“On ‘women’s wisdom’”

I am writing this letter on behalf of my 85-year-old mother Khorshed Wadia Ezekiel. It is in response to the article "On ‘women’s wisdom’" (Parsiana, November 21, 2012).

The first lady editor of Stree Bodh magazine and possibly the first lady journalist in India, Putlibai Kabraji was my mother’s great-aunt (grandmother’s sister). My mother fondly remembers Putlibai for her great wisdom and as one of the pioneers of women’s education in India.

It is a further cause for celebration that the two young lady researchers are from St Xavier’s College as my mother studied there in the mid 1940s. I join my mother in wishing the two young scholars all the very best in their future endeavors.

Readers may be interested to know that Putlibai’s late son Fredoon (Freddy) Kabraji, the noted poet who wrote poetry in Gujarati also wrote in English and was one of the first Indians to be published in British publications. I have a book of his poems A Minor Georgian’s Swan Song published in the UK in 1939. In fact, he preceded my paternal uncle Nissim Ezekiel in this regard.

GUL-FRAAZ (GULU) EZEKIEL

New Delhi

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