The white Ambassador was arguably the only car of authority in 1989, six years after Maruti launched, to signal a transformation in the Indian automobile industry. Barring the rugged jeep, it was also the toughest vehicle of that era, offering some degree of comfort on roads with countless craters. The build quality notwithstanding, the Ambassador tested the endurance of long-distance travellers, especially if they happened to be 60, the dawn of life as a senior citizen in India.
Bhupenda was past 62 when I hosted him at Morigaon, then a sub-divisional headquarters of the Nagaon district, in the first week of March 1989. As Morigaon’s Sub-Divisional Officer – it was my first posting as an IAS officer after a year’s probation in Jorhat, further east – I struggled to hide my excitement at meeting Assam’s tallest and most loved celebrity for the first time.
The responsibility of ensuring a smooth BhupenHazarikaNite kept the fanboy within me in check. I had facilitated the event at the Court Field with the help of Khirod Boruah, who was killed by the banned United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) in November 1993.
My enthusiasm was more because my newly-wedded wife, aSattriya classical dancer fresh out of engineering college, had a programme scheduled ahead of Bhupenda, whose arrival at the venue in an Ambassador car from Guwahati, about 80 km west, energised the audience. He had his favourite yellow sweater on. Sitting through his three-hour show, I realised why Bhupenda, as he was fondly called by everyone from children to octogenarians, was who he was. He did not just sing any song; he gauged the mood of the audience to sing one gem after another, often narrating an anecdote in between.
The anecdotes, laced with humour, were mostly on people and places in Morigaon, which the audience could relate to. The spell he cast on the audience snapped only when the programme ended close to midnight.
Soon after, Bhupenda and two of his musicians had dinner at my official residence nearby. His eyes lit up as we served what he enjoyed most – traditional Assamese food featuring aloopitika (boiled potato mashed with tomato), puramaas (roasted fish), and maastenga (sour fish).
I saw him off at the Circuit House at 1.30 a.m., and half an hour later, he left for northeastern Assam’s Dhemaji, more than 350 km away. I enquired and found out that he reached Dhemaji after 15 hours, faster than one would have normally taken, because the Kaliabhomora Bridge linking Tezpur on the north bank of the Brahmaputra River and Kaliabor on the south bank had been inaugurated earlier in 1987.
I also came to know he performed at Dhemaji as energetically as he did in Morigaon, without showing any fatigue from his long travel in a non air-conditioned car on mostly narrow, potholed roads. The maestro’s performances on successive nights taught me a few life lessons. One: You are never too old to pursue your passion. Two: No challenge is big enough to make you give up. And three: As a public servant, you have to understand what people need and never let your stature or status come in the way of giving them the respect they deserve.
My family was close to Bhupenda, the Bard of Brahmaputra, but his busy schedule, prolonged stay in Kolkata and Mumbai, and my academic goal prevented our meeting until that evening in Morigaon. Our second meeting in April 1991 was in Tezpur, where I was posted as the Deputy Commissioner of the Sonitpur district.
He came specifically to bless our newborn son and spend the entire day with us. He regaled us with his witty anecdotes and was effusive about his love for Tezpur, regarded as Assam’s cultural capital. He used to stay at the houses of two prominent citizens of Tezpur, Durga Goswami and Dr Robin Goswami, where he conceptualised many of his iconic songs. These include ‘Akashi jaanereuraniyamonere’ (With a flying mind in an aircraft) he composed in 1963 while flying from Kolkata to Tezpur.
Among the songs he composed in Tezpur was ‘Bimurtamornixatijen’ (My formless night), a sensuous love song. His frequent travels, within Assam and to various destinations across India and beyond, perhaps underlined the essence of ‘Moietijajabor’ (I am a nomad), one of the most-loved songs that Bhupenda wrote and sang. He was, indeed, a global nomad who travelled with a sack full of sonorous songs to bridge cultural, ethnic, and religious divides and bring people together by singing ‘Maanuhemaanuhorbaabey, jodiheokonunebhaabey’ (If humans do not feel for other humans, who will?).
The balladeer Bhupenda’s musical journey began as a 16-year-old during the peak of the Quit India Movement in 1942. He sang ‘Agnijugorfiringotimoi’ (I am a spark in the age of fire), determined to build a new Bharat. After stepping into adulthood, he began documenting the changing times lyrically, hoping every fire of mutiny or destruction would eventually generate warmth to erase physical and psychological barriers. If ‘Maanuhemaanuhorbaabey’, inspired by the Kingston Trio’s ‘Hang down your head Tom Dooley’, reflected his pain over the Assamese-Bengali conflict of 1960, the India-Pakistan war of 1965 made him ask Ayub Khan and Bhutto who was the xiyaal (fox) and who was the xingho (lion). The cooperative movement in the 1970s made him sing ‘Emuthichaulorkahini’ (Story of a fistful of rice).
He penned the change of mood during movements such as the anti-foreigners’ Assam Agitation from ‘Meghegirgirkore’ (The clouds are rumbling) to Mahabahu Brahmaputra, espousing assimilation of people from across the Indian subcontinent.
His perception of militancy in Assam also changed from ‘Saraipungorkopousorai’ (Doves of Saraipung, an eastern Assam jungle where ULFA had its headquarters in 1991) to ‘Suryodayjodilakhyaamaar, suryastorpineydhabomankiyo’ (Why are we racing toward sunset if sunrise, referring to the ULFA’s rising sun symbol – is what we seek?). From humanitarian songs such as ‘O Ganga bahetihokyun’ (based on Paul Robeson’s Ol’ man river) and ‘Aamiakekonnaworejatri’ (inspired by Earl Robinson’s ‘We are in the same boat brother’), Bhupenda could switch seamlessly to the feisty festivity songs such as ‘’Bihurenobirina’ and ‘BihuBihulaagisegaat’ to the romantic ‘ShillongoreMonalisaLyngdoh’ and ‘Tumaaruxahkohuakomal’’ (Your breath is tender like an autumnal reed flower), which became a Hindi film hit as ‘Naino me darpanhai’ (film Aarop), although not as popular as the melancholic chartbuster ‘Dilhomhomkare’ from the film Rudaali by Kalpana Lajmi, his companion till his last breath on November 5, 2011.
Some draw a parallel between Bhupenda and troubadour Bob Dylan. Others say he chose to be Percy Bysshe Shelley’s idea of an “unacknowledged legislator of the world” or a lyrical ambassador. Bhupenda, though, was more than a musical genius. He was a painter, poet, actor, filmmaker, journalist, and politician. He was the first journalist to report from the Kameng (Arunachal Pradesh) frontier during the Chinese aggression in 1962. The “barbarity” of the Chinese troops made him tweak his 1953 song ‘Pratiddhwani’ (echo) to remove any reference to “new China” and write the song ‘Kato jowanormrityuhol’ (So many soldiers have died). The Kameng tour also made him drift away from communism, the last leftist cell neutralised when he fought the 2004 Lok Sabha election on a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ticket.
I was the Deputy Commissioner of the undivided Kamrup district from 1993-1996. Bhupenda visited Guwahati often during that period, often staying at my DC’s bungalow on a hillock overlooking the Brahmaputra, his muse. The bungalow is now the Mahabahu Brahmaputra River Heritage Centre, one of Guwahati’s most popular landmarks. He spent New Year's Day in 1995 with us at the DC’s bungalow. I hosted Bhupenda in at home whenever he visited Guwahati till 2001. Our meetings became less frequent thereafter, although we continued to communicate on major occasions such as Sattriya being declared a classical Indian dance in 2000 during his tenure as the Chairperson of the Sangeet Natak Akademi. I invited him to the US during my stint in New York from 2001 to 2004, but he could not make it. I met him for the last time in 2008 in New Delhi, where he performed at the Siri Fort Auditorium. I was posted in the national capital as the Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Finance. My mind travelled back to Morigaon as I watched the 82-year-old Bhupenda struggle to sing, but I could feel he was determined not to give up yet. He had contacted me before reaching New Delhi, expressing his desire to have a traditional Assamese meal at my official residence. Memories of that evening where my wife serving him his favourite dishes will remain fresh always. I never thought that would be our last evening at my home.
I was pursuing an academic course at Syracuse University in the US when Bhupenda died in 2011. I felt guilty that I could not be near him during his last days, but I had the authority as the Principal Secretary for Culture and Planning and Development to facilitate a memorial for him in Guwahati. I held a series of meetings with the heads of Gauhati University, whose theme song ‘JilikaboLuitorepaar’ (illuminating the banks of Luit, an Assamese alias for the Brahmaputra) was penned and sung by Bhupenda, to seek space for his memorial. The Samadhi Kshetra dedicated to Sudhakantha Dr Bhupen Hazarika, later upgraded to a museum and park, was dedicated to the people on November 5, 2015, a year after the last Ambassador car was rolled out in India.
Bhupenda, Assam's cultural ambassador, continues to travel into the hearts of most Indians and millions beyond the boundary of our country. Because, the universe destined him to be a jajabor forever, on the move to cosmically document how the world celebrates his first birth centenary.
(KUMAR SANJAY KRISHNA, The author is Assam’s former Chief Secretary)
(This is a press release issued by DIPR, Assam.)