Manju Devi Nath was born in Nagaon, Assam, India, and her family moved to Diphu when she was a toddler. As the eldest of six children to Kusha Nath and Bimala Devi, she was well-tempered child, showing musical and academic talents early on. She also had a dramatic streak; as a first grader at her Catholic boarding school in Haflong, she kicked a nun who told her she couldn’t go home on the first day.
Manju spent her youth actively involved in the arts, studying harmonium, voice, and acting. As a philosophy student at Cotton College, she began a parent-guided courtship with the love of her life, Ananta Nath. Immediately after graduation in 1976, they married and she joined him in Madison, Wisconsin, where he was in graduate school. Their life together began in married student housing, and then a small apartment in Waukesha where Ananta had his first U.S. engineering job. In these years, they forged close, lifelong friendships with young Indian couples and families in the surrounding area. They attended dinners, picnics, and cultural shows, which were a balm for her homesickness and a welcome opportunity to perform bhajans and Hindi film songs.
Manju and Ananta welcomed daughter Irene in 1980, and then, after moving to Lincoln, Nebraska, Amy in 1982. For many (but not all – we’ll get to that) years to follow, Manju claimed those days a young, stay-at-home mom were the best of her life. In 1984, she began graduate studies at the University of Nebraska, taking classes at night after spending all day with her daughters (who covered her textbooks in scented marker and got her kicked out of multiple libraries). She earned a master’s degree in public administration in 1986.
The family settled in Naples, Florida the following year and Manju began her career as a social worker with the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (later the Florida Department of Children and Families). That work was her life’s calling and passion; she spent most of her 32-year career between the adoption and foster care departments. Late one evening, decades into working and while on call crossing South Florida to transport kids freshly placed into the system, Ananta urged her to join him in retirement. She declined. “Someone has to help these kids Why can’t it be me?”
Amid the milestones, Manju lived with gratitude for simple pleasures. She maintained lush fruit, vegetable, and flower gardens, feeding friends and family year-round (“You must try this!”). She had a gift for making friends and loved playing host. Her Christmas parties were the stuff of legend. She spoke four languages. She took dance floors very seriously. When she finally retired, at the dawn of the Covid-19 pandemic, she delighted in preparing proper afternoon tea snacks and in the luxury of forgetting what day of the week it was.
Manju spent her final six years in her favorite role: Aita to Rohit and Mira. They were the greatest joys of her life, and she was unequivocal about it: “I spent so many years really missing the early eighties, being home with Irene and Amy. I don’t even think about those days since the grandkids came.” We believe the last song she sang was on the night before she passed – the Gayatri Mantra, as a lullaby to Mira.
Manju was predeceased by her father and a younger sister. She is survived by her mother, four siblings, husband, two daughters, two sons-in-law, two grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews.
Her family writes this with the perspective of two years since she passed, and we can confidently say that life isn’t as good without her. But she taught us how to move forward with gratitude and love, and that is one of her greatest legacies.
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