by DR. SAROJINI SAHOO
SOURCE/Times of Assam
I had an opportunity to share a meeting with Mamoni Raisom Goswami in Bhubaneswar on June 9,2010 at Jaydev Bhavan on account of Nandini Satpathy’s 79th Birth Anniversary, where she attended as Chief Guest and I was as Chief Speaker. The introducer in that meeting introduced Mamoni to the attended audience that she was a famous writer of Assamese literature, to which I made a correction in my speech, and said it would be an injustice for Mamoni to call her an Assamese writer only as the locales of many of Goswami’s writings are outside Assam e.g. Chenabar Srot is set in Jammu and Kashmir, The Blue Necked Braja in Uttar Pradesh, Ahiran in Madhya Pradesh, The Rusted Sword (amore Dhara Tarowal) in Uttar Pradesh, Pages Stained With Blood (Tez Aru Dhulire Dhusharita Prishta) in Delhi, etc. She was writing in Assamese, but her landscape was wider.
Bhubaneswar meeting was not our first meeting. When I had been to Guwahati to attend a Sahitya Akademy arranged conference in 2006, she had greeted me there and we could build a fine friendship. Later we met several time in Delhi during different occasions. What made us come closer were that we both are a very rare poets and are confirmed fiction writer and we possess same out look in various topic and various ideas about feminism and femininity. What I liked most in her personality that she never hesitated to use make up despite of her age and she used to portray herself as a young girl. Once she told me, “ Saroj, I never any day tried to kill the young girl residing inside me” and her words made me impressed and I bow my head for the sensibility she had . Wearing red Sari always (whenever I met her, I found her in red) with lipstick, kajal with unbind hair. Her get up and gesture had become her logo. I think it was her protest to the society. She was a Vaishnavite widow from her young age and in Assam and in many parts of India also, widows are not allowed to wear ornaments or flowers, perfumed oil or soap and they cannot use mirror and have to wear white dresses and cannot put vermilion on her forehead. When I read her novel The Moth-Eaten Howdah of a Tusker’ (‘Datal Hatir Une Khowa Howda’), I could understand what made her to create the characters like Durga and Giribala so live and dissenter.
Writing under the shadow of the three-decade long insurgency in Assam, litterateur Indira Raisom Goswami wielded the pen not only to highlight the issue of violence but also took the initiative of persuading the banned ULFA to come forward for dialogue with the outfit even setting up the Peoples” Consultative Group (PCG) in 2003 and appointing her as an advisor. I can remember one of her stories (I am sorry, at this moment I can’t remember the title), in which she described life of a Boro young boy, who turned into a militant. Speaking about the story, Mamoni once told me how the story idea developed in a jungle area when she had to spend her nights in a tribal village.
Now, on last Tuesday, November 29, while I was busy with my classes in college, I received a call that Momoni Raisom Goswami passed away in the morning. And, I got mum for a while. I rushed to my laptop and then tweeted: “It’s a sad day. Passing away of Mamoni Goswami will not only leave a void but also negated the hearts who know her.”
Dr. Sahoo’s blog is Sense & Sensuality