Chapter 3: jurithewriter has started writing her story

Everyday I drive home to Mirza this is the route I pass through. I love this journey not just for its beauty but also as it reminisces the cycle tours of the periphery road of NDA, Pune. 

I started walking and talking at the age of nine months. No, that didn’t give me any edge in life. But it did make me tug on the tails of stray dogs and follow them around. The point that’s being underscored here is that the dogs didn’t object to their tails being pulled and never harmed the little baby Juri.

I could see the awe and wonder in my father’s eyes whenever he told this story.

About the same time my father came across an advertisement in a newspaper (he was a lecturer in DK College Mirza then) for a Central Government job through UPSC. Bharat Chandra Kalita was sharp (reason for passing through the fire of life unscathed), had great people skills and lack of fear for the unknown. From a remote (in 1970, Mirza was quite remote) part of the country, against advice from his peers and seniors (getting this job is impossible they said, he was just wasting his money), he booked a train ticket and reached Delhi.

His command over English was pretty okay, but he spoke it with a distinct Assamese accent. The syllables ‘Ch’, ‘Sh’ and ‘V’ do not exist in the Assamese script so every ‘ch’/’sh’ syllable is pronounced as ‘s’; all the consonants are rounded , so Arvind becomes Aurobindo). He topped the interview answering a difficult question easily and was selected for a Lecturer’s post in the prestigious National Defence Academy, Pune.

Dad lived in the Officer’s mess in NDA for a few months before returning home to get my mum and me to join him. There was a swimming pool adjacent to the Officer's mess and it was visible from the balconies of the mess rooms. My father’s eyes popped out figuratively when he saw the ladies in their swim suits. He had only seen them in Hindi movies earlier.

Alone in Mirza, the joint family members were there of course, but mum was struggling to take care of me without the father of the child. She had just completed her BA in Political Science and had joined as a teacher in a local school. I had breakouts in my skin and was delirious with fever. From whatever she described it was probably a combined infection of measles and chicken pox. In traditional Assam, poxes are not treated. Poxes are called “Ai”, “Mother Goddess.” Such infected are worshipped, non-vegetarian food is prohibited.

I was dying, my pox lesions had been super infected with bacteria but the elders kept dabbing holy water and worshipping the baby. Lila Kalita defied everyone and took me to a doctor. She never gave up easily. This was the first out of the two times she made sure her first born survived. The doctor gave antibiotics and it was a miracle for the village folk that I survived.

The miracle actually was the defiant mother I had inherited, lucky for me that I had no say in that choice.