Something my son Siddharth said about the sadness of goodbyes reminded me of my Mani Mausi ( my mother’s late younger sister). I spent a lot of time with some of my mother’s ( then unmarried ) sisters in my maternal grandfather’s house in Cuttack as my grandmother was admitted in hospital with a terminal illness and my Mom was by her side often.
I was around eight years old and my favourite Mausi was Mani Mausi. She used to ask me to sing ‘ Meri Sapnon ki Rani kab ayegi tu’ as the film Aradhana was released around that time and it’s songs were a great hit. Soon after my grandmother passed away Mani Mausi’s marriage was fixed with Dibakar Mausa who worked in the USA. A few days after the wedding we went to see off Mani Mausi and Dibakar Mausa at Cuttack railway station as they had to go to Kolkata by train to catch the flight to New York.
As the train started rolling out of the station with my ‘ sapnon ki Rani’
waving at us, tears rolled down from my eyes…
..Many years later Dibakar Mausa drove my son Siddharth Ratho to Connecticut college from New Jersey.
Mani Mausi passed away a few years ago. Their son Deepak ( Dipu) , a Doctor, is married to a Korean, and the younger one, Seema is married to a white American.
Dipu had come recently to Cuttack along with his daughter to see my mother, my sister and my brother. From the pictures of the visit, I realised that Deepu’s daughter looks a lot like Mani Mausi.
An ordinary life 