The World of Elder Care

Salute to Woman Power

This Women’s Day, let’s celebrate the lives of some of our exceptional members, who have dared to break the shackles of convention and managed to create a niche of their own.

<...

This Women’s Day, let’s celebrate the lives of some of our exceptional members, who have dared to break the shackles of convention and managed to create a niche of their own.

Sports, arts & junk craft

Jharna Dutta narrates to Mousumi Gupta how she earned the sobriquet of the “racquet grandma” during her stay in Bihar.

Mrs Jharna Dutta’s husband joined the Tata Group’s mining engineering branch in Bihar in the early-1960s.

On her foray into sports, Mrs Dutta said: “Right since my childhood days, I was extremely interested in different sporting activities. I was delighted when I got an opportunity to join the Tata Group club. By the time I took to playing badminton at the club seriously in the 1990s, my daughter had got married and even had her first child.”

Mrs Dutta excelled in the game so much that she was offered to represent the Tata Group in the Bihar State Badminton Championship in both the singles and mixed doubles categories.

“During the early 1990s, I happened to represent the Tata Group and won many accolades for our team. But the part which attracted attention from all quarters was the fact that I had become a grandmother by then. A grandmother playing badminton representing the Tata Group in several tournaments and that too, on a winning streak, was something unheard of. It became news in those days,” said a beaming Mrs Dutta with the glint of girl-like pride evident in her eyes.

But Mrs Dutta’s field of conquests is not limited to badminton only. The veritable powerhouse of talent, Mrs Dutta, is also a skilled painter, a junk artist (creating artwork from household trash articles) and a poet, a sort of all-round ambassador of arts and sports in the truest sense.

Her creations in sand art and those made up from household junk adorn the walls of the living room of her flat. Most visitors are often at a loss to understand or guess that the eye-catching objet d’art displayed all around are not bought from any shop but the creations of the lady of the house.

Pic credit: https://pixabay.com/photos/badminton-shuttle-sport-bat-racket-1428047/

Salute to Woman Power

This Women’s Day, let’s celebrate the lives of some exceptional women, who have dared to break the shackles of convention and managed to create a niche of their own.

Sports, ...

This Women’s Day, let’s celebrate the lives of some exceptional women, who have dared to break the shackles of convention and managed to create a niche of their own.

Sports, social activism...

One of our directors, Ms Susmita Ghose, shares with Anujit Mitter how she charted her life’s journey from the school basketball team to captaining the National Basketball Championship winning team to her long career in social service.

In 1968, Ms Ghose took up basketball at age 12 while studying in Loreto House, Kolkata, which had unarguably the best basketball team on the school circuit then under the able guidance of coach Ramnath. She picked up the game so well that she was soon donning the school games captain’s cap.

“We were visiting Delhi once, when we challenged Ramnath to take us to Rashtrapati Bhavan to prove his claim of being related to the then President of India. And Ramnath indeed took to Raisina Hill for tea,” Ms Ghose reminisces, with a twinkle in her eye.

Excelling in the All India School Games in Hyderabad in 1970, captaining the school team in the West Bengal Juniors in 1971 — all these make up fond memories for Ms Ghose. “My performance in the handicapped billiards at Saturday Club, Kolkata, in 1970-71, is also close to my heart.” Next, Ms Ghose bagged a seat in psychology honours in Indraprastha College under Delhi University in 1972. “My sports background did come handy in my admission though.”

The crowning glory in Ms Ghose’s sporting career came in 1975-76, when she led her college team in clinching the gold in the National Basketball Championship. “I guess that the railways drew inspiration from our performance and raised a women’s basketball team soon after. Till then, the men’s basketball teams of the railways and the services alternatively used to win the basketball championship.”

In between, Ms Ghose also forayed into swimming, running and javelin throwing.

Immediately after she completed her masters in psychology from Delhi University, Ms Ghose got married in 1978 and her banker father advised her to give up the chance of joining the Indian Institute of Management, Joka, in Kolkata.

Ms Ghose had joined HelpAge International first in 1977 and then travelled across the length and breadth of the country the next 40 years for HelpAge India (established 1978), nurturing it and taking it right to the top as the national director before retiring in 2017. She was also the national director of SAVE (Student Action for Value Education), a wing of Help Age India Foundation, Kolkata.

At 60, Ms Ghose began a fresh innings of her life at Support Elders and continues to guide the organisation with the invaluable experience she has gathered over the years.

Pic credit: https://pixabay.com/vectors/basketball-ball-nba-sport-147794/

Salute to Woman Power

This Women’s Day, let’s celebrate the lives of some exceptional women, who have dared to break the shackles of convention and managed to create a niche of their own.

Medicine

Dr Papiya Roy shares her story with Mousumi Gupta on how she has refused to stay away from serving humanity post-retirement and not allowed her cardiac conditions come in way of her noble duty.

Dr Roy served as a medical officer in government service for 28 years in the Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) chain of hospitals in Kolkata and its suburbs

After her retirement in 2010, she refused to set aside her stethoscope. “Just when I was thinking of doing something for the society at large, I came in contact with Bharat Sevashram Sangha. I visit the organisation’s hospital in Pailan on the southern fringes of Kolkata twice a week to examine patients.”

Speaking about her continued inspiration, Dr Roy said with a smile: “See, I have battled angioplasty and I still love serving my patients. Need I say more?!”

On the kind of patients she examines at Pailan, Dr Roy said: “When I started out as a medical officer in the outdoor department of the Sangha hospital, the patients were mainly from the lower-middle class section of the society. Though their background hardly affects my work, quite a number of patients from well-to-do families now come to our Pailan hospital to get themselves examined against the Rs 10 token.”

“What is most heartening is to observe is that the class divide among patients blurs when they visit a place like the Bharat Sevashram Sangha hospital in Pailan,” signed off Dr Roy.

Pic credit:: https://pixabay.com/vectors/doctor-hearing-heart-medicine-1295583/

Salute to Woman Power

This Women’s Day, let’s celebrate the lives of some of our exceptional women members, who have dared to break the shackles of convention and managed to create a niche of their own.

<...

Salute to Woman Power

This Women’s Day, let’s celebrate the lives of some of our exceptional women members, who have dared to break the shackles of convention and managed to create a niche of their own.

<...

This Women’s Day, let’s celebrate the lives of some of our exceptional women members, who have dared to break the shackles of convention and managed to create a niche of their own.

Education

Ms Sukla Gupta, an ashram kanya (student) from Rabindranath Tagore’s Santiniketan, shared her story with Mousumi Gupta about how she helped nurture a school with a couple of colleagues in Farakka on the Bengal-Bihar border and how the institution and its pupils grew extremely close to her heart.

Ms Gupta’s husband was a contractor at the Farakka barrage during its construction in the early-1960s, when this otherwise sleepy town started getting populated with a sudden influx of labourers and contractors.

There was no school in that area then. Soon, the state government took up the initiative to start a school. Ms Gupta, along with a few others, applied for posts of teachers and were selected in the interview. But the main problem was that there was no school building, leave aside students.

A school building was built with government funds and it started functioning on March 5, 1964, with a few local children and those of the barrage employees. Initially, there were around 60 students on the rolls. Gradually, the numbers started to increase. The school became like second home to the students because of the love and affection dedicated teachers like Ms Gupta and others showered upon them.

“The love, care and attention that we received from our teachers in Santiniketan and its verdant surroundings showed me the path to deal with these children,” reminisces Ms Gupta. “With strictly no punishment for the students, the school imbibed almost like the Santiniketan way of imparting education.”

No road is free of hurdles. Likewise, during the early-1970s, a few former students of Ms Gupta and her colleagues got drawn into a political struggle. “Later, when they came back to us, we hugged them and showered them our love. All those students are now well settled in life, some even abroad,” said Ms Gupta with moist eyes.

“The student strength had touched 2,200 at the time of my retirement from the school in the early-1990s. That gave me a sense of a job well done.”

Ms Gupta has an opinion on the way to deal with today’s students. “If we could solve serious issues of the young generation with love and care in those days, why can’t we change the present generation the same way?!”

Pic credit: https://www.maxpixel.net/Drawing-Single-Education-Pencil-Logos-Pixel-Icon-3150319

The World of Elder Care

Pages