‘Noorjahaner Ma’s Noorjahan’: A Lifetime of Conquering Hardships

Activist and social worker Noorjahan Bose (b. 1938) calls herself a daughter of the river Agunmukha—the Mouth of Fire—in a memoir that glows with confident self-affirmation. Noorjahan, born on an island formed by the six rivers flowing into the tumultuous Agunmukha, narrated stories about her childhood in East Pakistan and about her later life in the UK and USA to her children and grandchildren living in the USA. On their insistence, the stories were written and published first serially in a Bengali daily, Janakantha, before appearing as a book titled Agunmukhar Meye (2009). Its translation into English is a welcome opportunity for wider readership to learn about Bose’s remarkable life, the events and people she encountered and in turn impacted.