Discovering Life Through Bhupen Hazarika

My earliest memory of Bhupen Hazarika is of the time when I was a three year old kid. At a bihu function in Sipajhar, Assam, it had begun to rain, and people, instead of running for covers, sheltered themselves by lifting their lightweight foldable steel chairs over their heads. In my fancy filled reminiscence, I do not remember anyone who had left the ground. They were glued, like my Ma who was holding an umbrella and had me strapped to her back. Through the miasma, I heard a harmonium and a thick voice, the tune of which helped me to recollect the song many years later. That was Haagor Hongomot, which although is a very different song, made a lullaby for me with its aura and tranquillity of that night.

I was never in love with Bhupen Hazarika. But today when I look back, I discover that he has been percolating into me in drops all this while. When we were in school, we’d sing Luitor Saaporit on our Teacher’s Day. The most popular Bistirno Parore and Buku Hom Hom Kore followed in the teenage years (in between my daily overdose of Hindi songs). Then in the days of self-inquiry, when meanings were searched, I discovered through his songs the Assam Agitation and the Bhakha Aandolan – revolutions that we have never witnessed. If Maznixa Mur Endhaar Ghorot was a protest then, it has transformed into a discover-my-roots ringer today. Very few of the new generation are aware of ‘that history’, even fewer discuss it. These songs are the arresting pointers which a hardbound history book fails to bring to attention. I also remember the days when I’d be exhausted with an overdose of self-enquiry. Listening to Aai Tuk Kihere in my hostel room and remembering the warm lap of Ma, I would often cry. In the years that followed, as the world-stage dawned on me, a Modarore Phool, a Xongo Priya, a Bideshi Bondhu, and a Tezore Komolapoti slowly seeped into me. This seeping has been so gradual, like our growth from a child to an adolescent, to an adult, that I have hardly discovered it.

Perhaps you can read about Bhupen Hazarika in a biography and listen to his most famous songs. Like a historian does, you can learn about him much more than others. But, you have to let him seep into you in units of your moments. That is how you’d discover life.

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The funeral of Bhupen Hazarika has seen one of the largest gatherings of people. Only the Mahatma’s and JFK’s funeral has seen a larger count. This has caught even the Assamese people by surprise, for although they loved him, they never had a collective or even an individual measure. The obscured presence of Bhupen Hazarika within an individual spurted into an emotional fountain at his demise. With tears, they bathed in that fountain. The funeral had to be postponed by a day to Nov 09 2011 as people kept pouring in, some standing in queues for as long as eight hours. While waiting, the people in the queues talked about the man, and as one individual rallied a conversation, he could hear a few guys humming a Bhupen Hazarika song. Then it died out. And then there were some other people, humming another melody. The humming continued in an uncharacteristic trance, ebbing and flowing in the queues. From the distance, that looked like a spectacle.