Monday, 12 August 2019

Ordinary women – Extraordinary characters (by Debabrata Basu)

My uncle Debabrata Basu wrote a series of sketches, about his grandmother, his aunts and his mother.

Ordinary women – Extraordinary characters:
An introduction

by Debabrata Basu



The eight character sketches here are of people very close to me, I have grown in the shade of their love and caring. Among them, six are daughters of Bose bari, our household - these are my six aunts. Two were related by marriage – my grandmother and my mother. To many, they are just ordinary people, but I saw their extraordinary beauty. Not the external, but the internal. What I saw of them in my mind, is what I have tried to express in these sketches. Those who read these will also see them through my eyes, and hence see their extraordinary beauty.

Now, many years of my life have gone by. In this long life, the shadows of many women have fallen upon me; but the impact of these eight women on my mind, on my life has been, I think, without parallel. None of these people are alive any more. In the thirties, my fifth aunt passed away. And in the nineties, the last among them - my mother - passed away. The sketches here are set in the world of the twenties to the nineties of the twentieth century. The picture is partly sharp, and partly hazy. Those who read this are my relatives or my friends. That is why I can present this incoherent picture to them.

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