[1][2] Her father, Ganesh Das Kapur, was a leading surgeon in Lahore; her mother, Lilavati Khanna, came from a family of engineers involved in the building of the Sukkur barrage on the Indus river in Sindh.
She pursued her early education at Shantiniketan, founded by Rabindranath Tagore, also learning music and how to play the sitar.
However, inspired by a condolence letter that she received from Tagore, she enrolled in the MA program in philosophy at Punjab University, graduating in 1943, having stood first in her class.
Upon completing her Ph.D., Chowdhry returned to India and joined the Ahmedabad Textile Industry Research Association in 1949 as one of its first four recruits.
[2] Founded in 1947 by Vikram Sarabhai, scion of a family of textile industrialists based in Ahmedabad, ATIRA sought to apply scientific techniques in the research of industrial problems.