Stories About Women

Navamaniyamma: The jovial stork that came walking

Author: 
M P V Shenoi

Shenoi, a civil engineer and MBA, rose to the rank of Deputy Director-General of Works in the Indian Defence Service of Engineers. He has also been a member of HUDCO’s advisory board and of the planning team for Navi Mumbai. After retirement he has been helping NGOs in employment-oriented training, writing articles related to all aspects of housing, urban settlements, infrastructure, project and facility management and advising several companies on these issues. His email id is mpvshanoi@gmail.com.

Midwifery - this profession had its heyday in Indian cities from 1900 to 1950. Modern maternity clinics came up one by one In the 1950s, and by the end of the 20th century, most Indian cities were full of them.

Today, in the 21st century, no one seems to remember the friendly neighbourhood midwife. Has the profession has completely vanished from the scene in metropolitan Indian cities?

In the 1940s, Mary Ebenezer Navamani or, more simply, Navamaniyamma was a familiar figure to all of us who lived around Siddappa's square in Mysore - at least to lower and upper middle class people. Navamani means nine precious stones. The literal meaning of the suffix amma in Kannada is mother. Amma is used as a mark of respect for older women and those with high status in the society, with the status based on caste, wealth or professional standing.

Memories of a Diva

Author: 
T.S. Nagarajan

T.S. Nagarajan (b.1932) is a noted photojournalist whose works have been exhibited and published widely in India and abroad. After a stint with the Government of India as Director of the Photo Division in the Ministry of Information, for well over a decade Nagarajan devoted his life to photographing interiors of century-old homes in India, a self-funded project. This foray into what constitutes the Indianness of homes is, perhaps, his major work as a photojournalist.

Editor's note: This story is reproduced, with permission, from Mr. Nagarajan's not-for-sale book of his memories, A Pearl of Water on a Lotus Leaf &amp\; Other Memories, 2010.

The first time I ever saw ‘MS' (Editor's note: The reference is to M.S. Subbulakshmi) was when I was a boy of ten or twelve in her role as Meera in the famous film (Editor's note: The film was released in 1947 , which ran for years in cinema halls and had the whole country humming her bhajans (Editor's note: See Youtube videos and a detailed description with videos).

A College Professor Remembers

Author: 
Geeta Somjee

Geeta Somjee received her M.A. (Hons.) from Madras University, and Ph.D. from M. S. University of Baroda. She was a Visiting Fellow at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford for a number of years, the Wellesley College Centre for Research on Women, (U.S.A), Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver. She has done longitudinal field research in rural and urban India, and was engaged in comparative study of the involvement of women in expanding health services in Asian societies. Her published works include Narrowing the Gender Gap, Reaching Out to the Poor (with A.H. Somjee) and "Social Change in the Nursing Profession in India" in a volume entitled Anthropology and Nursing.

I am from Calicut, in Kerala and went to high school there. At that time, Calicut was indeed a small place, and most students used to go to either Madras or Trivandrum for their higher education. I went to Madras (now Chennai), where I got my Bachelor’s degree from Presidency College, and my M.A (Hons.) degree from Madras University in 1956.

A Tribute To My Wife After Two Decades

Author: 
Dinesh Shah

Dinesh Shah studied in C N Vidyalaya, Kapadwanj, and got his B. Sc. In Physics  at University of Bombay, India. Later, he got his Ph.D. in Biophysics at Columbia University. He is currently   Professor Emeritus of Chem. Engg &amp\; Anesthesiology at University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

War’s Consequences: A Mother’s Story

Author: 
Meera Balasubramanian

Meera was born and brought up in Madras, Tamil Nadu. She graduated from Stella Maris College with a B. in Sociology, and got her M.BA from the Asian Institute of Management, Manila. She has enjoyed living in Manila, Istanbul and Hong Kong, and currently lives in a suburb of Washington, DC with her husband.



L to R: Lakshmi Raman and Meera Raman. Madras (now Chennai).1982.

It was 1940. Nazi Germany invaded The Netherlands and shortly thereafter, the Dutch surrendered. The Dutch East Indies remained under occupation. Tumultuous and uncertain times compounded by the lingering threat of the Japanese made life unsafe for the young migrant family in the capital city of Batavia (now Jakarta).

The naive nineteen-year-old girl's life changed dramatically. She gathered her faith, her baby girls, (21/2 year and 10 months old) and the innocence of her youth to set sail to Colombo and eventually to India with her sister-in-law. Her husband and his two brothers remained to keep the business going, to help support their family back home in India.

A Resolute Self-sacrificing Woman by M. W. Potdar

Author: 
Magan Potdar
M W Potdar

Magan Potdar retired in 1985 as Superintending Engineer of the Bhakra Nangal dam, and is proud to have contributed to the building of what Prime Minister Nehru called as one India’s modern temples. After retirement, he lived in Pune with his wife Suman. He passed away in 2015.

She sacrificed everything for her son – her only child. In this materialistic world of today, one would be hard-pressed to believe that such a person actually lived.

My dadi was born as the eldest daughter with two younger brothers to my great grandfather in Virdel in 1889, the same year in which Pandit Nehru was born. Virdel is a small village in Shindkheda taluka in Dhule district, which is part of the Khandesh region of Maharashtra. Her father - my great-grandfather – was a Marathi scribe who used to write applications and other papers that people had to submit to the Revenue Department\; he also used to practice Ayurvedic medicine.

Like most other girls of her age in our community, my grandmother was not schooled. She was married when she was around 15 years old to my grandfather, who lived in the nearby Shirpur taluka.

A Fish-eyed Goddess from Madurai

Author: 
T.S. Nagarajan

T.S. Nagarajan (b.1932) is a noted photojournalist whose works have been exhibited and published widely in India and abroad. After a stint with the Government of India as Director of the Photo Division in the Ministry of Information, for well over a decade Nagarajan devoted his life to photographing interiors of century-old homes in India, a self-funded project. This foray into what constitutes the Indianness of homes is, perhaps, his major work as a photojournalist.

Editor's note: This story is reproduced, with permission, from Mr. Nagarajan's not-for-sale book of his memories, A Pearl of Water on a Lotus Leaf &amp\; Other Memories, 2010.

I decided to marry at 25, two years after I got a job in Delhi as an official photographer in the Information Ministry. I wrote to my parents in Mysore asking them to look for a suitable girl for me, preferably from Tamilnadu.

I had nothing against Kannada-speaking girls. But, somehow, I felt Tamil girls were smarter, had classical looks and above all they were very photogenic.

Amrita Patti (1923-1997) by Sujata Srinivasan

Author: 
Sujata Srinivasan

Sujata Srinivasan is a Connecticut, U.S.-based journalist specialising in business and economic development, as well as community and general interest features. She and her husband Arun enjoy the theatre, travelling, and classical music, among many other things.

I loved to nestle against my Patti, which means grandmother in Tamil. She smelled of all my favourite smells – Mysore Sandal soap, shikakai, and soft, sun-dried Pochampalli saris. And when she smiled, which was often, I felt as though all was indeed well with the world. My world, at least.

Dida by Partho Sengupta

Author: 



Partho studied at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and XLRI, Jamshedpur. Cutting short a professional career, he is now enjoying teaching at an ordinary management school in Orissa, where students come from ordinary Indian families. He is married, and his daughter and son are university students.



She was called ‘ma’ at home by all her five daughters, never called by her first name by her husband, and always referred to in third person singular by her three sons-in-laws. She was born in Khulna District, Bangladesh, and her in-laws were rooted in Dhaka. She gave birth to her five daughters, including one on board a steamer en route to Khulna from Dhaka. She worked but as a subservient housewife and remained a quiet worker/manager of her life from 1947 until 1974, the year she passed away. She lived simply and quietly all her life. This was my Dida - my mother’s ‘ma’.

Hello everybody! Today is a different day as I put together this final version on my Nani. Today, almost 60 years ago, a simple man was shot at and died in Delhi’s Birla House. He was Mahatma Gandhi.

Memories of My Dadi and Nani by Renu Khanna née Chatterji

Author: 
Renu Khanna

Renuka (Chatterji) Khanna, born in 1927 in Lahore, studied psychology at London University. She supported and encouraged her husband, Krishen Khanna, in quitting his prestigious job at Grindlays Bank to become a full time painter. Thereupon, she became the school psychologist and taught English at Modern School, New Delhi until retirement. An avid reader, a dilettante painter of birds, and an inventive embroiderer, she has raised her three children to follow their own stars. The eldest, Rasika Mohan, is a classical Bharatnatyam dancer, Malati Shah is a painter, and the youngest, Karan Khanna, is a professional photographer. She is a most loved grandmother to five grandchildren, who know her favourite word to be “comfortable”, which is what she wants everyone to be.

Editor’s note: This story has two parts. Renu Khanna’s story is followed by her daughter Malati Shah’s memories of Mrs. Khanna’s nani.

 

Dadi - Kumodini Das (1858?-1949)

On Dadiji’s eightieth birthday my parents celebrated by lighting up the house with about two hundred diyas (oil lamps in earthen containers), and having a party at which delicious food and sweets and clothes were given to our domestic servants and their children.

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Stories About Women