Rantu Maa

Death comes nearer, kisses and teases me one more time

26 Mar 1986 was the first time I ever had consciousness of death. Before that day, news of death never stirred my senses, never made a difference to "my" life. But this time it was my granddad - a grander man I have never known and whose presence I had gotten used to since my birth. He was bed ridden for three months and his death brought a sense of relief and I thanked god and was happy. Today I have similar feelings about another death.

Rantu Maa, as she was fondly referred to, never became a mother but was no less a mother to Mun. I do not know much details about her life except of what she narrated to me, during the lazy languid afternoons I would spend in her terrace abode on "Tintola (third floor)" in a sleepy Kolkata lane, which Opu says has not changed one bit in the past 20 odd years.

She was one of the many relationships I acquired as a result of my marriage. Relationships which are no less important to me than those more congenital.

It was interesting to hear my girlfriend talk a lot about Rantumaa. It was those days, when love was nascent and fresh, days when you would want to wrap your girlfriend's life around yourself. I was curious to meet Rantu Maa and impress her, since she seemed so special to Mun.

I do not remember my first meeting with her but over time, I slowly got to know a lady who was strong-willed, independant, practical, out-spoken, affectionate and had seen a lot more of life than I ever will.

Rantu Maa could easily symbolize the modernness of Bengal at that time. A culture where women would be thriving and would be big stakeholders of the household and possess a big say in all major decisions.

I heard stories of how she tried to run with the speeding train and in the process injured herself when she was young. How she would drive an Amby - a predominantly man's car and drop her docile doctor hubby to his chamber. How she was denied an opportunity to screen test for a Satyajit Ray film (I never asked about the culprit, I hope it was not Babuji).

My mom often mentioned how impressed she was each time when she would see Rantu, prim and proper, and with that smart hair cut, even when she would be very sick.

I would be amazed to see her energy levels when she was nursing "Babuji" while pushing seventy herself. She would read, stitch, limp through her household work, and would still have energy left. How she would maintain her bank documents, allocating and reallocating funds as if she was sitting on a mountain of wealth to be distributed to the princelings after her time.

I hated to see a person of her agility lose her physical mobility as time progressed. Over the past ten years of my marriage I saw how a hyper active individual would be forced to be a supplicant of her age.

I still cannot accept the withering of our body as time progress and would rather have grand people die grand. Today, I heard how she held the hand of her two brothers and apparently indicated minutes before her death, that her time had finally come. It typefies her, ever conscious of the dark realities of her life and never out of touch.

Honestly, I was praying for it for a while. She always had a sense of humor, rather dark humor. Each of our last conversations would be around this fish called "Koi", a delicacy among us Bongs. A fish which refuses to give up its life, rather cursed. Whenever you bring a Koi fish home (in Kolkata we usually buy live fish), it would be alive right through the dissection process and even wimper in the frying pan.

Recently, I would always refer to her as a "Koi Mach" and how she is cursed to live long. Each time I would meet her during my trips to Kolkata, I would think this was the last time. In my heart of heart, I would wish that her life conditions would change so that her grandeur is reinstated.

This time when I bade good bye during Christmas trip, she said "Aaar dekha hobena". I am both happy and sad that the words came true. While I write this, my eyes swell up whenever I think she is now a part of my past. While the last rites are getting performed miles away now, she forces herself into my present, may be till I visit Kolkata and accept the emptiness of the "tintola (third floor)" of 19/S Abinash Banerjee Lane.

I dearly hope the room is not dismantled for another month (for Mun's sake), so that we can see it one last time. See it the way Rantu Maa would keep it. Neat, tidy and crisp. And I hope I can lie down on her soft bed one last time.

I wish I knew her for a far longer period. Her death, like some recent deaths, brings it much closer to me again. Whenever I take a pause and I look around at my parents' generation, I fear their absence and how we would get used to it with time.

Life's cruel, but death is harsher. It will kiss us all.