Celebrating a life most extraordinary : Uddipana Goswami

Writer and SSP literary editor Uddipana Goswami recollects her association with Indira Goswami and calls for celebrating her life, rather than mourning her passing

MAMONI aunty lived, loved and gave of herself unabashedly, unstintedly, to all who came in touch with her

I HAD often heard anecdotes about her. She was, after all, a legend. And having read her early literary works, I was expecting to meet a morose woman, brave but also grave. When I did finally meet her, however, in my first year at  Delhi University, I could see no traces of the person I had picturised in my mind. I was surprised to see, instead, a woman full of life, always smiling, always the gracious hostess no matter what time of the day, no matter how many guests (and she always had many) kept pouring in. As I grew closer to her over the years, I would ask her how she managed to do it and yet continue writing with the same intensity and at the same rate as ever. She said she would get up very early in the morning and do her writing. Then she would go about her work for the day. And how did she manage to be always so composed, so gracious and ever-smiling? “Oh, but I suffer from depression all the time, Majoni,” she would say, still smiling!

It is now, so many years later, after life has doled out what it could – much happiness but also all the stings in its store – that I have finally realised why it is important to keep smiling through the pain. Behind its radiance, the constant smile on her face had hidden all this wisdom.

Many like me have been inspired by her, and encouraged immensely. Unlike the Axamiya crabs striving to pull each other down, Mamoni aunty always recognised and promoted talent. She took many young people under her wings and gave their intellectual abilities a new dimension. I was a young college girl when she would take me along to various literary events and proclaim to all present how bright and promising I was, and what is more, how I helped her with her English! Her hyperbolic and often untrue praises embarrassed me no end, but I also learnt another invaluable lesson – with true greatness of mind, comes greater humility and generosity of spirit.

It is difficult to imagine that anybody can ever come close to achieving her stature, both as a writer and as a person. Any appreciation of her literary genius is bound to run into volumes, and many better equipped than me have already done that. I can only remember her as the person who was once very upset by allegations of fundamentalism leveled against her by carping critics who based their evaluation of her on a translated version of her autobiography. She asked me to write a clarification, which I did. But then she refused to dispatch the piece because it might hurt the sentiments of the translator!

Many others have critically evaluated her role as mediator and peace broker. Today, I can only remember her as the woman who, with almost childish enthusiasm, entered into an arena filled with political machinations of which she had not the slightest conception. She would blithely tell me about her plans to go for a ‘secret meeting’, so could I come and see her the next day perhaps? And I would wonder why this good hearted woman, incapable of any artifice, was trying to initiate a process that called for seasoned (read downright devious) statesmanship.

When I did ask her this question, she wailed, “But they are killing all our young boys! This must be stopped.”  And did she hope to achieve what she set out to? I enquired. Her answer that day made me realise why I had been wrong about her all along; why all her staunchest critics had been wrong about her all along. She said she had entered the process knowing full well that she would fail, that there was nobody else at the time who could have undertaken the task that was so important if more generations of Axamiya youths were not to be wiped out; that as a writer with a social conscience it was her duty to at least try.

And try she did, to the extent that her health and her personal life started to get affected adversely. Once she moved to Guwahati, I got to meet her less frequently as I was still in Delhi at the time. After various other ailments when she finally collapsed for the last time and entered into a coma, I found it hard to believe that such a vivacious individual could be incapacitated this way. But the lessons about life that I learnt from aunty herself compel me today to refuse to mourn her passing. I refuse to be sad that she is no more. Instead, I am glad that she lived and that I could get to know her the way I did.

Mamoni aunty lived, loved and gave of herself unabashedly, unstintedly, to all who came in touch with her. Her life calls for celebration, death is not its end.