Google celebrates Mrinalini Sarabhai's 100th birth anniversary with a classical dance Doodle

New Delhi: Google Doodle on Friday celebrated the 100th birth anniversary of Mrinalini Sarabhai, the renowned Indian classical dancer. The doodle depicts Sarabhai with her signature parasol standing in the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts auditorium, the academy which she found with her husband in 1949. Her students are seen dancing on the stage.

Sarabhai was born in Kerala on May 11, 1918 to S Swaminathan and A V Ammakutty. Her father was a lawyer at the Madras High Court while her mother was a social worker. In 1942, Mrinalini married notable physicist Vikram Sarabhai who is considered to be the Father of the Indian Space Program.

Sarabhai had started training at a fairly young age, studying both the classical dance forms of Bharatanatyam and Kathakali. She is the youngest of three children. Her older sister, Lakshmi Sehgal, was a part of the Indian National Army and her older brother Govind Swaminathan was a former attorney general of the state of Madras. She has two children, Mallika and Kartikeya.

Mrinalini was awarded the Padma Shri in 1965 and Padma Bhushan in 1992. She was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship New Delhi in 1994 and she was the first recipient of the state annual award from the Government of Kerala, Nishagandhi Puraskaram, which was presented to her in 2013.

She died at the age of 97 in January 2016.