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The last thing she did in her life was to smile. She was bedridden with paraplegia which descended on her quite unexpectedly. She was dancing merrily with a few of her colleagues in the staffroom when she suddenly collapsed. She never danced again. She never got up on her legs anymore. But she kept smiling. Until her last breath. Etilda Lalu was her name. I called her Kong, which was the Khasi way of addressing women respectfully. “Call me mommy,” she told me many times. &ldqu...
