Laxmi menon autobiography sample

No other living individual could draw the sweeping historical picture that Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit has given us in her memoir, making it a book of rare significance that will speak lastingly for generations to come.

The Scope of Happiness is the autobiography of an outstanding world figure who was the sister, confidante, and lifelong political associate of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru and the aunt of Indira Gandhi. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit participated in the Indian national struggle for freedom from its inception and was imprisoned three times. In this very personal view of the struggle for independence, she gives an evocative picture of the cultured and protected world in which she grew up in Anand Bhavan in Allahabad, conveying even the textures, aromas and sounds of her childhood home. She offers an unprecedented picture of life in India under British rule, with its rigorous restrictions and racial bigotry.

A compelling strength of this book is the intimate picture the author draws of many great figures: the searching and affectionate view of her brother, the insight into her niece Indira, a personal record of Mahatma Gandhi that no one else could give—and penetrating and entertaining anecdotes of world figures such as Krishna Menon, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Chester Bowles, Dag Hammarskjold, Eleanor Roosevelt, President Tito and Prince Charles. No other living individual could draw the sweeping historical picture that Mrs Pandit has given us in her memoir, making it a book of rare significance that will speak lastingly for generations to come.

About the Author
Born at the turn of the twentieth century, in 1900, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was the daughter of Motilal Nehru and his second wife, Swaruprani. She played a key role in India’s freedom struggle. After Independence, Pandit entered the diplomatic service and served as India’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, the United States, Mexico and Ireland. She was also the Indian High Commissioner to

[Muthukulam Parvathy Amma was a well-known figure of Srinarayana-inspired reformism and a recognized poet and translator whose work and life have not been adequately appreciated even today. She was knows to have had spiritual inclinations and had even sought permission from the Guru to start an order of Srinarayaneeya sanyasinis, something that she could not fulfil. I have still not come across her speeches in print, though she was a prolific and much-admired public speaker. But reading her poetry, one finds extraordinary images and reflections : as a sample, I offer a translation of her poem from 1946, ‘Chalanachithrathil’ — in which she places life on cinema and cinema on life]

In the Movie

The viewers crowd and cram, they

sing and dance afloat on ecstasy’s canoe

They wait, minds joined as one

to feast their eyes on the movie’s tale.

Strange, exotic strains of music

flow from unknown space; they know

it not first, and then all the scene

is immersed in the pitch-black flow

of tenebrous gloom.

Hazy, absolute, solitude, the silence

spreads as sweet imagining, a moment

Then blooms a divine light, and then, all

watch, rapt, in deep delight

And from beyond the viewers’ eyes, from

behind the curtain, first of all

come the melodies, brimming with hope and promise,

dancing, like the cuckoo’s full-throated call. 

She,  beauteous in every limb, a single golden

beam of light, forged of poesy’s sweetness

She tilts her full-moon-like face, emotes

to the delight of any and all.

She lifts up subtly her flower-like body,

stretches the neck, holds aloft her victory’s pride

She comes on to the screen like an Apsara

Like a figurine, and the applause thunders.

And when the damsel’s tender lips –

ah! when they part, how they react,

the young men, and the truly old,

an