By Ruchira Bose

A kick-ass professional, confident, ambitious, caring and progressive. Are we describing Jassi or millions of women emerging from a new India —anchored by values but fired up with the hope to excel in life! Does Jassi describe who we are today?

“I grew up in Jalandhar, where beauty parlours had hair all over the floor, combs had lice and if you said ‘loofah’ they thought you were referring to a roadside romeo,” says Bobby, 29, owner of a day spa in Mumbai. “All my friends are having sex. It’s ok. I don’t think any less of them because they are sexually active,” says Sharda, 27, an account planning director with an advertising agency.

“I’d never betray my family’s trust. They’ve supported me all through my life — I would never have been able to achieve all of this if it wasn’t for them. But choosing my life partner doesn’t mean I am betraying them,” says Kumud, 26, running her own PR company in Mumbai and about to marry a man of her choice but from a different community.

“So I don’t have the perfect figure! It doesn’t matter to my clients — they are happy as long as I keep making money for them,” says Sheetal, an investment advisor.

Any of these statements could have been made by Jassi — from the immensely popular series ‘Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin’. But they were made by real women. Women you probably work with, shop with, or party with. Movies aren’t the only things crossing over.

Generation W is making a transition and straddling two worlds increasingly as successfully and smoothly as a Cirque de Soleil juggler juggles knives and balls. More important, Gen W is high on the latest drug a fast-growing economy has brought to us: Hope. “The hope that we can achieve what we want to is even more ferocious and rooted in the lives of people for who it may seem otherwise unattainable,” says Sunil Lulla, Vice President, SET.

Whether it’s unattainable because we are women, or ugly, or fat, or poor or have a bad dress sense is inconsequential; these elements are beginning to matter less as we become invaluable at the workplace and outside, and that is what seems to translate Jassi’s popularity not just into a high TRP but also into a trend.