New Delhi: Reinvention defines the life of the wife of an Indian Foreign Service officer, said historian Reba Som. An academic, historian and trained singer in Rabindra Sangeet, the acclaimed author Som is perhaps the most evident example, she was married to IFS officer Himachal Som for 42 years. The thought seemed to resonate with everyone gathered at the India International Centre to celebrate the launch of her autobiography Hop, Skip and Jump: Peregrinations of a Diplomat’s Wife.
Speaking at the launch, former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran called the book “a candid yet hard-hitting commentary of IFS wives, the most underappreciated role in the world.”
Discussing the crucial role of IFS wives, Som said the government ‘gains two services for the salary of one’. She reminisced about the many countries she travelled to with her husband and the difficult task of transforming each city into a home for her family while also reinventing herself to fit into a new cultural milieu.
She notes that for the diplomat, a new country feels familiar as Indian embassies remain under the continuum of the MEA and “have the same flavour”, this was not the case for their spouse.
“What about the wife? She is forced to uproot herself from a country she finally became comfortable in and begin the process of transformation all over again. For her, this journey is disruptive and unsettling,” Som said.
She added that the spouses know this was the life they had chosen and therefore accepted it. However, their perception and perspectives are important and need to be articulated.
In roughly 300 pages, the Om Books International publication takes readers on a journey across the globe, from Brazil, Pakistan, and Laos to Canada, Italy and more. Travelling across these countries, the readers witness Som transforming from a 22-year-old bride and college graduate, into her role as an IFS wife to becoming a renowned historian and academic.
“The book goes well beyond her experiences to speak about the role of the Foreign Service officer’s wife, a role that is difficult even in the best of times. This is a role that has huge and often unrealistic expectations associated and can be quite stifling,” said her son Vishnu Som, principal anchor at NDTV.
Filled with insightful insights on societies from around the world, writer and festival director Namita Gokhale called the book a “magical memory box” which allows the reader to travel with the couple through the years.
“Her being able to balance this role with her professional interests while also being a mother is what I believe has come to define her and what she brings out beautifully in the book,” Vishnu added.
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More than an IFS wife
In 2023, feminism is a constant theme across books, film, music and more. Women are constantly encouraged to own their sense of identity and follow their passions. However, this was not the case when the author was skipping from country to country with her diplomat husband.
Throughout her life, Som remained committed to her family as well as herself, developing her passions and identity. Hop, Skip and Jump… acts as more than an autobiography, it is a collection of history, and a travelogue as well as a feminist endeavour, focusing on a woman’s journey of self-actualisation and developing a space of her own through academics, singing and more.
While discussing Som’s achievements, managing director of Teamwork Arts Sanjoy K Roy recalled a call between him and the author. Roy emphasised Som’s determination to take up the role of director at the Indian Council for Cultural Relations’ Rabindranath Tagore Centre in 2008, highlighting her ever-deep-rooted sense of having her own identity apart from being an IFS wife.
“What really comes through in the book is that she is a person, despite being an IFS wife. She constantly pursued what she wanted to do, whether it was writing, research or music,” he said.
Reba Som, who studied history at Presidency College and obtained her PhD from Calcutta University, has written on a wide range of subjects from Subhas Chandra Bose and Gandhi to Rabindranath Tagore. Her books include Differences within Consensus: The Left-Right Divide in the Congress (1995), Subhas Chandra Bose and the Resolution of the Women’s Question (2002), Gandhi, Bose, Nehru and the Making of the Modern Indian Mind (2004) and Rabindranath Tagore: The Singer and his Song (2009).
Som is a trained singer of Rabindra Sangeet and Nazrul Geeti. She also served as the regional director of the Rabindranath Tagore Centre, ICCR, Kolkata, from 2008 to 2013.
Som also worked with the community of IFS wives to help provide the women with career opportunities.
During her husband’s six-year posting in New Delhi from 1997 to 2002, Som along with members of the External Affairs Spouses’ Association approached the MEA, when Lalit Mansingh was the foreign secretary, to remove the blanket ban on IFS spouses working abroad. However, he denied the request.
It was only when Chokila Iyer was appointed as India’s first female foreign secretary in 2001 that IFS wives were finally allowed to work abroad.
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Omnipresent role of Tagore
While the book discusses numerous themes from the challenges of an IFS spouse to a woman owning her identity, Tagore’s ubiquitous influence can be felt throughout the book as well as in Som’s life.
Calling Tagore her mentor, Som noted, “For Bengalis, Tagore is a personal religion. Dip into any Tagore poem or song and you will find an answer to a problem you are in.”
This gathering of friends ended aptly with Reba Som singing Tagore’s Purano Shei Diner Kotha, inspired by the Scottish ballad Auld Lang Syne, a song reminiscing good times with old companions.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)