Mothers of Daughters

Margaret Rosie is a domestic worker and cooks and cleans for several homes. She lives in Bangalore with her five children, their spouses and grandchildren. For this collection of essays Margaret shared the story of her mother Matilda with Arundhati in an interview.

Nisha Abdulla is Bangalore based theatre-maker practicing as playwright, director, and educator. She is Artistic Director of Qabila, a theatre collective that centres new writing and a dissenting imagination. She is also co-founder of OffStream, an anti-caste arts collective. For more on her work visit nishaabdulla.com

Sarbari’s executive career started with a multinational company that distributed and sold retail financial products.
During this period, she set up a pan-India network of financial product distributors and connected with finance
professionals and organizations all over India. This was not an easy process as the finance industry tends to be very
conservative in its approach, and women were few and far between in the area, especially in the distribution and
marketing of retail finance products. It then became imperative for her to gain the trust of these finance professionals
vis-à-vis her competence as a manager and as a woman. However, once trust was established, the friendship and
professional relationship she developed continued until twenty-seven years later. This process piqued her interest in
observing and studying human and organisational behaviour and later led her to train as a facilitator, group dynamics
professional, and psychotherapist. She was also certified as a professional executive coach. Her experience spans
Fortune 500 companies from industries such as IT, ITES, FMCG, Manufacturing, Family-owned enterprises, Telecom,
Media, Banking, Healthcare, and Non-government organizations such as CRY, Kamonahashi (Japan) and some others.

Sarbari is the Chief Executive Officer of Reflexive Lenses Consulting Private Limited, a boutique consulting organisation
based in Bangalore, India.

In her consulting work, the focus has been to study the organization’s culture and the leadership orientation of the top
team, envisioning, planning and leadership development. Her other area of immense interest is working with the
inclusion, diversity, and strategy of organizations interested in changing the roadmap in this area.

Spandana Bhowmik holds one of the earliest PhDs in Digital Humanities (DH) in India. She worked at the intersection of DH, textual criticism and archiving at the School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, until she moved to Bangalore. She has the unique experience of being associated with an academic, an arts and now a corporate archives in her 20+ years of work. She has been instrumental in building the archives of the India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore, and then expanding and re-organising the Wipro Archives and Resource Centre, Bangalore. Additionally, she is critically involved in building the Story of Wipro Experience Centre which is coming up soon.

Arundhati Ghosh is a writer, cultural practitioner, social activist and traveller. With three decades of experience in the arts and culture, she served as the Executive Director of India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) between 2013 and 2023. Her awards include Chevening Clore Leadership (2015-2016), Chevening Gurukul Scholarship at London School of Economics (2005-2006), and Salzburg Global Seminar Fellowship. She contributed on advisory panels and board of the Seagull Foundation for the Arts, Blind with Camera, Sangama and Toto funds the Arts, and continues to do so for the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Shomokaleen Protibidhan, the Solidarity Foundation, and Maraa.

She writes for various publications such as Scroll, The Wire, The Deccan Herald and The Hindu. Her collection of poetry in Bangla Oshomoye phire esho nodi hoye was published in January 2023 by Lastrada Prakashan. Her book All Our Loves: Journeys with Polyamory in India was published in 2025 by Aleph Book Company and won the Non Fiction Book of the Year Award at the Rainbow Literature Festival 2025 and the Kala Shreshtha Award for Debut Author English at the Kala Literature Awards 2026. She has also co-edited a collection of essays in Bangla of daughters writing about their mothers titled Meyeder Mayera (Mothers of Daughters) published by Sonta Prokashona in 2026. She writes a monthly column on relationships titled Ties and Knots for the Deccan Herald. She consults and trains for the cultural and not-for-profit sector.