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.

'Tumi kichu diye jao'--Rabindra Sangeet--Sreemati Mukherjee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv1G4CVF6Tc

You might want to watch this. A Mumbai experimental theatre group created mono-acted dramatic performances out of short stories. The writers were Saadat Hasan Manto, Rajinder Singh Bedi and Shankar. They asked for an audience response later. This was my 'response' on how their innovative and experimental move to explode generic differences between short story and drama, was a laudable one!!

The short story as quintessence: The Art of Rabindranath Tagore

When the Kabuliwala is finally released from prison, he comes to pay Mini a visit. It is the day of her wedding, and officially a day of parting in any Indian/Bengali household. He calls for her. She comes down having forgotten her old childhood mate. When he asks her about her marriage, she leaves the room in embarrassment. The Kabuliwala realizes that time has passed and that his own daughter in the remote mountains of Afghanistan, would probably not remember him too. This is how specificity merges with universality in Tagore, with the story exploring the relationships of fathers and daughters and the shadow that falls within.

Structurally, the story is straightforward without taking recourse to “ambiguity” and “ellipsis” as narrative modes. Compared to a short story by James Joyce or Katherine Mansfield, the story puts forward its universal aesthetics in unambiguous ways. Formally, Rabindranath’s pieces are in the tradition of Maupassant rather than Chekov, because not only do most stories have formal completion they also have a more or less definite closure.

The short story as quintessence: The art of Rabindranath Tagore

In Kabuliwala named after a generic figure popular in 19^th century and even early to mid 20^th century Bengal, Rabindranath not only demonstrates his capacious empathy for a spectacularly large range of people of various psychological and social registers, but also his acute observation of his times and the specific forms of domestic trade and barter  in upper-middle class Bengali households. 

The Kabuliwala or trader from Afghanistan, who traded in raisins, nuts and pistachios, items that have always been rare and expensive in Bengal because they are not produced  here, would hail Mini as “Khonki” which was his own inimitable reproduction of the Bengali word “Khuki” meaning  “little girl” but inflected with an inflection that was foreign to Bengali ears. He would walk into the courtyard of Mini’s house, a little intimidating for the women in the house because of his large size and unfamiliar clothes, and not to say, unfamiliar racial antecedents. Even if the narrator’s wife (the narrator being Mini’s father) would express concern over how the Kabuliwala gained easy access into the house and that it might be dangerous to allow their little girl to get so close to a stranger, the father remain indulgent and accepting towards the Kabuliwala, allowing the interactions of the stranger and his daughter to go on. It is possible that there is some self-inscription on Rabindranath’s part here because he too was the father of many daughters.

Eventually, sorrow makes an entry into this pastoral world as the Kabuliwala is taken to jail because he had killed someone in a brawl where a party that had borrowed money from him denied his debt. Simple, unsophisticated and direct, the Kabuliwala stands for a generic type that was known for both simplicity and violence.