Introduction
Portrait
Journalist
45 years of creation
Cinema
A Sari Story
Mode hippie à Paris
> CONTACT
Mohanjeet Grewal was born in undivided Punjab, India in a well-established Sikh family that emigrated from Lahore to Patiala during the partition.
At thirteen, Mohanjeet was an independent young girl with a passion for learning who stood first in philosophy honor at the Baccalaureate examination.
"I had a great desire to learn, I got up at 05:00 to listen to the Australian radio music programs."
She was also very athletic, a real tennis champion.
"I was extremely modern in outlook. I was always getting into controversies due to my actions and beliefs. My shirts caused ‘scandal’ in India; I made my own sari with collars and my shoes with details taken from English fashion magazines."
Her father, Punjab Education Director, encouraged everyone to become educated and professionally fulfilled. "First feminist of the world" she said "my father sent my mother and my sisters to school and university, thus losing the support of his family ... The day I told him ‘I'll go where the sky meets the earth*’ - he said - Go ahead and run!"
In the early 50s, she left her native Punjab to study in the USA. After a Master in Political Science at the University of Los Angeles (UCLA), she obtained the Doctorate at Berkeley in 1955. She wrote her first articles as President of the university student association.
After that, she left for New York and began writing for the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Times. “It was really very exciting. Not only was I the first Indian journalist working with American newspapers but also the first from Asia. No man or woman had done that before”, recounts Mohanjeet.
In 1959, Mohanjeet moved to Vienna where she got a job with the International Atomic Energy Agency. But within a year, she moved again, returning to India after a ten-year absence.
"I did not know India, except Gandhi! I had read all of him, I was only 13-14..."
Too modern and independent, she simply could not bring herself to live the life as prescribed by Indian society and left again.
Mohanjeet chose Paris in 1963.
* "The sky speaks to the earth ... My mother was the earth, my father the sky."
At thirteen, Mohanjeet was an independent young girl with a passion for learning who stood first in philosophy honor at the Baccalaureate examination.
"I had a great desire to learn, I got up at 05:00 to listen to the Australian radio music programs."
She was also very athletic, a real tennis champion.
"I was extremely modern in outlook. I was always getting into controversies due to my actions and beliefs. My shirts caused ‘scandal’ in India; I made my own sari with collars and my shoes with details taken from English fashion magazines."
Her father, Punjab Education Director, encouraged everyone to become educated and professionally fulfilled. "First feminist of the world" she said "my father sent my mother and my sisters to school and university, thus losing the support of his family ... The day I told him ‘I'll go where the sky meets the earth*’ - he said - Go ahead and run!"
In the early 50s, she left her native Punjab to study in the USA. After a Master in Political Science at the University of Los Angeles (UCLA), she obtained the Doctorate at Berkeley in 1955. She wrote her first articles as President of the university student association.
After that, she left for New York and began writing for the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Times. “It was really very exciting. Not only was I the first Indian journalist working with American newspapers but also the first from Asia. No man or woman had done that before”, recounts Mohanjeet.
In 1959, Mohanjeet moved to Vienna where she got a job with the International Atomic Energy Agency. But within a year, she moved again, returning to India after a ten-year absence.
"I did not know India, except Gandhi! I had read all of him, I was only 13-14..."
Too modern and independent, she simply could not bring herself to live the life as prescribed by Indian society and left again.
Mohanjeet chose Paris in 1963.
* "The sky speaks to the earth ... My mother was the earth, my father the sky."
