Loss

 Actually I had decided to devote the blog today to the magical evening blessed with the pristine purity of the absolutely perfect balance of sur-n-taal. My colleague's surgeon son Shantanu performed brilliantly on the santoor in the company of a tabla maestro and a flutist whose flute literally talks. 

Well, I returned home after a great concert, and with a cup of coffee was checking the wapp messages when like a slap in the face, I got the sudden news of the most untimely death of my dear colleague, Suchismita Mohanty, hardly in her early fifties. Hardly the time to go!

It seems suddenly her white blood cell count started dropping, and she never recovered despite the ventilator treatment, too, it seems. Some of my other colleagues, including the Office In-Charge, shared my acute sense of loss.

 Unlucky as it sounds now, I got introduced to Mohanty Madam during the Covid years when online I taught English Literature papers in the senior wing of her college.  For about a year and a half, we were more a voice to each other as colleges had closed down. 

I do not know how  but we grew to be good friends even when our subjects/disciplines differed. She was  a very sincere genuine person committed to teaching and to students' well-being. There were very few airs about her even when she was both, the Head of the Department and the Vice Principal.

We used to chat on various issues ranging from  the alternative medicine for her husband's backache bouts to organ donation after death (it hurts now!) to the unbelievable sense of loss when Mother is no more. Her poor kid (Mohanty Madam would always tell me about her and her progress, send me her pic's), hardly eight going nine, and now no mother for her!

She used to like my blogs a lot. She used to respond to them most warmly. Once she told me she could not sleep, and my blog on that day happened to discuss that very issue, being a night person! We shared a warm chuckle over the coincidence. 

Basically, she had a kind of deep faith in me. Sure she was nice to everyone.  She felt she could rely on me though. Research topics to be thought through to discussing problem students, we both knew the other person would be the most dependable.

Miss you a lot, Mohanty Madam! May you rest in peace! May God give your kid the energy (she is too small to say strength!) to bear this grievous loss!

Pratima@ Some three weeks back, I think, she read my blogs on consecutive days. Yet she never responded which I found a little confusing.  Thought she might be busy. How I wish I had called her up then! Death is a deadly chamber whence no echoes answer back! RIP, dear, RIP!