Kusum Choppra

My mother found it very difficult to wrap her mind around my later day dressing sense, especially cotton clothes. In the Ahmedabad where I have lived for over four decades, cotton is the norm, summer and winter – just thinner or thicker.   And Ma lived her life in silks, satins, chiffons, crepe d’chines and velvets.   As a pampered daughter of an importer/exporter of fine fabrics and accessories from all over the Far East and Europe, I too had grown up in the finest of clothes.       Until Ahmedabad taught me the value of cottons to cope with hot weather.    The varieties seemingly endless and the comfort so endearing.   Besides I ran an outfit that tailored everything for a handloom and handicraft   organization, Gurjari …..  How could I possibly wear anything but cottons?   The wonder of block prints, with vegetable dyes taking on so many different hues, different for each village with its own soil and water chemistries, coming together to an incredible, amazing variety

Holding a new book in your hands is a visceral experience, akin to holding a new baby.  One that is a celebration of women determined to lead life to the full is more exuberant. That is what my book NIRBHAYA & OTHERS WHO DARED is all about --- a pean of hope to combat the trauma of December 2012’s Nirbhaya.    Add to that tadka of helping young students to achieve new goals and life suddenly become exciting. When Nirbhaya started malingering with the publishers, I devoted myself an NGO, Balajanaagraha devoted to inculcating citizenship into young minds bored with the mind numbing civics textbooks. After days of rounds of school, four schools agreed to take the leap forward and I was getting up unusually early to trot forth to a different school every day of the week with my bag of tricks. High point: two days after the launch of my new Nirbhaya book, on December 2, 2014 my students presented their civic projects, written and oral before a jury of three.   They had surve