.On Love, again..


 This thought about ' love' was triggered in my brain when i watched The Danish Girl, day before yesterday. The netflix membership is my son's gift to me. In the movie, which is based on real life characters, the painter A Elbe goes through a trans gender transformation in the late 1920's. He was helped in the process by his wife, Gerda. I've never seen or heard or read about anyone like Gerda. She understood her husband's need to become the woman who he felt he was. She brought himback from the hospital and nurtured him after his first operation. He died after the second very critical one. Probably some mega personalities in our country also have, in recent times. After his death Gerda continued to paint pictures of Lili Elbe ( her husband's transformed new woman identity) for the rest of her life. THAT is love, i thought..

Some thoughts on viewing 'The Other Woman' just now

My heart is too full, right now. I happen to be a moralist and I believe that for married couples strict boundaries must be maintained. One must not, for the heck of it, drift into other relationships.

But people do. They do for all kinds of reasons. Was Emilia's dead child the reason for her carrying on with a married man and having him leave his family? I don't know.

I just know, and I feel it over and over again, that love is the biggest thing that there is. And love means putting yourself in the other person's shoes. It means being able to forgive even when you know that you were wronged.

Love is like the ocean. You can always fit everything in there. You can keep stretching and keep accommodating.

Love is practice. Love is doing.

Love is being happy for other people; rejoicing in their joy. Love is the wronged wife looking out for the 'other woman' when the latter is in deep moral distress. Love is in growing to love our 'others'.

 Post  3 on my mother's life

Going back to her Economics teacher, Bibhuti Babu. He was a short man with a paunch. He would sometimes be late for class. He used to teach part-time in other colleges, too. And he would come walking.
So the girls would hang out in a common room kind of place in the college and one of the tallest girls in the class had been apportioned the duty of being on the lookout for Bibhuti Babu. When she spotted him coming, she would say, 'Bibhuti Babu ashchhen'. Then there would be a ritual chorus, 'Ke ashe/Bibhuti ashe/Bibhuti r aage ke ashe/Bhundi ashe'. This literally translates into, 'Who comes?/Bibhuti comes/Who comes before Bibhuti?/His paunch comes before Bibhuti.'

I asked Ma, 'How come you went into Philosophy?'

Ma: Well, I liked abstract thinking. I never read fiction.

Me: So you read a lot?

Ma: Yes

Me: Where did you get books in those days? I want specific details Ma. That will make this narrative rich and make it come historically alive. It is the specific context that brings a specific colour and shade to the narrative.
Do you remember the names of any of the books you read?

Ma: Oh, I never read stories. I liked serious writing.
Me; But Ma, around you most people were not interested in reading, isn't that so? At least the women around you? Your mother?
Your mother was only 16 years older to you. She was interested in cooking and needlework. So was there anything that you guys shared?

Ma; Not really.

Me: So you and your mother didn't communicate much did you? You were like equals? You were your Dad's daughter, who encouraged you in all your academic interests?

Ma: Yes, I owe all my academic excellence to my father. He enouraged everything. He encouraged inquiry, he encouraged independence of the mind, he did not mind 'difference'.

Me: So you were the odd one out in your family?

Ma: Yes.

[I should have asked her if she felt any pride/arrogance in being different. I will tomorrow. I think she did. I am positive]

She told me that Rilbong, where her father's joint family lived, had a good library. They had a separate establishment because her mother had been very beauty loving, aesthetic, neat and systematic and somehow those aspects were missing in the joint family which was always crowded with relatives. If someone wanted to do a job interview they came and stayed. I think people from Sylhet still came and certainly from other parts of Assam. Shillong was then the capital of Assam and certainly more vibrant, busy and in-demand than other places like Dibrugarh....

I remember my mother telling me that once someone laid out their clothes on one of the beds of the house before going to take a shower. He came back to find that someone else had worn them and already left the house!!

Dear Readers of my Blog:

Please watch this video I made on Durga Puja, 2018 entitled Chinmoyee Roop Dhore Ai. It carries an interesting interview with Sri Gauranga Kuila and Sri Debaprasad Hazra, the artists behind the Mudiali, Tridhara, Barisha Sarvajanin and Budoshibtala Pujas this year in Kolkata.

This is Part I. There will be at least 3 more to come uncovering different faces and phases of Durga Puja in Kolkata, 2018



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brt6OwYCaBE&t=32s

Ma's story...

Mothers' stories are always important. They are big signposts in our lives for us to take stock, to register change, to be thankful or filled with regret. These are stories that can never be forgotten. The cells have knowledge even before our cognitive minds do. it is a tremendous continuum that is best not to deny....

Going back to Ma's story and Lady Keane College of Shillong. She told me yesterday that she stayed in the hostel. Have heard a lot of stories of her hostel life in Kolkata, where she lived during her M.A. years in this city. Those are going to come later. There used be no fans and the food was the same everyday..but I will come to these stories in due course.

I said, 'but why did you need to be in a hostel? you lived in Shillong!'. She said, 'no, it took a long time to come from Lymukrah to where the college was.'

She told me about Bibhuti-Babu, her economics teacher. Economics used to be her Pass subject. She said, that it would be hard to find an Economics teacher who was as learned as Bibhuti Babu, perhaps not even in Kolkata. He used to work part-time at many colleges. He had three sons, all of whom made a mark later on in their lives.

The salary of part time teachers was very poor. So he worked at a couple of colleges. One had to travel by walking in Shillong, in those days. 'Those days' would be 1934+16=1950.

He used to wear a dhoti and a coat. He would often be out of breath through all that walking. He would get up and sit on the bench. He used to like my mother a great deal and called her 'modol' which is a coarse term for 'leader'. Interesting portrait of a woman who I have seen in a submissive stance in many critical moments of her life. What vital aspects of our beings we give up in order to say the 'right' thing and do the 'right' thing. For women of my mother's generation the kind of freedom of articulation we enjoy would have been an inconceivable matter. May be my mother even resents that a bit, in me. Perhaps.

I too would not have achieved it without a lot of heartbreak and struggle.

So, Bibhuti-Babu would sit on the bench and he would say, 'what kind of marks do you guys want? Those who just want to pass, raise your hands. Those who want to do moderately well, raise your hands and those who want to do very well, raise your hands too'!

I will give you suggestions that will fit your special need for the upcoming examinations!":)

My mother's story..


Women's lives have always fascinated me. I used to love my mother more than anyone else. I was fascinated by and deeply drawn to her story. When I was a child it was very important for me to support my mother at all times. My father was an extremely dominating man and I used to sense my mother's suffering.

She is still alive. Her name is Bharati Mukherjee. She was Bharati Bhattacharya before her marriage. She was born in Shillong in a Sylheti family. Her family was very cultured and refined. However, they were not that sophisticated.

My Dadu had a transferable job. He was in Auditing. He had retired as the Chief Audit Officer of the Sikkim Government (Maharaja). I remember seeing him as a child. I mean the Maharaja. Hazy and uncertain the memory--but there, none the less.

So, my mother never really had a proper school education. In the sense it took place in fits and starts. She took her Matriculation examination when she was 15-16. Then she studied Philosophy at Lady Keane College in Shillong, which was under the recently inaugurated Guwahati University (Gowhati University).

I just went downstairs and got a few details from her. The Principal of the college had asked her to study Philosophy. So she did. Who knows what she would have studied, otherwise? May be even Pass subjects.

This narrative/testimony/witnessing will depend on the oral narrative that my mother will spin as I ask her every day about details of her past life..:)

Some excerpts from an excellent book on Presidency College. 

Presidency College-r Itibrittwa (Biswanath Das, Thema, 2011).

Translation: Sreemati Mukherjee 

Peary Charan Sarkar (49)

This idealist and exemplary student of Hindu College could have easily obtained a high governmental posting had he wished. However, he chose to become a teacher and consequently embraced a life of constrained means. From the position of Head Master at Kolutollah Branch School (later named Hare School), he joined Presidency College as Assistant Professor in 1864. Later in 1874, he was appointed as Assistant Professor (Lecturer?) in the Department of English. During those days, a teacher could teach anything. There was no steadfast rule that a particular teacher had to teach a particular subject, only. It all depended on whether the teacher had the required competence to teach a specific subject. Peary Charan’s general sweetness of temper, gentleness of conduct and deep commitment to students, succeeded in winning them over completely. His early demise in 1875 caused his students to be deeply grief stricken. 

Peary Charan’s First, Second, Third and Fourth Book of Reading were considered fundamental to the teaching of English at schools all over India.

It is not widely known that Peary Charan donated 70,000 rupees, which constituted his entire life earnings, to his dear friend Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, to help build a school for upper caste Hindu widows. He also set up a girls’ school at his own residence in Chorbagan.