My grandmother, Late Smt. Nirupama Bose, knew Leela Roy well. At the time of the Partition of India, on the 14th of August, when our family was leaving Dhaka for Kolkata, Leela Roy exhorted my grandmother not to leave East Pakistan but to stay on there. She said, ''Nirupama, jabe na, jabe na. Tomra ekhanei thakbe.'' [''Nirupama, you will not go away. You all will stay here itself.''] However, our family, bound for the airport and just about to depart, came over to Kolkata that very day and put up at our house in Ballygunge which had already been built in 1939 by my grandfather, Late Sunil Kumar Bose.
My grandmother was also close to Bina Das (Bhaumik after marriage to Jyotish Bhaumik), daughter of Beni Madhav Das, Subhas Chandra Bose's Headmaster at Ravenshaw Collegiate School, Cuttack, and herself a revolutionary. Bina Das was her junior in school and younger by eight years. After my grandfather's death in 1967, when I was six years old, my grandmother, now freed of her constant occupation with her paralysed (due to cerebral stroke suffered) husband whom she served night and day for eight long years without any nursing help from anybody else in the form of ayah or nurse, used to sometimes say, '' Jai, ektu Binar bari ghurey ashi.'' [''Let me visit Bina at her house.''] Bina (Das) Bhaumik used to stay on Fern Road, Ballygunge, which was very close to our house. I never even asked my grandmother once to take me there with her and missed the golden opportunity of seeing the great revolutionary.
Many more stories of personal and familial interest but related to the revolutionaries keep streaming in but they may not be of much concern to anybody else. So, I desist here.
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo : top -- Leela (Nag) Roy ; bottom -- Bina (Das) Bhaumik
No comments:
Post a Comment