In order to reach Lanka, Rama began to build a bridge. A little squirrel wanted to contribute its mite to this effort. It began to jump into the water and then roll on the sand and then run to where the bridge was coming up to shed the sand. Amazed at this unusual activity, Rama asked the squirrel what it was up to. The squirrel replied that it was doing what it could, to help build the bridge.

There must be many who, like that squirrel, have contributed quietly to our independence. They also have their own stories to tell. Kala Shahani too, has a story of her own.

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It has been a long journey for Esther Victoria Abraham, known as Pramila, to the film world. From a girl who stood under the foyer clock of her Calcutta school - punished for giggling and playing pranks - to a Hindi cinema actor in Bombay, from marriage to a celebrated actor to becoming a producer in her own right, Pramila has travelled a long way. The journey of this venturesome, vivacious woman has been marked by many road maps, many destinations. Not all these destinations have brought her joy but if one were to believe Pramila, all of them have been worth the journey.

At eighty-one, when Pramila narrates her story, Pramila's mind is a treasure house of details and anecdotes that she never tires of narrating. From this narration emerges an insider's view of the Hindi film world and of the many women and men who formed a part of it, a part not often revealed.

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A young girl in Karachi whose family did not allow her to study beyond the fourth standard; an eager girl who read all the papers especially for information on new discoveries in science and worried that there would be nothing left for her to discover if they did not let her study further; a twenty-two year old girl walking on the streets of Bombay with her brother after Partition, to find out if the city could give succour to her large family of five sisters and five brothers; a research scientist who never got tired of her laboratory; a sanyasi who wants to find out the nature of the subject since as a scientist she can grapple only with the objective world.

These images of strength and resilience emerge from the narration of Shantoo Gurnani - a narration that informs us about educational choices women made in the thirties and forties and the careers in science opening out for women in the early half of the century.

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As a little girl, Kanaka travelled in a bullock cart to the Somnathpur temple with visitors who came to her house. She would run around the stone figures in the temple; sometimes she would stand and wonder why she could not make such figures. In the village where she lived as a child, she waited for the servants to clean the front yard with cow dung paste, and over that dull green colour she would draw with white powder the rangoli designs she had learnt from her mother. In a family with so many children that it was like a nursery school, Kanaka alone carried in her heart the yearning to create something with her hands; something akin to the grandeur of the sculptures she had seen at the Somnathpur temple.

One can truly say that the first fifty years of Kanaka's life are all about the way her dream became a reality with the support of her mother and the immense love and knowledge that her guru Vadiraj gave her so generously. The rest of her life as she lived it until her death on 13th May 2021, was about creating through stone some new forms, forms which would not take her away from tradition but which, would emerge as different expressions of her imagination. These notes taken from her dialogue at the SPARROW visual history workshop represent the flights in stone that Kanaka continued to take all her life.

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A four-year-old girl met Menaka, a woman who had chosen to be a dancer against great odds. Menaka took this frail child under her wings and persuaded the little girl's widowed mother to allow the girl to be trained a dancer. Menaka became the mentor, guru and a second mother to the girl.

This little girl became the renowned Kathak dancer, Damayanti Joshi, who feels that her entire life and its meaning is contained in her dance. Everything else is incidental and unimportant. To Damayanti, dance is the only story of her life and she never tires of telling it.

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