A terrible goddess
Smita Kakoty to Dipankar Goswami
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After the way we parted, I would not have written to you at all. But then, your goddess forced me to...
Deep, she scares me-o, toure xapat she does. She wants you back and because you are gone and she can't have you worshipping her in that servile manner of yours, day in and day out, at her doorstep, she's after me now. She thinks I'm responsible for your going away, jano? Ghuri ah na. Come back Deep, come back, please…
She just came in my dream, savage goddess, all naked and bloody. She was Sinnamasta, Kesaikhaiti, whoever, the terrible goddess Kamakhya. She wants my blood if she can't have her mortal lover, her bhakat, her blind worshipper, back…
She blames me. Well, you know what? I blame her too. It's because of her you had to leave me and go back. It's because of her and that blasted book on her. Why couldn't you stay back and write it here? Kio kio kio?
But think about it – she is here, your divine inspiration, and I am here, your mortal lover. Hoine? So why can't you take a bloody sabbatical and come back here and write it here and then go back to wherever you want to and I won't complain? Ahibi ne? Please…
I won't even cling to you again the way I did at the airport and embarrass you in public again, bidda xapat!
Smit
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A terrible goddess (2)
A terrible goddess (2)
Dipankar.Bhattacharjee to Smita Kakoty
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Debi Debi Debi! :-)
Toi jano Debi, you do not need to use the goddess as an excuse to want me back! If you want me back, you just have to say so, nohoi? And please don’t call the goddess ‘savage’ – since when have you started using such politically incorrect language ;-)
And what do you mean by ‘after the way we parted’ ha? I know I offended you at the airport when I said you were embarrassing me and creating a scene in public, and I am sorry. Mouk khemibi Ai! I would give up anything now to come back and have you cling to me the way you did at the airport, not letting me out of the car. But you know, nohoi, that it is not possible for me to come back immediately? It makes me feel good though to know you will be there waiting so eagerly for me to get back. I told you I shall try my best to finish my book as soon as possible and come back to you. Koisilu ne? We had a deal, so please stick to your side of it and make it easier for me to stick to mine. Let’s both have a little patience – I just reached here, Pagoli!
What is the time there? Ro, against my better judgment, let me call you…
Dipankar
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A terrible goddess (3)
Dipankar.Bhattacharjee to Smita Kakoty
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Debi,
Please forgive me for cutting the line so abruptly. But I cannot stand the deluge your tears force through my veins, Banya. You do not know how it affects me! That is why I do not like to call you – you always cry on the phone! I warned you just the other day that if you keep crying like this, I will be forced to give up my book, my job, everything and come back to you immediately. And you had said that you do not like people who compromise on their work for whatever reason. Koisili ne?
You would hate me for leaving my work and going back, believe me. You might not feel that way now, but if I go back, I will come in your way – you will not be able to do your work the way you are used to and you will hate me, moi janu. I know how much you love your work, being among your ‘own people’ (my possessive princess, I love the way you make everything your own).
If not, then why are we apart at all? You refused to apply for the jobs I asked you to consider here, toi jano. And if I go back, you might not want to work in the field, or worse, feel obliged not to because of me. I have no right to do that, Aijoni. You would wither away if you were to be in the city all the time, my little mountain flower. Ai o, you should stay where you can blossom, and where they need your soft touch of compassion. I know I need your touch and feel myself, but I cannot be so selfish as to ask you to uproot yourself from where you belong, and either stay permanently in Guwahati – in the event of my going back to live there – or here, with me in this distant city where there is neither love nor companionship.
I’m living in the hope that soon, sometime very soon, I shall be able to wrap up my cosmetic life here and come back there where your beauty and fragrance is. Till then, Debi, have patience and do not make it more difficult for me than it already is, please.
Reply now,
Dipankar
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A terrible goddess (4)
Smita Kakoty to Dipankar.Bhattacharjee
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So you would like to have me cling to you now, hoi?
Why did you laugh at me about the goddess scaring me then, ko?
Why did you hang up on me, ko ko?
If you hate to hear me cry, why do you leave me, ha?
Would you have clung to me like I cling to you, ko etia?
Ko ko ko?
You would not, Deep. And there lies the difference. I think I’ll always need you more than you will ever need me. You are so bloody self-sufficient with your books and your courses and your goddess. It's almost like I am there and yet, not there. I know. Aw, moi janu, moi janu, moi janu.
And please don't use my work as an excuse for your not coming back here......
I can't take it anymore Deep. This strain is too much. How long will this go on? Me looking forward for so so so long to seeing you, meeting and finally feeling alive after months of numbness, and then, xeiyya! time for you to leave again. And me crawling back into the grave once more.
Once more, and I swear I will die. It takes a heavy toll, Deep, very heavy. Moi nauaru aru.
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A terrible goddess (5)
Smita Kakoty to Dipankar.Bhattacharjee
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Oi old man,
I was sleepy and depressed last night when I wrote you that mail, biuso? And very very grumpy. And I had not read all the things you had written too. Boliya neki? Me a mountain flower! Moi? You have lost it, burha. Stop romanticizing me - I have told you that often enough, hoi ne nohoi? I don't live in any mountain though I might have been born on a hill - I love hills - and I’m not some Florence Nightingale figure to my people, jani tho. But my people are mine alright J, like the mountains are mine, like the river, the old man river, my Luit, my Brahmaputa, is mine, like you are mine, like everything I see is mine. Mour mour mour! Like that old imposing majestic Ahat tree is mine - the one I showed you on our way to Mangaldoi last time... hmmm... so many things are mine, but the one thing of mine that I really really want at this moment is not here with me. You are gone, Deep, and I can't believe it yet...
But that's beside the point, thik ase? The point is, if you hate your cosmetic life so much why don't you just leave it behind and come back? Asalate Deep, you are too comfortable out there to ever want to come back. Cosmetic or not, it is the life you prefer, and it suits your personality. It would be doing an injustice to want you to come back just because I can't live without you. And I can't leave here. Mane, give me a break aru, I just got back. All those years wasted trying to build a professional career, away from the one place I should have never left! I didn't leave that life and my career behind on the mainland, in Delhi
And so we are stuck - you in cold cold London
Stop-gap is the word that comes to mind when I think of our situation, but we cannot go through life in this way forever. I do not want a stop-gap relationship, certainly not with you, the best thing to have happened to me in a long long time... Aiow, I'm going to die, or cry, or both. Jau etia, bye,
Smit
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A terrible goddess (6)
Dipankar.Bhattacharjee to Smita Kakoty
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Debi,
Who ARE you, really? Debi ne manuxi? Goddess, woman or child? What drastic transformation from petulant intractable child to insightful psychoanalyst! But that is so typically you J - wanting one moment to be petted like a baby and seducing me the next like a profligate! Don’t I remember it all, Mayabini? And then one minute you are close to tears because I am reading on Kamakhya and you think I pay more attention to the goddess than to you, and the next minute, you scream and shout at me and want me to leave you alone because you do not want me intruding upon your poetry. You make me go through so many emotions at the same time, Majoni, I never know what to expect from you next.
Nobody, but nobody, has ever managed to make me feel this way. Xasai koisu! Ture xapat! What I feel for you, Debi, is not one tenth of what I have felt for anybody in my entire life, and two months together this time only made me feel how fortunate I am to have you in my life. You could have anybody you want, Goddess, but you chose an ancient relic like me; a staid old professor who writes books and cannot (or will not, which is worse I suppose) participate in your noble work of bringing succour to your people. I really admire your breadth of heart, Aijoni, and I love you, like no man can ever love you.
But what makes you think that I’m too comfortable here? Ko sun. And that our relationship is only stopgap? Why do you feel this way, Xounjoni? We did make provisions for a future this time by buying the apartment, didn’t we? I’m sorry I couldn’t give you the tiny Assam-type house with the huge garden in front that you wanted. Could we perhaps have waited and looked around some more? Toi ki kawo? But there just wasn’t enough time - the two months just flew past. And you know, Moina, that you would not have had the time to tend to the garden. It would have become a jungle out there, and whenever you were back from the field, it would have taken all your time and energy to clear it up. And by the time it was cleared, you would have had to leave again. Maybe it was for the best we bought the apartment. Now that I know I have a home to go back to, I’m all the more keen to complete the project as soon as possible and return – hopefully for good this time. We both know we are not a conventional couple what with our age difference and the physical distance between us, but that only sets us apart from the rest, nohoi janu? I promise you, Debi, we will soon be together. Xapat khai koisu.
My editor has already called about the book and I need to now sit down and organize my notes from all the spadework that I did on this trip. As soon as I have organized my data a little, I can begin with my first chapter. And once again, Debi, I am warning you, please do not get upset with me if I switch off completely for long periods. I need to do that while writing. I know you did say you will understand, but I am always so scared of hurting you with my insensitivity, jano? I’m scared that being day in and day out with the insensate books and rowdy crowd of students here at the university, I might have become too insensitive myself. And you are such a delicate sensitive thing.
I wonder when I see the young people here, what you would have been like at their age. Somehow I cannot see you as someone who could ever have been anything but extraordinary, standing out among all the other students. And yet, I do not remember you from my Cotton College
Having taught here all these years now, I often wonder if I could not have stayed back in Assam
But just look at the length of this mail! Now I know I am ready to start writing my book J I have got into my writing mode and I believe this is a sign from the goddess that I should not delay the process any further. Moromi, you accuse me of being in love with the goddess. But I can't help it. If one is from Assam
Write back soon, Xounjoni, and take care,
Dipankar
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A terrible goddess (7)
Smita Kakoty to Dipankar.Bhattacharjee
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Aw sure, hoi tu, take her side. Why not? She was your first love – I come a distant second, nohoi janu? J
But let’s not fight today – or ‘debate’ as you will no doubt correct me: Debi, we are not fighting, just debating, like two individuals who have different perspectives on the same thing ;-) Today, I am very happy – not completely happy abasye – how can I be without you here – but as happy as I can be under the circumstances. I am happy because I am going back to the field after a long long time! Jit just called again – last night when he called I told him I was sleeping – moi bor beya manuh dei – when I was actually sitting and writing to you, heh heh! I don’t want anybody coming between you and me – even if we only have a chain of emails tying us together now….
But no, we are venturing into depressing territory again. I was telling you something about being happy. O, Jit called – not that that in itself made me happy aru – I talk to him every day at work – but what he said made me very happy. It reminded me of Bishnu Rabha…
After all, it was Bishnu Rabha and people like him – like say, Jyotiprasad Agarwala – who kept the dialogue between the various communities of Assam alive, nohoine, and thus promoted the peaceful coexistence and co-mingling of all the peoples of the region based not on the hegemony or domination of one particular language, religion or community, but on a natural evolutionary symbiotic relationship?
Wondering where that came from? Let me explain, xun.
Jit and all had gone to the Bongaigaon relief camps again last week like I told you (when you had said, I feel bad that you have to stay back only because I am here, as if I could sacrifice those last few precious moments I had left with you, mane!) and they went to two of the camps, and the people in both places were asking about me. Jit says at the Adivasi camp in Kalabari, the people remembered me as ‘the woman who told us to talk, talk, talk’ – amak kotha kobole kuwa manuh joni, because I used to sit with them every evening – Gomati, Jit, Nilima and Prasen da would also join us – and over some haria that they brewed and a few bottles of rum that Prasen da never seems to run out of, we would encourage them to talk to us about themselves, about their lives before and after the riots, about everything. I used to tell them that talking is therapeutic – xasa katha nohoine? – and that they should start talking not just to us but to the Bodo people living near the camp also. It would help heal the wounds, I’d told them. I’d also told them that talking to each other would help build mutual trust and understanding, and provide a common platform of give and take, prevent further lacerations.
Jano Deep, I have often felt that during the years he was underground, Rabha had most effectively initiated such a dialogue between communities, going from village to village, hiding there (but not so effectively of course, since everybody in the village and in all the surrounding villages came to see him wherever he was supposed to be hiding J), and talking to them, inviting them to talk to him and to each other. I am always reminded of that scene from Medini Choudhury’s account of his life in Pherengadao, where he is sitting surrounded by all those villagers one night, everybody drinking freshly brewed rice beer (was it joumai?) and talking to them, educating them, rousing them... And there must have been so many nights like that, so many villages visited, so many villagers involved, so much camaraderie instilled. I wish I could do something like that someday, but there is already so much poison in the minds of our people for one another, often it seems like an impossible task...
But no, I won’t be depressed today! Nai, nai!
You know what the Adivasi people at Kalabari had said to me at the time? They had not seemed to take my suggestion too well – they had said the Bodos were the people who had killed their friends and families and snatched away their lands and livelihoods, how can there be any conversation with them? Some of them had become quite angry at my suggestion, jano. But it seems at least they remember. They remember what I’d said, so there’s still hope, hobola…
And they remember me, Deep – it feels so good when people remember you-o – it makes you feel like you have left something of yourself behind and grown beyond your limitation as just one person, one being – it’s almost like you are scattered all over those places where you are remembered and you have escaped the confines of having to be just one – you can be so many, and in so many places. It makes me feel like god, one but not one! (Talking of one god, remind me to give you a talking to about your ideas on the Xankari one-god-one-refuge tradition sometime soon! I’m not in the mood to ‘debate’ today.)
Is it too conceited of me, Deep, to feel like god? Well, I don’t feel omnipotent like him – on the contrary, I feel quite helpless when I can’t do anything for all these people who are suffering – but it does make me feel expansive, bistrita, unlimited… However, it’s not much good to feel like god, if you can’t do anything much, ki labh? There is so much I want to do for these people, Deep, and so little that I can! Sometimes I feel like I know exactly what it is that needs to be done to bring peace to my Assam, my home, my Northeast, and to set everything right – everything that has gone wrong beginning with the misguided ethnic and nationalist politics of the region and the mishandling of indigenous aspirations and settler problems. But when I sit down to think what it is that actually needs to be done, in practical terms, I just can’t put my finger on it! I feel so helpless then, and not in the least like god... Why is god so smug anyway? He is not very good either, nor is he just. Nohole why should there be some people who suffer so much – 12 years in a relief camp is no joke, and ‘relief’ is quite a misnomer here, believe me – while others sit in comfortable newly-bought fancy apartments and complain about their stop-gap love lives? These people have been living stop-gap, make-shift lives for more than a decade now, Deep, and they don’t have much of a future to look forward to either! Can you imagine you or me being able to do that?
I hate Sunil, and his self-righteous mainland airs - 'so, have you ever been to Delhi?' he asked me the day I first met him about the job, like I haven’t lived if I haven’t seen Delhi – you should have seen the look on his face when I said I hated Delhi so much, I’d left my job there and come back and never wanted to go back there again J I also know he is part of the whole money-making NGO racket, but so long as he and his organization gives me the opportunity to work among my people, I will stick on.
But I’m really glad I have such good colleagues to work with, dei. Jit just said that they all loved you – Smitr burhatu: ‘Smit’s old man’ – and said to tell you they will take care of me while you are away – not to worry. He probhu, everybody thinks I'm quite incapable of looking after myself , seh! And here I am wondering how I can change the destiny of an entire nation and so many communities. Si si!
Am I a fool, Deep? I think I am, because every time I try thinking with my head, I end up using my heart. One can't think straight when one is thinking through their heart, pare janu? And here again I am being like the man I love – like Bishnu Rabha. Didn’t Goswami saar – mane Praphulla Dutta Goswami saar – write that he was not at all in touch with reality, that he lived in a romantic bubble he created for himself? I was very angry with saar when I read it the first time, but now I think he wasn’t all that wrong. The good that Rabha did while he was alive has no parallel, but he did not make any provisions for his good work to live on. Asalate, I think that he never thought he was doing anything but what he felt like, and that what he felt like doing was the very thing that our people needed then. It is also the very thing that we still need, only he is no more and his legacy has been corrupted and co-opted. Hoi, he was too much of a romantic to realise that after he was dead, he and his life and work could be used any which way by every vested interest section of our society. The dominant Axamiyā community will use him – a Bodo – as their brand ambassador, their cultural icon when it suits them, but dominate over all the other communities that Rabha considered a part of the greater Axamiyā nation, including the Bodos. There are those who will use his rousing lyrics – O Axamiyā deka dal/Aji toure tejal badan malin kio hol? – to awaken the sleeping chauvinistic spirits of the younger generation, but forget that Rabha’s politics was one of inclusion and integration, not one of exclusion. They consider his politics dangerous, because it might put an end to the conflicts that have proved so lucrative for a section of the elites, where thousands died so that a few could fulfil their political ambitions and greed for more funds, more money that could line their pockets. And so he lives on in bits and pieces – adharuake – in the Axamiyā mind as the kalaguru, the master of arts, his politics conveniently forgotten. Maybe it’s his idealism that we need most now, Deep, ne ki kawo? If your politics is about the people, can you ever be anything but a romantic?
I do try not to be too romantic and idealistic about things myself, Deep, and you are my inspiration, you who have a breadth of intellect I have never seen in anybody else. Of course, I have my differences with you, and I don't think you think right in many cases (especially about egalitarianism in Xankari culture – I MUST talk to you about that soon), holeu... I love you all the same. It's nice we bought the apartment, and when I return from this field trip, I will be coming back to my own home, it will no longer be rented place. Thank god Das khura wanted to sell the house to us. I hate having to shift things around, though I feel like that's what I have been doing all my life. At least, all my adult life. Sometimes it's fun - you know- all the romanticism surrounding a jajabori life – I love the life of a vagabond. But sometimes, it can be very tiring... I know I give this line to my Ma all the time - about being settled in unsettled-ness. Kintu ketiaba, just sometimes, not too often though, fatigue sets in from all these mental and physical wanderings. Am I growing old? This time at least, I will be coming home to OUR home and I will have the memory of your presence to keep me warm. ummmmmmm...
Abasye, I would have loved to have my Assam-type house with the garden in front as well... AND DONT YOU DARE SAY ANYTHING ABOUT JUNGLES! I LOVE JUNGLES. SO WHAT IF WE HAD A JUNGLE IN OUR FRONT YARD? I WOULD ACTUALLY LOVE THAT. You know I hate order. And jungles are so chaotic, you could get lost in them. I love getting lost. The thrill of finding yourself again is like being reborn... Will you go looking for me if I ever got lost Deep? I would love to be reborn in your arms... xosake!
Deep, Deep, I love you so much-o. I have loved you since the first day I saw you in the Social Anthropology class so many years ago. You didn't know that nohoi? It was one of those crushes you have on your teacher and moon over them in class and pay no attention to anything that is being taught and watch with dreamy eyes the slight tilt of their head or the gestures of their hands and imagine them – a la Indiana Jones – rushing off into some wild adventure fraught with danger and peril and wish someday you will grow up to be a world famous academic and meet them in some international conference where they have come to talk about their latest finding and your eyes will meet across the conference table and the spark will be ignited and you will meet up later and that will be the beginning of a passionate love affair…
I’d always thought myself to be above silly, girly crushes, and so I had never told anybody about it, not even you – mane, I mean, it’s too embarrassing! Then one day, when I was in my third year BA in Delhi University , there was this notice up in our college notice board which said “Talk by Professor Dipankar Goswami at the Arts Faculty today on ‘Worship of the Female Principle and Shaktism in Assam Cotton College and is teaching in some vague university in the UK UK Assam
And now I’m tired of writing and writing and writing. So I’ll stop. Aru aru aru... Aru ki kom ko? Ja, I'll write to you when you mail me next and tell me about what you have done on your book so far. I won’t mind if you switch off, so long as you don’t start panicking and calling up my friends about my whereabouts while I am in the field. I shall most probably be leaving next week, and this time I might be gone for two weeks or more, thik ase?
Love you old man, jatna lobi
Smit
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