‘Remembering The Legacy You Left Behind’ –#TheMemoryProject

“I would call my mum a superwoman” says Huma, as she sits on an ornamented wooden bench in her cozy living room in Vasant Kunj. The bench, like many of the other belongings in the home Vikram and Huma share has been passed on to them by their late mother, Yamin Hazarika. The apartment is also filled with seven adorable dogs, all rescues Huma has found over the years. “They’re like my babies” she says, “as much as I would love to be as strict with my own dogs as my mum was with us I find that kind of hard”. Huma smiles, “I commend her for that”, Huma smiles.

Do not mourn the dead, is what people often say, but rather celebrate the lives they have lived. It is hard to celebrate a death, however, that is so untimely and unforgiving, It can be hard to celebrate when two kids, brother and sister, lose their mother to leukemia when they were only nine and twelve. But now, with years passed, healing, and large doses of generational strength, that is what Huma and Vikram Hazarika Sharma do with the memory of their late mother: they celebrate. Yamin Hazarika was the first female police officer from Assam and a highly celebrated and decorated officer in the Delhi police force. More than just titles, however, Yamin Hazarika was known to many as one of the first modern female Assamese icons. In all the articles written about her, she is commended for her social work, for her polite but disciplinarian demeanor, for her fight against sexual harassment, and for the gender boundaries she broke.

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“Every memory of my mother’s is a happy memory” says Vikram, “I think things would only be better if she were around”. Speaking to Huma and Vikram it’s understood that the pit left behind in Yamin’s absence has since been filled, but stories of her are still shared with an air of wistfulness. Her objects are scattered in plain sight around their home: she is still there, in the pearls around Huma’s neck, in the carefully chosen furniture, in the old letters she left behind. She’s there in the dogs, in the teaching that one should protect living beings be it humans or animals. She is there in her legacy; in conversations with her old colleagues, friends, and well-known writers who have nothing but lovely things to say about her.

She is also there to take care of her children now, despite not being physically present. “My brother and I were lucky that our parents had the foresight to be wise with their money” says Huma. She explains how the money left behind to them, in their investments and pensions, was what got them through a lot. Along with the memories, objects, belongings, and legacies left behind by those who pass away, there are those who also leave behind a sense of security. Such precautions can, in small ways, make the grieving process a little easier. There are decisions you make in life that in death let your loved ones know that you are still there to take care of them.

#TheMemoryProject, powered by HDFC Life, is a space for such stories. It’s a collection of narratives about love, loss, and nostalgia. It’s a place to celebrate the lives of those we have had the privilege of knowing, to cherish the memories we’ve had with them, to honor the value they hold, and will always hold. It’s also a place to celebrate the living, those who have loved, lost, and overcome. We lose something when we don’t remember the people we have lost, and we lose something when we don’t pay attention to such stories of others. So here’s the place for it.

Bringing all these stories together, we’d like to invite you to a very special evening on April 28th for our Memory Project event at G5A in Lower Parel, Mumbai, 5PM onwards. It will be an evening of poetry, interactive art installations, music, and letter writing. If you send your stories in to us, you will find them there. Please RSVP at the link here.