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Papiya Ghosh 1953-2006
BY JYOTIRMAYA SHARMA, IN SEMINAR, FEBRUARY,
2007
She worked on the dispossessed, the exiled
and the hopeless. As a historian, Papiya
Ghosh was not necessarily concerned with the
mainstream. For her the migrant workers of
Bihar were of great concern, and among them
the Muslims, who were shortchanged doubly.
Her work spanned all those within the
sub-continent who belonged and yet were
marginalized. The displacement of
individuals through the actions of
individuals or the caprice of history
bothered her. Her posthumously published
work, The Partition and the South Asian
Diaspora: Extending the Subcontinent, is a
lasting testimony to her intellectual
concerns. These stories were to her the real
stories to be told loudly and clearly, just
in case those who did not have a voice were
forgotten.
Papiya Ghosh loved stories. Every event had
to be narrated in the form of a kahani. She
needed every detail about colour, texture,
smell and sound to be part of the narration.
She herself told fantastic stories, and her
anecdotes were told in a masterly mixture of
English and Hindi, where like criss-crossing
streams the two languages and phrases she
had invented merged effortlessly into one
another.
Papiya is now dead, and the ghastly manner
of her departure cannot be rendered as a
‘kahani’ in the way she liked to listen and
speak. A friend who knew her told me
recently of the effort she has made in order
to get the Papiya we knew back to mind
without the events of 3 December
intervening. We, her friends, were so used
to listening to good stories in Papiya’s
company that it is difficult for all of us
to comprehend the manner of her departure.
For me, the first memories of Papiya would
always be that of her rooms in the Public
Entry building of the Indian Institute of
Advanced Study. Her hospitality was
matchless, and her room the very picture of
beauty and order. She hated clutter,
disorder and ugliness in all forms, and her
immediate environment reflected her finely
honed aesthetic sensibilities. It was in
these rooms where gossip achieved
metaphysical heights, quarrels were
sorted-out, and friendships for life made.
She had a pet name for all her friends.
Those who were not her friends, but amused
her were also rechristened. The list
included Dolly, Sally, Awareness, Victoria,
Imelda, Earl Grey, Molly, Reindeer, Savvy
and so on. I was Tiger, named so after I
growled at a speaker in one of the weekly
seminars at the Institute. And of course,
she was Polly. We became these names, for
her, and for each other.
The centre of her intellectual life was
driven by a deep consciousness of her
identity as a Bihari and as a liberal. If
these two identities came in the way of each
other and stood in antagonistic opposition,
Bihar eventually won hands down. She stayed
on in Patna despite threats from the land
mafia because leaving would not merely mean
geographical displacement, but abandoning an
idea and an engagement.
When I visited her in Patna in 2000, her
greatest regret was that Auntie Ghosh, her
mother, was no longer there and would have
loved to meet me. She played some Rabindra
Sangeet, and when I remarked that a
particular composition was my favourite,
Papiya tearfully told me that it was Auntie
Ghosh’s favourite number too.
In 2001 and 2002, Papiya came to Hyderabad
and pronounced that my new flat was ‘khoob
bhaalo’. She loved the view from the
hilltop, where she gazed fondly at the view
of the Golkonda fort. She loved the dinner
Peacered (her name for him, a translation of
Shantilal), my cook, had made for her, and
he was rewarded with several pictures taken
of him in the kitchen with his paraphernalia
around.
Four days before she passed on, we spoke on
the phone for a long time. She always asked
for the well being of the living as well as
the dead. Papiya never failed to call me on
the death anniversary of my grandmother, and
she even remembered the day our favourite
dog, Sumo, died. She sent up prayers for all
of them. Her generosity and her sense of
empathy were boundless.
Today when I look around, the beautiful
porcelain coaster on which I place my
morning cup of coffee was given by her. The
wooden elephant from Indonesia on my shelf
was a birthday present from her. A small
porcelain bowl on my desk was her gift when
I left the Institute. There are at least two
dozen books on my shelves that were given by
her over the years. If these objects are
also part of a story, then, the manner of
her departure only heightens one’s awareness
of how narratives take a different turn and
change the very way in which stories are
begun, continued and come to an end.
Papiya was constantly sending up duas for
everyone, especially her friends. Maybe, we,
her friends, did not regularly send up
enough ‘duas’ for her. Maybe, we never felt
that someone so vivacious needed prayers.
The Almighty shortchanged her in the end.
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