Sulabha Chakravarty

August 15, 1963 – August 19, 2018)

- Neha Sinha

“Can you send a clearer picture of your article?”

“I have become an oldie,” Sulabha Chakravarty said. “I can’t read small fonts.” I imagined the ‘voice’ in my Facebook messenger to be warm, admonishing, courteous yet demanding; indeed, a bit like my own mother.

I knew Sulabha Chakravarty first in the disembodied way we get to know adults at friends’ birthday parties – as the mother of my friends, Rohan and Rohit. I had the deference and distance one maintains for the parents of friends. But like a plant pushing against a sunlit window, Sulabha aunty came into my life, spilling it with blossoms of questions, and tendrils of thought. She read my articles, and consistently gave me feedback. But that wasn’t what made her more than Rohan’s mom for me. It was the fact that she took up an interest – wildlife, bats, birds, wildlife writing – at an age when women are ‘expected’ to be going through mid-life crises. Not only did she take up an interest, she followed through.

“Sulabha was a spirited ‘young’ person, as in spirit she was always a lively, vivacious child! However, this child-like nature concealed a very determined and resolute human being; if she got it into her head to do something, there was nothing in the world that could deter her from seeing it accomplished to its logical end,” says close friend Anuradha Paul.