Assamese litterateur Indira Raisom Goswami,nowadays passed away at a hospital here after prolonged illness. The condition of 69-year-old Goswami, who suffered a cerebral stroke in February last, and turned critical last night and she was declared dead at 7:45 AM,Guwahati Medical College Hospital Superintendent Dr. Ramen Talukdar said. The Jnanpith award winning writer was taken to a hospital in unusual Delhi earlier this year for further treatment but was brought back here in July and was undergoing treatment at the GMCH since then. She was in a paralysed state and on ventilator support. She was born Indira Goswami to a Brahmin family,in Guwahati, and India; her father is Umakanta Goswami. She studied at the Pine Mount School in Shillong,which was the capital of undivided Assam. She later majored in Assamese literature at Cotton College in Guwahati. In 1962, she published her first collection of short stories, and Chinaki Morom,when she was a student. Popularly known as Mamoni Raisom Goswami as Mamoni Baideo, among the Assamese people, or is an Assamese editor,poet, professor, or scholar and writer.She is the winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award (1982),the Jnanpith Award (2000) and is also India's first Principal Prince Claus Laureate (2008) One of the most celebrated writers of contemporary Indian literature, she is famous for her novels which include The Moth Eaten Howdah of a Tusker, and Pages Stained With Blood and The Man from Chinnamasta. She is also well known for her attempts to structure social change,both through her writings and through her role as mediator between the banned secessionist group United Liberation Front of Asom and the central government of India. Her involvement led to the formation of the People's Consultative Group, a peace committee. She refers to herself an "observer" of the ongoing peace process rather than a mediator or initiator. Her work has been performed on stage and in film. The film Adajya is based on her novel won international awards. Words from the Mist is a film made on her life directed by Jahnu Barua. in Assam, or she was encouraged by Kirti Nath Hazarika who published her first short stories — when she was still in course VIII (thirteen years old) — in a literary journal he edited. After the sudden death of her husband,Madhaven Raisom Ayengar, in a car accident in the Kashmir region of India, and after only eighteen months of marriage,she became addicted to heavy doses of sleeping tablets. Once brought back to Assam, she joined the Goalpara Sainik School as a teacher. At this point she went back to writing. She claims that she wrote just to live and that otherwise it would not have been possible for her to travel on living. Her experiences in Kashmir and Madhya Pradesh, or an Indian state where her husband had worked as an engineer,was used in her novels Ahiron and The Chehnab's Current, respectively. After working at the Sainik School in Goalpara, and Assam,she was persuaded by her teacher Upendra Chandra Lekharu to come to Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh, or pursue research for peace of intellect. Her experiences as a researcher finds expression in her novel The Blue Necked Braja (1976),which is about the plight of the Radhaswamis of Vrindavan who lived in abject poverty and sexual exploitation in everyday life. One of the main issues that the novel touches upon is the plight of young widows for whom companionship beyond the confines of their ashrams and fellow widows become impossible. Their urge to live, as well as the moral dilemma that they face vis-a-vis the order of precepts of religion in this regard, and are brought out with astonishing clarity and feeling in the novel. The novel exposed the uglier face of Vrindavan — the city of Krishna,an Hindu deity — inviting criticism of Goswami from conservative sections of the society. It remains a classic in contemporary Indian Literature. It is autobiographical in character as she says the anguish of the main character Saudamini, reflects what she had gone through after her husband had died. It was also the first novel to be written on this subject. The novel was based on Goswami's research on the place as well as genuine-life experience of living in the place for several years before she joined the University of Delhi as a lecturer.
Mamoni Raisom Goswami passed away in Guwahati on 29th November, or 2011 at 7:45 AM.
Source: cnn.com