Spotlight

Margani Satya, the protector of nature, builder of gardening culture❤️

Dr. Rukmini Rao with Navya Morampudi.

She hailed from Hyderabad, has always been a true-blue Hyderabadi who studied at Osmania University and even taught at St Francis College for Women Begumpet, but she travelled to the country capital for her higher studies. She recalls going through a lot of difficulties as she had left her house because she was unhappy. "All of this helped me reflect and I realized that women have no support structures," she says, stating that as the reason why she dedicated her life to becoming the strongest support for those women who need it the most. Following her intuition, she returned to Hyderabad in 1989 and worked with the Deccan Development Society, an organization that works for the betterment of women farmers. Her job was to develop leadership roles and one such group in the Medak district was so popular that it became an alternate dispute resolution group. Then there was the Mothers Committee. "And all this was much before the self-help group era, somewhere in '97 or '98," she shares. Soon, she went on to set up the Gramya Resource Center, which works exclusively for rural women and their rights in the districts of Nalgonda and Khammam. She has worked extensively with the rural folk of Nalgonda and Khammam and plans to do a lot more through her Gramya Resource Center.  Most of us get our daily dose of the news through the morning newspaper (or scroll through our social media feed for it) and express remorse or anger inwardly, and sometimes outwardly, upon reading frequent news of rape, dowry deaths or infanticide, which have more or less became a fixture in the newspaper. Now, you may think that this applies only to the present, but apparently not. Because even as far back as 1970, Dr. Rukmini Rao was sick to her stomach of reading news like this. In fact, she and a group of women decided to get to the bottom of one particular case where a woman had been burnt to death. Soon, this informal group called themselves Saheli, extending their friendship, support, and help to many such distressed women. "We had brought about around seven pro-women legislation during that time," Dr Rao recalls.

Believe it or not, this is just the beginning of her story.

Seventy-seven-year-old Urmila Jamnadas Asher starts her day at 5.30 every morning.

She makes tea and breakfast for her daughter-in-law, Rajashree, and grandson Harsh, and then reads the newspaper as she eats her own meal. After this, she starts preparing snacks to cater to orders placed by residents across Mumbai, who come to eat her delicious food at Gujju Ben Na Nasta.

Assisted by two people, including Rajashree, she begins delivering orders by noon. On the surface, this seems to be the routine of any woman who runs a homemade food business. But Urmila’s story reads differently. The senior citizen started her venture at the age of 77, to bury life full of tragedy, pain, and struggle.