Remembering mother on International Working Women's Day

My late mother, Saraswathi, was a little over 21 when she was married and went with her newly married husband to Shillong where father was working in the Accountant General's Office, I guess of undivided Assam. She worked there shortly in Lady Keane College, teaching Chemistry. She has asked me couple of times to take me back there, but it was never to happen. In a few years, she had lived in Trivandrum and then in Delhi and Hyderabad, by which time she had two children, and then in Ahmedabad. By the time we were little older, she went back to to Osmania University, first getting a degree in Journalism, and then eventually settled down to a career in education, earning a Bachelors and Masters in Education first from Osmania and then a Masters from SUNY Buffalo working on a short thesis with the renowned Philip Altbach, and then her Ph. D. from Osmania under the supervision of Prof. Ramachandra Reddy of a different department. Her thesis work was published as a book and now I have two copies. In the meantime, she started to work in Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy College of the Vivek Vardhini Society in Putli Bowli and spent a couple of decades there as a teacher, in toto and retired in 1996. A very practical person, who taught her subject of educational philosophy and science methodology with a rare passion, she trained a generation of students many who went back to the hinterland as teachers. Her infectious enthusiasm for science rubbed off on everyone and love for kids. Her other major love was for the language of Telugu from which she translated several stories and the like. Although in essence she stood for the rights of, and emancipation of women, I rarely heard her talking about it. I guess actions are louder than words and to us those stay etched in our minds. Also a tireless fighter against discrimination and caste system, she could speak her mind fearlessly. Even though it is over 13 months since her altogether early departure, I thought it fit to think about her on the day after the International Working Women's Day.