Tithi, my strong but silent friend, is now still forever

Her trademark smile: 18.6.24

A tribute to my dear friend Tithi (Monjari Barooah) who passed on the 3rd July 2025, after a 14-month struggle with a deadly disease.

Till the time I left Guwahati in April '25, she was still positive and full of hopes. It was almost exactly a year ago, in April 2024 that I had found her crying with pain one day when I went to see her. She was alone in her flat but too proud to ask anyone for help. Her elder sister Saki took her to the doctor. Her disease was diagnosed around the 10 May last year. It was a huge shock. In the beginning, it was she who would console all of us; don't be sad, she would tell us, this will soon be over. She was certain that she would get better. Ayudh her younger son was with her then and taking care of her. She would always say, moi bhal hoboi lagibo, moi bhal homei... and as long as her mind was strong and determined, she was making good progress with her treatment; Even after her beloved Ayudh died in a bike accident suddenly on the 14th August last year, she tried to keep up her spirits; moi bhal hoboi lagibo, etiya tu aaro Ayudh nai muk saboloi moi sob kaam nijei koribo lagibo... And miraculously, she really did get better, so much so that the doctors decided that a bone marrow transplant would no longer be necessary.

At Iora on 17 Nov 2024

She also tried to regain her independence, stopped expecting people to do things for her -- she engaged a full time maid, and also got herself a reliable taxi driver to take her to hospital etc. Things were looking up. I began to visit her every Sunday. Before I came, she would send me a list of things I should bring for her. Small things, fruits, nuts and biscuits, etc that she would normally have bought from Dayamoy if she was well. At other times, nighties, underwear and socks etc... Her favourite food around that time was surprisingly 'nemu tenga'. (Later someone told me that this intense craze for sour lemons is a sure sign of less haemoglobin in the blood, not sure if this correlation is scientifically verified).

with her three sisters on 22nd Jan 2025

'I am going crazy staying at home', she would often tell me. 'Please come and take me out.' We went out for a meal for the first time (after her diagnosis) on the 20th October (to Hotpot in Uzanbazar). She was happy and enjoyed her meal. Then on the 17th November, we went for a long drive together, just the two of us to Iora on the road to Nagaon. That was a lovely outing and she really enjoyed it. On the 1 December, we went out again with our class friend Bhaskar Phukan to Pabitora and had a lovely lunch at the Tourist Guest House there. At some point last year she told me, 'this business with my illness will be over within this year, I tell you; and from 2025 we will be able to do everything normally as we used to earlier'. Early in January we had a plan to go to the Bouganvillea Resort. But I foolishly cancelled it at the last moment and decided to go instead on a picnic with a group of ladies from Creative Hands. I will never forgive myself for that. But she was determined to go somewhere: if not Bouganvillea, she rented a taxi and went with her three sisters to Jiva on the Nongpoh road on the 22nd January 2025. She sent me photos and told me that she had a plain cheese dosa. She looked happy and almost normal then...

Photo taken in Pobitora on 1 Dec 2024

But then from around February this year, when the pain and other complications started, and she realised that the chemo injections she had been getting had been going on for far too long and had become ineffective, and on days when she was not feeling too good she would say, ki koribi aaro, ji hobo hoi thakibo, upai tu nai. I would keep urging her to get up, to walk about, to eat properly and to do things she wanted to do. On 29th April she wrote to me, 'trying to get better, step by step'.  But from then on her responses started getting shorter, as the days went by. Then it became short audio messages, moi bhale asso, toi sinta nokoribi.  Then slowly, as she finished a year since her diagnosis, she seemed to give up completely. She also began to lose a lot of weight, and became severely anaemic. So much so that she would have to be given one or two units of blood before she got her chemo. 

She stopped talking about herself, at best she would say, when pushed very hard, 'moi sesta koribo lagibo, korim', but that was very half hearted, she said it without really meaning it. And she sounded very weak and tired. She would spend most of the day in bed, and she began to sleep a lot. On 13 June she sent me her last Whatsapp audio message, on Obhick's insistence, 'toi ketia ahhibi, sunkale aah aaro', she told me. I told her I was coming but things deteriorated very fast in the last couple of weeks, possibly due to the very strong chemotherapy treatment that they had chosen to subject her to. She was frequently in and out of hospital. Someday her albumin would be low, another day her creatinin would be high. Her sister Saki had been staunchly by Tithi's side throughout the entire period of her treatment. As late as last Saturday, on the 28th June, I was pleading with everyone to stop subjecting her to such strong toxins, to let her live her remaining days in peace. But there was no one around who could take that decision on her behalf... and soon after, on 2nd July she went into a coma from which she did not wake up.

Taken during our trip to Bamunipahar in Tezpur with Samhita

at the river in Tezpur

Peeping into Poki, Jyotiprasad's home in Tezpur

Tithi and I have been friends all our lives. And although the course of our  lives did force us apart every now and then, we have always found each other again. And in these last few years, ever since Stephan left me, she has been there for me, whenever I have needed her. Actually, she and Saki were in Germany, visiting me, when Stephan was disgnosed with cancer. That created a very strong bond and Tithi took if upon herself to stay by my side, from then on. And what a huge pillar of strength she was for me. For she had a mind of her own, a thinking and logical mind, unsentimental and uncluttered with societal pressures, that helped her to arrive at sensible conclusions. And she helped me work my way through the haze many times. I dragged Tithi through everything I did in the last years, without thinking. She went along, everywhere, without question.  She could be silent and hold herself back when she felt that was the best way to proceed. But she was frank with me and did not shirk from telling me what she thought about my various projects, and where she thought I was making a mistake. But always in private, in public she was always there for me, cheering me on, my first supporter.

18th April 2023, celebrating Eid with Nellie and Ditty in Kharghuli

She had this remarkable ability to put away her own problems and be there for others in their times of distress. I will never forget the morning after we both took our first Covid vaccines. Tithi was staying with me. I was running fever and was not well that morning. Seeing my condition, Tithi took care of me and did everything one had to in the house. It was only after I recovered that she told me that she had also felt terribly unwell that morning but she didn’t tell me as there was no point in doing so. In many of the things we did together, I always put Tithi in charge of the money. Her background in banking and her methodical mind helped -- there was never any confusion. With minimum fuss she would keep all the accounts and find ways to problem shoot, without bothering me. That time that we were making a film on my father, Tithi was the one who was the treasury as well as the treasurer. The many trust events we organised all over the place, Tithi was the one counting the cash and making the payments. 

At Oli and Bhaskar's home on 9th March 2024

The latter half of her life was not exactly easy. After her marriage failed she moved back into her ailing mother's home and tried to juggle working full time with taking care of her mother and bringing up her two little baby sons. But fiercely independent as she was, she just did it. Financially, she knew how to live nicely with whatever she had. One never heard her complain. Once her sons were working and doing well, she decided to stop working and just be there for her family and friends. The family of course had a very special place for her – she doted on her two sons, and her cute little grandson Ekavir; and in the last years she was always there for her mahi, her four sisters and her huge extended family of cousins, nieces and nephews. 

with the ladies at Creative Hands sometime in early 2024

Life kept trying her, over and over again, but she has always found the strength to cope. Not just cope but also laugh and have fun and care about others and bring smiles into other people’s lives. Ask anyone who knew her: ask her family and friends, ask her maids Doibaki and Anjali, ask the gatemen and the sabjiwala in front of Greenland Apartments, ask the taxidriver who ferried her up and down to hospital. Ask all the ladies who joined our beautiful store Creative Hands that Tithi helped me to get started with. They will all say the same thing.

She was a staunch and loyal friend to so many of us. She was both reliable and practical, yet fun-loving 

Christmas celebration with friends at my home Jan 2023

and ready for a go at whatever. Who would have thought she would be the first among us to go? She who was always active, always took care, ate healthy, had very regular habits and was so fit that she preferred to travel on the back of a Rapido motorcyclist to beat the Guwahati traffic. She and Ditty would come, every now and then, to spend a weekend with me at my Kharghuli home.  She was principled, resolute and firm, almost to the point of being stubborn. She thought showing emotion to be a sign of weakness – I have rarely seen her cry. Always neat and tidy – nothing lying around, everything in its proper place, even the neatly stacked pile of newspapers in her flat looked like a solid brick block. She would read the Assam Tribune end to end each morning; but not just that, also books – she was a voracious reader, all through.

Mela shopping was one of our favourite pasttimes

In recent years, Tithi had become like my shadow. Tithi was not talkative -- but that does mean she was indifferent. She was with me in everything -- silent but listening attentively. As a result, she knew not just about my work and worries but also about my clothes, my pots and pans and about my friends and relations, sometimes more than I did. Whenever I was in doubt, I would call her and ask, often she had the answer. Do you know if I have a big enough pot for boiling noodles, do you know where I left my brown folder, do you know whether my cousin just gave birth to a boy or a girl -- most often than not, she knew. And birthdays and weddings etc -- she would be the one to remind me, not just of the date but also make sure that I had the right dress and a suitabel present for the event. Often she would remind me of deadlines I had forgotten, or accompany me to complicated places where I needed to conduct unpleasant tasks. And she was a great one with handling official work and bank stuff. She had a clear and methodical mind, and in the last years ever since I had started to begin to be a little forgetful, possibly under the huge pressure of my many different activities, she was always the first one to tell me to slow down, to find time off for myself, and to not take myself so much for granted.

At ward lake on 1.10.23

In happier times: attending a wedding Dec 2021

Always smiling, always positive, always there… not just for me but for everyone who knew her.  She had so many plans that will never be realised, she wanted me to take her to see the Bouganvillea Resort. We had planned to travel by train to Gopalpur on the beach in Orissa as soon as she got better. And she had even asked Jonti to make mutton for her next time she came to Panchabati. But she will never visit Panchabati again. Nor will we go anywhere together again... She has been my companion, not just to go to the cinema, to visit some craft mela or to go shopping but also on many journeys, not just short day trips here and there, but also longer trips, like the time we went by train to Dhemaji together, the many trips to Shillong, to Tezpur, to Dudhnoi, to Kokrajhar, to Bhutan, to Nagaon,... 

But this last journey, she went by herself, she did not go with anyone, she went on her own, to be reunited with her darling Ayudh and her mother.  Now that she is gone there is a certain emptiness and helplessness that sits heavy on me. I know that from now on, I am on my own. I will have to manage by myself. But there is also a sense of deep gratitude and admiration for all that Tithi did for me. And also a sense of how incredibly lucky I have been to have had a friend like Tithi by my side all these difficult years of my life. Go in peace, my dear friend. You have been a true and loyal friend all your life; you can go with the full knowledge that no matter what was thrown your way, you gave it your best. One can do no better. Will we be able to measure up? Will we be able to walk the straight and narrow path without your help till the bells begin to toll again...for one of us...