Once upon a time, she was the breadwinner of the family. That was a decade ago, when Ananth Kumar was secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka, and a kingmaker who had never sought a ticket for himself.
"I told him right at the beginning when we got married that I would be the family's breadwinner, and would leave him free to follow his ideals and dreams," she says. She did this for several years by working as an engineer on the Light Combat Aircraft project for the Aeronautical Development Agency in Bangalore.
Tejaswini, however, found she could not keep pace with being an MP's wife, active party worker and mother of two bright little girls, all at the same time, and quit her job three years ago. She still dabbles in some software work though.
Her day often begins with a session on her laptop or desktop, as she is the person who designs and creates material for her husband's web site -- Ananth Kumar
As in the case of most women, Tejaswini works in small spaces in her home amid the clutter of her younger daughter Vijeta's Barbie dolls and her older daughter Aishwarya's books. She takes the odd hour off from work on the web site, in the morning, to go pick up report cards from school or comb her daughter's hair.
Reportage: M D Riti