Just as I was thinking in June 2019 there is no grandparents’ day the capitalist system proposed a week for them, I am told!
Mummum, my paternal grandmother, looms large in my life, larger than my mother, larger than all human beings in my life. It is thanks to that 4 feet nothing woman who was for me stronger than all gods together in her pooja room, including the cross in her rudraksha mala, that made me an atheist! From day 1 of my life I slept with this deceptively frail woman, feeling her soft wrinkles, till I was 10 when we shifted to unit family existence because my father was advised to live near his office. She enters my space, be it Ashram or Women’s Studies class room to endorse women empowerment! I am grateful that she has given me her witch like quality to think, decide and implement what I think is best for collective existence. After being with her nothing else can scare me, not that she was scary, as my little sister says, we were struck by her ‘towering figure’.
It was she, who gave me the name Olibul. There were other options, I know of one other ‘Varsha’ (rain) as I am given to understand that it rained heavily almost flooding the area, the day I was born. Whatever the options my Mummum would have the last say. For me it was just a name, never thought that it was strange or unusual the way everyone saw it. My classmates were all ok with it, some of them called me Bulbul. In Class nine a teacher came from London in exchange programme. Miss Beastly was opposite of her name, a gentle warm person. My name was the first she learnt among the unfamiliar Indian names. Even then it did not strike me that why so. After all my Mummum had given me the name! London did not seem as some far away land nor did English seem a language of power. Miss Beastly was a young person, with dignity of underprivileged, who got a scholarship to come. She shared the beauty of reading from places unfamiliar to us and shared lived experiences of those places. All students remember her with love.
I married a Sindhi soon after my schooling in 1972. In Sindhis along with surname the girl’s name also gets changed. My mother-in-law lovingly gave me a name after the first letter which came out from Guru Granth Saheb during marriage. My name got changed. In course of time I started studying for formal graduate course with the new name in 1984, thanks to my sister who filled the form for me in Rani Durgavati University, Jabalpur. That was probably the last year where class eleven was accepted for graduation. Thereafter twelfth was required. She was doing her Ph D when she realized that her Didi was not educated so she asked me if I would study. I am still studying.
My Mummum passed away in 1980. In the meanwhile my aunt shared that Olibul was Swami Vivekananda’s disciple like Sister Nivedita but had not visited India. In 1997 she gave me a book by Sister Nivedita in Bangla. Somehow due to work pressure (was working in Rural Development, commuting between Mumbai and Udwada, learning ropes of production of handicraft of a rural women’s cooperative) and me being slow in Bangla reading the book would not proceed. There were other books and magazines I kept reading. I did want to read Sister Nivedita’s Web of Life, so eventually I exchanged it for the English version. Oh la la! (https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=nivedita%27s+Web+of+LIfe) I found Sister Nivedita’s friends somewhere in the middle of that book but what a surprise — Mr. Oli Bul and Mrs. Sarah Bul. I wondered how my grandmother could make such a mistake. I went back to the Bangla book to find these people, who among her other friends had helped Sister Nivedita start one of the first schools for girls (13 November 1898 inaugurated by Sharada Ma) in Calcutta now Kolkata. In Bangla version of the book, the mystery of ‘Mr. Olibul’ got solved. It was a slip by Mummum, but I do not hold it against her. In Bangla it was written Mr. and Mrs. Olibul, she must have presumed Olibul to be a female. I cannot even consider her wanting a male name for her granddaughter. After all she was stronger than all Gods put together so what of a male. Olibul thus became the name of an Indian girl, whose grandmother wanted her to go to an English medium school so she became a student of Christ Church Girls Higher Secondary School, Jabalpur. Her class mates of her school, coming in her life after 48 years, gave the name a rebirth.
