From the Dusk of Life

This remarkable publication is a translation by the eminent author I.K.K. Menon, of Ratnamayi Devi’s autobiography written in Malayalam about 20 years account of her early life before marriage in Travancore in the second and third decades of the last century; her marriage to a distinguished but temperamental playwright at the age of sixteen and her determined search for a career which even after three children were born to her, took her to Madras, where she worked as a teacher. The Quit India movement and Gandhiji transformed the simple, shy, young woman into a fighter for many causes; it would not be an exaggeration to say that she was a feminist in her time. She lived in Wardha in Gandhiji’s ashram and later in Delhi during the turbulent days of the Partition. During this time , her first marriage is terminated pleasantly enough and she meets another freedom fighter, the Hindi scholar Sita Charan Dixit, with whom she had a very happy relationship. Her academic career began in the municipal schools of Delhi and reached a climax in the sixties when she became Head of the Department of Sanskrit in Miranda House. During this period she translated many books from Hindi to Malayalam and from Malayalam to Hindi. When she finally reached the dusk of her life she could look back upon a lifetime achievement in intellectual and literary pursuits and also in the service to society.