A Life in Words, Khadi, and Rice-Milk Dessert

When I had returned home from school one afternoon, I had brought along a certificate to show that I had won the first prize in an essay writing competition. My parents were not surprised; by the time I was an adolescent, I was winning fewer prizes in drawing than in writing. That afternoon, there was someone else at home to show my certificate to. Kaka—my maternal grandfather, who only wore khadi, and had gone to jail with Gandhi during the Independence movement, and was a publisher and editor of a literary magazine that stood as an intellectual pillar for the Assamese society—was sitting crouched in that comfortable chair, writing into his journal, and making plans of where to visit next, during his visit to us in Bombay.

I showed him my certificate and his face the colour of rose-dipped milk acquired a redder tinge, with his large smile. He pulled me closer to his face, and rubbed my cheeks against his; the stubble of his unshaved beard piercing my skin, much to my annoyance but also knowing that was his favourite way to show love. Having been born in 1912, Siva Prasad Barooah then went on to tell me the story of when he won the second prize in an essay writing competition in school: “Can you think what was the prize? It was a stainless steel safety pin!” He said with laughter, in utter disbelief how the world had changed over the decades, as I was well aware of the tattered corners of his khadi cloth bag held together by a few safety pins.

My father—Kaka’s beloved son-in-law—took it upon himself to get the khadi bag repaired with durable yarn; get his eyeglasses cleaned; and most importantly, get the worn heels of his sturdy shoes fixed with new blocks of rubber. Nobody could stop that 80-something man from walking up to 15 kms a day; the best that could be done to protect his feet and legs were to repair the shoes.

Walking with Words

Well into his 90s, Kaka could walk long distances. How did he do that in his hometown of Guwahati? That I don’t know much about, but what I do have are memories of incoming calls to our landline in our Bombay home: calls that came from Borivali, Thane, Churchgate, all of which were quite a distance from our home in Kalina. The calls would come from Assamese families living there, that Kaka had somehow known about—even though my parents themselves were well-connected with the Assamese diaspora in Bombay. These newly-discovered people would be calling to inform us of four things: that they were honoured that a senior writer and editor was visiting their home; that they were so delighted to receive a copy of the latest Bordoichila magazine from him; that Kaka would be having lunch with them; that he would reach home by evening.

Bordoichila was born in 1931, and Kaka came on as its editor later, and he passionately sustained it for several decades. It was the platform that announced the literary acumen of many people who went on to become well-known writers in Assam, and beyond. It was published during Bohag Bihu, or in April, and its name signifies the dark storms in spring, just before sunset, with dark grey clouds bringing torrential rain, to mark the onset of Bohag (from the Hindu calendar of Baisakh). I came across a small write-up by literary scholar, political scientist and Sahitya Academy recipient Dr Hiren Gohain, who wrote how, when he was a youth, he often heard the elders impatiently wait for the next issue of the magazine.

In an article written in 2004 by Dr Gohain that my mother found, he had written how the expanse of Kaka’s works was sadly limited by the fact that, in Assam, artists of all disciplines were continually judged and even vilified, but their contributions or successes are not equally written about. He wrote how, along with being courageous and committed to fighting injustice, Kaka had a fun-loving and unconventional spirit. It is difficult for me to imagine Kaka’s contribution to Assamese society; I only know of this through what other people have written about him.

Each night in our home in Bombay, Kaka would write about his day in his diary. They would become thick from tiny notes inserted between pages; he did not complain that there was no writing table for him in Bombay. He saw that me and my brother had a small study table for us in our tiny apartment, and he kept his stack of books in a corner of our dining table. But in the Assam-type house in Guwahati where he lived, I was deeply fascinated by his room, as though it were a museum. It had a distinctly strong scent: of the old wood of his bed with ornamental carvings and shelves stacked up with books and notebooks; and Keo Karpin hair oil, which he would slather onto his shiny white hair. His Nehru jacket would be kept neatly on a hanger, and remnants of a rose tucked to one of its buttons would mean that he may have had an important meeting that day.

With just a table lamp on, he would write through the evenings, and would catch me peering through the door which he would shut to drown out the noises from the rest of the house. His dinners were almost always the same: a few spoons of cooked rice, and whatever daal and sabji my Aaita—his wife, my grandmother—had cooked. And to finish off, he would mix the last bits of the rice in a bowl of milk. Over the years, the quantity of rice kept getting lesser.

As a child, I felt his writing table was the biggest I had ever seen; full of books, reams of paper, and pens. It was there where I first encountered that globe of blue: an inkpot. He would get very angry when anyone would take a pen from his room, and not return it to its place. I would hear my aunty mock him for this: his room was utterly untidy and yet he would get cranky about a missing pen.

Now, as an adult with a messy room full of books and notebooks, I get equally cranky if anyone comes in and tries to “fix” it. I realise how much I have become like Kaka, and I actually love it. He was an independent journalist throughout his life, and so have I for the larger part of my career, entirely by coincidence. I am, however, still waiting for the courage, conviction, determination, and the important ability to cut through the madness that comes with working with different egos, to create my own magazine.

Lost in Legacy

Sometime in the 1970s, a massive fire in the printing press in Calcutta—where Bordoichila was printed—had impacted the magazine, and thereby Kaka’s finances, terribly. Even so, it continued to be printed in smaller numbers, based on whatever funds Kaka could generate; the older generation of Assam still remember the magazine and him, and that has been my way of identifying myself.

Many years ago a friend was researching about Kaka, and had found a local news item from 1998, which had reported that Kaka’s archive of newspapers and journals that dated back to 60 years had been stolen by hawkers dealing with scrap materials. The news item had reported that among those that were stolen were rare manuscripts and Kaka’s diaries, along with old photographs. “Mr Barooah lamented that a chapter of his hard literary work was over and he could not give the Assamese readers any original work of art and literature.” I found this news item buried in my old emails; just like the physical archive that was lost, the URL of the news article is also lost on the Internet.

I was still quite young when the squabble among his children—my mother and her siblings—began, such that the magazine could not be preserved within the family. Each of the siblings had a different experience of him as their father, and they were resentful of him for prioritising a public-facing life. My cotton-soft, ever-smiling grandmother was angry, but she was not a woman to hold onto them for long: writing about her generosity, her directness, her compassion, would need more reams of paper. But my mother was always upset that her mother—my grandmother—did get a good deal in life by being the wife of a famous intellectual.

When Kaka died in 2010 at the age of 98, none of his children were interested in keeping up the legacy of Bordoichila. It was taken over by a Trust and sustained itself for a few years, but it is now largely lost. It was only a few months before his death that I had a chance to talk to him about his work, the gap between the dream of a free India for all and the reality of a corrupt India by all.

One opportunity to know about Kaka’s magnanimity was in 2006, when I was visiting Assam after graduating from college, and he had been admitted to the hospital for a lung infection. I decided to sit by his bedside everyday. I was surprised by the stream of visitors who had come to see him each evening. He had asked me to write down the names of each visitor—it would go up to 20 individuals each evening—so that he could write that down in his journal, after he would be discharged from the hospital.

One evening, my uncle brought Aaita to see him; she was dressed beautifully and he spoke with a feeble tone. When he asked her if she was doing okay, she responded with her trademark sarcasm: “You never asked me this all my life, and you’re asking me this now!” I thought this was the beginning of a fight, but she just laughed and he pretended not to hear her. He was discharged from the hospital soon after, and continued with what he did best until he died: writing, walking, meeting people, and digesting his days with a small bowl of rice and milk.