Ammu Sona

  Hi Koko, 

I have not written in a looong time. Not because I had dearth of subjects, but because I definitely was caught up in a lot of things. You started going to school - physically going to school. In fact this week you have your exams. Between adjusting back to normalcy of having a person routinely go outside of home, packing lunch boxes and managing the newly increased amount of work at office I was honestly left with no time. 

However, I have been planning to start this series for a long time and I think today is a good day to start. So I have been thinking that you know your relatives and cousins, but there are so many of your family you will never meet or people who are not really in their element anymore. What about their stories? Do we just forget those lives? I want to you to know them, like they were in their beautiful and meaningful lives. Like with you and me - all of them have had bright and awful days. I will try and collect some memory you can hold on to. 

There are some of these people who I myself have not met. But for some, I have partly faint and fond memories. Like Ammu, your Dadan's mother.

 

If I asked Ammu when her birthday was, she would say she was born the day they heard the ship's horn blaring near their home. The concept of not knowing one's birthday was so alien to me that I would keep asking her this question again and again and she would always patiently give me the same answer. She seemed to be from some other world as she would sit in the balcony's winter sun, arranging a paan for herself or meticulously applying coconut oil on almost each strand of her hair and talking of her young life. 

She would talk about the time when my father was young, how he broke his collarbone (thrice), or about the beautiful and dangerous river Icchamati by whose side her home was. I would imagine her as a young mother to a tribe of untamed brats, shouting after them, or cooking or cleaning, or somewhere on the banks of the river as a kalboishakhi approached. Like Durga from Pather Panchali. We should watch that movie sometime. 

She was a woman of grit - she had her fair share of storms that she weathered when she was in her prime. But I have not seen her then, I only saw her in the sunset years of her life and I will tell you about how I remember her. Once I misplaced a brand new crayon set at school and my mother was absolutely livid. After listening to the scolding for a bit, Ammu took my hand and walked with me to the closest stationery store and bought me a 24-set crayon box. I still remember that day clearly. She was wearing her white saree with a narrow blue border, her hair tightly braided with the trademark black ribbon and tied into a bun, tightly holding my arm lest she lose her way. 

By this time her eyesight had deteriorated a lot. She suffered from this disease called Glaucoma, which led to her vision depleting to almost negligible by the time she left us. I remember accompanying my mother and aunt to many a visit to the doctor - the eye specialist, the heart specialist et al. I think I also vaguely remember the medicines she had - Sorbitrate, Zolam etc. It is not easy living your life in darkness, especially if you have lived your entire life with vision. Learning how to find your way, or go through the simple motions of life without the key sense - I cannot imagine it!

So Ammu would come and stay with us for a few months each year and that was the time when I was on medicine duty. She loved having a peaceful night's sleep so almost everyday, she tried smuggling an extra Zolam tablet. Every night she pretended that she had somehow misplaced the first tablet I gave her so that I would open and give her another one. I got fooled a couple of times as she would have deftly tied it to the end of her saree. But I quickly caught on and she would implore,"দে না সোনা"

No one calls me by that name anymore. That was nice between us, the names we had for each other - No one else called her Ammu, and no one else called me Sona. 

Love,

Ma