> And he said I don't want to, I don't want her to be abusive to me, but I don't want to be abusive to her because she is the mother of my child, I respect her. I want to be in an equal relationship.

Nandini Ray: Here come gender role expectations. If you are a man, man up, be tough, be dominating, be aggressive, so that is the thing we have to address, we have to do something to stop gender bias, gender inequality, and gender role expectations. It is toxic then we must do something to prevent it....

Sonya Pelia: Absolutely, and I think the fact that we have this radio program now and people are listening to us, I hope everyone who listens to us has at least one conversation in the next few days with a friend, a sister, a cousin, their children and say this is what I learned and I think I don't want to be part of gender inequality.

Nandini Ray: I will surely have this conversation with my boys today. Thank you, Sonya, thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience with us, with all community members.

Sonya Pelia: My pleasure as always.

Nandini Ray: And I hope we will keep doing this kind of show over and over and bringing a perspective, different perspective to you and keep sending us any requests if you want us to do a show on any topic.

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