Tulsi
Badrinath

Legacy

Growing up, Tulsi absorbed at home the sensory impressions of Indian art in its many forms: painting, music, dance, fabric, sculpture, and handicraft. Tulsi’s great grandfather, N C Mehta, of the ICS, was a pioneer in the field of scholarship related to Indian painting. His outstanding collection of miniature paintings is housed in the N.C. Mehta Gallery at the LD Museum, Ahmedabad, of which Tulsi is a Trustee. Link to N C Mehta Gallery at the LD Museum. https://www.ldmuseum.co.in/ncmg.php

His daughter Leela Shiveshwarkar, Tulsi’s maternal grandmother, was a well-known designer of brass-inlaid furniture and an art connoisseur, who had studied at Shantiniketan and had played muse to Amrita Shergil who painted her portrait in 1936. She inspired the Maharaja of Benaras Vibhuti Narayan Singh to set up the museum at Ramnagar Fort, Varanasi. Tulsi’s grandfather Sadanand Shiveshwarkar, also of the ICS, had a great love for Hindustani music.

From both her parents, Seeta and Chaturvedi Badrinath, Tulsi inherited a love for reading, especially the Sri Ramakrishna-Vivekananda literature, and an introduction to Vedanta, one of the six world-views of Indian thought. Tulsi’s father was a philosopher and also a member of the IAS. His book The Mahabharata: An Inquiry in the Human Condition won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2009. Link to Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturvedi_Badrinath