There was a quote I found in a newspaper some days back; reflective of the general public mood in the wake of Anna Hazare’s agitation against corruption in the echelons of power. I reproduce it here - "You chase the drunken elephant towards us, but if we people come together, we can tame him too"; said by a hypothetical commoner Assamese of bygone times to the ‘Swargadeo’, the Divine Title assumed by the Ahom king (the Ahoms ruled over Assam for more than 600 years). The words speak of the power within the common people like us, held within our throbbing hearts and pulsating blood to even subvert the will of a heavenly creature like the ‘Airabot’ (the Royal Elephant of the Ahoms). These evocative words might have been poured into a song, a book or a film – I do not know, for Bhupen Hazarika, the man who penned them, also composed songs, wrote lyrics, created screenplays, directed movies, authored books. And Bhupen Hazarika, the man who could create such a landscape of sheer beauty for us Assamese, for his country and indeed for the world, died today evening in Mumbai.
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| Dr. Bhupen Hazarika (1926 - 2011) |
Bhupen Hazarika was a symbol of Assam, the North-east and the Assamese like nothing before has been, and nothing after probably ever will be. His songs, the wonderful poetry he wove, the music he composed are a part of the consciousness which the Assamese society possesses or lays claim to. Indeed, he could create ethereal magic out of nothing and everything. Dew drops glistening from the wires strung across telephone poles, a mother harshly admonishing her child with a switch – everything was grist to that wonderful imagination. In his compositions, this maestro consistently held aloft the motif of the mundane, the everyday into a thing of great beauty.
It is perhaps immaterial at what unthinkably tender age Bhupen Hazarika composed and sang his first song, or which were the many commendations and awards that a grateful people bestowed upon him, or who were all those great singers and musicians and artists who collaborated alongwith him to create great masterpieces. What matters is he created universal images for everyone who seeks to lend this great artist his senses, for all time to come.
For a long time (since June this yr), this great artist under the ravages of old ages, had been ill and admitted in a private hospital in Mumbai. A few days back, when the news of him suffering a complete renal failure came, the newspaper report proclaiming this carried a detail which I felt very numbing. The report stated that Bhupen Hazarika as he lay strapped onto a life-support system, seemed oblivious to everything else, but one thing. His head doctor said that the 85-year old was responding only to Bihu geet (the harvest songs of Assam) – he seemed to have just that little bit of consciousness to lightly tap his fingers to the rhythm of the song which was played to him intermittently. At 16:37 today evening, those frail fingers stopped tapping their wonderful magic into our lives.
(You can know more about Bhupen Hazarika in the following 2 links.)
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