Until we meet again

 

“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die”- Thomas Campbell

I heard her voice even before I saw her. The day was 26^th April, 2005. I had joined  CARE - an international humanitarian aid organization in their Tsunami response program in Chennai.

Since it was my first day I had arrived very early. As  I waited in the reception, I heard from one of the rooms inside , a sweet voice with a strong Bengali accent speaking in English on the telephone to someone. I suppressed a smile as I heard her trying to explain some finer point about the organization’s procurement policy to the person at the other end .  Surprisingly there was no irritation in the voice though she was repeating the same information over and over again. As soon as she finished her call, she came out into the reception area and that was when I first set my eyes on what would remain etched in my mind as the symbol of kindness and warmth. She was wearing  a blue ikkat salwar kameez . Her  steel rimmed glasses and well oiled plait  gave her the image of a school teacher. But what struck me most about her was the smile of welcome on her face as I introduced myself.

She was named Dipashree but we all called her Dipadi. She had joined the organization when she was just out of college. It was her first and only job.  She had worked in almost all of CARE’s  state offices and been part of various humanitarian response projects . There was no one in CARE India at one point in time who did not know her. And to everyone she was Dipadi. Even the expat staff sometimes called her Dipadi.

Dipadi is someone I consider  my “Soul sister”. And coincidentally , she shares her name with my biological sister. As a person who had grown up in Calcutta ,Dipadi to me was everything that I had until then been missing in my life in Chennai. I loved my  job in CARE not just because  I enjoyed the work but because people like her made that work so enjoyable.

A humanitarian project involves long hours of work as you are responding to a crisis. The Chennai office was a new one and many team members like me were new to the organization. Though we knew what we had to do, we were not aware of the policies and the procedures. We had literally landed running on our feet, as we tried to grapple with the enormous work load. Dipadi as the lead for finance, administration and procurement was our “go to “person for almost everything.

I remember sitting with her until late evening, as we finalized the donor reports, matching outreach numbers with the financials. As we sat poring into the desk top computer screen , she would suddenly ask me “Ektu cha khabe” ( Would you like to drink some tea?). And then at 8.00 PM we would request one of the support  staff to make us some tea. If there was no one around ( which was often the case)  she would go into the kitchen and make the tea, grumbling about the mess the pantry area was in, exclaiming “Eesh” every now and then in true Bengali style as she cleaned it up. A fantastic cook, Dipadi was as much at home cleaning a tea stained stove top as she was while going through the CARE accounting program  ( I think  it was called “Scala” ) to pull out some crucial missing numbers.

Dipadi had moved from Calcutta to Chennai, initially to “hold the fort” for the emergency response program but she stayed on for almost three  years after that. She was single. She had her mother living in Calcutta with whom she spoke everyday. She also spoke to her mother’s live in household help cum caregiver,  discussing in minute detail, the menu for the day , her mother’s medication or any other issue relating to the running of the house there. Whenever I thought I was juggling too many different roles as a woman  I was humbled to see that she juggled not just roles but universes. She was on one hand the daughter who managed her elderly mother’s home virtually in one city, maintaining the equilibrium there, while on the other hand she was an important team member in the office in another city.

She was an amazing cook. Yet, I think she lacked the time to cook a proper meal for herself. Her biggest delight was  “doi bhat” or “thayir saadam” ( curd rice) that she had begun to love in Chennai. I would see her order it for lunch almost every other day. But when she decided to cook, she could put all seasoned chefs to shame.

I remember an office party that was organized in 2007 when we had moved into a new office. As the lead chef, she supervised all the cooking  we did in the backyard of the office on a small gas stove. It was one of the happiest o events I remember in my entire professional life.

One of the “projects” that some of us used to speak of was to get “Dipadi married”. She humoured us whenever we spoke about this, joining in the fun.  I remember travelling with her once to Cuddalore to visit a small grassroot level NGO partner of ours, whose financial systems she had come to streamline. The accountant there was in awe of her saying “Yes Madam” to anything she mentioned. I teased her saying that she should find herself a life partner like him who always said “Yes Madam”. She mentioned this to our boss during a call that evening in her Bengali accented Hindi “Boss aap Meera ko yahan program monitoring ke liye bheja hai lekin woh to  marriage brokering karta hai” ( you have sent Meera here for program monitoring but she seems to be doing marriage brokering)

She had her own set of biases. Like most Bengalis, she would reduce any physical ailment to the lowest common denominator of “Gas”. I remember one afternoon when I was suffering from a splitting headache in the office, she came up to me and said “Dekho Gas phas hoyechhe nishchoy” ( Look here it must be gas or something)

 She also had that  Bengali sense of superiority when it came to culture .  I remember going shopping with her to the Lajpatnagar Market  during one of our official trips to Delhi.  After visiting shop after shop that only seemed to have  bright and gaudy coloured clothing, she told the shopkeeper in the next shop we visited, “Arre kuchh accha dikhao na. Yeh sab toh bilkul Punjabi logon ke liye lagta hai”  ( Please show me something good. All these  seem like they are for Punjabi people) completely oblivious to the fact that Lajpat Nagar was a Punjabi area! I had to stop myself from giggling as she lectured the owner of the shop about how his wares were not catering to “refined” tastes.

But despite her slight Bengali chauvinism, she felt very close to Odisha because she had grown up in Cuttack. She could speak Oriya fluently and only wore Odisha handloom.  I would tell her  that she was a walking exhibition for Odisha Handloom Development Corporation. She was the target of a lot of leg pulling, especially during those rare moments when she got irritated. But her irritation was just momentary, because she would start laughing with all of us.

She was a peculiar mixture of modernity and tradition.. Dipadi and I were sharing dinner in our hotel room in Guntur when we watched a particularly bad singer by name Himesh Reshamiyya sing  on TV. Not only was he singing badly , he was also dressed ridiculously. He had left his shirt unbuttoned and a heavy gold chain dangled on his exposed chest. “Chi Chi! Ki Oshobho” ( How uncultured ) she exclaimed as I rolled on the bed  with laughter, trying to capture that moment inside my head. But at the same time, she was quite broad minded about many things like inter caste or inter religious marriages, love affairs  and live in relationships . 

When she left the Chennai office for Bhubaneshwar I was very sad . I couldn’t control my tears. But she consoled me saying “Ami aar koto din thakbo ekhane” ( How long will I stay here). She told me that one should not get so emotionally attached to colleagues like this ,because people come and they go.

Yesterday when I heard the news that she was no more, her words - “Ami aar koto din thakbo ekhane” came back to me. I couldn’t believe that she had left this world because I had just spoken to her four days ago. We spoke  for about 10 minutes. She had a lot of questions about how I was , what my daughter was doing and where was I living now. . She also told me about her older sister’s demise two years ago, her younger sister who lived in Australia and whose children were about as old as my daughter. She then spoke about her older sister’s son and his wife. But when I asked about her health, she sounded very vague and tried to hide her answer behind laughter. I wonder now if she knew her end was near!

I feel guilty that I had not kept in touch with her as often as I should have. I had met her last at Bhubaneshwar around December 2015. She was due for retirement in January . We had talked about going together to Kanyakumari where she had visited with her mother while she was posted in Chennai. Her mother had since expired but Dipadi had a strong support system at her home in Kolkata and I knew she was looking forward to going back there.  However I was not sure how she would adjust to a retired life, considering almost all her adult life she had been working for CARE.

Her demise has in a way signalled to me the end of a generation of people who used to be part of the development sector in our country. They had no fancy degrees but loads of common sense. They led by example. They were  kind and patient and acknowledged everyone’s  contribution in the team. They gave their lives to an organization and did not believe in switching jobs simply because the present situation might be difficult. These are the people who built the foundation of development and humanitarian work in India. Never overtly emotional about the poverty and suffering they saw in the field, they carried in their hearts a deep sense of service to humanity.

It is a new world today and CARE itself is adapting to this new context of development work in India. But the contribution of stalwarts like Dipadi can never be forgotten.

Dipadi, I will miss your presence in this world but every act of kindness of yours will be remembered until I am myself ready to  leave this world . And then one day when we meet somewhere in some other universe, you will probably greet me again with that smile you wore when I first saw you and  ask your favorite question “Ektu cha khabey”?