kumari Amrit Kaur was a full Cabinet Minister. She is now Chairman of the Indian Red Cross Society. There are many women in the country's administrative, armed and foreign services, dozens of them holding very senior jobs. West Bengal's Governor, for instance, is Padmaja Naidu. And women form the backbone of the community development projects which will soon cover the entire country. Indian women have also made a mark in the international field. They have been included in delegations to various international conferences. Vijayalakshmi Pandit has been the first, and so far the only woman to preside over the United Nations General Assembly. Hansa Mehta now represents India on the Unesco Executive Board. Thus women's horizon, onece limited exclusively to household tasks, has expanded considerably. In the villages, she is man's partner, sharing his arduous life and often working harder and longer hours. In the towns, she is generally well educated. And the progress made by women of the middle-income group toward gaining economic independence is a new and encouraging factor. But in spite of these changes, the Indian women's abiding interest is her home and family.

TIPUTOA'S TANIWHA BY H. D. B. DANSEY Where it came from no man knew. What it was only a handful of wise men had an inkling. How to use it only the possessor could tell and he chose not to. He, the possessor, was Te Maunga-i-tawhiti, high priest of Te Kahui Maunga, mortal repository of immortal truth, latest in a line of seers, prophets and wizards stretching back in time and space through Hawaiki-nui, Hawaiki-roa and Hawaiki-pamamao even to ancient Irihia itself. That which he and no other man in Aotearoa possessed was the kura. The few wise men who had an inkling of what the kura was would have said it was knowledge, greater wisdom than the mind of man could grasp, greater power for good or evil than the mind of man could conceive. And Te Maunga-i-tawhiti had chosen not to use it because he did not know how and feared to try. That is, until now. For Te Maunga-i-tawhiti, on this sunny summer morning of the year that white men far across the sea were calling Anno Domini 1459, had climbed alone to the altar of the gods on the summit of Karakatahi Pa and there had resolved to put the kura to the test. He prayed. In chants old and sacred even when Kupe was a boy he prepared the way. He approached the gods of heaven and earth, paid tribute to them, passed on to the threshold of the One Whose Face Is Covered, prayed leave to enter the abode of the All Highest. “Prepare me to use the kura, let me not be harmed by it. Show me that this which I have believed through the years is true. Reveal to me this last mystery that I may pass it on to those who come after me. Let the years swing by as a shooting star gleams and is gone. Let five times a hundred years pass as this day passes. Let what is to be pass before my eyes, Oh Lord of all the Heavens and of the Earth and of the sad souls lost in the night which ends not.” Thus on his palisaded hill top prayed Te Maunga-i-tawhiti and as he prayed the spirit of the kura descended and stood beside him in the likeness of a little grey cloud. The old people gave Tiputoa his name because they hoped he would grow to be brave. But Tiputoa had only grown to be fat. And, so his wife Puarata said, lazy. This she told him frequently, loudly, fiercely, publicly. Sadly enough the rest of the people of Karakatahi agreed with her although some were a little sorry for him as he was, as so many little, plump, long-suffering men are, quite a likeable fellow in his jolly, ineffectual way.