Childhood: a carefree romp that didn’t last

A random account of some events of my childhood... I began to write this piece because I wanted to send it to Teresa Rahman as part of her series on childhood memories in the Thumprint Northeast. But it turned out to be a very therapeutic exercise as well as the news of the horrible aircraft disaster in Ahmedabad came in. It might sound self-indulgent but it kept me from sinking... 

My childhood was spent mainly at three places, Guwahati, Delhi and Shillong. I was born in Delhi as my mother, Renuka Devi Barkataki, was a young parliamentarian at that time. But whenever my mother needed to go anywhere, since my absentminded and rather impractical father, Munin Barkotoki, could not be trusted with such things, I was left with my aunt, my Jethima, in Shillong, who ran a full house with six kids of her own. The first time I was left there I was barely a few months old – Ma was selected to be part of a parliamentary delegation to the US. She was gone for more than a month.  When she returned, I did not recognize my mother anymore and refused to go back with her.

Later, when Ma became an MLA and Shillong was still the capital of Assam, I studied for a year in Loreto Convent and stayed with my cousins in Motinagar. That year was a very happy time. I was in Class II, the youngest addition to the set of six already at home, and much loved by everyone, despite the natural jealousy of my youngest cousin at my having taken his place as the baby in the house! My three pretty elder girl-cousins were already out of school and going to college and university; my male-cousins who were still in school used to tease me a lot, because I was rather plump and pampered and not used to having to share things with others. It was a wonderful time and it helped me to find a much bigger family for myself. But soon after in 1972, the capital moved down to Guwahati and I went back to Guwahati and re-joined St. Mary’s.

Ma was very busy those days and was rarely at home. But she somehow always found time to help me with my homework, whenever I needed it. I remember waiting for her, nodding off at my study table, sometimes with my head down on the table, but still waiting, with mosquitoes doing their worst to my legs below. My mother’s position was clear on this: she expected me to do well in my studies, and she would make whatever help I needed available to achieve that. I am not sure how she managed to do so many things simultaneously. Of course I used to sometimes wish she would have more time for me, but then I also cherished the freedom her absence gave me. What I loved doing most with my mother as a child was go with her to visit the beautiful home of the well-known dramatist Prabin Phookan and his very graceful and elegant wife Roshan Phookan. They lived in a pretty cottage with a lovely garden just at the back of Apsara Cinema Hall. My mother and Phookan aunty were great friends. And Phookan jetha, for reasons that I haven't figured out till this day, would give me his precious notebooks containing his freshly written plays (he wrote long hand Assamese in single lined thin exercise books, one notebook per play) to take home to read and comment on. But it did make the little me feel very important and valued. Since they had no children of their own, the Phookans pampered me no end with gifts, games, chocolates and delicious homemade food. Their home and garden was my idea of paradise.

My father, who was a writer and a dreamer, spent most of his time at home, reading and writing. My father was a full half a century older than me, so in my earliest memories of him, he was already retired. I’m not sure if he ever actively encouraged me to do so, but the fact that he read so much, that he always had books around him and that he would always gift me books (and talk about them) for my birthdays must have had an impact on me. I saw even more books at my Bordeuta, Satyen Barkataki's home in Titabor. Unlike my father, Bordeuta was an extrovert and I loved his company. His smiling face and mischievous eyes made him a favourite instantly. In fact, one summer the two of us got it into our heads to translate PG Wodehouse. We did give it a honest try because Bordeuta felt that the Assamese would be deprived of something very essential (to their mental wellbeing) if they were not told about the activities of the Empress of Blandings and about Jeeves, the Butler. Needless to say, we failed miserably. But still it was a wonderful way to spend a summer holiday.

Baba and Bordeuta were not friends in the same sense as I was. I never understood why. Their conversations did not last very long. Baba did not have too many clues about how to handle a daughter and was happy to let me be as long as I did not disturb him with too much chatter or boisterous laughter: he needed peace and quiet to read his books. But he had a funny bone too.  His absent mindedness meant he did many silly things, but he would be the first one to tell us all about it. He also had a set of friends who visited him at regular intervals; most frequently his ‘mitra’ Pramod Sharma, Gyanada Sharma from Panbazar and his childhood friend writer Krishna Bhuyan. When they came, it was hard not to overhear what they were talking about since most of them had got a little hard of hearing by then and so would talk to each other very loudly. They mostly talked about books, and also politics.

Panchabati Ashram was a great place to grow up in, school was just around the corner, my closest girl friend Makoni lived next door and there were always people around who would join me for a game of badminton. Together with the kids who lived in the lanes around we formed a small ‘gang’ with me as the self-appointed, undisputed and absolute boss. The main activity of this gang was to stage a play in our garage once a year, invite our neighbours and make them sponsor the prizes! I still remember how cross I was on one particular occasion when the first prize went to someone else… My school friends do not tire of reminding me, even today, of the large tiffin carrier that would arrive in school during the tiffin break, with my lunch. I am told that I often pretended not to recognize any of my friends while I was eating, for fear of having to share the food with them. I do remember enjoying my food as a child; as for not wanting to share… Well…no comments.

Nobody told me what to do and what not to do. The absolute tomboy that I was, I not only enjoyed roaming about the Ashram, but also climbing trees, or wading in the muddy pond at the back. On one such muddy expedition, a leech attached itself to my ankle. First it was small but when it started to grow with all the blood it was sucking out of me, I got alarmed and ran to Doctor mama, the homeopath who used to run the Aparna Homeo Hall nearby. I remember being more worried about the trouble I would get into when my parents heard about this than about getting rid of the leech. Another time I convinced Mahendro, our very gullible boy home help, that I knew how to cut hair and could give him a haircut for free. The truth was that I had never cut anybody’s hair before, but I had watched the barber when he came to give my father a haircut. It seemed simple enough and I wanted to save Mahendro his hard earned money. But all my good intentions could not stop my getting into serious trouble later because not only had I knicked Mahendro’s ear while cutting his hair but I had done such a bad job of the hair cutting that the only thing left for Mahendro to do was to shave off his remaining hair completely! My mother was not at all amused, I tell you.

We had many visitors at home during that time, other politicians and leaders --Bhupen Hazarika, Deva Kanta Barooah and Sarat Chandra Sinha to name some of the biggest among them -- who came home to meet with my mother, people from Hajo, her constituency, or simply friends and relations. When my aunt and cousins from Shillong or elsewhere came, they often stayed. At any point of time, we always had a few young men who stayed for longer periods with us while they were getting started with their studies or work in Guwahati. So although I was an only child, I was never alone. I seem to have somehow understood that whenever anyone visited our home, they should not be allowed to leave before they were served tea; but not just tea, there should also be some snack to go with it. And since a biscuit looked too meagre, I would order omelettes for everyone!  This went on for quite a while till our cook got sick of having to produce omelettes at any time of the day or night and complained to my mother when I insisted that he produce an omelette for the postman!

That carefree existence came to an abrupt and sudden end one fine day in June, almost exactly fifty years to a day today, when I was not even ten years old when Mrs Gandhi declared Emergency in the country and my mother, who was an Opposition leader during that time, was arrested and taken to jail. That was a sort of watershed moment in my childhood, for as the news of her arrest spread, people not only started not visiting us at home, but also started avoided meeting us on the streets. It was not easy for a nine year old to understand what was happening and why it was happening. My mother’s bank accounts were frozen, and since my father was not used to taking care of practical things, suddenly things turned dark. My mother was first lodged in the Gauhati jail and later when she fell very seriously ill, she was moved to the Gauhati Medical College for treatment, where she was kept under strict police surveillance. We were allowed to meet my mother once every 45 days, that too, only after getting a written consent from the DC of the time. That was not easy to organize, at all.

If it were not for the nuns of St Mary’s School who visited my mother almost every Sunday at the hospital (during their normal ‘visiting the sick’ activity) I am not sure how we would have managed to find out how she was. The nuns would just pretend that they did not know who was in that hospital room and was just visiting another sick patient. They would simply walk past all the sentries and go into her room. They would sometimes carry back letters for me from Ma and also take for her things that she needed like toothpaste or medicines. I have often wondered what courage it must have taken for the nuns to do what they did and what would have happened if they had been found out. Not just that, they often came home not just with news from Ma but also with a nice food hamper for us. I was very grateful to them and decided, as a small way of expressing my gratitude, to take my studies a little more seriously from then on. That they did not forsake us, even in those very difficult dangerous and troubled times, taught me a lesson or two about life as well.

But even in those complicated times, some things followed their usual course. Somewhere in the middle of the 22-month period that Ma was in jail, I attained puberty! Of course I was completely clueless about what was happening but when the bleeding would not stop I went to tell me father about the big boil that I had somewhere in my upper inner thighs which had burst! I was quite annoyed with my father when he seemed to not react as one should to a heavily bleeding boil! My poor father was so shaken by the news that he tried to get my Jethima from Shillong to come to explain to me what had happened. But by the time my aunt finally arrived, my bleeding had stopped and I refused to believe my aunt when she tried to tell me what I should do when I bled again! I also remember how jealous I was when I saw that my best friend had a ‘tuloni biya’ celebration where she was dressed like a bride and got many presents. So when my mother got back from jail, I remember insisting that she organize a ‘tuloni biya’ also for me, even if belatedly!  Seeing that I was not getting anywhere with my mother on that matter, I quickly added that I didn’t mind not getting dressed up as a ‘koina’ if she had problems with that, as long as the gifts were big and nice!

But my mother had bigger things happening by then, for example, she was campaigning for an election! I remember coming home from school one day and to find that my study room was stacked to the ceiling with posters, banners and festoons; there was no space to even walk in! Mercifully, someone had remembered to remove my school books lying on the table before they got buried in the general mess. Riding the huge Janata wave that was sweeping across the country, my mother was elected again as a member of Parliament, but this time she was not just an MP but she also became a Minister in Morarji Desai’s Council of Ministers.

We moved to Delhi. I moved school again and joined Carmel Convent! I was in Class VIII then. Although I got admission in the same class in Carmel Convent, the curriculum was very different. For one, the level of Hindi was very high; Geography classes included studying something called contour maps that I had never seen or heard of before. And Science did not mean just Science, it meant Physics, Chemistry and Biology with labs to attend for all three! And this was only in school. Our home in Delhi became like a mini Assam House, where people came and stayed and went… there was no guessing who was coming next. 

Besides attending school, I had begun to take sitar lessons and had also started to participate in the activities of the Bal Bhawan in Delhi. It was as part of the Bal Bhawan contingent that I went on my first foreign trip to Sofia, Bulgaria in 1979, to attend the World Children’s Congress in the International Year of the Child. [How I managed to go, despite my mother's strict ruling against it, is a story for another time.]  And today, almost half a century later, I am still friends with Lyubov, the oldest among my many friends abroad, who was our local guide and interpreter in Sofia. Ma bought be a bicycle and told me that I would have to cycle to school (and to everywhere else I needed to go) as her official Minister’s vehicle was not to be used for personal purposes. Although I was really upset then, later I realized that cycling those long distances in Delhi also helped me to lose my puppy fat and to get back to some normal shape by the time I finished school. 

My father, meanwhile, returned to Guwahati to teach journalism at Gauhati University. With Baba absent and Ma busy, the long summer holidays in Delhi were a problem. One year, I was sent off to Shimla for the summer with Kavita Mami, whose father, Col. U.N. Sharma was then the Chief Secretary of Himachal Pradesh. The hills were lovely and I had a great time there, the only problem were the many lice in my very thick head of hair. I still remember the look of disbelief in everybody's eyes when I returned to Delhi, my hair shorn into a smart 'boy's cut' but liceless! When she found no other way to keep me occupied, my mother would pack me off to Guwahati for the summer. Some of my happiest memories from that time are of travelling between Delhi and Guwahati by train every summer along with groups of Assamese students who were studying in the colleges and universities in Delhi at that time. They were much older to me, but that was even nicer, for everyone took special care of me during those endlessly long journeys filled with fun, food and laughter. And some of them have remained my dadas and baideos even to this day.

When does childhood end, I am not sure. My childhood probably ended, or least got a very rude jolt, when Ma was taken to jail in 1975. I was not even 10 then. But by then I had already had a few wonderful childhood years, as an only child in a family with a mostly absent but hyper-efficient mother and a well-intentioned but absent-minded father!  Somewhat unconventional by normal standards? Could be, but then, who can say what is normal?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   13^th June 2025

[Appeared in the Thumbprint Notheast on 16.6.25 https://thumbprintmag.in/single_post.php?id=the-tomboy-who-witnessed-the-emergency]