On an otherwise nondescript September evening
in 2015, I announced to my friends and Guru that I had a new job at a think
tank called ORF and would be joining from the next day. No one except Malavika
Aunty, a friendly elderly lady who learnt music with me, had heard of ORF. She
said excitedly, “I know ORF. My niece Joyee (as Joyeeta was fondly called by
family and close friends) works there. She can be your friend”. The next day I
reported for work both excited and scared at 9, much before other colleagues.
By sheer coincidence, I was given a seat right opposite Joyeeta. As any new
place, ORF seemed like a mystery to me. A senior colleague sitting close to me
was enjoying his breakfast while reading the newspaper and slowly went off to
sleep. As I was used to more formal settings, I was pleasantly surprised. Then
Joyeeta came and sat down at her seat and I rose up to introduce myself. That
was the beginning of our friendship.
We hit off instantly. Both of us had similar
interests – good food, jokes, sarees, music, and generally chilling around. We
often agreed that the only reason we worked was the fun that came with it.
Money and making a mark in the research world was secondary. We often went out
for lunch together, shopped together, and had golgappas at Bengali Market. She
had a much better idea than me in where to eat what so she was the leader and I
was the good follower. Often she took me to places to eat and later I took my
sister, family or other friends there. So conversations with my friends and
family often started, “Joyeetadi took me there and the food was awesome. We
must go there”. But most important were sarees and saree days in office were a
serious matter for both of us. She loved sarees, shopped a lot and received a
lot of gifts from her husband and also extended family. She had a lot of
friends in Bangladesh, her area of specialization, and received Dhakai Jamdani
sarees from there too. She shared every detail. Who gave, what were the special
features of those sarees, the weavers who weaved them etc. I often complained
Africans never give gifts. I wish I worked on Bangladesh.
Shortly after I joined ORF, Manish (my husband)
and my parents got together and started preparing for our marriage. As we were
very close, I shared all my anxieties and excitements with her. I was quite
anxious because of the huge differences in our backgrounds, Manish’s atheism
and refusal to participate in religious rituals, and the hyper-religiousity of
so many of our family members. Some of the comments I got such as “men change
after marriage”, “love marriages don’t last”, “men are one thing when they are
wooing a woman another after marriage”, “his family and mother will not let you
work after marriage” and the most common one “so no more non-veg for you after
marriage” drove me crazy. One day someone said, “ab music to bhul jao shadi ke
baad”. And I broke down and rushed to her. There were 10 days left to my
wedding and someone was trying to tell me I had only ten days left to live.
Joyeetadi sensed the tension and said ‘let’s take coffee”. What followed was a
one-hour counselling session in which she told me very firmly, “Nothing of that
sort will happen. Manish loves you he will keep you very happy. Why do you
listen to such people? Every one doesn’t have the same experiences. Look at
Subimal. He always encourages me to dance. He encourages me to do work. Just
relax”. Subimal, her husband featured in every third sentence that she spoke.
Her love for him was so reassuring. Next she told me something that completely
shifted my mind from anything else that was going around. Subimalda had bought
two meklas, one for her and one for me. The excitement of receiving a mekhla
from Assam was too much for me. I told my mom in advance that the gift from her
had to be kept carefully because it was a special mekhla for me.
The real life after marriage was actually
closer to what Joyeetadi had predicted. I flourished professionally and
personally. Manish, as a husband was so different from the boyfriend that he
was. Super caring, loving, and encouraging. I felt the intense love that
Subimalda and she had because I knew a lot of the little details of their life.
Their funny fights, every time Subimalda teased for being overdressed or her
dieting. We laughed and shared everything with each other. Often other
colleagues in ORF were amused at our friendship and wondered how we managed to
stick around together so much. Most people in office were also aware of her
dieting and she often shared the benefits of eating quinoa. But that was
another funny story for I knew how non-serious and non-committed she was. After
a full week of eating salads, she and Subimalda would go to Purani Dilli to eat
breakfast, follow it up with a full Bengali meal, go for a Dinner party. Monday
morning, she would be back with salads and complain that it was “Subimal” who was
to blame and not her with a big and bright smile.
Not many people knew how deeply committed she
was to the region she studied. Her knowledge of Indo-Bangladesh border areas
and Bangladesh was very nuanced. I learnt so much from her during our conversations
and often told her to write more. I used to give her a lot of ideas to write
short stories out of her interactions with people during her fieldwork and also
encouraged her to write in Bengali, her mother tongue. She agreed with me but
was overburdened by organizing and also the philanthropic activities that she
and her husband did together. In one of the programmes that they organized,
Manish and I were invited. This was a cultural programme to showcase the
richness of the Barak Valley. It was a great experience for me and Manish who
learnt a lot and got to know the importance of the work that they were doing
together.
A few messages to her wishing her on the Bengali
New year (a day we were always dressed in Saree in office and went out to Banga
Bhawan to eat) were unanswered. Then I got to learn from colleagues that she is
hospitalized and then came a frantic call from my sister. “Just saw Samir Saran’s
tweet. Is it the same Joyeeta?”. That ended everything. No more Dhakai sarees, no
more golgappas at Bengali market, no more discussions on Assamese politics,
NRC, and Bangladesh, no more ‘Subimal this Subimal that’. Last Tuesday, it was
my turn to call up Malavika Aunty, and inform her of the terrible news that her
niece is no more. This is death which ends everything. Our dear Joyeeta, very
smiling, slightly temperamental, who knew how to love is no more. She has left
behind a Joyeeta-shaped in me. In such a short period of time, she was so much
to me. All the discussions of maternity and my little son which I can never
have with her now that she is gone. And I am here at home, listening to the helpless
stories of friends who are struggling for oxygen, hospital beds and also going
through the loss of their loved ones, waiting for my own turn.
