My mother-in-law, Rachel Ansari, who has died aged 75, was a primary school teacher, traveller and trailblazer for inclusivity who travelled to India in the 1970s, riding a bicycle through Hazratganj, the heart of Lucknow, and choosing always to wear a sari.
Rachel was born in Taplow, Buckinghamshire, the youngest of three children of Richard Kennedy, a children’s book illustrator, and Olive (nee Johnstone), a librarian and linguist. Rachel was often drawn by her father and, aged nine, by the family friend Stanley Spencer. When she was a child she was taken to a specialist doctor who diagnosed her with Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, and stated loudly, to her mother’s anguish, that Rachel would not live to adulthood. Fortunately Rachel did not hear, and confounded medical expectations.
