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 mostly happy, and 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. I am told I was put in the care of two very nice kongs, first the very pretty Kong Cross and after her Kong Cheni, but I have no real memory of them. 

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Reckoning with death

Two deaths in the last days have shaken me up. The first was the death of my teacher from Gauhati University Professor B.P. Chetiya and then a day later Biren Datta Sir's baideo. I was not in direct contact with either of them in recent times. They were both ailing for some time. So the deaths were not unexpected. But still these two deaths have affected me in ways that I cannot explain at the moment. Let me try to put the facts down here and try to understand what happened.
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They don't come any fairer!

I had not finished saying farewell to my lovely friend Srutimala Duara when disaster struck again, and this time took away from us our beloved Deepika Phukan baideo. If the too early departure of a bright, beautiful and vivacious human being that Sruti was has stunned and numbed me, Deepika Baideo's going was perhaps less unexpected but has left me feeling like an orphan, all over again.  And now, as I sit at my desk trying to make sense of these goings, I understand more clearly than ever before our transience in this world we temporarily inhabit. Nobody is a survivor, Sruti had rightly said, for in the end nobody will survive the condition of being alive. 

 But then why is it so hard to say goodbye?

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Too many deaths

There has been too many deaths these last months of people who I was close to -- it began with Neelda's going last October. Then  Nilmoni Phukan khura in January, followed by Srutimala Duara, and Deepika Phukan in February and March... among many others...Some were sick and ailing, some were old and frail, but still...

Why is it so hard to say goodbye?

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Pampered sons of besotted parents

Three small vignettes showing how excessive parental love for sons can sometimes lead to absurd situations and do the boys more harm than good. Small wonder then that our daughters grow are far better equipped to face life than our spoilt and pampered sons. It is hard to understand why parents get so completely blinded with love for their sons, when one only needs to look around to see that girls are doing as well, if not better, and most often than not, it is the daughter, and not the son, who takes care of her parents in their old age.

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It is all about taking ownership

The more I think about it the more it becomes clear to me that the basic reason why many public or community amenities and facilities that are started with great fanfare do not take very long before they stop functioning or fall into neglect and disrepair is because we, as individuals who are in charge of that amenity or generally as a community where the asset is located, do not take pride, responsibility and ownership of the assets.
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You can never be too prepared

A slightly fictionalised account of how we prepared for the last award presentation ceremony, the many worries, and how everything fell in place eventually.

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Covid revelations

The corona pandemic has taken everyone by surprise. But in India, it has not made the system collapse, rather it has exposed that we did not have a system worth the name to begin with. Here is a quick list of what else we have learnt about ourselves, our leaders and the state of our countrymen and the nation in the past two months...

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Faultlines of a burglary

It was on the night of Monday 27^th April that robbers broke into my parents’ home in Guwahati, in the northeastern state of Assam in India. These days the rooms are used as a Senior Citizens’ Club, which had remained closed for the last several weeks because of the Covid 19-induced complete lockdown that was still in force in India at that point. So no one came to any bodily harm but they ransacked the whole house, opened each cupboard, each drawer and each box and left with what they could find – some cash and a huge amount of bell-metal and copper articles – most of them priceless family heirlooms belonging to my parents, many over a century old. The caretaker’s family was asleep in the adjacent room, I was also in the flat on the first floor directly above, but we heard nothing. So they must have had some idea about which rooms to avoid and must have also worked out a time-interval when everybody would be asleep.

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Facing up to the scary truth

Some ghastly incidents in the last few weeks, one in Thailand, the others in Assam, and some sobering conclusions that we can draw from them...[with thanks to Bodhisattva Sarma for some of the inputs and for goading me on to write]

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Truly one of a kind: Kotoky Sir

My tribute to Professor Prafulla Kotoky Sir, written on 5^th June 2018, on getting the news about Sir’s demise

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Death of an ancient Ashram

A desperate cry for help, recounting the past glory and the present crisis facing Panchabati Ashram in Guwahati where I grew up, with the hope that someone reading this will come forward to help and  together we shall be able to rescue the precious Ashram and revive it in a new form and function.

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Cycle

A beautiful piece by Saurav Kumar Chaliha about Goettingen in Germany and Germans, as well as about us kharkhuwa Asamiyas in contrast... This is about the time when he was living in Germany in the late 1950s and studying physics at the university.

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The house died too that night

My tribute to Ma, a month after she left us...

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A world which seems to have missed the point altogether

Coming back to Guwahati and being here for more than a month this time helped me gain a little more clarity about what it is that I find strange about people's reactions here every time I come back.  A few instances:

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After the end of the centenary celebrations

These last twelve months have been very full with various activities in connection with my father's birth centenary celebrations. Looking back after the end of the final event on Baba's 101st birthday, Kati Bihu day, the 18th October 2015, I have mixed feelings...

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After the event

The after-the-event report promised in the last blog...

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A catalogue of failures

This last year has been a lesson for me -- I had started out with a number of projects related to celebrating my father's birth centenary. What has become of some of them in the course of the year is a veritable catalogue of things that went wrong and proof of the fact that perhaps the problem does not lie out there but somehwere within me... perhaps I have become a misfit in this world I thought was and which I still call my home.

Some details follow...

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How to get things done in India

Coming home always brings with it new revelations. Living in Germany I had foolishly begun to expect that things function everywhere as they should as a matter of course -- coming home to Guwahati and having to go to renew my driving license in the DTO office recently cleared my head of many of those illusions.  Last year I had a similar experience trying to get the necessary permission to use the State Archives at Dispur. About what exactly happened on those occasions, some other time, right now I just want to list, for your convenience, some ways (read, tricks) to get things done here.

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The Dibrugarh conference: much ado about nothing

The occasion was the annual congress of the anthropologists in the country, hosted by the Dibrugarh University in February. Hundreds of anthropologists from all parts of the country and abroad were expected to attend. I am a life member of the INCAA, but had never attended a Congress. Since the venue was nearby in Dibrugarh, I decided to attend.

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