My mother, Lalit Jaggi, who has died aged 96, was an inspirational teacher. She was one of independent India’s first graduates, and in 1978 became head of the English department of a large London secondary school.
The eldest sister of the actor and food writer Madhur Jaffrey, Lalit preceded her in moving to London in 1952. When Madhur won the Silver Bear at the Berlin film festival in 1965 for her role in Merchant Ivory’s Shakespeare Wallah (from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s screenplay), Lalit was teaching Shakespeare at Brentford school for girls, in a then disadvantaged area of west London, helping, one headteacher wrote, to “raise the standard of English”.
Born in Delhi, to Raj Bans Bahadur, the manager at a flour mill, and his wife, Kashmiran Rani, who ran the household, Lalit grew up in Civil Lines, an affluent enclave of the old city. After convent schools in Kanpur and Nainital hill station, Lalit gained a degree in English literature from Indraprastha College, Delhi University, in 1950. She won a postgraduate scholarship and honorary fellowship, taught undergraduates and won drama prizes.
She briefly worked as a disc jockey for All India Radio. In 1952 she married a postgraduate economics student, Madan Jaggi, whose family had lost lands in Punjab during partition in 1947.
The couple sailed to London for further studies, settling near Strand-on-the-Green, Chiswick, in 1960 – the year Lalit joined Brentford school – then moved to Kew. In Britain, Lalit fought to have her first-class honours degree (she came third in her year) recognised. With a postgraduate certificate of education in 1967, and a diploma in the philosophy of education from the Institute of Education in 1975, she distinguished herself as an external examiner, and led a group of fellow teachers to India.
After retiring in 1988, she taught English as a second language to displaced women by setting them embroidery tasks, and read voraciously into her 90s. Her husband died in 1995.
An amateur dressmaker, she twinned tailored trousers with flowing scarves. “We loved the Indian outfits she wore – well ahead of her time,” one former student told me. “She saw the potential within me, and gave me an indelible love of literature.”
Lalit left a manuscript in verse, The Spirit of Number 7, consisting of 450 10-line stanzas filled with drama and anecdote about her extended family, including her grandfather, Rai Bahadur Raj Narain, a London-trained barrister, and an ancestor at the Mughal court.
She is survived by her children, Deepak, Rohit and me; grandchildren, Phoebe, Cicely and Cleo; great-grandchildren, Cicelia, Marley and Marcelle; and her sisters, Madhur and Veena.
