MA ... 2 ... SAMMILAN SAMAJ READING ... 27 JAN, 2019

MA ... 2 ... SAMMILAN SAMAJ READING ... 27 JAN, 2019

Our mother, Smt. Geeta Bose is no more. She cast aside her mortal coil on 19 Jan, 2019 early in the morning in a peaceful lapse into the other world whence there is no return. After a protracted period of illness and absolute confinement in her Fowler Bed this was a release that had been much sought by her and now her aspiration for freedom has been fulfilled.

Born on 3 July, 1932 to Late Sunil Bose and Nirupama Bose at Rajshahi in erstwhile East Bengal, our mother, one of four siblings, grew up in the five cities of Rajshahi, Baharampur, Jalpaiguri, Dhaka and Kolkata as she had to frequently undergo change of location on account of the transferable job of her father.

At four years and several months in 1937 she had seen Netaji in Baharampur, at eleven years in 1943 while in Dhaka she was witness to the Great Bengal Famine that consumed five million lives, and saw at first hand communal carnage in Dhaka just before Partition.

In Dhaka our mother studied in the Ananda Ashram School. She was an exquisite singer and was, thus, selected to sing before what seems to have been the then President of the Ramakrishna Order, Swami Virajananda, and was blessed by him. The year was 1945 or 46 and our mother was then thirteen. Sixty years later at the advanced age of 73 in 2005 she was graced with spiritual initiation from Virajanandaji's disciple, Swami Gahanananda.

She was married to our father, Late Santosh Bose, and mothered three children, my eldest brother, Bhaskar, who died of leukaemia at the tender age of five years and seven months, my elder sister, Kasturi, and myself, Sugata.

Her marital life was spent at Jamsedhpur and then Kolkata.

Our mother was a versatile being. Music, dance, poetry, prose, theatre, art -- all these came naturally to her. But the brightest of all her talents was in the domain of designing woollens for which she became delightfully distinguished in the metropolis and way beyond. When the West Bengal Government offered her a plot to expand her enterprise from the cottage industry level to the medium scale industrial level, she had to decline the offer on grounds of health. She had to likewise decline Mother Teresa's offer asking her to train women in knitting. But her woollens still cover the selves of so many that she remains bound in a broader kinship with her countless clients.

A dutiful wife and a most affectionate mother, she glided through her advancing years with grace and assumed gradually the role of mother-in-law and grandmother. Titli and Abir, her two grandchildren, fulfilled her in old age.

Our father passed away in 1996 and these twenty-three years since then saw her mature into a mother for all.

The last five years and two months of her life she was incapacitated by the effect of a massive left brain haemorrhage that left her right side paralysed, her speech impaired and her body confined to bed completely. Through the untiring nursing of the ayahs and the physios, the medical treatment provided by doctors and the service rendered by family members, she rallied fine and remained keenly attuned to the proceedings all around. Mother's blessings are on all of them.

Thus dawned the final day of the little one that had seen the light of day in Rajshahi 86 years 6 months and 16 days ago. It was past 4.45 a.m. on 19 Jan, 2019. The flame flickered a last time, brightened, then blew off in the scented early morning breeze. All was quiet by the time I was wakened and rushed to see her gone to her distant abode from where none return.

Written by Sugata Bose