MEERA G

• NAME : Meera Ghosh
• AGE : 80
• PROFESSION : Homemaker all her life
• ETHNICITY : Bengali
• PLACE : Lake Gardens 

She was alone and was crossing the road and the way she slowly, calmly but firmly crossed the road caught my attention. I am one of those people who never know when to cross the road and end up running the last few steps.

I approached her and said my stereotypical, tentative "Hi". She replied back with a very smart "Hi". So I explained to her what I was trying to do. And she told me that she does something quite similar. She writes down notes about people she meets or encounters or even reads about and then mails them to her son in Delhi. I asked her if she goes out every morning and she replied yes for morning walk cum day to day shopping. She appeared very strong and independent for a woman of 80. I then asked her to say something which might be trivial but had an impact on her. She got a faraway look in her eyes and then asked me if I would like to come to her home. I readily agreed because it would mean I could record her voice too. Once in her house she told me about a dog she named Mamata. 

This was an incident that had happened a long time back when she used to live in Salkia. She was standing on the roof of her house when she saw two dogs approaching around 6 PM. One of them was visibly very sick and the other one seemed to be guarding it. The ailing dog came and fell asleep in front of her door.  At around 8 PM she got up on the roof again. She saw that the other dog had gotten some food for the dying dog and was trying to nuzzle the dying dog into eating. The dying dog had no energy and did not eat. Seeing this Meera went down again. At around 10:30 PM she heard a loud wailing noise from the other dog. She went up and saw that the dying dog was still lying there and the other dog was keeping it guard. The next morning the municipality people came and removed the dead dog from their doorstep. They told her that the dog probably had died around 10:30 PM the previous night. After that the other dog whom Meera named Mamata left as well never to be seen again.

I am uploading the story in Meera's voice. It is in Bangla.


At the end of the interview, I was thanking her profusely since she happened to be the first person who talked with me. Not only that , she even invited me to her home . She thanked me back instead.