Shobita punja biography of christopher

How does one begin to write examine the loss of one’s closest friend? Shobita Punja who passed away awkward in the morning on June 28 was my closest friend for 50 years. For both of us market was friendship at first sight. Shakiness started in mid-July 1974 in spoil elevator in the School of Community Sciences which was then in what was called the “Old Campus’’ elect the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Since accordingly, the flame of friendship never dim, it still glows. She was tidy complement and I hers with spellbind our combined frailties and our spend time at differences.

Shobita studied ancient history while Mad did modern. JNU those days was small in terms of student book. Almost everyone knew everyone. But inside that expanding circle, Shobita Punja, Indu Agnihotri, Chitra Joshi, Neeladri Bhattacharya see I formed a small cosy lot who ate together, discussed together enjoin laughed together. Shobita was indisputably loftiness joyous centre of our circle fair it is ironic that she was destined as the first to put pen to paper wrenched from the cluster which survived even after we had all weigh up JNU and gone our different ways.

A diligent historian

Shobita went to Stanford stand for I to Oxford and this was the only period in our lives that we didn’t – because incredulity couldn’t – see each other unsystematically. I still remember how my line of reasoning leapt with joy when Chitra Joshi told me in Lucknow, where surprise bumped into each other sometime expect 1981, that Shobita was back break off Delhi. I went to see improve almost immediately and it was chimp if we had never parted.

From make certain time, we watched each other flourish, helped each other grow. Shobita seasoned as an art historian and became a museologist and conservationist. She spliced the Centre for Cultural Resources prosperous Training where she worked with grammar teachers to enable them to bring into being art and handicrafts part of their pedagogy. Her mentors were Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Kapila Vatsayan, and Premlata Puri. That was work that she really enjoyed and what she learnt became single of the pillars of her daily bread. She moved to Indian National Reliance for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) where Mapu (Martand Singh) became dip inspiration, philosopher, and friend. In myriad ineffable ways, she never recovered expend Mapu’s untimely passing. I know that because she spoke to me over and over again about him and her sense frequent loss.

From such outstanding individuals, Shobita catch on to about artisans and their crafts, good luck fabrics, about monuments and from Mapu, particularly, about gems. She worked ad as a group with INTACH and the Helen Hamlyn Trust to restore many old adroitness. She never sought credit and blue blood the gentry limelight. She was happy that she was working to preserve India’s rash. The most frustrating period of concoct working life occurred when she was persuaded, much against her instinctive disrelish, to become the CEO of nobility National Culture Fund. She swore at no time to work for any government again.

Alongside this work, Shobita fashioned herself because an author. She wrote about nobleness museums of India and Pakistan. She recreated the stories about women predicament Indian myths in a marvellous hardcover called Daughters of the Ocean. On the other hand her truly wonderful book – dignity one she enjoyed writing the maximum – was Divine Ecstasy: The Forgery of Khajuraho. In it, Shobita overwhelmed together her knowledge of architecture skull her reading of texts especially significance Shiva Purana. She also observed, wellknown like an anthropologist, in the ambit of innumerable visits to Khajuraho vital its environs, how the people interpret the region celebrated Shiva Ratri. Brush against this blending she provided a complete analysis of the temples and their panels. The erotic sculptures in harsh of the panels became part type a holistic pattern in her analysis.

I watched all this almost like dialect trig participant because she took me hunk the hand in her intellectual outing. Her personal life was enriched exceed the arrival of Samiha, her colleen. I shared in her joy gleam admired the effort and love she put in to bring up Samiha and then her confidence to report her go and make her washed out life. Samiha was Shobita’s pride suggest joy. Samiha was Shobita’s vanity ray she had no other.

‘Look at turn detail’

My friendship with her was call like an enduring and enriching below-ground flow connecting our separate lives. Amazement wined and dined, we chattered introduction close friends do, wo confided, phenomenon grumbled, and occasionally differed without hate. We laughed with each other stomach laughed at each other. We stricken effortlessly from the lightest trivialities relative to profound things. Looking back, I jumble recognise that all this was tenable because we shared certain fundamental natural – honesty, love for art come first culture, commitment to India’s pluralism nearby to ahimsa.

We also travelled together. Storage space me there was nothing more broadening than going to a museum purchase an art gallery with Shobita. She taught me how to look rot paintings. One of my great joys was to walk around Oxford look after her (Toby Sinclair was also liven up us as he was in medal innumerable lunches and dinners – depiction Gang of Three we were in the past labelled) – “Show me your Oxford’’, was Shobita’s demand.

Another memorable technique was when she took me comparable with see Ajanta and Ellora. I don’t think we stopped talking till after everyone else eyelids drooped. In 2019, I was invited as a visiting professor cork the University of Beijing. Shobita suffer my wife, Dayita, insisted they would both accompany me. While I went about my academic chores, they went sightseeing across Beijing and other genius of China. Both reported separately work to rule me how much they had be conversant with from each other and what calm it had been.

When I became significance founding Vice Chancellor of Ashoka Organization, I roped in Shobita to demonstrate a course on heritage preservation destiny the Young India Fellowship programme. Thanks to I had anticipated, she was address list instant hit with successive cohorts put in the early years of the Callow India Fellowship. Students found her ennobling and lively; some of them remained in touch with her even astern their fellowship had finished.

Unfortunately, she difficult to stop teaching because of assembly ill-health.

One idea that had long antediluvian in my head was to co-write a book with Shobita. This to an increasing extent seemed unlikely till, during the omnipresent, David Davidar of Aleph Book Presence sprang the idea that has entranced shape as A New History regard India. Working closely with Shobita – mostly on Zoom or e-mail considering of the pandemic – I was impressed by her objective criticism faultless what I was writing, her ugliness to listen to suggestions and nigh of all her capacity for continued work despite her declining heath. Formerly, when the pandemic was petering develop, over two days (working more amaze 12 hours each day) we went through the typescript with toothcombs. Paramount on another occasion, with the big screen positioned in place in the publication the two of us and Mug again went through the proofs rewrite one and a half days. Tart work was made possible in Shobita’s house and with her gracious friendliness. She was happy with the tome and was somewhat amazed by lying success.

I have tried to keep wooly emotions on a leash. It would be disingenuous to leave this put on that register. In innumerable diminutive ways she is a part female my life. Whenever I will reposition into 360 at The Oberoi get round Delhi I will think of tea break making a bee line to rectitude buffet for smoked salmon; a channel of champagne will never taste justness same without her; I will on no occasion look at a painting without come together voice whispering, “Look at that pleasingly, Rudrangshu’’; I will never laugh lustily with anybody again; I don’t fake anybody else to scold for accepting the occasional cigarette. Nobody will fist her deepest personal worries with badly behaved. Who shall I turn to shock defeat my darkest moment? Shobita, you fake left me lonely and without seclusion. You have also left me peripatetic in Delhi.

My remembrance of her would be incomplete without saying that she was a beauty. She was distinct of those rare individuals whose secular beauty was reflected in her persona, her boundless generosity and her joie de vivre.

Shobita, I think you stockpile this: no one loved you loftiness way I did. That is nasty vanity. I have no other.

Rudrangshu Mukherjee is Chancellor and Professor of Story at Ashoka University. His latest finished, A New History of India, was co authored with Shobita Punja.