Santha Rama Rau: The prolific wordsmith who wrote for the ‘New Yorker’ and was wooed by a mafia don
In her peripatetic life, the accomplished writer got many opportunities to observe major events and changemakers from up close. Courtesy: The Nikhil and Dottie Wagle Family Collection.
When she was six years old, Santha Rama Rau left India for the first time. Her father, Benegal Rama Rau, a civil servant, moved to England as the first Round Table Conference to discuss constitutional reforms in India got underway in 1930. For her, it was the beginning of a lifetime of travel, during which she wrote books and journalistic articles, had a ringside view of global events and met the changemakers of the time. Rau once told a newspaper that she lived in three-year cycles, spending “a year in New York, a city I adore, a year in India, and a year travelling”.