Shillong, Nov. 29: It’s where the author worked on her writing skills perhaps, taking her first unsteady steps into the wondrous world of words. Pine Mount School in Shillong misses its student Mamoni as does the Tarini Chandra (TC) Girls Higher Secondary School in Guwahati, as do those who passed out of Cotton College many years after her. Her friends miss her…
TC School, as it’s known, where Mamoni studied for a few years, organised a condolence meeting today. A group of students and teachers visited her house at Gandhibasti to pay their respects. “We were hoping to have baideo come to our school but she could not come because of health problems. We are proud that she was an alumnus of our school,” principal Jyotsna Devi said.
The Cotton College alumni gathered in Delhi to bid farewell to a celebrated senior. “We remember every moment baideo’s sweet voice, like an everlasting echo,” they said. “We promise to carry her ideals with us forever.”
The years have passed, but the pride hasn’t faded. The principals who now run the schools that Mamoni went to are younger to her, but their schools have lost a priceless pupil. “The death of the distinguished writer is a big loss to each one of us and we offer our condolences to the bereaved family,” E. Syiem, principal of Pine Mount School in Shillong, said. It’s where Mamoni studied in the 1950s. The government-run school stands near Shillong’s famous Crinoline Falls, close to which Mamoni spent many years as a child, the daughter of the then director of public instruction of Assam in the erstwhile capital of the state.
Among her friends and the “Pmites” she went to school with, her laughter still lingers. “Mamoni was a very simple, down to earth girl,” Manjula Choudhury, president of the Pine Mount Alumni Association in Guwahati, said.
Choudhury and Mamoni were in the same class in Pine Mount. “We never thought then that she would one day become such a big writer. There were no air about her as the DPI’s daughter,” she says.
And were the school’s rules broken by Mamoni and gang? “Yes we did our bit, like peeping in through the keyhole of the door of this very strict teacher we had. But Mamoni was never a part of this. She was simple and bright girl, this big-eyed good-looking girl.” Buddy covering up for buddy? We’ll never know. Her friends miss her lots…
