RIP: Dr. Suman Raje

Early the morning of Dec 26th, my Choti Buaji (my father's sister) passed away. Dr. Suman Raje was a doctorate in Hindi Literature, a professor, a poet, and the author of many books. But to her family she was a loving mom and wife, to my father and mother she was more than anything else a close friend, and to me she will always be the storyteller.

When I was a young boy we used to travel from Ahmedabad (where we lived) to Kanpur (where Buaji lived) every summer holidays. It was a 2 1/2 day train trip on the Sabarmati Express. I remember the train always arrived at Kanpur in the middle of the night - around 4am or so. Of all the fun things we would do during the summer holidays - my favorite memory was the night when we would go to sleep.

We used to sleep on the roof since these were the days of heat w/ no AC, just a cooler. But before the kids would go to sleep we all had to circle around Choti Buaji for the bedtime story. And every night w/o fail she would churn one up. She was never reading from a book. Every one of her stories came right out of her head. The most imaginative creative fantastical stories a 7 year old had ever heard. In Hindi - often using words I couldn't understand then (or now for that matter). But she managed to create very vivid, very real images in our young minds.

"Bahut saal pehle, ek Raaja tha ...."

Miss you, Buaji.