Not a woman you could cross
Gopalkrishna Gandhi
Mridula
Sarabhai did more than any party for communal harmony and for human rights
years before the latter phrase gained currency
It is Women’s Day and memories of certain
amazing women swim into one’s thoughts.
To certain people a calling comes most
naturally. Mridula Sarabhai, daughter of Mahatma Gandhi’s early collaborators
Ambalal Sarabhai and sister of the nuclear scientist Vikram Sarabhai, was meant
for the rough life. Born in 1911, she died at age 63 in 1974. She looked the
rough role all right. One of the proudest women ever made by God, the most
sneeringly contemptuous of cowardice and of ‘safe playing’, Mridula had more of
a brave man in her than a woman. Ever in her Pathan salwar-kameez outfit with a
man’s collar, she looked like she could pound an adversary on his nose without
a moment’s thought. Or shower imprecations on him. And of adversaries she had
no dearth.
