Her Table Was Her Testament

Hamri atariya pe aao sanwariya / Dekha dekhi balam hoi jaye…”

Begum Akhtar sang this refrain in her inimitable voice—half velvet, half wound— and the air itself seemed to stop and listen. It was not a song, it was a visitation. And today, as I sit with the news of my aunt Usha Bhatnagar’s passing, this ghazal returns like a river after silence.

Because Usha Bua was herself a visitation. She was Begum Akhtar’s student, and not just a student but the one Begum Sahiba spoke of in her biopic—the one whose name did not need to be spoken, because affection transcends articulation. My aunt and my uncle, Shashikant Bhatnagar, then in service in Lucknow, found Begum Akhtar at a moment when she needed sanctuary. They gave her not just shelter, but safety, solace, and sincerity. In return, Bua received music, yes, but also love and trust.

I was a boy then, wide-eyed and impressionable, and to me, Usha Bua was the epitome of elegance. But beauty was only the beginning. Over time, as life brought me back from America, unsteady and unsure, I rediscovered her. I found not just an aunt, but a philosopher of the everyday. She grew more radiant with each passing year, not in vanity, but in vitality.

Her table was her testament. A simple lunch at her house was a festival: baingan bhaja, crisp discs of eggplant still breathing their earthy heft; gobi, golden and glowing; yellow dal, humble yet heroic; parathas, perfect in their warmth; chutneys, pickles, papads—each a punctuation mark in a feast that was also a poem. There was jalebi soaked in milk until sweetness surrendered,  served in earthenware bowls that seemed to hold memory itself. Her kitchen was alchemy, turning the everyday into the extraordinary.

And always, there was song. A line hummed here, a verse whispered there. Music threaded her life like a silken sari border—quiet yet constant. Sometimes she sang, sometimes she listened, but always she lived musically.

When I last met her just weeks ago—it was mango season. She wasn’t feeling fully well, but even so, she made the moment beautiful. She stayed in her room, arranging chairs and small tables for us, each served in courses, each detail correct. That was her gift: even minor illness could not diminish her dignity.

Now she is gone, and yet she is not. Because people like her do not leave; they only change rooms. They inhabit our senses—our taste when we bite into a crisp baingan slice, our sight when we notice grace walking into a room, our sound when a ghazal drifts unexpectedly on the radio. They survive in the soft soil of memory, in the sweet spice of recall.

“Tasavvur mein chale aate ho, kuch baatein bhi hoti hain / Shab-e-furqat bhi hoti hai, mulaqatein bhi hoti hain…(Even in separation, there are meetings. Even in absence, there is presence).” My Usha Bua lives now in the kaleidoscope of recollection, in the rainbow of remembrance, in the prism of the past refracting into the present.

We all have such elders—custodians of taste and tenderness, of song and story, of values we inherit not as commandments but as comforts. And yet, we take them for granted, until one day they are gone, and we scramble to gather their scattered stardust.

So let this be not just an obituary, but an invitation. Look around you. Find your own Usha Bua. Celebrate her now. Sit at her table, listen to her stories, notice the sparkle in her sari, the philosophy in her laughter. Because today’s abundance is tomorrow’s ache.

Usha Bhatnagar may have left this world, but she remains—immortal not in monuments, but in the simmer of song, in the sweetness of mango panna, in the cadence of a ghazal. And that is enough. That is everything.

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