Madhu Bala Nath is an inspiring leader and advocate for women’s rights, gender equality, and public health. Her career has spanned multiple organizations, including the Swedish International Development Authority, UNIFEM, UNDP, and EngenderHealth and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). In this podcast episode, Madhu highlights unlearning as a guiding principle, drawing from her experiences in HIV and AIDS prevention in India. She also reflects on the collective strength of women and the importance of pausing to witness one’s own work as a grandmother changemaker. If there’s one lesson to take away from the remarkable Madhu Bala Nath, it is: “Dissonance is the word.”
Madhu Bala Nath’s most recent book is entitled “ Let Us Walk the Talk on the Road to Gender Equality.”
TRANSCRIPT
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Welcome to Grandma Magic, a podcast from The Grandmother Collective. We are a nonprofit organization that supports and advocates for a world where a grandmother’s power is seen, cultivated, and activated for positive change. The Grandma Magic podcast is an opportunity to learn more about the unique roles that grandmothers, aunties, and other older women around the world play in advancing positive social development.
By talking to and learning from grandmother changemakers, we hope this series inspires you, brings you joy, and helps you recognize the enduring magic and wisdom that comes from grandmothers everywhere. My name is Lynsey Farrell, and I’m your host.
Today, we’re honored to introduce Madhu Bala Nath, an extraordinary leader and advocate for women’s empowerment, gender equality, and public health. Over a remarkable career spanning decades, Madhu has worked with organizations such as the Swedish International Development Authority, UNIFEM, UNDP, and Engender Health, driving critical initiatives in grassroots development, gender-sensitive HIV/AIDS prevention, reproductive health, and women’s rights advocacy.
Madhu’s work has taken her to some of the most remote parts of India and Asia, where she has empowered women’s groups, advised on national and regional policies, and strengthened global health systems. She’s an accomplished author of four books, including Let Us Walk the Talk on the Road to Gender Equality, and has contributed innovative capacity-building tools to the field.
Her impact extends beyond programs, serving on the governing boards of major organizations and influencing the next generation of leaders. Madhu, we’re so delighted to have you with us today. Thank you for joining us.
Madhu Bala Nath: Thank you, Lynsey. Thank you for inviting me.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): So, I’m just going to kick it off with a question that I ask a lot of women, especially our wise women connected to The Grandmother Collective. What are some of the things you most hope you’re remembered for after this remarkable career you’ve been on? And what do you really hope you’re passing on to the next generation?
Madhu Bala Nath: Lynsey, I’ve spent a large part of my work life trying to demystify and simplify the concept of gender and rights. A large part of my life has gone into developing capacity-building tools that generate a dissonance in us so that the next generation can strengthen advocacy efforts to create a more gender-equal world.
The idea is to have an expanded constituency where these tools can be used. So, I developed a training manual on gender and human rights, which was endorsed by UNAIDS, UNIFEM, and UNFPA and was printed by UNESCO. It’s now in six languages, including Mandarin, Hindi, and Bangla, besides the UN languages of French, Spanish, and English.
It’s being used widely. I’ve documented my learnings in four books, and the whole synopsis of my work is in these books. The experience we had on genderizing the Indian census was used by the Upper Midwest Women’s History Center for training students, so that also got institutionalized in some ways.
This has largely been my hope — that these tools continue to be used and get updated. Of course, they will over time get outdated, but they are made in such a way that they are experiential tools. And with a bit of updating, they can continue to be used. So that is my dream. Let’s see what happens.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): That’s so interesting, that idea that we need to institutionalize knowledge and learning in a way that’s inclusive and accessible, like putting it in all these different languages. But if you were to say the greatest learning of all of this is X, what is your biggest takeaway that you’re making sure people take with them?
Madhu Bala Nath: Something I learned over the years is that if we want to be real changemakers, we should make sure we focus on the concept of unlearning as much as we focus on the concept of learning.
Unfortunately, a lot of new learning is pumped into new minds, but what is already seated there that needs to be cleaned up and unlearned before they can accept new learning is not addressed.
I’ll give you an example.
We were working on HIV/AIDS prevention in India. At the time, the project was focused on truck drivers because it was felt they were moving the epidemic from one place to another since they were away from home for long spells of time and sex was happening.
The idea was: How do we create workshops? How do we create awareness? How do we distribute condoms? How do we make sure prevention efforts work with this group?
I went once to observe. I sat at a roadside food stand on a highway where most trucks stopped. I saw trucks lined up, and I saw that this was where a lot of workshops were being held. There were posters, condoms in boxes, arrangements for a workshop, blackboards — everything was there.
I sat there watching, and over the next hour, 28 trucks came. The truck drivers got off, bathed, used the toilet, ate, and rested. As they left, I noticed something.
Many of their trucks had condoms tied around their radiators.
I counted — 17 out of 28 trucks had condoms wrapped around their radiators. I asked them why, and they told me:
“Elder sister, these are excellent material, tested for leaks, so we take a lot of them and just tie them together. Whenever our radiators start leaking on the way, we use these as a stopgap until we reach a repair shop.”
I was aghast. I asked, But haven’t you heard about HIV? Aren’t you worried about that, about your family?
And they said, Oh, my father was a truck driver. My grandfather was a truck driver. My great-grandfather was a truck driver. Nobody got HIV. But we were told when we were being trained for driving that we had to stop every 400 kilometers and have sex. Otherwise, we would have an accident because of the heat generated in our body.
Here is a belief that has been passed down through generations. How can they suddenly, overnight, in a workshop, give that up and start using condoms or stop having sex every 400 kilometers? The accident is more fearful to them.
This is the unlearning that was needed to understand their minds before bringing in new learning. And this is what I have been using in my capacity-building tools. How do we generate dissonance first? How do we prepare real learners?
In gender work, there are countless myths and rituals across Asia that I have documented and worked on. So I just thought I’d give you an insight into what was the key learning for me. This is just one example. There are many others.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Oh, wow. You know, what it makes me think is that where they had gotten that learning, which is passed down from generation to generation from trusted people, from family members, from people that they knew, to counteract that with a development…
Madhu Bala Nath: And what does it support? It supports the concept that has been coming down the ages, that men can be promiscuous, women cannot.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): The justification that’s couched in this idea of safety or this idea, like, justified in a particular way. Those are powerful forces to overcome. And a development officer from the big city who doesn’t know the local space or local people, it’s hard for them to counteract that.
Madhu Bala Nath: Indicators of success of this project were number of workshops held, there was a tick mark there, all needed, number of condoms distributed, huge success. No indicator on proper use, no follow-up.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): And change, and behavior change, which has always been the hardest thing to measure.
Madhu Bala Nath: Unlearning became a watchword for me.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): That’s a long-term thing for you to pass on. Okay, so, Madhu. How did you get here? Can you tell me a little bit about what sparked for you to take on what is an incredibly difficult and challenging and emotional fight for women’s equality?
Sometimes I ask people, did you have a pivotal moment in your childhood? Was there a figure in your life that unlocked this as a possibility for you to pursue?
Madhu Bala Nath: I must say that I was very fortunate to have a mother who was a visionary and a very, very ambitious woman who wanted to see women prosper and move ahead in life. And I think that was my cornerstone.
Then I got married to a man who was amazingly supportive, who made sure that I did well in life. So I had a very enabling environment that fostered the kind of vision that we would all like to see as women. I don’t think there’s any woman who would not want to see the development of women. There are other circumstances that push her into acting alternatively. But by and large, we all want everybody to prosper around us, especially women.
So that was my background. And it was ironic because I worked on issues where women were most marginalized, and I had a very empowering environment for myself. So that was something that helped me. I started my work as a women’s development officer at the time when we were called WID officers.
In the early 80s, I worked with the Swedish Sida, and we used to get a large sum of money from the Swedes to reach out to women’s organizations that were working for women. And the more remote we went, the more credit points we got. So that push took me to the remotest parts of India. I worked with women’s groups, I sat with them, I understood their dilemmas.
And I saw women braving adversity, finding solutions, multitasking, bearing the triple burden, and yet getting together and laughing and singing songs. And it was a very good time because the Mexico conference, which was the first conference of women, had just concluded in 1975. So the environment, the media was talking about it.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Was that the Decade of Women?
Madhu Bala Nath: That was the UN Decade for Women, yes.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Yeah. Decade for Women, right.
Madhu Bala Nath: 1975.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): You were really there for the heyday of the beginning of the women’s development movement.
Madhu Bala Nath: And then to work with Sida, the Swedes were at that time leaders in women’s empowerment. At that time, they were really on the top. So that was my enabling environment.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): But it was also like an apprenticeship, like this early stage of your life. You were really being brought up in that space.
Madhu Bala Nath: It was intoxicating. It was addictive. It created the fire in my belly.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Were there things in that early period that surprised you? I mean, going into those deep parts of India, I’m sure you were exposing yourself to things that had not been what you had known growing up with an empowered mother. Were there things that shocked you?
Madhu Bala Nath: Lots, lots of things. I’m going to share with you today an interesting example of what I learned on the ground and how, when I started working with the UN soon after, we could take that to a policy advocacy level that may change the lives of large numbers of women. So how I could take the learning from the ground into a policy level.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): I think it’s such a great story to know that if you had that really grassroots grounding experience, the right trajectory is then to figure out how to shift the system, right? To go from empathy of being on the ground. So yeah, I’d love to hear that journey for you.
Madhu Bala Nath: When I was on the ground working with women, I saw women working everywhere. They were in the fields, they were in the homes, they were doing animal husbandry, they were cleaning the street spaces, they were in the construction industry. The naked eye could tell you that almost all the women in India were working.
One day I was working at a construction project as part of my work. I had gone there to understand the lives of women in the construction industry. This was in one of the states in the middle part of India called Madhya Pradesh. It was a huge construction project where about 500 laborers were working.
I could say that the women formed four times the amount of labor there as the men, because the men were in so-called relatively skilled jobs. They would be sitting on the step ladder, putting mortar, laying bricks, and the women would be carrying all the mortar, all the bricks on their heads and taking it to the men who were just sitting there and doing this comfortably, relatively.
It was the peak of summer. It was so hot. The children of the women were lying on the ground in extremely unhygienic conditions. I was sure there were infections. There was the sun.
Something that struck me was that I had read that the government has a program to create creches for construction workers while all this is happening. So I went to the government authorities there and I said, “There is this program. Is it being used? Can it be available for a project that we are looking after?”
They said, “Of course. Give us the data. We’ll send our people to evaluate, and we will set it up. We set up tents. So it just takes two days to set it up. They are creches for children.”
Lynsey Farrell (Host): So the government was basically saying, “We’ll send you a childcare worker to come?”
Madhu Bala Nath: They said, “We’ll send you a person to assess what is the need, how many children are there. And once we know that, within two days, we will set it up.”
I was very elated. I came back sprightly. And two days later, when the report came of the assessment, it said that the data is showing that the whole project has only 2 percent women workers. I was aghast.
They said, “So we cannot approve the tents.”
I said, “But you can see it.”
They said, “No, but on the record, the contractor has given the contract to the man.”
Lynsey Farrell (Host): The husband.
Madhu Bala Nath: The husband. And he has to produce a certain amount of work over a week or over two weeks. And he then brings in his sister, his wife, his mother, whoever, and they help him, but they are invisible in our records. So we cannot set up the creches.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): So they’re not getting paid.
Madhu Bala Nath: They are not getting paid. The man gets all the money. The contract is with the man. So if he has to produce something that is agreed upon, if he needs two people from the family, he’ll get two. If he needs four, he’ll get four. If he has to withdraw a girl from school, he’ll get four to come and help him.
The girl will be withdrawn from school to carry bricks and mortar. This was in 1988–89. I was so struck by the invisibility of women in the workforce. I came home, looked up all the data, and found that our census data from 1981 showed that only 13% of Indian women were considered workers. Work was associated with going out somewhere and working. You may be in a family where you have cows and goats, selling milk and meat in the market, contributing to the GDP, but you are not counted as a worker.
Why? Two reasons. One is the enumeration process, where there is a misunderstanding about women’s work. The other is the woman herself. When the enumerator asks, “Did you work in the last six months?” she often says, “No, I just stay in the house. I do housework,” which is not counted as work. So only 13% of women in the 1981 census were considered workers, when the reality was so different.
There was a report brought out by SEWA, one of the largest women’s cooperatives at the time, founded by Ila Bhatt, a pioneer of the women’s movement in India. She wrote a report called Shram Shakti, which revealed that 89% of the workforce in the informal sector was women. So there I was — I had experienced it, I had read about it, and I had confirmatory research from such a renowned institution.
By that time, I was with UNIFEM, and that platform gave me access to the government and national institutes. From there, there was no looking back, Lynsey. The 1991 census was coming up, so over the next year, we brought together a common platform — UN bodies, national research institutes, statisticians, women’s organizations, training institutions, government bodies, the Planning Commission, the Ministry of Women and Child Development, and the Office of the Registrar General of India. Over a year and a half, this initiative expanded, bringing together experts whose reputations were beyond question.
That was the advantage of being in the UN — we could do data-based policy advocacy with the right institutions. To summarize what happened: the Registrar General of India, a fantastic, gender-sensitive person, decided to change question 14 in the census questionnaire. It was revised to ask, “What work did you do last year, including unpaid work on farms and family enterprises?” This meant that whether a woman was from a weaver’s or potter’s family — if she was selling her products in the market, even from home — it would count.
Enumerators were then trained to ask probing questions to help women properly define their work. These questions were designed by key universities in the country. UNIFEM also designed a poster showing women doing all kinds of work — visible and invisible labor. At the bottom, the question asked: Do you really think she doesn’t work? This was appended to the enumerators’ manual, displayed at bus stations, and made widely accessible so women could recognize their own contributions.
A TV commercial was also created, featuring India’s biggest composers and Bollywood stars who championed women’s rights. It played for an entire year on radio, TV, and in movie theaters. And do you know what the result was? After a year and a half of work, there was a 44% increase in women counted as workers. The 1981 census had reported 13%, but the 1991 census showed that 27% of Indian women were working. It was still a long way to go, but by 2001, this figure had risen to nearly 40% because the changes had been institutionalized.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): I don’t think you know that I worked on youth livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa for a long time. My dissertation focused on that, and I continued at Ashoka, working with social innovators redefining work.
I spent a lot of time in the informal sector in Nairobi, conducting work censuses. I would sit with young people and help them define their economic output. What happens — and I’m sure you’ve seen this in India — is that when 60% of your urban population is considered informal, those individuals start believing they are not worthy, that their work doesn’t count, that it’s insignificant.
They are constantly told, Oh, you’re just a jua kali worker — a Swahili term for informal laborers that implies low status. The term itself means “hot sun,” referring to people working under harsh conditions, often poorly organized and underpaid. It carries a negative connotation.
I found that when I asked young people about their work history, they would initially say, “Oh, nothing. I haven’t done anything.” But as I kept digging, it became clear they had done extraordinary things.
I would say, “Wait a second — you ran an entire informal school?” And they hadn’t even realized how significant their contributions were. They didn’t see the skills they had gained or how they were shaping their communities.
I was just thinking about those census enumerators learning to dig deeper, being trained to ask the right questions — how that fundamentally changed how women saw themselves.
Madhu Bala Nath: Yes.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): It’s such a powerful part of shifting mindsets. After interviews, I would hand young people their work history, formatted as a resume, and they would look at it in shock. “Oh my gosh, look at everything I’ve done!”
Madhu Bala Nath: Absolutely.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): You have to help people see a different label for themselves.
Madhu Bala Nath: Exactly. Probing questions help people discover themselves — to say, I did this. That “I” has to come in.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Do you have another example of working with women where they taught you something new or surprised you?
Madhu Bala Nath: I just wanted to add one last piece about the census work. Because it became institutionalized in the Registrar General’s Office, the Ministry, and research institutes, we were able to take it to other countries. We shared it with governments in Laos and Vietnam as a learning model.
That’s what happens when you take women’s voices from the ground and institutionalize them at the policy level — it creates an impact that’s not just national, but global.
To your question — here’s another key lesson we learned from working with women. Across most countries, the household is the unit through which welfare schemes are distributed. Even after all the discussions from the global women’s conferences in 1975 and 1985, government benefits and aid still typically go to the title owner of the house.
It’s the same as that construction project I mentioned earlier — the only thing that mattered was the contract in the man’s name, regardless of who was actually doing the work.
What we found is that using the household as the distribution unit ignores intra-household inequalities. It doesn’t take into account gender-based violence or disparities in how resources are used. Just because the man receives the money doesn’t mean it will reach the woman who needs it. She might be doing all the work, buying food for the family, but that money could just as easily go toward alcohol instead of household needs.
Priorities shift based on intra-household inequalities. So when we started working on access to contraception, we saw that unless women had independent access to contraceptives and knowledge — along with men — gender-based power imbalances prevented them from making informed choices.
We wanted to study this in Afghanistan, where gender-based violence was alarmingly high — 90% according to global reports.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): How did you get those numbers?
Madhu Bala Nath: These were from global reports on gender and rights, including the Gender Gap Reports by the World Economic Forum. Even the Human Development Reports had started investigating these issues.
Afghanistan had the highest gender-based violence rates, but even countries like India reported 34%, and the U.S. had a rate of 30%.
The real question for us was: Because of this violence, were women able to access health and contraceptive services?
One of the areas where we normally study these issues is in places where the most vulnerable men and women gather. For example, in HIV and AIDS work, prisons are an important site of study because many drug users are incarcerated, and their wives are often affected as well.
In some countries, accessing women in their households is extremely difficult. Instead, you go to places where women gather and talk — but in Afghanistan, such spaces are rare. At the time, I was working with IPPF in collaboration with the Afghan Family Guidance Association (AFGA). We decided to visit the prisons to meet with women there.
I entered with a stereotypical image in my mind — imagining these women feeling miserable, isolated, stigmatized. I wondered about their families, their futures, how they would cope. That was the mindset I had as I walked in.
Sure enough, as I entered, I saw this large Afghan Pathan man with a big mustache, a gun in one hand, and a stick in the other. I was the only visitor allowed in — there were very strict restrictions.
But as I approached the women’s cell, I heard something unexpected.
I heard music.
I heard laughter.
I heard singing.
I was surprised, but I continued in. And what I saw completely broke my stereotypes.
The women lived in dormitories, some washing clothes together in the bathroom while children lay nearby. Others walked in open spaces, chatting, laughing. There was a sense of community.
I sat down for a focus group discussion, the methodology we always used — gathering in a circle and talking. I asked one of the women, “Why are you here?”
She told me, “My husband murdered another man. But when the police came, he said that I was having an affair with him.”
Adultery is considered the worst crime a woman can commit in Afghanistan. Her husband had framed her, and as a result, she was in prison — while he received sympathy.
I asked another woman why she was there.
She explained a practice called Batta Satta — though there’s another name for it, which I can’t recall now. The practice dictates that if a woman in one family is raped, molested, or abused by a man from another family, the first family has the right to retaliate by doing the same to the women in the perpetrator’s family.
This woman had done nothing wrong. She was simply trying to escape retaliation for an act committed by a male relative. A cousin tried to help her flee, but their attempt to leave was seen as running away with a lover.
In places like Pakistan and Afghanistan, it is common for people to marry their cousins. But in her case, even though she was just trying to escape, it was framed as an elopement.
I share these stories to illustrate the kinds of injustices that brought women into these prisons. And yet, despite everything, they seemed happy.
After understanding their circumstances, I realized I needed to change my questions. Instead of asking, You must be counting the days until you leave, I asked, How do you feel about the law? Will the law protect you? Do you have lawyers?
Some women said the Afghan Family Guidance Clinic had provided legal advice. But the real problem was that the law itself was against them.
For example, in Pakistan, the Hudood Ordinance states that if a woman is raped, she must provide four male witnesses to prove it. If she cannot, the law considers her guilty of adultery. A woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man’s, so she would need eight women to prove her case.
I learned about these laws directly from the women. Many of them came from different parts of Afghanistan, where there was significant cross-border influence.
Then, something astonishing happened.
They turned to me and said:
“This is not a prison for us. This is home. Our homes are the real prisons.”
Even if they were released, they would be kicked out of their families. They said they would rather stay in prison.
“We are happier here. We have our collective strength here. We have each other.”
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Isn’t that the thing? When women gather, they become powerful. And that’s dangerous. That’s why you struggled to find women’s gatherings in Afghanistan.
Madhu Bala Nath: Collective strength is the greatest power women have. I saw this in Afghan health clinics that provided contraception.
Women were allowed to go to these clinics for their children’s health. But if they openly sought contraception, they would be accused of promiscuity.
So they came under the pretense of getting care for their children. They arrived in burqas, fully covered. But once inside, they would lift their veils, talk, and laugh together.
And here’s the most powerful part — these women were the largest adopters of long-term contraceptive methods like injectables.
Why?
Because nobody could find out.
They didn’t have to hide pills in their drawers, where their husbands might find them and beat them. With injectables, there was no evidence.
And every few months, they had a reason to return: “The child needs a check-up.”
There were so many lessons in this. I started questioning everything — was the household really a protective unit? Should government aid be channeled through households when it often reinforced gender inequalities?
We raised these questions in roundtables, seminars, and policy discussions.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): This is The Grandmother Collective, and we believe older women grow more powerful as they age.
Not power in the traditional sense, but in their ability to speak truth, to harness wisdom, to bring people together.
What does that mean to you? How has aging changed you in this fight?
Madhu Bala Nath: As I’ve aged, I’ve become a witness to my own work.
I’m no longer actively involved, but I have the distance to analyze what went wrong and what went right. Seeing things from afar is magical.
That’s why I wrote my last book, Let Us Walk the Talk on the Road to Gender Equality, which was published last year. It’s a reflection on these learnings, placed in the context of today’s challenges.
We envisioned change as linear — 0 to 1, 1 to 2, 2 to 10. But in some places, we are now seeing 0 to -1.
It’s a critical moment. Maybe, in your Grandmother Collective, you can create spaces to analyze what went wrong. Why couldn’t the change be permanent?
Change is permanent in pockets, but globally, we are facing setbacks.
Who would have thought that globalization would bring protective tariffs that disproportionately harm women in the informal sector?
Who would have thought that the progress we made in gender and rights would be questioned again?
It’s not happening in just one country — it’s happening across the board.
For me, this has been a time of deep reflection. Over the last year, I started writing again. One of my chapters is titled: We Are Growing in a World of Probabilities. What kinds of probabilities are before us today?
As older women who are no longer deeply involved in the day-to-day work, we can now analyze and bear witness. We don’t have jobs at stake. That’s something a Grandmother Collective can harness.
We can organize our learnings, reflect on them, and share them with today’s movement leaders. Self-help groups (SHGs) are thriving in many countries — especially in India, where the SHG movement has been very successful.
We need to engage. We need to dialogue with today’s movement leaders, get their perspectives, share ours, and rebuild a vision — a vision for a future full of new, difficult challenges.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): It sounds like you’ve come full circle.
You started at the grassroots — deeply understanding issues, working to change institutions. But now, as things shift, it’s as if we need to return to the grassroots again to figure out what’s going on.
Madhu Bala Nath: Exactly. But through it all, my faith in women’s power has never wavered.
Women have immense collective bargaining power. They have the power to question hegemonic masculinity — and hegemonic systems in general.
That’s what we need to focus on now — questioning hegemony.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): We need to dismantle its pieces.
Madhu Bala Nath: Or at least raise the right questions.
At this moment, what we need is dissonance.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): We need to provide an alternative narrative — or at least point in its direction.
Madhu Bala Nath: The alternative narrative must emerge from today’s doers.
Our role is to raise the right questions — the kind that create dissonance and force people to think.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Dissonance.
You’ve given me — and hopefully everyone listening — so much to think about. I know we could continue this conversation for hours, but I just want to thank you for being so open and sharing your journey with us.
Madhu Bala Nath: Thank you, Lynsey. This was a wonderful opportunity.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Do you have another book in you?
Madhu Bala Nath: Not immediately. I haven’t even conceptualized a fifth book yet.
I write when I feel the need to express something. And I expressed a lot in my last book.
I’m not the kind of author who publishes every year. I’ve written four books over three decades — each one when the moment felt right.
So I don’t know when the next spark will come — but when it does, I’ll write immediately.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): This feels like a time when many of us are trying to make sense of the world rather than rushing to find answers.
Madhu Bala Nath: Yes.
When you have that fire in your belly, it doesn’t die easily.
You may enter a phase of pondering, but the fire — once lit — doesn’t cool down.
Because what is happening to women across the world is undeniable. And we are part of that.
I have hope as I conclude.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Thank you so much, Madhu.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Grandma Magic. We hope you were inspired by today’s conversation with Madhu Bala Nath and gained new insights into the power of women’s collective action.
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