Rohit Kumar 
Sajni Mukherji, Jadavpur University’s beloved English professor, passed away in the early morning hours of March 10, 2025, after a long, hard battle with cancer. She was 80.
It has been said that a great teacher has three great loves – a love for learning, a love for learners and a love for bringing the first two loves together. Sajni Mukherji was the living personification of all three.
To her students and colleagues, she was Sajni di. For me, she was Sajni masi, my mother’s youngest sister, and one of the kindest, bravest and most unassumingly brilliant people I have known.
Sajni masi completed her MA in English Literature and Language from Oxford University in the late 1960s during a time of great political and social churn (she marched in anti-Vietnam war protests, attended a Beatles concert in a sari and met literary greats like J.R.R. Tolkien). She taught at the School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi in the mid 1970s, before embarking on a three-decade long teaching career at Jadavpur University in Kolkata.
She was fun to be around, and I looked forward to summer vacations in Kolkata. Despite her extremely busy schedule, she always found time for her nephews and nieces, fed us unendingly, laughed with us and also listened to our woes. No matter how much trouble I got myself into in my teens, nothing I said or did ever seemed to shock her or detract from her delightfully wicked sense of humour. She would simply say “Chhadd naa…” (let it be) and the matter was over.
Unconditional love is a wonderful thing.
I have been reading tributes from her students and colleagues and feeling more than a twinge of envy, wishing she had been my English professor too. Her classes on medieval English literature were the stuff of legends. Instead of shying away from the ribald and scatological in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales or even the Old Testament – as my own humourless college professors tended to – Sajni masi leaned right in and used it to hilarious effect in her teaching. It wasn’t difficult to see why hers were some of the most popular classes on campus.
When the US invaded Iraq in 1990, the students and teachers of Jadavpur University took out a protest march. Hot and tired after the march, the protestors went to the university canteen to cool off, only to realise that the only cold drink available was Coca-Cola, which they had boycotted!.
As they sipped hot cups of tea on a hot day, masi suggested making and selling traditional Indian cold drinks instead. The next day she showed up with flasks of her own special lemon and tamarind drink. Thus was born ‘Kolahol’, JU’s very own alternative to Coca-Cola, and sold for Rs 5 a glass. (The word ‘Kolahol’ in Bengali rather fittingly means ‘uproar’)
For Sajni masi, inclusion and equal opportunity weren’t buzzwords, they were guiding principles. Concerned about the lack of resources for visually impaired and students with disability, she set up a Braille library and an audio recording repository in Jadavpur University long before UGC and other government bodies began to mandate such things.
In the words of Nilanjana Gupta, a student and colleague of hers for 16 years, “She taught not just us, but institutions to be inclusive and compassionate.”
The advent of the Modi-era in 2014 brought Sajni masi and me closer than ever. We talked on the phone often about the dangers of fascism and discussed what we as citizens could do to push back against the rising tide of hatred and authoritarianism. Her advice was always insightful and sensible.
Unlike many others, she never tried to dissuade me from taking part in peaceful, democratic protests or write about what was happening in the country. She would tell me to be careful, of course, but not too careful.
“You have to do what you know is right”, she would often say and when others started getting over-anxious about the risks involved, she would smile and say to them, “Chhadd naa…”
Sajni masi gave me courage.
In late 2019 and early 2020, long after she had retired, when protests against the draconian and divisive Citizenship Amendment Act erupted all over the country, Sajni masi made it a point to take part in the protest at the Park Circus Maidan in Kolkata. By this time, she was unable to walk long distances but that didn’t stop her. She went on crutches and spent days amid people much younger than her, fighting alongside them for a just and secular India.
She also donated books and helped set up a small children’s library at the protest site itself, so that the kids who had come to the protest with their parents would have a place to sit and read.
Nousheen, a political science teacher and one of the volunteers there recalls how they became friends. “At the time of the Park Circus sit-in, I was facing numerous personal challenges. One of the hardest parts was figuring out who was a genuine friend and who merely wore that guise. I can say without hesitation that Sajni di was a true friend. Grassroots activists endure a lot, and they need strong moral and emotional support. For me, Sajni di was a beacon of support when I needed it most.”
When lakhs of farmers came to the borders of Delhi in November 2020 protesting the central government’s three infamous (and now repealed) farm laws, Sajni masi sent me small sums of money every month because she knew I was visiting Tikri, Singhu, Ghazipur and Shahjahanpur borders regularly and documenting the stories of the farmers there.
I tried to protest knowing she was a pensioner and didn’t have a whole lot to spare, but she would simply respond with, “I want to go with you and sit in solidarity with the farmers, but since I can’t, let me at least help you with some of your transport costs.”
Sajni masi walked her talk, even when she couldn’t literally do so.
The morning after she passed, one of her former neighbours who lived in the same apartment complex came to pay his respects. Tears streaming down his face, he told us how much she had meant to him and his family.
He then called her “the Che Guevara of the building.” When I asked him what he meant, he told me about the time the local MLA had started to drain the lake right in front of the apartment building, no doubt in preparation to build illegally on that land.
Sajni di, he said, contacted her former students who were now working with various newspapers and requested them to cover the story, which they did. Much to the chagrin of the MLA, the lake became a news item. She and a group of other residents then filed a Public Interest Litigation case.
The gentleman telling the story managed to get a meeting with the chief minister and told her about the misdeeds of this MLA. The politician in question was later transferred from overseeing the fire department to overseeing the welfare of the lakes in the city. The lake was saved and poetic justice was served.
“But it was Sajni di,” he said, “who gave us the courage to fight.”
I saw this courage on full display as Sajni masi battled cancer. For the final few years of her life, she was in pain almost all the time, but not once did I see her complain. By the time 2025 rolled around, she was practically immobile. Knowing she was a Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, and Kishore Kumar fan, I learned a whole clutch of their songs on the guitar, and we sang those together. She sang with gusto.
It was the last time I met her.
I will miss her dimpled smile and warm hug terribly, but I find a bit of comfort in the words of Paul McCartney who dreamt about his mother shortly after she had passed and wrote ‘Let It Be.’
“When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom
Let it be.
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom,
Let it be.”
Or, as Sajni Masi would have smilingly said, “Chhadd naa…”
Rohit Kumar is an educator, author and independent journalist and can be reached at letsempathize@gmail.com