It may be Halloween, but it is also Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights celebration. It seemed the perfect time to share the piece I wrote about one of my friend’s amazing grandmother, whose life and career had a lasting impact on her family and her community. In writing this piece, I also learned about a delicious Indian pudding she made, so weaved it into the piece.

Sonia Satija Kapour’s grandmother didn’t pay for her brother’s advanced degree – just hers.

Like clockwork, every semester, the wire from India would arrive to pay for Sonia’s law school tuition at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.

“Dadima believed that no matter what happened to you as a woman, you could take your education with you,“ Sonia told me. “Wherever you went as a woman, your brain would go with you.”

Her grandmother, Sushila Satija, had certainly taken hers far.

Born a woman in the 1920s in India, Sushila had few prospects beyond marriage and no ability to be educated beyond the eighth grade in her town. When her father, a school teacher, fell very ill with typhoid fever and nearly died, he vowed if he survived to educate his only daughter so she could support herself – progressive thinking for the time.

Sushila was sent to live with her uncle in a different part of India, where girls could attend high school. Friends insulted her father, taunting that he was planning to live off of his daughter – a shameful prospect in a culture where once a daughter was married, families took nothing from them so all could go toward serving her husband and his family.

She graduated from high school and was fortunate that a new medical school opened nearby and accepted girls. She became a doctor, practicing obstetric medicine.

Then came the partition in 1947, when the British left and India and Pakistan became two nations. Sushila, her husband and young son ended up on the Pakistani side and soon left for India.

“They traveled by horse and lived in refugee tents for about a year,” Sonia said. “They brought little. But Dadima did bring her medical degree.”

Eventually Sushila and her husband settled in Rajasthan as government doctors – Sushila delivering babies and earning the trust of women who often wouldn’t seek medical attention if it meant men would see them undressed. She had much success and opened her own practice: a maternity ward.

She purchased a Maharaja’s palace – a clinic on the first floor with room and board where women could stay to deliver their babies, and her own family living above. She bartered when women couldn’t pay, counseled, offered space for women to build their own businesses, and practiced for over 50 years. She retired just five years before she passed. Today, you can get married at the palace she once owned.

Sushila was so successful, her husband quit his job and managed their investments. She raised three children – two doctors and one real estate investor. And she paid for her only granddaughter to receive a law degree.

“She moved our family forward,” Kapoor said.

The one thing Sushila didn’t do was cook, but she loved to make one special Indian dessert: Gajar Ka Halwa, It’s a carrot pudding rich with butter and milk, cardamom, almonds or pistachios, and in some cases, infused with kewra water – a floral essence. Sushila would wake her son as a little boy after he’d gone to bed to taste it fresh and warm.

“I think it brought her joy,” Sonia said. So now Sonia’s family makes it in her honor, and considers how a father’s illness sparked a different path for his daughter, who in turn moved her whole family forward.

Sushila’s Gajar Ka Halwa was a labor of love – made on a wood burning stove in India, but it can be made quite simply with ingredients that are readily available year-round and just a touch of sugar. When I first saw the recipe I thought of all the years trying to get vegetables into little ones… (you’re welcome). Beautifully, it doesn’t require a lot of chopping or a big cleanup. Kewra water can be optional, but is easily found at Indian grocery stores, and rather conveniently, online.

The next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, make a pot of of Gajar Ka Halwa and take a note from Sushila – focus on the aspects of your career that matter. Peel away the parts that don’t. Take risks and own your confidence. Recognize the skills you have and the opportunity to use them wisely to further yourself and the generations after you.

Take your brain with you.

RECIPE: