Sunita Biswas has called Kolkata her home for 10 years, a decade that saw her transform from a young girl in a Himachal village to a Bengali-speaking Calcuttan.
She came here after marriage and rebuilt her world, only to see it shatter to smithereens on April 28 this year, she lost the love of her life, Bulbul Rahman Biswas. He was 42.
Sunita grew up in a small village called Rakeon in the Shimla district of Himachal Pradesh. Though like other village girls she would help her mother manage the cattle and do the chores at their modest home, she was an intelligent student. Driven by the desire to be self-sufficient, she completed her MA in Hindi from Himachal Pradesh University.
She met her husband when she went for the interview before her first job as a trainee in the admin team of a manufacturing company. He was her interviewer, who would become her boss and, eventually, the one her world revolved around.
“I did not bring my lunch. It was my first job,” she remembers about her first day at work. “He scolded me for not bringing food and took me to the canteen and ensured I was fed.”
There was no proclamation of love, Sunita recalls, but they knew they were meant to be together. Her family was unsure about sending their daughter to faraway Kolkata but Sunita and Bulbul followed their heart. In 2011, they married and shifted to Kolkata to start living with Bulbul’s family at their own house in Salt Lake.
Sunita found a job in Kolkata and for a while, it was the “perfect life,” Sunita remembers. Every day, Bulbul would pack her lunch. They would hold hands while walking to the bus stop. Each evening, she would find him waiting for her at the bus stop. Sunita gave up her job soon after Bulbul completed his MBA. Bulbul encouraged her to learn fitness training and swimming.
Even that perfect life, however, was not a bed of roses. Her husband was at a crossroads in his career; he wanted to get into the business of fitness training but his father's health had worsened. Sunita egged Bulbul on to follow his dream.
Looking at the last photo her husband sent from the gym where he worked as a trainer, Sunita says most of Bulbul’s wishes were fulfilled — except the wish of growing old with her. She remembers how her husband was 'Bulbulda’ for one and all — a man with a heart of gold who was forever ready to help anyone in distress.
In 2020, Bulbul shifted to Jharkhand’s Dumka with a better-paying job as a gym trainer and shifted there. A new struggle began for Sunita to take full responsibility for the household — her mother-in-law and the canines Sunita calls her “dog babies”. Once again she picked up the pieces of her life, unaware that fate was readying its heaviest blow.
Bulbul came back to Kolkata in early April, by when the second wave of Covid-19 had hit. He stayed back due to the lockdown. Around three weeks later, both he and Sunita had cold and fever. The day before the Covid test, Bulbul developed weakness. He died even before they could get him to the hospital. Sunita's perfect life was shattered in a day.
A part of her aches for Bulbul; she says their pets still waiting for him to come back each time the calling bell rings. But Sunita is a fighter. She knows it is hard to find work in a pandemic but she knows she cannot be weak, she cannot break down. She knows she must carry on, for her husband's sake.