Culture Talk

I had no idea Gloria Steinem spent two years in India

Like most people I knew Steinem from Ms. magazine and the undercover Playboy Bunny piece. The Guardian's look at her years in India was new to me. She went at 22 on a fellowship, lived at Miranda House at Delhi University, wrote for Indian papers, and called it a 'life-dividing event'.

The detail that stuck with me was the women-only third-class train carriage from Calcutta to Kerala, where she watched women share their experiences years before American consciousness-raising groups. Feels like an important reminder that ideas travel in more than one direction.

RIP. 92 is a long, full life.