Image & Narrative contributed by Nishant Radhakrishnan, Mumbai
This is a photograph taken in 1977 of my mother, K Jagadammal (right) with her peer and friend Jayshree Sawant (left) in Bombay. They were on a strike, outside a school compound, protesting the injustices served by the school they both taught in. My mother, K Jagadammal was born in 1949 in Kalanjoor, Pathanamthitta District, Kerala. Her parents were farmers, and she was one of five sisters and a brother. Her father later ran his own grocery shop, exactly opposite Kalanjoor Government School, that all of his children attended. My mother and her siblings all grew up to have careers as school-teachers.
In 1972, following a matrilineal Dravidian tradition, the Marumakkattayam system (where women of the family are legitimate inheritors of property and therefore integral to families), my mother was betrothed to her cousin, her mother’s brother’s son, my eventual father, M. G. Radhakrishnan. My father had been living in Bombay (now Mumbai) since 1968 and worked in a clerical position at the Indian Cotton Mills Federation. After their marriage they moved to Bombay and on June 11, 1973, my mother armed with degrees in B. Sc (Science) and B. Ed (Education), joined the ranks of thousands of Malayalee migrants (mostly teachers and nurses), and became a Primary section teacher at Abhyudaya Education Society High School where she taught all subjects except Marathi.
