OBITUARY
Those who loved her poems will suffer too, for she left us two days ago, tormented by cancer till she could bear it no longer.
karma happened to be one the strongest poets of Sikkim who I got to know accidentally. I had written to her that someday she will be an iconic poet from Sikkim.
One Sunday morning about a year ago, my daughter-like Tina (Trinity) Rai called me to say that her best friend is a poet, Now, Tina has a knack for tracing out new talents, and since she herself is a consummate and very mature story-teller, I had no doubt about the new poet's quality. So I asked Tina to tell her friend to send some poems to me.
It is then that Tina told me two things about Karma, One, that she is suffering from cancer and the doctors had given her just four years to live. And second, that Karma feels her poems are substandard and not worth publishing. So she will not send it. "But I have some of her poems," Tina said. Naturally, I asked her to send one at least.
When I read the poem Tina sent, I was shocked. It was not just very good, but also very strong. I did a bit of editing and it became stronger. Then the day before publishing, I asked for a photograph, as is our standard practice. Tina sent that too.
Then I told Tina: "Look, as a matter of ethical practice, we needed her permission, that we cannot be seen to be "stealing" someone's property. Tina said "Baba (she feels herself to be my daughter, and I, likewise), don't worry. I shall tackle her."
I published the poem - An Obituary to the Living -the next day, along with her very beautiful photograph. The impact was magical! Not only was there a rush of accolades, but Karma herself commented on me, saying, "You have saved my life, Sir. Now I want to live and you have given me back my urge to write more and more."
Frankly, it was a revolution for me as an editor-publisher, for never have I read anything like this. No one had credited me with saving his or her life by merely publishing a poem or a story.
By the third week of August this year, I was in Sikkim, and the biggest item on my agenda was meeting her. She knew it, and had written to me earlier that she will not die before September. She had also promised to meet me.
Though she had only written poems for our group, she had discussed with me several times a novel she had contemplated but never completed. It was on cancer patients and what they went through, not just physically but socially.
We had become intimate in our discussions on her writing and her cancer, rather I made it a point to be intimate for two reasons. One, that she was very powerful poet, and she produced poem after poem or our group.
And two, I wanted to meet this fabulous fighter and express my adoration in person, no longer by WhatsApp, for fighting so valiantly. For writing poetry under the pain of cancer is not valiant, nothing is.
"She is the epitome to we of love and compassion and spreads love everywhere, all the time," I remember Tina had told me once, and that showed in her poetry.
Besides, she used to tell me that the kind of editing I did was to her utter satisfaction. Her last poem sent to me was fantastic: The Burdened Deity on Lord Shiva.
I stayed in Sikkim for 20 days and had to cut it short because my mama had died in Calcutta. But she never came to me, nor responded to my WhatsApp messages asking her to come to meet me.
How would I know that her suffering had put her out of commission altogether?
I did not know she'd never meet me. When Tina broke the news to me, I cried inconsolably and shamelessly. For hours!
Sikkim Knowledge Group shall celebrate your life when we publish your unfinished novel from September 25.
Goodbye my poet... goodbye... and fare thee well, sans pain.
(Sujit Chakraborty is Founder-Editor & Admin, Sikkim Knowledge Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1016930669122164)
