Stop All the Clocks for Mummum

13 September 2026

Dear Koko, 

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone"

W.H. Auden's poem "Stop All the Clocks" captures the element of processing grief so beautifully that I have been going back to it last few days. When I received the news in the morning, I knew I had a full day ahead, you had an exam to go for, I had a million meaningless meetings to attend to. Putting your mind into tracking your cab obsessively, being extra attentive in meetings and complaining about the traffic and potholes is an excellent distraction. Mummum passed away on the 8th, you called her Boroma. I went through the motions and was happy with knowing she passed away surrounded by family, she had no pain in her final moments and the family sat around her the entire night recalling many memories of her. You know her as this really old person you met once in a year for a few hours, you sit with her, but find it difficult to communicate. She can't hear you, or maybe she can, she responds with a distant nod as she looks over at you. So you really do not know the half of what that woman used to be. I have told you about my Dadan before and this is a good time to tell you about my Mummum. 

She made me do my homework when I was really young, checked my cursive handwriting. I remember practicing translation between Bangla and English from a tattered, moth eaten book. 

That's the thing with memory, it betrays us. Somewhere between love and loss is an island of memory and that's where she resides. I recall her in snatches and it seems like I am grasping at receding sand, trying to hold on. I remember watching a Bangla movie with her on TV and she could repeat the dialogs of Suchitra Sen, was she her favorite actress? I remember her loving songs, saying things like you must remember the lyrics of the song so that you can sing it to yourself later, what was that song we were listening to that evening - I cannot remember. I remember summer afternoons in a darkened room, all her grandchildren on the bed and her trying very hard to get a shut eye, while we bother her with requests for one more story - what was that story, was it about a sparrow? Again, my memory doesn't serve me very well. And all this is not very long ago, so I am angry at myself for getting annoyed with her when she could not remember things from her own past. To me it was just a story, for her it was her lived history. And recalling this is the toughest. 

It was the 1930's when she was born, I wonder what the world was at the time. She told me of the opulence in Burma, the grandeur of teak wood laden living rooms, gold jewellery being commonly sold, the more than comfortable living quarters of a government employee in Rangoon. The memories from the war were broken and vague. 

As we were growing up and even now, one of the defining moments of her life remains, as if that is her identity, is that she was widowed at 27. Yes, if that moment was different and her husband had been with her, life would look as something else entirely. People forget about the fact that she was already the mother of four children, keeping a house where there were two unmarried brothers in law, one married with family - all these people older than her, how difficult and challenging must it have been for a twenty something to navigate this space when her husband was away most part of the year. 

For most of our childhood we have heard her children describe her as a very angry woman, snapping at them, making them do things they did not want to. Apparently she hated cards. Once they were sitting on the bed, playing cards fanned in their hands. The kitchen and eating area was downstairs where she was finishing up cleaning and getting the kitchen ready for next morning. She just snuck up on them, snatched their cards and threw them away. They were all left shaking in their skin. Such goes the story of the terror she could strike with her mere presence. But I don't see it that way. I see the entire family, I believe my mother's uncles were also present, sitting and enjoying games while she was alone working and she came up and saw they were doing something she had expressly asked them not to. She had to be the good cop and the bad cop, so she had to do something dramatic to stop the kids. And honestly, we never saw her like that, we stole so much of her prized pickles, but she never lost her cool with us, but maybe that's a luxury grandchildren enjoy! Also, she loved playing, she defeated us in so many Ludo games, I think there are portraits of me bawling my eyes out at the end of those games, but I'm not showing you that. 

She loved reading, I remember she would read well into the night after the children would fall asleep and someone teased her asking if she were preparing for an exam, but she just had to get through one more chapter. Her embroidery pieces are art. When my Dadan passed away she had made a piece which was a garden and the four sides had four different kinds of flora and fauna, her own design, her own way of keeping herself absorbed, her own expression of grief and loss. Loss has followed her through her life, but she was resilient until my aunt passed away - my aunt (Krishna as she affectionately called her), her firstborn. That event really shook her to the core, I saw a drastic shift in her. 

But I don't remember her that way, I don't remember her the way her obituary reads, not a woman with white hair and an absent look. I remember the smiling lady who was managing the kitchen by herself, teaching me exactly how to keep my writing within the lines, giving us endless supply of snacks, lining us all up in the uthon to give us a cleaning with a loofah as hard as a rock because she didn't think our mothers were doing a good job, having zero ego and attachment and able to give away prize possessions, capable of letting go, stepping away from situations without a grudge, getting the entire family to Victoria Memorial every winter for a family picnic and getting the most heavenly aloor dum, holding me on her lap and sitting with me on the Puri sea beach while the rest of the family were in the water because I was too scared of the waves. She is now peaceful with the love of her life, she has met her Krishna too and she must be very happy. I think we should be happy too, she has lived a full life through the World War, Partition, Emergency, Economic Liberalization, Covid - she has literally seen it all!