The visitor in the hostel

Former Assam DGP Kula Saikia remembers his conversation he had with Gail Omvedt forty years ago.

The mild knock on the door was good enough to take my mind off from the class note book which was mysteriously looking at me with its long sum of econometrics. Who was that, I could have asked as usual but I moved towards the door and unlatched it. “I am Gail Omvedt,” she said and I quickly shook off the menacing effect of the statistical parameters of my class notes of Delhi School Of Economics that were hovering all around me. It was meant to be as I had the examination paper next day. I quickly responded to her and gave the confirmation that yes, professor Rao had already sent me the message about her coming to meet me in my hostel Jubilee Hall.

I did not have to ask who was Gail Omvedt, where she was from, how she took up the Dalit rights issues close to her heart after coming to my country from the US for research, and how she was in jail during the dreadful Emergency days when she brought the pathetic conditions of jail to the outside. In fact, number of times issues raised by Gail on the caste-ridden society and the dialectics involved were important topics of our discussion at the coffee house.

She apologised and placed on my bed her little child who was sleeping on her shoulder. The child was in deep sleep, looking obviously tired, and I was told by her mother that it was a long trip from Bombay . Gail sat by the child and said to me , “Let’s hear about the latest in your State”.