no cabin in this womenled nariman point office has a name plate even the glass door leading to dr kalpana apte director general of family planning association of india fpai is bare the deliberate modesty is among the many lingering footprintsa tall brown swivel chair a thick memoir at the reception table an artwork from kuala lumpur an idol of lord krishna from mysore a letter to jrd tataof mrs wadia the silksariandbroochtoting cofounder of fpai who had lobbied for the reproductive rights of women even as she silently suffered a series of emotionallydevastating miscarriagesdeaths due to pregnancy in one week in india were equal to those in one year in europe when avabai wadiawho had made headlines at age 19 as the first woman from ceylon now sri lanka to pass the bar exam in the uk conceived fpai in 1949 alongside fellow womens rights activist lady dhanvanthi rama rau she did not suffer fools gladly says dr kalpana apte director general of fpai who worked with wadia in the 1990s and was once asked by the seriousseeming but loving leader to fetch the book in which apte had read about the tenyear effectiveness of copper ta contraceptive that wadia had believed to be effective for three years fertility control especially womens rights over their bodies was a radical idea for newlyindependent india when she firmly held that family planning would only be successful if it was done voluntarily and through informed choice says apte about wadia whose persuasions as part of the advisory board of the planning commission had led to india becoming the first nation to introduce family planning as part of its health policyborn in a parsi household in 1913 colombo wadiathe daughter of a highranking official in a shipping companymoved to london with her mother at age 15 as a teenager she immersed herself in social service and womens rights movements says lawyer parinaz madan who recently chronicled wadias legacy along with historian dinyar patel in a bbc articlethis early exposure to social work coupled with a zealous desire for fighting for the right and helping the weak motivated her to study law adds madan about wadia who attended brondesbury and kilburn high school in london as the only south asian pupil and made headlines when she became the first woman from ceylon to pass the bar examencouraged by her success the law college in colombo opened its doors to women even as wadia frequently battled gender bias as an advocate working in london and later in colombo madan cites the part in wadias memoir the light is ours which recounts that when she applied for apprenticeship in a barristers chambers in london she was rejected with the lame excuse that there was no ladies lavatory available at the chamberswhen the family moved to the city during world war ii bombay was living what wadia called a shiptomouth existence dependent as it was on incoming boats for foodgrains here wadiaa vegetarian by choiceworked with volunteers