| Santha Rama Rau शान्ता राम राव |
|
|---|---|
| Born | January 24, 1923 Madras (now named Chennai), India |
| Died | April 21, 2009 (aged 86) Amenia, New York, United States |
| Alma mater | Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts |
| Genres | Travel writer, novelist, playwright |
| Notable work(s) | This is India (1953) (novel) A Passage to India (1960) (play adaptation) |
| Spouse(s) | Faubion Bowers (1951-1966 -divorced) Gurdon Wattles (1970-1995 - his death) |
Santha Rama Rau (Konkani: शान्ता राम राव) (24 January 1923 – 21 April 2009)[1] was an Indian American travel writer.[2]
Her father, Sir Benegal Rama Rau, was an Indian diplomat and ambassador. Her mother was Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, a leader in the Indian women's rights movement who was the International President of Planned Parenthood.
As a young girl, Rama Rau lived in an India under British rule. When she was six, she accompanied her father's political trip to England. There she was educated at St. Paul's School for Girls, and graduated in 1939. After short traveling through South Africa, she returned to India to discover a different place than she remembered. She applied to Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, in the United States, and was the first Indian student to be accepted there. She graduated with honors in 1944. Shortly afterward, she published her first book Home to India.
When India won its independence in 1947, Rama Rau's father was appointed as his nation's first ambassador to Japan. While in Tokyo, Japan, she met her future husband, an American, Faubion Bowers. After extensive traveling through Asia and a bit of Africa and Europe, the couple settled in New York City, New York.Rama Rau became an instructor in the English faculty of Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, in 1971, also working as a freelance writer.
Rau is the author of Home to India, East of Home, This is India, Remember the House (a novel), My Russian Journey, Gifts of Passage, The Adventuress, (a novel), View to the Southeast, and An Inheritance, as well as co-author (with Gayatri Devi) of A Princess Remembers: the memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipur.
She adapted the novel A Passage to India, with author E. M. Forster’s approval, for the theatre. The play was produced for the Oxford Playhouse, Oxford, United Kingdom, moved to the West End in London, United Kingdom, in 1960 for 261 performances, and then on to Broadway in New York City for 109 showings commencing in January 1962. It was adapted by John Maynard and directed by Waris Hussein for television by the BBC in 1965. In 1984 the play was adapted for film by director David Lean.
Her short story, "By Any Other Name", is one of the essays in Gifts of Passage. It is in the Norton Anthology of English Literature and is widely studied.
She married Faubion Bowers in 1951 and had one son, Jai Peter Bowers in 1952. The couple divorced in 1966. In 1970, Rama Rau married Gurdon B. Wattles, and had no children. Faubion Bowers died in November 1999 and is survived by his son, Jai. Jai is currently living in Scottsdale, Arizona, with his wife, Deborah Bowers, and has a daughter, Whitney Bowers. Jai also has two stepchildren, Morgan and Ross Mandeville.
Rau wrote a short memoir called "By Any Other Name", as mentioned above. She, 5 and a half, and her 8-year-old sister Premila briefly attended an Anglo-Indian School where the teacher anglicized their names. Santha's name was changed to Cynthia and her sister's was changed to Pamela. The condescending environment in which they worked and played was not fit. When confronted with the additional indignity of being told by the teacher that "Indians cheat", her older sister came immediately to her little sister's classroom and they walked home, never to return to that school.