dear aaita
a letter to moini aaita, and the ordinary moments that became the most extraordinary memories of my life.
dear aaita,
the last few months have been a storm our family didn’t even expect in the worst of nightmares. your absence disturbs me every day, and i hope you are doing well on the other side.
throughout my life, you have given me so much. not only through the big gestures, but through countless small moments that helped shape me into the person i am today. i carry every piece of your love with me.
you always called me “junak baba”, and there was a quiet comfort in hearing those words every single time.
back in my childhood, when maa and papaji used to go to work, i spent entire days with you, and those days still feel like a dream. how we used to play ludo and chinese checkers. how you would peel oranges in the winter sun and we would sit together eating them. how everytime i hated the sabzi you’d make, you would get me a plate of gakhir bhaat with butter and i would have it in no time. how we would pluck guavas from the tree in our front yard. how every evening i would hold your hand and walk around baroholiya with you and your friends. how the neighbour aaitas would come over for tea and spend time with us.
one fine day in 2012, when my parents told me we were shifting to a place called ushanagar, my first question was whether you were coming with us. sadly, the answer was no.
i was heartbroken.
i still remember how, even months after we shifted, my school bus would drop me off in baroholiya. i would have lunch made by you, spend time with you, and return home in the evening.
the most ordinary days i spent with you became the most special memories of my life.
i still miss the stories you used to tell me before sleep. i would wake up the next day and ask you to continue from where you had left off. even when the story had already ended, you would make up new chapters on the spot just to make me happy.
maa and papaji were never big fans of you secretly giving me money to buy toys, but you never stopped. looking back, i wonder how unconditional someone’s love has to be to do that.
i still remember the time i got caught doing something mischievous in school and was asked to pay a fine. both maa and papaji refused because they were disappointed in me. i ran out of the house crying and came straight to you. without a second thought, you helped me.
now, when i look back, i feel like i grew up too fast and slowly lost the bond we once had. but you were always there.
i loved how you held grudges if maa didn’t call you once a day, even when you purposely kept your phone switched off. i loved how upset you would get if i didn’t visit you every few days. and i loved how, whenever i was travelling, you would keep your phone next to your pillow and wait for maa's call to tell you that my flight had landed safely.
and then there were your silly fights with papaji.
both of you would stop talking for days, and then you would secretly call me and ask whether he was actually angry. somehow, i would always find a way to send him back to you.
but life is never simple, aaita.
life gets cruel sometimes.
when i left home for bangalore in 2023, i knew you weren’t the happiest person about it. you told me how important it was to get a good degree, but also how important it was to return to my hometown, buy a car, build a good house, and marry an assamese girl. you always said there is no america ahead of bangalore, but there is a tezpur and a family waiting for you to be looked after.
funny how the eighteen-year-old me laughed at your advice as if it were a joke. at that age, all i could think about was leaving home and seeing the world. today, i understand the weight behind every word you said.
it was never about cars or houses or even marriage. it was your way of reminding me that no matter how far i go, i should always remember where i come from and the people waiting for me back home.
aaita, when i say life gets cruel, i mean there are days when everything feels heavy. days when you don’t feel like getting out of bed, days when nothing seems to go right, and days when you feel completely lost. on days like those, i used to call you.
every single time, you would answer and tell me that listening to my voice made your day, or that knowing i was doing well made you happy. i never got the chance to tell you that those five-minutes often carried me through entire weeks. somehow, after talking to you, my problems always felt a little smaller.
recently, i was having one of those days again. without even thinking, i picked up my phone and searched for your contact. it was almost instinctive. halfway through, it hit me that there was no one on the other side anymore. i don’t think i have ever put my phone down as slowly as i did that day. it was one of the loneliest moments i have ever experienced.
one of my favourite memories with you will always be eating oranges together. every time i came home, i tried to make the most of every moment we spent together, even if it was something as simple as sitting side by side and sharing oranges.
on 24th december 2025, we sat together and had oranges for the last time. the next day, you fell and had to be rushed to the hospital. even in the toughest situations, you somehow managed to make things go your way. even while unconscious, you didn’t let the ambulance driver switch on the siren even once. somehow, what should have been a frightening ride turned into one filled with laughter.
that night, me and pinak dada stayed at the hospital looking after you. even in your weakest condition, you kept waking up just to check whether we had slept or not. that was so typical of you. no matter what you were going through, you were always more concerned about everyone else.
i also loved how particular you always were about your things. the first thing you told maa after coming out of the operation theatre was to put some baby cream on your face and make sure your bindi was in place. even in a hospital bed, you were still yourself.
when everything slowly started getting back to normal, i genuinely believed you would recover in a few days. the day before i flew back to bangalore, roomon and i clicked a picture with you. the plan was simple. one day, after you recovered, we would show you that photo and laugh together about how stubborn, silly, and strong you were at the same time.
5th january 2026 was the day my whole world fell apart. you were doing well until the previous day, and i still don’t understand what happened to all the strength you carried your entire life. even today, there are moments when i cannot believe that you are gone.
and honestly, that is the only thing i hate about you. you could have fought back that day. it was too early for you to leave.
but then again, i knew you. you never liked being dependent on anyone. you never liked someone else doing your work. you never liked hospitals, and you certainly never liked being confined to a bed. sometimes i wonder if that was your way of leaving, on your own terms, the same way you lived your entire life.
my hands still shake while writing this. you are lucky that you never got to see what happened to our family exactly one month after you left. i often think about that. sometimes i wonder how you would have reacted, or how you would have held all of us together through it. some days it feels like we lost you, and then before we could even begin to understand that loss, life found another way to test us.
sometimes it still feels like i am trapped inside a terrible dream and that i will wake up at any moment.
there was an innocence in you that i don’t think i will ever find anywhere else in my life. people close to me know how deeply i admired you and how important you are to everything i am today. no one will ever have expectations from me the way you did. aaita, this was all so sudden. you spent all these years teaching me how to live, how to grow, and how to become the person i am today, but you never taught me how to live in a world without you….
~morom,
junak baba