Alexandra Sanchez Gavito is a political activist, a journalist, a professor, a feminist, an active participant in her country’s civic movements – which led to a wide range of electoral reforms and consequently the ushering in of a new political era in Mexico — and a woman. She didn’t start out as a feminist though. Ms Gavito wore many hats before coming to India. And it was here that she understood the real worth of a woman.

She came with Julio Faesler, her husband, the Mexican Ambassador to India. The idea of working on a book had germinated in her mind in Mexico because she felt that Indian women had not been given a fair deal by the Western media. She put it rather succinctly, “I would not like to compare Indian women with those from the West because I think women from all over are very special because of two reasons: they are the bearers of the future generation and secondly, women everywhere in the world are bearers of values and therefore, they are the bearers of nations. But what is so special about Indian women is that they have a very special dignity and strength. And even though they are struggling to win new positions and to be more active in society they have not lost their femininity.”

A book on Indian women it would be and the first persons she interacted with were the celebrities who make up the embassy parties and the Page Three set. Undeterred, Ms Gavito started to work on the book “since the first day I arrived”. It took her two years and 30 women to understand the feminine side of the country but in the end of it all, it gave her immense satisfaction of having done a job well.

It was an uphill task. First, of course, there was the question of choosing her “heroines”. But her focus was clear: she wanted to choose women “who were interesting in this country”. Once she started jotting down names, the list grew longer and longer. So she tried getting names from people she knew since “I was completely new to India”. With a word of praise for her friends, she says, that she “found an indescribable generosity among the Indian people. The moment someone learned that I was going to write a book, university professors, friends and many others gave me their own lists”. It was, she confesses, like a small survey. She zeroed in on anyone who was mentioned more than ten times.

She started off with two persons: Mani Mann and Shirin Paul, who “are so human that it is unbelievable”. Ms Gavito specifically chose the two ladies, who would commonly belong to Page Three. But she is quick to point out that “it was not by mere chance that the two ladies were chosen but because of their stories which nobody can imagine”. Ms Gavito ruefully says, that people tend to gloss over their lives and put them in the Page Three bracket. Perhaps it was the similarities with women of her country that Sanchez Gavito, a student of psychology and international relations, hunted for in India. Now that she has tracked it all down, she seems contented.

Take Shirin Paul, the owner of the Apeejay Group, for example. “She is a socialite,” says Ms Gavito, “but I think most people forget what Shirin Paul has had to go through.” Her son died in a car accident and within a few months her husband was killed by terrorists. All of a sudden Ms Paul was burdened with a company and its 42,000 employees. “That,” Ms Gavito points out “is not a Page 3 personality for Shirin Paul changed the whole image of the group…”.

Her other heroine is Mani Mann, a woman who achieved success without the backing of her family. Ms Mann went on to work at a time when very few women worked and it is entirely due to her that Indian crafts and textiles have become extremely popular in the United States.” These two women may be appearing on Page Three a lot “but their stories are quite unusual”. Taking a mild swipe at those who question her choice of “heroines” for her book, Ms Gavito says: “I think people judge very lightly why I chose these two ladies, who are Page 3 performers and not others.” Each one of the women in her book have done “something extremely precious”.

Ms Gavito’s research took her to Kolkata, Mumbai, Cochin and Ahmedabad where the former newspaper journalist of the 80s specializing in interviews held long chats with film personalities like Sharmila Tagore, Zohra Segal and Nandita Das, businesswoman Naina Lal Kidwai, politicians Brinda Karat, Margaret Alva and Vasundhara Raje Scindia and the hapless widows of Vrindavan’s Aamar Bari. In between came many more like poetess Amrita Pritam, classical singer Shubha Mudgal, danseuse Mallika and Mrinalini Sarabhai, artist Anjolie Ela Menon and Arpana Caur and of course, the most courageous of them all, Kiran Bedi.

The interviews apart, most of the women she talked to have become her very good friends. Like the poet Amrita Pritam, for example. The time she spent with the poet, says Ms Gavito, were “very special moments for me. Amrita Pritam had not been well – in the summer of 2002… she would talk for five minutes and then she would tell me that she was feeling tired. I would go back to her two days later… she would maybe talk for five or ten minutes. I would hold her hand and comfort her. There were other times when she was stronger so we would talk a little more. That summer was extremely precious for me because I became very close to her and we developed a very beautiful friendship. I think I have had the enormous privilege to have been the last person to have interviewed her. To me it is a great honour and a great, great privilege,” she says with a proud smile.

Talking animatedly about her book amidst her miniature paintings, Ms Alexandra Sanchez Gavito exudes some sort of energy that makes you want to go out and look at the country’s women in a totally different perspective. Perhaps, society has made many of us take our women for granted. Here was this distinguished lady from Mexico discovering new facets in our women. Her book is not an effort to teach Indians what they have been missing but a women’s insight into the battles fought and won with femininity and grace.

Did she feel a sense of history in India? After all, she was living in the same house in which Mexican Nobel Laureate, President and former Ambassador to India Octavio Paz (1914-1998) stayed. Ms Gavito cannot even think of the similarities – however weak they might be since “Octavio Paz is someone who stands high above all of us. He is high in the mountains and I cannot come anywhere near him even by osmosis just because I stay in the same house”.

But indeed there is a similarity. Like Paz, Ms Gavito adores democracy. “For every single Mexican,” she says, “Octavio Paz is a very important person because he stood for democracy.” For Ms Gavito, this fact is “really important”. The country had a one-party system for around 70 years and Octavio Paz had the courage to resign as ambassador to protest the Mexican government’s massacre of student demonstrators at the Plaza of Three Cultures in Mexico City. “I am not talking,” she hastens to correct, “about Octavio Paz the Nobel laureate but Octavio Paz as a simple Mexican who stood for democracy and one who acknowledged what democracy and human rights is.

It is these rights, which dragged Ms Sanchez to her book’s title, A woman’s wheel of life. In her travels, Ms Gavito came across an old woman from a village in Uttar Pradesh, who told her “that men and women are two wheels of a carriage. Without one, the carriage cannot run” For those who always find fault with our men folk, Ms Gavito has a few words of hope. Says she, “There is no battle of the sexes here. There is a strange sort of harmony and strength that Indian women continue to show. And that keeps the country together.” This, despite the fact that women of India and Mexico come from male-dominated societies. “We have had our struggles,” she maintains. “We have conquered many spaces. We have to cope with our many roles. Both Indian and Mexican women come from nations with ancient civilizations and very important cultures. The women of Mexico and India are holders of values in families and are also the givers of values in both countries. This attachment to family values and cultures make a nation strong. Unfortunately there are a lot of pressures because of consumerism, which does not come from our countries. Consumerism comes from globalisation. This is what we call trans-culturalisation in Mexico. In some societies values have been forgotten but not in Mexico or India. Our values cannot be completely lost because of our strong families.”

Feeling so close to India, has Ms Gavito ever thought of discarding her Western attire for “beautiful Indian saris”? She thinks that the dress of any country has to be worn with the consent of the people “and I would do the same with the sari in India”.