The journalist is one of the first and most forceful voices of #MeToo, as she called out three senior journalists—former DNA and Times Of India editor Gautam Adhikari, former TOI Hyderabad editor KR Sreenivas and Hindustan Times’s Manoj Ramachandran— for sexual harassment. It wasn’t the first time that Menon was calling out sexual harassment in the workplace, but this time, she named names, and her series of tweets gave specific instances and witnesses which made it very difficult to brush off. Sreenivas was eventually sacked, Ramachandran was sent on leave, and Adhikari was forced to resign from a think tank he was with in the US. Menon’s twitter handle @TheRestlessQuil is now the go-to place for everything related to the #MeToo movement in India. She took her own traumatic experience and turned it into a positive force to help other women. She uses her increasingly growing follower count to give voice to other women who have gone through similar experiences in the workplace or outside, and is now focussing on the next step: how to use the momentum to bring about permanent change in the workplace. She says, “In the past month, I’ve had no time to do anything other than focus on [#MeToo]. I see this as becoming my life’s work—talking about it, raising awareness about it. That sense of purpose is very great but very scary, so I have to work it out.”
Photograph: Mallikarjun Katakol
Sittings editor: Karim Maouche and S Thanng Khan Khup
Hair and make-up: Jean-Claude Biguine, Bengaluru
