ABSTRACT
In late 1939, Janaki left Coimbatore to attend the ill-fated Edinburgh Genetics Congress; the Russians would not attend. Tormented by her mother’s impending death and her own uncertain future, Janaki resolved not to return to India; she was just about to turn forty-two. She saw herself as a scientist-refugee like many others at this time of war, her exile however was a self-imposed one, a retreat from an imperial breeding station where patriarchy was rife and which she believed was run on unscientific lines, and its location in Coimbatore, too ‘Brahmanical’ for her taste (in contrast to cosmopolitan Madras). Janaki felt India had nothing to offer her—an independent woman and a border-crossing plant cytogeneticist—by way of facilities, a stimulating atmosphere or a research career. Her exile to the West would last nine long years, during which time she suffered the ravages of war and extreme loneliness, but it was also the period that saw her evolve into a world-ranking cytogeneticist and a veritable citizen of the world.
