Bhupen Hazarika was cremated this morning in Guwahati, at a ceremony on the banks of the Brahmaputra that was attended by an estimated 100,000 people present to pay their tribute to the legendary singer. His politics did go somewhat awry in his last years, but I don't want to think about that right now. Here [...] | Flow on, great river Bhupen Hazarika Amlanjyoti Goswam http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111108/jsp/northeast/story_14719103.jsp Bhupen Hazarika has crossed the river. Even mahabahu Brahmaputra cannot catch his current tonight. This evening has turned spare, empty. It does not matter where we are — in Guwahati, Shillong, Calcutta, Dibrugarh, Itanagar, Dhaka, London, New Jersey or Delhi — the songs do not go away, do they? More than a million people are expected to mourn him on the streets. We will finally let him go, tomorrow. There are earthen lamps lit outside homes. It is as if the very river has disappeared overnight. When the history books are written, we will know more about this man's significance. How a single man strode the entire cultural landscape of a region and defined it. He became the voice of a beleaguered Assam. As a writer, filmmaker, lyricist, cultural voice and even, for a brief while, a political leader, Bhupenda was the last of the renaissance kind. Political scientist Sanjib Baruah once wrote that a narrative of Bhupen Hazarika's songs could provide a window to understanding the complex socio-politics of Assam itself. Bhupenda was like one of those 19th century giants, an artiste so emblematic of his culture that he could command respect, love, adoration with a single song, a public word, a single wink of a twinkling eye. The tradition of the prophetic bard goes back further — to Homer, the oral balladeers, the wandering minstrel, singing the soul of the peoples and in turn, epitomising its very spirit. Bhupen Hazarika was a large-hearted progressive modernist for whom the world was a difficult but lovely playground. His particular genius was to marry the modern lyrics with ancient folk idiom of the people, literally inventing a genre inimitably his very own. It is said Paul Robeson's Ol' Man River did something to him when he first listened to it while studying in Columbia University. The child prodigy, whose genius started radiating at 11, found rich possibilities of what he could achieve with folk and the ballad. Thus was invented a timbre uniquely modern and yet so close to the Assamese home, where the guitar had equal place with the Dug Dug Dug Dug Domboru, Meghe Bojai Domboru (The ones clouds play). With the stunning evocative lyrics and the baritone, the charisma and the broad inclusive vision, he seemed to tug at being itself. Such is, and can be, the power of art. Bhupenda's ballad spoke to the heart, gave dignity to the poorest, gave Assam a face in the national map and eulogised the universal jajabor (the wanderer). He was one who was as much at home at Mark Twain's grave as at Gorky's, in Austria and in Chicago, whose mother was the Ganga and the Padma. The humanist and democrat shone forth in his belief that art could change things, that his songs of protest and warmth, of compassion and peace, could move mountains. The river was a constant, haunting omnipresence. We are on the same boat brother, whether on the banks of the Ganga or the Brahmaputra, of the Padma or the Mississippi, whether the tongue is Assamese or Bangla, Bhojpuri or Nagamese or Gujarati. Yet, his universalism, so cosmopolitan, was also deeply rooted. The wanderer found smiling folks wherever he went. The universal and the roots in a passionate embrace, and changing both, and us too, the feeling Wallace Stevens once evoked when he said: "And there I found myself more truly and more strange". The romantic, Moinajan, Moinajan, the job-seeker who can't find a job even in oil-rich Digboi, but asks, "Can't I have a sweet word please?" Lakhimpur or Sadia is no longer home, and home is simply a place to be in, a song to listen to. The eternal romantic, this vision of recognising a common humanity is as real as blood, not an abstract transcendent notion. The warmth of humanity flowing from his songs is the folk spirit that sustains all of us, like the river itself, whose currents we listen to in tonight's darkness. The brief interlude in politics was just another footnote. He was already a man of the people, a living example of Shelley's "unacknowledged legislator of the world". The last time I saw him — at the Siri Fort auditorium in Delhi — he was 78. All of us, young and old, father and kid, mother and lover, we clapped and danced, and we forgot time. We were with him and he was with us. Wasn't he endless, like the Brahmaputra itself? As he sang, life's heavy knocks faded away. No more cruelty, despair, anger or hatred. Bhupenda showed us how to get away. Then the lights came on, people made their way out, cars zoomed by and we walked the hard streets as the roar of time and the city hit back at us. But for three hours, he brought back feeling. It's the feeling I remember tonight. What else can one ask for? That baritone hummed deep, with a spirited, if unhurried, immediacy. The enduring image of the artiste at his job — hands on the harmonium, a beret on the head, one leg lazily atop a makeshift bench on the stage and another firmly balanced on the floor, responding to his fellow artistes who smile with him and then going back to the audience, singing and having all the fun in the world. Tonight, the tears flow incessantly — just as his passion for song and life lives forever. The songs are always company. Bhupenda remains alive and I can see him waving across, his Nepali cap in place, as he moves out quietly. I can see no more. |
