Mrinalini Sarabhai

In 1949, when the dancer Mrinalini Sarabhai toured France, the press dubbed her  ‘Les Bomb Atomique des Hindous’ and her husband, Vikram, who would head India’s nuclear and space programmes, ‘the Indian Joliot-Curie’.  She was past 80 when I interviewed her for my biography of Vikram Sarabhai -- always elegant, poised and involved in a myriad causes. A brief excerpt from ‘Vikram Sarabhai-A Life’ to bid her a fond farewell: 

“Meeting Mrinalini again, as an adult, in Bangalore... Vikram was struck by the transformation in her personality. The frisky teenager, he realized, had grown into an elegant, young woman and one quite different from the tennis, bingo, ballroom dancing obsessed creature he had met. In fact, Mrinalini had taken a leap in quite another direction: she had become passionately involved in the study of bharata natyam. The interest had led her from a stint at Tagore’s Shantiniketan to Ram Gopal’s school in Bangalore. She had even sworn, she told him, to stay unmarried, in order to give herself completely to her art. Her engagement, so akin, it seemed, to his own involvement in science touched a chord in Vikram. He asked her out. They began to date. 

There were long, romantic drives in Vikram’s Bantam and endless conversations. They munched on fresh makkai and recited poetry to each other; Mrinalini breaking into lyrical Bengali recalling Tagore and Shanti Niketan; Vikram quoting Kalidas. Both professed repeatedly to have no inclination for marriage and yet they were moving relentlessly closer.”