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From nuclear physicists and doctors to adventurers and martial artists, this article spotlights five older Indian women featured in Jasreen Mayal Khanna’s ‘Bullet Nani: And Other Badass Indian Grandmas’ who challenged the societal limits imposed on their lives.
In ‘Bullet Nani: And Other Badass Indian Grandmas’, journalist Jasreen Mayal Khanna profiles twelve extraordinary older Indian women whose lives expanded the possibilities for those who came after them. From a nuclear scientist who became her family’s breadwinner to a doctor who entered war zones in her fifties, the book tells the stories of five of these iconic women who refused to let gender, circumstance or age determine the limits of their lives.
Dr Raminder Dhillon — a former Resident Medical Officer at The Lawrence School in Sanawar, Himachal Pradesh — spent the first half of her life as a doctor, wife, and mother. At fifty-six, just a few years shy of retirement, she decided to volunteer with the United Nations as a doctor specialising in trauma care and medical evacuations in warzones. She has worked in life-threatening situations around the world, from Afghanistan to South Sudan, earning her the nickname ‘Bullet Nani’.
Pavane Mann is a pioneering Indian adventurer and outdoor educator who entered India’s nascent white-water rafting scene in the mid-1980s as its sole female participant. An experienced trekker, rafter, sailor and diver, Mann helped establish India’s professional adventure-tourism ecosystem and has travelled extensively across the Himalayas. She later served as Executive Director of Outward Bound India-Himalaya and remains associated with outdoor and experiential education.
Thankam P. is a trailblazing Indian nuclear physicist who joined BARC in 1961, making her one of India’s first women nuclear scientists. Hailing from Kerala, she pursued science mainly to achieve financial independence to support her family. After completing BARC’s demanding year-long training programme, she became a Scientific Officer in 1962 — entering the field of nuclear physics at a time when Indian women were rarely seen in STEM careers. Her journey broke gender and class barriers, allowing her to become a scientist and the main breadwinner for her family.
Dr S. Rahmath Beegum is a pioneering Indian physician, recognised as the first female graduate and the first woman doctor from Lakshadweep. Rahmath overcame severe societal constraints and earned her MBBS from Kakatiya Medical College, Osmania University, in 1970. After completing her residency and specialising in gynaecology, she returned to Lakshadweep and single-handedly revolutionised regional primary care, emergency medical infrastructure, and safe maternal delivery in the remote archipelago. For her decades of providing exceptional grassroots healthcare in Lakshadweep, she received WHO fellowships in 1985 and 1996, and the Government of India honoured her with the Padma Shri — one of the nation’s highest civilian awards — in 1999.
Meenakshi Amma (Meenakshi Raghavan Gurukkal) is an Indian martial artist celebrated as the oldest female practitioner and master of ‘Kalaripayattu’, an ancient traditional martial art which originated in South India. Defying rigid social taboos against women in physical sports in the 1940s, she began training at the age of seven. She has dedicated over seven decades to running the Kadathanad Kalari Sangham academy in Kerala, training thousands of students entirely free of charge. Renowned for her lightning-fast agility even in her eighties, she was honoured by the Government of India with the Padma Shri in 2017 for preserving this intangible cultural heritage.
To learn more about other inspiring older women, read Jasreen Mayal Khanna’s ‘Bullet Nani: And Other Badass Indian Grandmas’, a collection documenting Indian women whose lives challenged conventional ideas about gender, ageing and domesticity.
