He graduated from Woodstock School in 1940, and has wonderful stories to tell, such as the time he almost burned down the boys’ hostel by running a pakora-frying operation out of his room.

He remembers with fondness going to the bazaar and having a double roti with vegetable curry. That double roti sounded so good that I’m putting it on the menu of the Why Not? Tea Shop in the third Jana Bibi book.

Jeannie’s no slouch as a storyteller, either.

Jeannie recalls how both she and my mom received frequent visits from the same brasswalla. The bargaining was intense. If it broke down, Mr. Beg would announce indignantly that Mrs. Woodman would never offer such an insultingly low price for such a fine piece. Then he’d come to our house and play the game in reverse with my mom.

Thanks to Jeannie for permission to post these line drawings from her charming memoir about foreign service life.

Drawing by S.A. Aziz

Drawing by S.A. Aziz

From Jeannie Miller, Believe Me When I Tell You, Aftab Alam Press, Lahore, Pakistan.

As you may remember, Padmini (1932-2006) was the middle sister of India’s Travancore Sisters, wildly popular dancers and movie actresses at mid-century. Although they are no longer with us, they still have devoted fans across the globe.

Photo credit: Woodman Family Collection

My mom hadn’t danced for a long time, but Padmini tried to put her through her paces. Get those arms up there, mom!

Photo credit: Woodman Family collection

My dad, however, was apparently content to sit at her feet.

Photo credit: Woodman Family Collection

Then came dinner. The man on the left is Carl Salathe, then development officer for Colby Junior College.

Photo credit: Woodman Family Collection

At some point during the 1970s, Padmini founded the Padmini Institute of Fine Arts, which soon had five branches in New York and New Jersey; her dance students were legion.

I was very enthusiastic for a while, and I usually rode a large and phlegmatic creature called Shah.

Photo credit: Colby-Sawyer College Archives

With the neighbors’ kids, we tried to use him in one of our theatrical performances.  We staged the play in the driveway so that one of us could jump on him and dash off, crying “Hi-yo, Silver!” Unfortunately, Shah would not be induced to gallop that day, or even trot, but plodded away at his own sweet pace.

Later, I got spooked after a nerve-wracking ride on one of the other horses, when it decided it would prefer not to have me on its back and bucked for what seemed like an eternity. I stuck to the saddle in grim determination and terror. Afterwards, I considered it a victory to have dismounted alive and was proud of myself, but not proud enough to repeat the experiment.

Lee doesn’t look too happy, either, on vacation (c. 1958) in Mussoorie, where we sometimes rented ponies.

Photo credit: Woodman Family Collection

All other things being equal, we preferred to have the horse out in front, at a safe remove, as in this excursion (c. 1956) in Delhi in a horse-drawn tonga:

Photo credit: Woodman Family Collection

Lee, Betsy, my mother holding Jane.

Sukumari’s year of birth is variously reported as 1938 and 1940. In any case, she was very young when she acted in her first film, Oru Iravu (1951), with her cousin Lalitha of the Travancore Sisters, appearing in scenes depicting Lalitha’s character at a younger age. This film was in Tamil, but Sukumari also appeared in Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Sinhala, and Hindi-language productions. For a long time, the voices in Indian films were dubbed rather than recorded simultaneously, and common practice was to have someone other than the actors do the speaking parts in different languages. Sukumari, like the Travancore sisters, did her own.

In this snake dance from the movie Sarpakadu (1965), Sukumari appears mostly on the left, with her cousin Ambika on the right. In later years, she was greatly in demand for what the newspapers termed “mother roles.” Her productivity was prodigious, as was her popularity among audiences and colleagues in the film industry. In 2003, the Government of India awarded her the prestigious Padma Shri for her contributions to the arts.

These pictures from my parents’ photo album were taken in Chennai around 1954.

Photo credit: Woodman Family Collection

Right to left: Ambika, Padmini, Ruth Woodman, Lalitha, Sukumari

Photo credit: Woodman Family Collection

Right to left: Ambika, Ragini, Saraswati Amma (the Travancore Sister’s mother), Padmini, Ruth Woodman, Lalitha, Sukumari

My respects and condolences go out to her friends and family.

Here are news reports from the Times of India and The Hindu.

Here’s my mom at about age six, in Newton, Massachusetts, about to be the bride in a show called “A Kewpie Wedding.”

Photo Credit: Woodman Family Collection

My sister Lee at a performance in Delhi. Of all of us kids, she got the furthest in ballet, advancing from flat shoes to point.

Photo credit: Woodman Family Collection

I didn’t escape participating in Woodstock School talent shows.

Photo credit: Woodman Family Collection

In addition to classical dance, we learned ballroom dancing-—box step, waltz, foxtrot, cha cha, and jitterbug. Thus prepared, we went forth, dressed in our best, to face the agony of wallflowerdom or the joy of a full dance ticket. (No, we didn’t actually have tickets, but I see I am clutching a little beaded evening bag, probably borrowed from my mother.)

Photo credit: Colby-Sawyer College Archives

At my parents’ frequent parties, we felt it high privilege to stay up and dance with the grownups. Here, Lee doesn’t quite come up to the armpit of family friend John Marsh.

Photo credit: Colby-Sawyer College Archives

My mom at a club in Delhi with another family friend, Ujjal Singh:

Photo credit: Colby-Sawyer College Archives

Tripping the light fantastic. That very expression makes me want to get up and dance!

Anu posts on Tumblr, WordPress, and Facebook.

Take a look at her stunning array of images and read about ancient Indian costumes, royalty, missionary influences, men’s fashions, period drama movies, writers in saris, Air India hostesses, regional headgear, and lots more.

Just a couple of my favorites:
women musicians
birds as accessories

A few quick fashion notes of my own here, about the color coordination you see in Indian women’s dress. These ladies are impeccably pulled together:

Photo credit: Donna Greenberg 1998

A mom in elegant monochrome:

Photo credit: Donna Greenberg 1998

The sandstone-colored outfits on the tourists at the gate of the Taj Mahal look custom-made for the scene:

Photo credit: Donna Greenberg 1998

Thanks to my friend Donna Greenberg for the use of the photos.

A formal portrait of Ragini and Padmini:

Photo credit: Woodman Family Collection

A couple more of Ragini:

Photo credit: Meco Studios
Woodman Family Collection

Photo credit: Meco Studios
Woodman Family Collection

The three informal snaps below are faded and scratched, but I can’t resist posting them anyway. All were taken in Chennai, c. 1954.

Ragini with her brother, Chandran:

Photo credit: Woodman family collection

Ragini with my little sister, Jane:

Photo credit: Woodman family collection

Aren’t Ragini’s braids fantastic!

Finally, Padmini with Woodmans:

Photo Credit: Woodman Family Collection

Padmini’s got me, and I’ve got Jane. Lee’s on the right. My mom and dad, Ruth and Everett Woodman, are in their thirties. Padmini would be in her early twenties.

In their publicity photos the three sisters–India’s beloved Travancore Sisters–look breathtakingly glamorous, but in real life they were girl-next-door-wholesome and unaffected, and nice as could be.

Photo credit: Woodman Family Collection

Photo credit: Woodman family collection

Lalitha (1930-1982) was the oldest of the sisters, in whose pioneering footsteps Padmini and Ragini followed. She got her start in films at age eight. My parents remembered her as quieter than the other two, with her own gentle mystique. My dad liked to recall the time she sat up all night with a sick kitten in her lap, willing it to live after everyone else had written it off for lost; the kitten recovered.

These pictures date from about 1954:

Photo credit: Woodman family collection

Photo credit: Woodman family collection

Photo credit: Woodman family collection

Here are Lalitha (left) and Ragini (right) in their expressive enactment of a dance drama, also in 1954:

Photo credit: Woodman family collection

On Youtube, you have to dig a bit to find Lalitha. In this excerpt from a 1949 Tamil movie, Vazhkai (“Life”) Lalitha and Padmini make a special dance appearance in a “play within a play.” (It starts at about 4:06.) Padmini plays the role of a village lad, complete with moustache and turban, driving fake oxen across a stage and showing off her comic skills. Lalitha is absolutely charming in the role of a fresh-faced country girl. The sisters (then teenagers) loved performing together, and it shows. Pure joy!

Photo credit: Betsy Woodman

Photo credit: Deborah Keehn, I presume!

Here we are on a typical Saturday morning, busily cleaning our dorm room. We had to pass room inspection before we could go to “the buzz,” as we called the bazaar in Mussoorie.

Photo credit: Betsy Woodman

See? All cleaned up!

I had not been in touch with Debby since college, but, to my delight, found her last year on Facebook.

In New York, we took in a couple of exhibits at the Rubin Museum of Art. One was of the work of Homai Vyarawalla, India’s first female photojournalist. Vyarawalla’s iconic shots include this one of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

The exhibit is over, but this podcast tells about Vyarawalla’s life and work.

The other exhibit was Radical Terrain: Modernist Art from India.

Debby was knowledgeable company for this outing. Her parents, Thomas and Martha Keehn, were passionate art collectors, and friends of painters who at that point were struggling but later became world renowned. Items from the Keehn collection and Martha’s letters home to the States are gathered together in a book called India Ink. Irresistible reading for me! Martha was nothing if not candid, and this portrait of an American family in India in the 1950s is a classic.

And, amazing coincidence, the book also revealed that the Keehns had lived in my family’s first Delhi house just before we had. I didn’t know that at the time. Debby and I had more in common than we even realized.

Perhaps the sight of these three beautiful ladies has been a remedy for homesickness for people spread over the globe by the Indian diaspora. But you don’t have to be Indian to love them.

The sisters are no longer with us, but decades after they made their movies, they still have devoted fans.

Like the older two, Lalitha and Padmini, the youngest Travancore sister, Ragini, was a stunning dancer with a sparkling screen presence. The tallest of the three, she would often play a male role in dance dramas. She’s made up with a little moustache in this clip from Ummini Thanka, a 1961 Malayalam film. She could also wield a cricket bat!

These photos show her luminous beauty.

Photo: Woodman Family Collection

Photo: Woodman Family Collection

Photo: Woodman Family Collection