“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” (~Joan Didion)
When death comes, there’s no time to prepare for well-rehearsed thoughts and reflections. Grief is a bulldozer. A jackhammer. It knocks you down and heaps memories of the person who died on you like rubble. No amount of awareness and acceptance about the inevitability of the end of a life is what awaits us all will provide any immediate comfort. I can’t pretend. I am sad. Death knocked the wind out of me today.
In 1958, my mother’s youngest sister, my Chotomashi, had a daughter. She was named Arpita, an offering to god, someone who is dedicated. . . and the many syntheses in Sanskrit. I called her by her nickname, Bebu.
There were four of us cousins, each four years apart. As an adult I was amazed at the harmony and the symmetry of our births. My sister was the oldest, then me, Babu (Abhijit) after me. The cousins were my closest relatives. And being so close in age helped. It also helped that our parents liked each other and spent a lot of time together, including many vacations.
(Above): Bebu (closest to camera) at Mullen Street, mid-1980s
(Below): Bebu (center), Babu (with mustache), Papiya (Babu’s wife) and Papiya’s brother. 1983
Bebu got married in the early ‘80s. She had a little boy. Avishek. Soon there were twins, boys, Aviroop and Avinash.
Then her husband died one morning. Heart attack. I think he was in his late thirties. Bebu was in her mid-thirties at most.
I saw her infrequently. Only on my trips to India, which at that time weren’t very often. She taught school and raised her boys. I have no idea what she struggled with and struggle she must have.
It’s our nature to recall patches, fragments of a person to push against forgetting.
I look at these scattered photographs and realize that she resembled both her parents, especially her mother’s deeply angular features. As she grew older, her voice was her mother’s, including the cadence.
When my mother died, Bebu bathed and dressed her for the coffin. I heard this from my oldest aunt. It stayed with me.
In Behala, October 2025
(All photographs courtesy of the author. Reproductions are prohibited without written permission)