Hirabai Pednekar left her mark in a male-dominated world of entertainment, when women weren’t even at the periphery

Journalism is rife with strange coincidences. That explains why the first female Marathi dramatist Hirabai Pednekar (1885-1951), an acclaimed singer with two plays to her credit, did not find a biographer among her contemporaries or later chroniclers, who recorded the history of Indian theatre. Seven decades after her death, a culture beat reporter, Shilpa Surve, 39, working in the Marathi daily Saamna, has chronicled Hirabai's life in a crisp 120-page paperback titled Adya Mahila Natakkaar Hirabai Pednekar (Dimple Publication).