As the days after her death became weeks and months, I was amazed to see
how quickly Ma faded from public
memory. After the initial few very
crowded days, it was simply over. People simply stopped coming, talking or
writing about her. Even at the Red Cross to which she had given so much in the
last years, some seemed to be in a desperate hurry to remove all traces of her
as quickly as possible. The INTUC and the Freedom Fighters’ Association, the
other organizations to which she devoted a lot of time and energy in her last
years, seem to be entangled in too many problems of their own to have the energy
to spare any thoughts for her.
I was surprised. Kids learn about her in school I am told, as the first
woman from Assam to become a Minister in the central government. But was that
her only claim to glory? I started to count -- besides politics, there were
many other things that interested her – if one tried to find a pattern then it
was that she always sided with the smaller or the weaker party, the ones who
could not stand up for themselves –
older people (Pensioners, Freedom fighters), women (Kasturba Ashram, Eastern
India Women’s Association, Red Cross), orphans and destitute (Shishugram,
Children’s Home), children (Gauhati Public School), juveniles (Juvenile Court),
flood victims (Assam Flood Relief Committee first and later the Red Cross), the
daily wage workers (INTUC), the deaf and the dumb (Assam Deaf and Dumb Association),
etc. While she was a trade unionist all her life, she also had experience of corporate
boardrooms at the highest level, being one of very few women to have been
nominated as a Navaratna Director of the ONGC.
Her need to do whatever she did thoroughly made her visit and actually
insist on going down an oil rig at Bombay High, as a Director of the ONGC, to
see how the operations were actually conducted. And she was brave – her
exploits in the time she was in jail during the Emergency have become legend, she
did much more than just send out Red Cross relief teams during the yearly flood
relief operations; not sure how many even know that she used to drive around in
a jeep to visit all sorts of remote out of the way places when she was younger,
that she personally led the Red Cross rescue and rehabilitation efforts during
those difficult times in the aftermath of the Nellie massacre as well as after
the Guwahati bombing. Many older people from
Hajo still talk about the time when, as the local MLA, she had fearlessly led a
procession of agitated people in the middle of a curfew, thereby managing to
prevent a firing.
As for her politics, when one compares her with the politicians of
today, she seems to really be from another generation, another time. In her
time, politicians cared about their reputation and integrity, they still had
the decency and the common courtesy to be civil even to their political rivals;
and in some cases there was even respect and friendship among politicians of
opposing factions. Ma always had a very healthy respect for the then Chief
Minister Sarat Chandra Sinha, even though Sinha jetha was the person who had
ordered her arrest during the Emergency. Even when she became a Minister, she
made sure that it did not change much in our personal lives – she carried on
helping me with my homework, even as she insisted that I continue to cycle to
school. Her official car was meant for official work, not for anything else.
But even while she tried to remain the same mother for me, she also
tried to learn how to be a good minister, and be of some use to her home state
of Assam. I
remember how troubled she was when the foreigners’ issue first started brewing
in the state in 1979. As the only Minister from Assam in Morarji’s government
she desperately wished to bring the students and the government to agree on a
cut-off date quickly, before the situation got worse. I believe she was part of
the government team that more or less convinced Morarjibhai to accept 1971 as
the cut off year for the detection, deletion and deportation of Bangladeshi
migrants. But the AASU boys scoffed at the proposal. They would accept nothing
later than 1951, as the cut-off date. Soon afterwards Morarji Desai’s
government fell and Ma gave up politics and returned to Guwahati. A few years and many deaths later, the
government and the students signed the Assam Accord with 1971 as the cut-off
year.
Why then was she forgotten so quickly? It did not take me long to see that although
my mother was passionate about her work and had contributed a great deal to
many of the organizations she was involved with, there was no one cause
that she had made her own, to the exclusion of all others, for which she could
be remembered. Moreover, many of the
people with whom she worked were either dead or too old now to actively do
anything. The present generation of social workers and politicians probably do
not know her, probably have not even heard of her. She had simply outlived
public memory.
It was perhaps my fault as well, for usually it is up to the immediate family
to keep a person’s memory alive. After Baba’s death in 1993, Ma had made sure
that Baba remained in public memory by setting up a trust and instituting an
annual award in his memory. But I had
been too caught up with coping first with the million things that needed to be
done immediately after Ma’s demise, and later with other pressing personal problems,
to be able to do anything about keeping alive Ma’s memory. Moreover, I had
somehow expected Ma’s case to be different since she was a public figure. But
it wasn’t. Since I am her only child, I will have to do something, before it is
too late. Because, as the days go by, I feel she is slipping out of my hands
too, that I am losing her. It is clear to me that in order to keep her, I will
have to bring her back in another form, a more lasting form, if not for anyone
else’s sake then for my own.
So now I am back at square one. Hopefully Addaghar will get going again
after this current crisis is over. But that alone does not seem enough. Unlike
Baba, Ma did not leave behind any clear indication of her wishes; so initially
I waited for some sign from Ma. But nothing came. People told me to give myself
some more time. Not to rush. Now three years are almost over. I cannot wait
much longer. But what else could I do? Instituting something like a lecture, a
prize, or a scholarship in her name does not seem right. For Ma it has to be
something that happens all the time, not once a year, or every now and
then….Moreover it would have to be something down-to-earth, something energetic
and vigorous that would make a real difference to those we seek to support. Ma
had no patience with esoteric ideas or abstract notions of philanthropy. More than sitting and thinking about the whys
and the hows she preferred to go out and do what she could. She was simply a
doer.
I need to do the same – go and do what I can to create something in Ma’s
memory, rather than just thinking, sitting around and writing about it. All
suggestions and ideas are welcome – I am sure Ma would like it much better if
it was a collective effort. Of course the general situation is not really right
to starting anything new at the moment. I have often wondered how Ma would have
reacted to the current situation. I think the lock-down would have bothered her
no end – and she would have used her Red Cross card to go out even during the
lock-down in order to help those in need. And we would have had huge daily
fights with me trying to prevent her from going out and worrying about her
exposing herself to the virus, at her age. I have also no doubt who would have
won those verbal duels. May her fighting
spirit prevail, and the memory of her rather unusual life, survive these
strange and unnatural times.
This piece appeared in this form in the Thumbprint magazine on the 14th August 2020 http://www.thethumbprintmag.com/not-wanting-to-let-her-go/
A condensed and heavily edited version of this article appeared in the Assam Tribune on the same day. http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/spat.asp?id=2020%2Faug1420%2FBigPage4.jpg&fbclid=IwAR3n0sjlY2zv2PRCSWDlDS91B8FeL0w7Qe-b6t5HgESf57EhqSNtg_BCcz0
An Asamiya version of the article, translated by Arindam Barkakatki, appeared in the Amar Asom on the same day. http://amarasom.glpublications.in/imageview_18073_13237805_4_1_14-08-2020_i_1_sf.html?fbclid=IwAR22YZls-Cl5u31L_ozZ21qnDxvYAXV7cM7KX0lKcsxJVeGANpTZfSEpEqc
Another article on Ma appeared today, 4th Sept. 2020 in the Niyomiya Barta by Thaneswar Malakar... here is the link https://niyomiyabarta.org/
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