My mother, Lalit Jaggi, who has died aged 96, was an inspirational teacher. She was one of independent India’s first graduates, and in 1978 became head of the English department of a large London secondary school.
The eldest sister of the actor and food writer Madhur Jaffrey, Lalit preceded her in moving to London in 1952. When Madhur won the Silver Bear at the Berlin film festival in 1965 for her role in Merchant Ivory’s Shakespeare Wallah (from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s screenplay), Lalit was teaching Shakespeare at Brentford school for girls, in a then disadvantaged area of west London, helping, one headteacher wrote, to “raise the standard of English”.
