In the end, I want to say that I could have regretted that you did not follow a career path but I actually look at your decision to concentrate on your family with a tremendous sense of admiration. Nothing is more powerful or more worthy of pride than the sense of somebody’s conviction and the courage to follow one’s own heart. I’m proud of you.
Lovingly,
Dad
Mallika Sarabhai
allika Sarabhai is a multifaceted woman, a restless, vibrant soul unwilling to be caged in by boundaries and societal restrictions. Her interests are many. She is dancer, choreographer, social activist, writer, publisher, and commentator. But more than anything else, she is a human being whose heart beats and feels for the women of our country, the unsung majority who live in rural India and silently suffer the indignities that an uncaring society heaps on them. Over the years, she has worked relentlessly opposing crimes against women through her dance-dramas, mobile dance troupes, traveling through rural India spreading the word against female foeticide, child marriage, and maternal mortality, among others.
Mallika herself grew up in a family of very strong women including her danseuse mother, Mrinalini Sarabhai, her aunt, freedom fighter Capt. Lakshmi Sehgal, and her great grandmother, a feisty woman who once single-handedly mollified and made friends with a rampaging mob working in the fields of the zamindaars, who attacked her home during the Moplah Rebellion in Kerala’s Malabar region in 1921. The Nair widow waited for the mobs to arrive, cooked a meal for them, and sent them home, mollified.
The biggest influence on Mallika’s life was and continues to be her father, eminent physicist and the father of India’s space programme, Dr.Vikram Sarabhai from whom she got the gift of enduring positivity. At his insistence she did a business management degree from IIM, Ahmedabad so that she would help him set up great institutions that would exist without material considerations such as income and profit. He never lived to see his daughter give shape to his vision but over the last three years, Darpana, an organization that her mother founded, has been steered by Mallika who has made it a hub for catalyzing social change through art.
Mallika is remembered for her inspiring role as Draupadi, in Peter Brook’s ‘The Mahabharata’ which ran for five years, first in French and then English, performed in France, North America, Australia, Japan, and Scotland. She has, since then, made several hard-hitting solo theatrical works, including Shakti: The Power of Women, all of which talk about the inherent strength of women.
This poem was written to her unborn baby some two decades ago. Anahita is now part of Darpana and a keen dancer herself, who accompanies her mother, and sometimes her grandmother too, on stage.
FOR ANAHITA
A lullaby
The mother hums while rocking a cradle. She stops, peers in and sings:
Don’t sleep yet my little girl
For I have a story to tell.
A long one perhaps, a hard one too
But a good one that you will tell your bitiya.
There is a world around—
A world of fools and knaves
Of frightened men and mindless women.
They see us first as women
Not people, not humans, not normal;
Girls, women, bitches, whores,
Other’s wealth, burdens.
Soon to be gotten rid of.
They’ll say you’re a curse
An unproductive mouth to feed.
They’ll try to starve you, burn you,
Keep you out of school.
They’ll try to keep you scared
And away from knowledge and power.
But they don’t know the secret
That I shall tell to you.
The world had changed around them too
But they don’t see it, so blind with fear
But you must know that you CAN
You can work, and fight, and talk
And dance, and learn, and sing.
All by yourself
Without their help
Without their permission
Or blessings, or guidance.
And then, if you wish, you can stretch out a hand
And take a partner who understands.
Don’t listen to their limitations
You can fly, you can jump
You can run, you can write
Because you are a woman
In a world where we can stand alone.
They will fight, hurl stones and abuse
For you will be the light that breaks their power
They will starve you, try and throw you down,
But you will know of the light inside
That gives you truth, and strength and courage
And above all
A joy that they could never give
And never withhold
For I am telling you a secret, bitiya
That you shall pass on to all the bitiyas
The future is ours
Filled with joy
Take the light of the women of history
And the few brave women of today
To light the lamps
A million lamps
For tomorrow’s women who are free.
Narayana Murthy
or most Indians, Narayana Murthy, co-founder of the information technology company Infosys Ltd, is a wise elder statesman, a man who is respected for his knowledge, and is revered by both his industry peers and his business associates.
And yet, Murthy has a delightfully gentle and vulnerable side to him too as he reveals in this humorous, touching, and astonishingly honest letter to his daughter Akshata, herself mother to two little children. Murthy wrote to me just a few days ago saying Akshata gave birth to her second child, daughter Anoushka, on October 25.
‘It is quite a well-known fact that when a daughter gets married, a father has mixed feelings about it. He hates the fact there is somebody else in his daughter’s life with whom she shares her affection—a smart, confident, younger man who gets the attention that was his alone. I, too, was a little sad and jealous when you
