When Pinky returns to India, she will take care of me,” the ailing Dr. Prasad told her domestic help. But it was not to be. When the daughter touched down from Vienna, the capital city of Austria, two weeks ahead of schedule, it was late; mom was, as later events showed, in her final hours. A distraught husband, CRV Prasad, said, “Nirmal left us without so much as wishing a good-bye.”

Yes, she was unwell; but it was too early an age to be called back. Doctors who worked on her were surprised by the suddenness of the developments. The doughty warrior had dressed up, pinned her hair into her trademark bun, and walked her way to the hospital, promising to return in three days. The former principal of M.O.P Vaishnav College is now mortally no more, but she will be remembered forever.

Nirmala Prasad was born in PV Kalathur village in Kancheepuram district, as the second of seven siblings. A Leo, she breathed fire. Around that time, in faraway China, Mao Zedong called on the politburo to prepare for the People’s Liberation Army to enter the Korean War.

Nirmala finished schooling from the NKT National Girls Higher Secondary School in Ice House, Chennai. Those days, there were only a handful of engineering colleges. In any case, in the mid-1960s, academicallyminded women preferred medicine to engineering. But neither of these was on Nirmala’s radar. Her eyes wandered towards business and commerce, and she had entrepreneurship in mind.

Let her tell the story as it unfolded.

“My father was a businessman. I was 13 years old when I observed him mentoring several young boys into entrepreneurship. So I began dreaming of becoming a businesswoman, and perhaps, inherit my father’s business. I did not realize that those days, in India, women cannot inherit their Papa’s assets. The dream made me choose neither Arts nor Science, but Commerce. “However, there was a hitch. In Tamil Nadu, until 1971, not a single women’s college offered a bachelor’s in commerce.

So, I graduated as a private candidate from Sri Venkateswara University and later did my Masters, again through correspondence, this time from Utkal University. I completed MPhil and then my doctorate, both from the University of Madras.”

That’s how and why the lady who spent 40-plus years, first as a teacher and later as principal, had never been inside a college during her student days. In 1972, a few months after India bested Pakistan in a war, PSGR Krishnammal College began offering commerce. Soon Queen Mary’s and SIET (now JBAS) followed. It was just the kind of opportunity Nirmala was looking for. Women were starting to come out of their closets, wanting a place under the sun, both economically and socially. And madam was one of them.

She was in the right place at the right time in history. In the years ahead, she would run a college with missionary zeal and act as a catalyst for budding entrepreneurs.