Goodbye, Apu Mama

 

Apu Mama, my mom’s younger brother, left us on 11 July. He was as fortunate in his death as he was in life (ultimately, after long struggles). He died at home, peacefully, with his wife Jana and daughter Monica by his side. His long guerrilla war against dementia ended when he was 88.

It’s difficult to write about people who are close to you because it is a bit like writing about yourself. I wish instead of writing this I was with Jana and Monica today.

I have been thinking of you, Apu Mama, over the last five days. We miss you. We will miss you. Pranam.

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I shall try to use as few adjectives as I can because of what I have just said, but I can say this without hesitation: if one word could describe Apurba Ranjan Pal, Apu to his family and Ron to his friends, it would be “affectionate”. He was genuinely affectionate, despite being an angry young man all his life.

As he left India for Denmark when I was little, I have almost no childhood memories of him except that mother used to be deeply saddened by the absence of a darling younger brother who was struggling to make a living in a faraway land. (Their mother had died when they were kids; so my mother was a bit like a mom to Apu.) A few years later, Apu Mama crossed the North Sea to move to England, where over time, he would settle down in a quiet neighbourhood not far from the airport at Heathrow.

Moving back in time and towards East Europe, in the aftermath of the Prague Spring in 1968, Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Russian army, as many as 650,000 of them. The people of Czechoslovakia put up an unarmed resistance for eight months, says Wikipedia. The forces on either side would have been as asymmetric as in Vietnam, but for some reason, we didn’t get to hear much about this struggle. Wikipedia also says, a “massive wave of emigration swept the nation.”

Among the émigrés was Jana, a maths teacher and a stunningly beautiful Czech woman, who came to London. Apurba Ranjan met her and after some struggle with the Communist bureaucracy, they managed to get married in Prague. I have always thought my uncle (and our family) was among the biggest beneficiaries of the failed rebellion against Russian Communism. Czechoslovakia would become free much later, in 1989.

Sometime in the late 1960s, Apu Mama managed to visit home for the first time, maybe after a gap of 10 or 15 years. I was in college then. He travelled with me to my hostel, and together, we explored the campus and beyond. We went around in overcrowded public buses to the Masanjore Dam and maybe to a few other places too. In those few days, an unknown uncle became lifelong friend.

Thereafter, from time to time, I would receive a warm letter from Apu Mama with an international payment order for a few pounds. The amount, a minor treasure for me, was “biri khabar poisa,” that is, cigarette allowance.

Thereafter, he and Jana would visit us infrequently and we always looked forward to the visits. Meanwhile, I got married. My wife, Arundhati and Apu Mama had deep reciprocal admirations. Arundhati for the uncomplicated handsome man with salt-and-pepper hair who always spoke his mind, and he, for the shingaras and koi macher jhol that she would always prepare for him. Apu Mama obviously missed shingaras, which he called the national food of Bengal.

Much later, when my wife and I visited him in London a couple of times, Mamu was in the autumn of his life. He used to be quiet. I would still go out to a pub with him, but I missed the raucous arguments with him over many topics ranging from Satyajit Ray to the state of the nation, which had been the usual interaction pattern between uncle and nephew. (He was a rare Bong who was not a Satyajit Ray fan.) When we visited him, he would insist on his copy of the Guardian every morning, but wouldn’t be able to read much. He would sit quietly or sleep.

My wife and I stayed at their home. We would usually go out in the morning and go around. Jana would pack our lunch, complete with two soft-drink cans. What she gave would be more than what we could eat. But when we took leave, Apu Mama would invariably pick up two apples or oranges from the dining table and give us. I will remember my uncle by these small acts of kindness: IPOs for a few pounds and a few oranges or apples.

Over the last few years, uncle’s condition deteriorated. He might forget if he had had breakfast. More worryingly, when he went somewhere with family, he might suddenly start walking aimlessly, or try to get off the train at a wrong tube station. Jana and Monica took tremendous care of him. I haven’t seen anyone taking better care of their ailing husband / father.

16 July / 29 July 2021