Nirmal Kumari Mahalanobis

She was born on 24 October 1900 in Calcutta, British Raj. Her father was the Bengali educationalist, Heramba Chandra Moitra who also had been a member of Brahmo Samaj. In Calcutta, she met with the scientist, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis with whom she married on 27th February 1923.^[4] This move was met with initial resistance by Heramba, her father who was infuriated with P. C. Mahalanobis showing opposition to various clauses of membership of the student wing of the Brahmo Samaj, including prohibition against the members' smoking and drinking. Therefore, Sir Nilratan Sarkar, had been present at the wedding in place of the father of the bride. Rabindranath Tagore had also been present during the wedding. He had gifted the couple the original manuscript of his recently published work, Basanta.^[5] Dedicating his work to them, Tagore wrote:

প্রশান্ত, রানী

তোমাদের ই মিলন বসন্ত দিবেন কবি বসন্ত গান আনি সুন্দর প্রেম সাজুক আনন্দে পরুক গোলায় সুরের মালাখানি

[Prasanta, Rani In this spring of your union the poet evokes the songs of Spring; Let your love dress in joy and wear the garland of melody.]

Mahalanobis family lived in the Baranagar house "Sashi Villa" situated at 265/19, Gopal Lal Tagore Road, Baranagar which was often visited by Tagore in where he wrote a few poems. Tagore had renamed this house to Netrakona (Eye Corner). In 1960, this villa had been renovated as Mukh Bodhir Vidyalaya (transl. School of Deaf and Dumb). At the time when P. C. Mahalanobis worked at Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), Tagore also lived in Alipore observatory building with the Mahalanobis from the years 1923 to 1928. Despite having a room for himself, he preferred to write his poems under the shade of a banyan tree. Today the observatory has been changed to a museum with the Banyan tree still preserved in its place.^[6]

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  Tagore with P.C. and Rani Mahalanobis in Alipore Observatory, 1926

In 1926, both Prasanta and Nirmal Mahalanobis toured with Rabindranath Tagore on a seven month long trip to different countries in Europe which included Italy, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia. This was followed by their trip to South India and Ceylon in 1928.^[7]

The memoirs of the above mentioned travels are well written in her book (in Bengali) that was published in 1941 long after Tagore's death. In it their travel anthology is divided into two parts namely, Kobir Shongey Europey (transl. With the poet in Europe) and Kabir Shongey Dakshinattey (transl. With the poet in South India).^[8] It also includes the translated 60 letters called Pathe o Pather Pranthe (transl. On the road and beyond it) that Kobi Tagore wrote to Rani Mahalanobis out of a total of 500 that he wrote to her in his lifetime.^[3] Three other articles written by Mahalanobis have been also included in this volume which are "Om Pita Nohosi" ("You are my holy father"), "Tomaso Ma Jyotirgomayo" ("Your mother is brilliant") and one for children which was published in Autumn Festive Number of Anandamela in 1941.^[9]

A month before Tagore died, he remembered Mahalanobis as given in the preface to Kabir Shongey Dakshinattey,

You are one of my last friends. I know that even if others go away, you will not leave me.

The book had been translated by Somdatta Mondal, former English professor at Viswa-Bharati university which was established by Tagore with funds from US and Europe; and adopted Oriental (Gurukul) education system for the students. ^[10]

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  Tagore with P. C. and Rani Mahalanobis in Balatonfured, Hungary
• 
  Tagore with Rani Mahalanobis in Kesztehly, Hungary

This book was written by Mahalanobis as a tribute to the infamous day on which Tagore had died while being surrounded by Mahalanobis and his servant. In it all the events leading to Tagore's failing health, his last wish and the events post death are all recorded. ^[11] According to Mahalanobis, Tagore's last wish right before he died on 7 August, 1941 was to leave his corpse in free will to the ground in Shantiniketan, his birth place. This wish unfortunately couldn't be fulfilled as the Jorasanko house had been forcefully broken and crowd entered then took him away as huge populace waiting outside at that moment had grieved his demise. ^[12][13]

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  Baishe Srabon

In the annual reports of ISI, it is stated that Rani Mahalanobis had made donations to ISI which led to Raj Chandra Bose getting the part time scholarship. It was with this scholarship that R. C. Bose made out the Mahalanobis D² statistic The Mahalanobis couple also hosted distinguished scientists and their families at the time.^[14]

Note - if not much then converge with awards and career