Memories of a Mama: Joydeb Mukherjee

Inspired, in part, by Nels' recent "Bricolage" homage to his friend Dave Conz, we are blessed with the following guest post today from Dr. Lopa Basu, Director of the Honors College and English Professor at UW-Stout. 

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Memories of a Mama: Joydeb Mukherjee

In Bengali, the term for a maternal uncle is Mama, phonetically a repetition of Ma the word for mother.  From our earliest nursery rhymes, the intimacy of the place of a maternal uncle’s home is invoked:

Tai Tai Tai

Mamar bari jai

Mamar bari bhari moja

Doi Sandesh Khai

My rough translation:

Clap Clap Clap

We go to our Mama’s house

Mama’s house is a place of great joy

There we eat curds and sweets !

The place of the Mama and his home is a place of freedom, a suspension of the rules and disciplines of everyday school and home life, a place of uninhibited imagination and play. Today, as I write this, I remember that Mamar Bari and the Mama who had such a formative influence in my childhood and with whose death, that figurative place has ceased to exist. As long as my Mama lived, my childhood was still available to me. Today, I feel the burden of adulthood and the inability to escape into another world of imagination and play.

A Mama is not a parent and precisely because he is not burdened with the task of raising a child, time with him could signify a refreshing freedom from rules.  Of all the myriad memories, I want to focus on some  magical moments with Bappa Mama. I remember when I was about eight years old, Bappa Mama, till then the bachelor uncle got married. I was very dejected when I heard that such an event was imminent. At that age, I thought marriage meant leaving a natal family to go to the house of the in laws. I cried and begged my grandma not to have Bappa Mama married. My grandma explained that only women went to live with their husband’s family when they  got married. Men were not subject to this fate. I was still uncertain but went to see the woman who was to become my Mami. I found her to be very beautiful and gracious and and she sang many songs for us, playing the harmonium.  Soon we loved her as much as Mama.

In what ways did Bappa Mama create an alternative world for me? First, through his dedication to Indian classical music, he opened the doors to  this world of art and music.  Bappa Mama was a very talented sitar and esraj player. However, music was not his profession. He started working in Central Bank at the age of eighteen and progressed to the ranks of upper management. However, I did not learn anything about banking from him. Unlike many others for whom conversation revolved around their professional identities, Bappa Mama gave me the distinct impression that banking and finance were as ubiquitous as vacuuming or plumbing, tasks, necessary for the smooth functioning of a house, but not a part of its aura or magic.

From what my grandmother told me I learnt that Bappa Mama had wanted to be a journalist or writer. However, with the death of my grandfather, he decided to take a banking job and pursue a college degree in commerce as an evening student. There was something painful in that decision, a decision prompted by the constraints of middle class Bengali life and practical considerations, but somehow representing the loss of the full potential of Bappa Mama’s talents. He never complained about his job and was well respected at work. However, his passion clearly lay in books, music, and painting. These were not the pursuits of a dilettante but vital to his existence. I remember his neat manuscripts in long  notebooks, in his impeccable hand writing often containing  his screenplays of children’s stories that were produced by local children’s groups.

Bappa Mama  always valued my creative endeavors. My mother decided not to teach us Indian classical music, formally.  This was a decision prompted by her own disappointments in the field of music. She thought that we were better off focusing on academic pursuits. On visits to Bappa Mama’s house, however, we were encouraged to sit with the harmonium and sing. When I started developing interests in debating and dramatics, Bappa Mama was always my captive audience. I would enact plays that I had performed at school,  for him, taking on multiple roles. He genuinely enjoyed and encouraged these performances.

When I moved to Delhi for college, I did not see him as often.  However, he was always eager to hear about my new interests and friendships.  He remembered names of friends I had had in high school in Kolkata, and inquired about them, many years later.

At a certain point, I remember, Bappa Mama’s usual blessing after I touched his feet for pronam, changed to a startling new line “ May you have a nice husband.”  I don’t think anyone else has ever been quite so specific in a blessing.  It was usually  “Be happy, have a good life. ” At that time, a husband was not in my thoughts and I would have preferred a blessing about success in college exams.  Today, even with the knowledge of theories of gender, I do not find that blessing archaic or limiting. It was the affectionate wish of an uncle that his beloved niece find fulfillment in a life partner.  

I remember when I did find my husband I was struck by the fact that he was an amateur sitar player like Bappa Mama. At our wedding, when it was time for the bride to leave the house,  it was  a poignant moment of tears. I felt the terrible reality of separation from my natal family and the fear of the long journey to another country that awaited me.  I noticed that it was the first time in my life that my father and Bappa Mama were both weeping as profusely as my mother and sister. Life had come full circle and marriage did mean in our case a new life, geographically separated from those who had nurtured and cherished us in in our childhood. In the infrequent meetings with Bappa Mama, over the last nineteen years, music continued to be a common thread that bound my husband and myself to Bappa Mama. Bappa Mama created the most exhaustive digital archive of Indian classical musical recordings and shared these with us, on every available occasion.

What is Bappa Mama’s legacy? I think he had a subliminal impact in my choice of career. At a time when most of my teachers  were pushing me towards a  career in a science and technology field, I realized that I did not want to pursue literature as a part time option. I was prepared to take the risk of not being gainfully employed, but I wanted to attempt to pursue my scholarly interests, first. Bappa Mama and I never had a conversation about careers but somehow he had shown me what was worth being passionate about and he had signaled to me the importance of the arts and humanities for a fuller and richer life. I think I continue to strive for these ideals in a higher education scenario where jobs are seen too often to be the only raison d’etre of higher education.

One may ask how does Indian Classical music have any practical applicability except for a handful of gurus and acolytes.  I would argue that Indian classical music is a way of treasuring the syncretic cultural roots of the subcontinent. For an international audience, it exemplifies the richness of other traditions, not in the superficial way of cursory knowledge of some bestselling ethnic writers,  but through an invitation to explore and engage with a tradition that is challenging yet hauntingly beautiful. To listen and learn to love this music is to learn lessons of humility and recognize unfamiliar soundscapes and unexpected pleasures. Too often, we dismiss the aesthetic dimensions of learning. Through understanding these expressions of human creativity and meaningful reflection of the traditions that produced then, we can perhaps receive new insights and ideas to approach ongoing problems in human life.