Bhupen Hazarika: Spanning centuries, borders, oceans

The Bard of the Brahmaputra may be silent but the river flows on.  It
may be centuries before it finds another. But till then, it will flow
and so will his music. Bhupen Hazarika’s ballads will sustain the
river, which was his true muse. There is few of his great songs – and
he wrote 1,500 of them in a creative journey that began 72 years ago
when he was 13 in tiny Sadiya in North Assam.

For those of us from Assam and the North-east, there is one
fundamental truth — without the Brahmaputra, there can be no Assam or
North-east or lands beyond our borders.  It is our lifeline, one of
our most defining assets and entitities.

It was would be no exaggeration to say that in every household of
Assam, a lamp has burned these past nights to honour the greatest
figure that most people of that beautiful but blighted state have
known. Across India, South Asia and the world, many of us who are
Assamese and many others who are not, have done the same and sung,
wept and prayed out of shradha for Bhupen Hazarika., whose lyrics keep
running around in our heads, playing on radio stations and over
television channels. Although I did not know him as well as those who
were close to him, there are many memories of the man I called ‘khura’
or uncle.

The outpouring of spontaneous love and affection for him was nothing
short of extraordinary. Millions of people, young and old, the rich
and the poor, the infirm and the healthy, stood in line patiently for
hours through the day and night to pay homage.  Many wept but others
sang his songs of humanity and equality, his political signature
tunes, which have become part of our folklore and history. Everyone
used their mobile phones to click pictures, they wanted a piece of
him, or history.

They came not just from every corner of Assam but from across the
North-east and beyond as songs played through the day and night over
public address systems on every street of Guwahati.

It was as he had sung, in his unforgettable Sagar Songramat or ‘At the
Confluence of Seas’, where he had never tired of swimming. For many
Assamese, he was a creative genius with his songs proclaiming the
rights of man, of brotherhood in that rich, velvety baritone.

In that expression of their affection, the Assamese showed the rest of
India their true face and spirit – not of anger and disappointment at
neither being deceived by Delhi time and again, nor resentment and
suspicion at being slighted by its failure to honour him adequately or
any other great figures from the region for that matter.  It was this:
“What can you do for or to us – we have chosen our path and you yours.
So let us walk separately.’   Sending a rookie politician with
aspirations or pretensions of being Prime Minister just because he
happens to bear the Gandhi name, who could not even get to the
cremation in time, shows how far Delhi is from understanding that
respect.  There is a demand for the Bharat Ratna for Dr. Hazarika. But
as one of my relatives recently blogged, “Let the mandarins of Delhi
keep their awards and wear them round their necks, if they so wish.”
They’ve missed the opportunity to share respect, failed again to move
in time to accord him the dignity that the people of the region – and
I include the larger region here, of the NER, Bangladesh, West Bengal
and Nepal – have always given him. Everything will be too little, too
late – as usual.

In contrast, Dhaka’s recognition of Bhupen Hazarika by honouring him
with the country’s highest civilian award shows how misconceived and
prejudiced have been Indian comprehensions of our neighbouring
country. We have failed to distinguish between the agendas of
government security agencies and the goodwill of people.  But why
Bangladesh?

It was his marching, stirring compositions for the Bangladeshi freedom
struggle: ‘Joi Joi Naba Jata Bangladesh, Joi Joi Mukti Bahini’ which
was on  every Bengali’s lips as that momentous struggle for liberation
gathered strength and inspired that battle for freedom.  And when
Bangladesh was born, he was welcomed there like a hero.

As the cremation took place, a 21-gun salute was offered by the Assam
Police, doctors and forensic experts took his foot impressions for
posterity. I do not know if these footprints will now be carried
around the Assamese and North-eastern countryside for more to pay
their homage but I do worry about a cult-like situation around a man
whose political message was equality, who loved simple home cooked
food and the company of friends to have addas, create his compositions
(sometimes on the back of an envelope or a scrap of paper) and express
his concern and love for his own people, although for decades he lives
in Calcutta and Mumbai, cities which, in his middle and later years,
gave him both dignity and financial stability.

To millions he was simply ‘Bhupen da’, including those of the younger
generation who have never seen him barring on television and the small
screens nor heard him live – but only on CDs and DVDs. So, there are
two classes of people today – those who knew him personally and those
who did not.

Yet, as one Assamese student said the other day, Bhupen Hazarika
spanned generational distances seamlessly: ‘It was the distance
between the television screen and your heart – that was how instant
the connection was.”

I was privileged to call him ‘khura’, partly because of his closeness
in the 1960s to my parents, the late Chaitanya Nath Hazarika and Maya
Hazarika of Shillong, and their mutual respect and affection.  One of
my mother’s fondest memories was singing with him (and she was a fine
singer) at All India Radio in Guwahati which used to be the great
Mecca of music and aspiring stars in the days when television had not
seized us with its ugly embrace. He used to visit us occasionally
whenever he happened to be in Shillong, lighting up days and lives.
Some years back, I was privileged to work with him and Kalpana Lajmi,
his companion of many years and partner in numerous creative ventures,
who took care of him with fierce affection, in a documentary series
for Doordarshan on the North-east. My collaboration began when the
great man called and asked me to help.  Could anyone say no to him.
His haunting melodies torment and inspire us.  They fly across the
world, on our mobile ring tones, our personal collections, our
memories and experiences.

He was more than the Bard of the Brahmaputra. A passionate crusader
for rights, for the poor (notice how his early and also later songs
drive home the message of equality even in times of pain) he believed
in the importance of means over ends. But he was also an incorrigible
optimist and even a prankster, with an impish sense of humour. That
was as much a part of him as his ability to give love and creativity.
Let me recall an evening, some years in Tezpur, where a small group
gathered in the elegant drawing room of the (now late) Dr. Robin and
Dr. Laksmi Goswami (Baideau), a couple who were very close to Bhupen
Hazarika, sipping drinks and listening to a long- time politician
recount one of his favorite anecdotes in the Assam Assembly.

The politician spoke of how a mischief-making MLA had got another
opposition member, who was quite easy to sway, to challenge the then
leader of the opposition, the late Dulal Baruah, in the House on a
point of order. An outraged Baruah thundered at his backbencher to
shut up, but the instigator was not done yet. ’Press on a point of
order,’  he hissed at his wavering colleague.

‘Point of order!’ yelled the now-defiant member, who was once again
stumped when the Speaker asked him, quite legitimately, ’On what
grounds?’

He fumbled, but then his friend whispered again, ‘Say, bad grammar.’

‘Bad grammar, sir,’ suggested the legislator.

The House dissolved in laughter as Baruah gazed balefully at his two tormenters.

The name of the questioner is not important, but there is much to be
said of the mischief-maker, who was the storyteller himself — none
other than Bhupen Hazarika.

Whereas he was a legend in Eastern India for decades, it was his
compositions for the film Rudali which won Hazarika recognition across
the subcontinent, a recognition which came very late in life.  As head
of the Sahitya Kala Parishad, he ensured that the Sattirya dance form
of Assam was given its rightful place as a classical dance form of
India and his own sangeet became immortalized as  a new genre, a new
school of music, the Bhupendra gharana.

Perhaps the best example of the humanistic ideals that imbue his works
is the song Manuhe Manuhar Babe (for man), composed in 1964:

If man wouldn’t think for man
With a little sympathy
Tell me who will comrade.
If we repeat history
If we try to buy
Or sell humanity
Won’t we be wrong comrade?
If the weak
Tide across the rapids of life
With your help
What do you stand to lose?
If man does not become man
A demon never will
If a demon turns more human
Whom shall it shame more, comrade?

Elsewhere, I have said that Bhupen Hazarika wove the virtues and

capacities of several centuries and a handful of truly great Assamese
into his life and his compositions, as on the currents of the
Brahmaputra, flowed the values and traditions of the Vaishnav reformer
Srimanta Sankardeva of the 15th and 16th century; the valour and call
to arms of Lachit Barpkukan, general of the 17th century when Assam
defeated a mighty Mughal invasion; the richness of prose and
composition of Lakhinath Bezbaruah; the humanity and creativity of
Jyoti Prasad Aggarwalla and Bibhnu Rabha and then the political
steadfastness and courage of Gopinath Bardoloi, Assam’s Premier of the
1940s, who stood alone, with Gandhi, against his own Congress party
and the Muslim League, refusing Assam to be absorbed into Bengal and
thus into East Pakistan.

The Bard of the Brahmaputra has fallen silent but he remains among us
through his songs, his music, his films, his convictions and his love
for Assam. Just by being amongst us, he enriched us — and single
handedly did more for Assam and the region than all politicians,
agitators and ‘underground’ groups, media and all of us collectively.
Like many others, I have spent these days listening to his music and
songs and realizing how mighty a figure has fallen and how little do
we comprehend that he is irreplaceable. And that such a person may not
come again for centuries.

The Lohit still flows and rumbles but where is its singer and
interpreter of its maladies? Perhaps the jajabor (wanderer) has,
finally, found a resting place. The Bard is immortal.

 

North by North East By Sanjoy Hazarika