(Manak Hari Paranjape was born in 1924 and she passed away a year ago. This is to remember her for the remarkable woman that she was. I'm sure that readers will agree even while allowing for a son's bias.)

On to a list of what my mother did ...

• Query her interviewer for a job to the effect that if everyone only hired experienced people, how would she ever gather experience. (She got the job!)

• Take a teaching job in a college when most un-married young women were being made to stay at home and in the kitchen.

• Walk to her home in Shivaji Park from Elphinstone college after teaching her class just because she felt like it!

• Go to France for higher studies by ship at a time when even young men were being asked to perform prayaschitta (penance) if they travelled overseas.

• Continue to teach her class in December even when she was expecting. (My sister was born in early January).

• Raise two children in Delhi even though it was even more inhospitable to working women than Bombay.

• Restart her teaching and research after a gap of about 10 years. She started again as a school teacher!

• Rise to the rank of Professor in the School of Languages at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

• Write two books to help scientists learn practical French so as to interact with scientists from other countries.

• Help her children (especially son!) learn Hindi, which she herself was not fluent in.

• Be an immensely popular teacher.

• Take a DTC bus from Pandara Road to JNU everyday to teach. (If you are a woman who rode a bus in Delhi in the 1970's you know why this is significant!)

• Give lectures on the works of famous French democrats and their views on liberty and equality with a view to awaken her students to horrors of the Emergency (1972-1977).

My strong desire to be a teacher was definitely grown in a vat of admiration for my mother.