My childhood has always been filled with stories. Stories of people, places and things that somehow became part of the home and remain of importance to this day. One of these stories is that of my paternal grandmother, Mamma as I have always known her. I had the privilege of growing up around her, of knowing her as a person and at certain moments in life, realising that I have inherited her traits. But memory is a tricky game and there are gaps in my memory of her that I can’t seem to fill up. So, I remember her by her stories and the stories that have created a legend of this woman who had been so much more than a grandmother with secret recipes. 

Mamma was a woman of grit and perseverance for as long as I have known her. She was a bit of a local celebrity as I don’t remember going anywhere without at least one person coming up to her and asking, “Didimoni bhalo achen?” (Madam how are you) She had always been Didimoni outside our house, a teacher and mentor to what seemed like half of my hometown. When I started to gather the pieces of her story, I realised the real mark she had left in her lifelong work as a teacher in a simple, unassuming girls’ school in a small town. 

Born in the historical French colony of Chandannagar, West Bengal, Smt. Lila Ganguly was a prodigy by the time she was six years old. As a toddler, poverty forced her to move to a boarding school, and she started living in the Prabartak Nari Mandir Ashram. This is where her story began. At 13, she became the first girl in town to ace her matriculation exams and earn a first division, winning a medal from the hands of author Tarashankar Bandopadhyay. Soon after this, she started working as a teacher in the school where she was growing up. As her life grew distant from her family, the school and all the people in it became her real family. At 21, she graduated B.A. Honours and went on to complete her double Master’s degree in Bengali and  Sanskrit. With her fluency in languages and love for teaching, numerous girls of Chandannagar found their way into her life as young students looking for guidance. At one point, she was the headmistress of a school and a full-time tuition teacher, dedicating her days to teaching students and taking Prabartak into its glory days. With a husband, two young children and an ailing father-in-law at home, she became a superwoman with unlimited energy and an undying love for languages. 

In her final days, my grandmother, Lila Ganguly, developed dementia and forgot much of her eventful life. She was limited to a room with not much left to interest her. But on the good days, she would wake me up in between afternoon naps to talk about what happened at school that day. Or perhaps her sudden lapse of memory would lead her to ask me, “Am I not supposed  to go to school today?” The school had been her haven, a place where she belonged, and no one could take it away from her. Sometimes, my 82-year-old grandmother would wake up at night and recite flawless Sanskrit shlokas as I completed my homework, thinking I was a student who needed her help. Till the very end, she was a teacher who believed that her world consisted of shaping young minds for the future.  Her life was not an easy one, but to me it is a reminder of a woman who made her life and made her mark, working throughout her life to give the best to her students, who always remained her second family.

I had a conflicted relationship with Mamma throughout childhood, things that I myself cannot remember now. Which makes me wonder if I ever had a chance to know the woman she was. She lives through her stories, through her special recipes passed down to my mother and aunt and through the cupboard of books and certificates that speak of her achievements. Her story, for me, is one of the key elements of tracing my own family’s history. She is one of the most important pieces of a great puzzle that I continue to discover day by day. 

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