PRESIDENT Pranab Mukherjee's wife Suvra Mukherjee, who has been ailing for some time, passed away on Tuesday (August 18).
Suvra, an accomplished Rabindra Sangeet singer, was 74.
The First Lady, who remained hospitalised for 11 days, breathed her last at 10.51 a.m.at the Army Research and Referral Hospital in New Delhi.
Suvra was admitted to the Army Hospital on August 7 after she complained of breathing troubles and discomfort. Since then she was in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
Besides her husband, Suvra is survived by two sons Abhijit, a Congress MP, and Indrajit and one daughter Sharmistha, who unsuccessfully contested the Delhi Assembly elections on a Congress ticket.
Mukherjee had cut short his visit to Odisha on August 7 and returned to the national capital after he was informed about his wife's health condition.
Born on September 17, 1940, Surva, a graduate, married Mukherjee on July 13, 1957. The First Lady hailed from Jessore, now in Bangladesh, and had migrated to Kolkata at the age of 10 years.
'We are not like today's couples. It's not a lovey-dovey relationship and we don't express our emotions overtly,' Suvra was quoted as having said on the eve of the crowning moment of her husband's political career when he assumed the office of President on July 25, 2012. Suvra was an ardent fan of India’s national poet Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore.
Suvra founded the ‘Geetanjali Troupe’, to propagate Rabindranath Tagore’s philosophy. She has written two books – 'Chokher Aloey', which is a personal account of her close interaction with the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and 'Chena Achenai Chin', a travelogue recounting her visit to China.
