Dr. Sarita’s death and an unexpected message

These days, News Papers hardly carry news of hope and life in the morning to your living room. As I opened the front page of the paper in anticipation of another  appalling information, I stumbled upon the news of bail being granted by the High Court to the killer of a young lady doctor at Assam Medical College, Dibrugarh. The gruesome murder rocked Assam for quite some time and the  killer happened to be  a disgruntled colleague whose marriage proposal she turned down.  
 

While the news of Dr. Sarita’s death kept me dismayed,  I had a  message least expected. The sender of the message informed me of being a regular reader of whatever mundane staff I write in my blog with the sole complaint that in the last two years I have missed  something important. 
 

“I too was an important part of your life at some point of time which your blog continues to miss”, She wrote with her usual effervescence.
 

The message brought back memories of those days when I was just past the age of 21 and joined Steel Authority of India Limited at Durgapur as a Management Trainee. We met literally on the road in one of those boisterous evenings at Durgapur, the evenings which we could spare in abundance over a cup of hot coffee and kebab or a chicken roll at Durgapur Steel Market.  We were not bold enough like today’s young couples. Some phone calls, short meetings here and there and sharing of Archies Cards and chocolates kept the relationship going. Was it love or something else I didn’t know as I kept on asking myself? But I enjoyed talking to her and her simplicity, sensitivity and intelligence kept her spaced out from the others. 
 

One evening to scare her, I rang her up in to inform that I was coming to her home .  Till then, she didn’t have the courage to tell her parents about me. While she laughed away my words as prank, I rode straight to her home and knocked at the door pretending to enquire about some “ Mr.Bagchi”. Scared to death, she prayed the moments to pass on safely as I had water and chatted comfortably with her mother . I was from Assam and Auntie was pleased to hear that I belonged to the land of Ma Kamakhya.
 

While I was recuperating at the Hospital and fighting one of the toughest battles of my life, she often managed time to come from Jadavpur to the hospital skipping classes, with a bag full of drawing sheets, T-Square and what not at her back. She prayed for my recovery and holding my hand, showed her unstinted support. Yet, when my father met her in my Hospital chamber, a so called good boy from a middle class family, I couldn’t muster over enough courage to introduce her as my friend. I knew, my timidity did hurt her, but she never vented her feelings for once to unsettle me at the hospital bed.
 

As it normally happens in most such stories of youth, we too broke up rather in an unconventional way. There was guilt, self inflicted pain and many sleepless nights pondering at both sides. Years latter, I think, the parting was mutually beneficial and even better for her. While we parted and moved along, my friend has done well in life as a professional and a loving wife. Today, she manages works for a large MNC and more importantly lives life with dignity. These days, we don’t have much correspondence except exchanging birthday greetings. Perhaps like me, today she laughs, remembering those days of naïve immaturity, yet, with no hard feelings, I know I have a well wisher in her and so she has one in me.    
 

When my two sons grow up to read this blog, they should know that their father was a normal human being like them , prone to slip-up. As he trudged along, like them, he did all the mischievous acts as a child, wanted to desperately fall in love in his early youth and was as dreamy as them as a young man. Like others, their father erred too, not once but many times, but he was no hypocrite either to hush them up under the veil of fake righteousness.
 

The murderer of Dr. Sarita had a brilliant academic career too. But, perhaps more than the human anatomy and fat mark sheets, which he was regular at getting, someone needed to tell him that it is important to achieve whatever you desire in life, but more important is to learn to respect the time you were at relationship with someone, even if it was one way traffic.

You can contact Kamaljit at kamaljitmedhi1975@gmail.com

Down the lanes of Durgapur- the uncanny side of life

(4)

When I first met him, he was a bundle of energy. A blue eyed Manager, he seemed to be a man in a hurry and nothing seemed to move on well without him whether it was office or outside. As a student, he had a brilliant track record and did Graduation and Master's from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (Chennai). He had the appetite for enormous job responsibility just like his craving for good food.

This was the person I knew in Bijit Roy (name changed) at Durgapur. Like any other blue eyed executive, he used to maintain a punishing work schedule from morning to night. He was destined to rise very high.

That evening, Bijit was late at office. He had a lot of job to finish so that his superiors can sleep the night peacefully. But in that fateful evening, Life presented a twister to the Roy family. Bijit had a massive heart attack at his office. He was flown out to a super speciality hospital and undergone treatment for months. At times, it seemed like Bijit was fighting a lost battle. That entire ordeal was too intense to endure for his wife, a first time expecting mother. Their child didn’t see  light on earth .

After many months, Bijit joined office at Durgapur. I still remember how slowly he got down from his car, assisted by the driver to adjust his pair of crutches. His right hand required a special device to keep it in proper position and the lips drooped to the right side. He required to frequently wipe the uncontrolled saliva flowing out. It was painful to see  energetic and full of life man of once on the crutches. Though difficult for him to work in an industry shop floor, Bijit insisted to come to the office to be with the people he loved and shared the prime of his life. He wanted life to move on.

The sufferings of Bijit didn’t end here. Public memory is short and it is even shorter in corporate world where we often overestimate our own importance and fail to appreciate that we are important as long as we are useful. The brilliant IIT Graduate failed to understand this simple logic of life. He was asked to take voluntary retirement. Bijit refused as he thought that staying idle at home would do more harm than good. Finally with a heavy heart, he was compelled to take retirement as someone higher up was required to achieve the VR target. Bijit was a potential candidate.

In the last sixteen years of my professional life, I have met thousand of people and each one of them is a separate world in entity. I have seen people working with selfless dedication, people who place responsibilities above self, snobs who run from pillar to post to appease superior with heads always directed towards the Master's knees. Like a country, big industry houses run on the selfless devotion of many unseen faces who barely come to the limelight.

I haven’t heard of Bijit in the last 12 years. Perhaps he is doing well in some corner of the world. But his tragedy often reminds me the triviality of my own self. Money, status and power are important proponents of life. Yet a sweet home waits for you and you are far more important to your family than to the rest of the world.

                                                                       (To be continued)

You can contact Kamaljit at kamaljitmedhi1975@gmail.com