July 31, 1977
Obituary
This morning we want to celebrate the life and death of Aiyahabai Quereshi. Many people died in the building of the Fort. Many will die in the building of Nava Gram Prayas. Her death is a symbol of all the deaths that new life demands.
Aiyshabeai was sixteen years old when she joined Nava Gram Prayas. She was from Daulatabad. Her father works at the Ambassador Hotel in Aurangabad, her mother teaches in the primary school in Daulatabad. She leaves behind sisters and brothers.
She was born in a time when educated village women in India were still very few, when most women were confined to working at home. She lived through more than half of India’s thirty years of Independence, in the time when India’s millions are standing to claim their destiny.
Aiyshabai was a pioneer of the new woman in India. At sixteen she began the infant school in Maliwada. At seventeen she went to the first village Gram Sabha at Vaviharsh, and at eighteen she joined the Vaviharsh auxiliary. She utterly transformed every situation. She was a leader by being a servant. She washed dishes and rugs while training others in the infant school. She transformed education in Vaviharsh and brought out the women of the village. She gave all of herself to Nava Gram Prayas.
We celebrate here the fullness of that offering. There is no more to give. Her life and death spanned eighteen years. If they had spanned eighty years, there is no more to give. She died doing that which she had decided to do with all her life.
(On the evening of July 31, 1977, in Vaviharsh, Aiyshabai’s sari caught fire from a small kerosene lantern. She was severely burned and died a few hours later. The above obituary was read during the morning ritual of the Sub-Continent meeting, September 17, 1977.)