Kalpana Lajmi - Bhupen Hazarika: As I Knew Him

BHUPEN
HAZARIKA

As I Knew Him

KALPANA LAJMI

with

SUNANDA SHYAMAL MITRA

TO

HER HOLINESS

AMRUTANANDAMAYEE MATA

CONTENTS

I was seventeen, he was forty-five. My eyes sparkled with love at first sight and I saw their reflection in his eyes just when the light of his life was about to be extinguished forty years later.

He always said that both of us should celebrate our love story because it was a special, unique love given the conservative construct of society around us. Our lives, from youth to old age, was a continuous journey of mutual passion and love. We stepped into various chapters of our lives, sliding in and out of relationships with men and women, making memories along the way. We cherished some of them, but there were some we wished we could forget.

Bhupen Hazarika was born in a lower middle-class family in Assam, the eldest of ten siblings. Bhupen narrated a very interesting anecdote to me once. One winter, while he was taking a shower, his mother went into labour with her tenth child and his father shouted, Bhupen, what shall I name this baby boy? Bhupen, though petrified of his father, replied, Deota, call him full stop! Till his dying day he looked after all of them, educated them, got them work and jobs, made sure they got married, and continued to do the same with the second generation as well. All this must have taken a huge toll on his psyche.

Perhaps my entry in his life instilled in him peace, harmony and happiness and he became a comfortable householder with me. I was totally unaware of the friction and the complexities that enveloped the Hazarika household. We never discussed it and, perhaps, all the relationships that disintegrated in front of his eyes, the loss of his parents, sibling rivalry and jealousy, his wrecked marriage, disillusionment with his only son made him accept me and look upon me, I feel, with the love of a tender, concerned and caring father.

He completed his MA in political science from Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and went on to do his PhD in mass communication from the Ivy League college of Columbia University in New York. He could have continued to remain in the USA. But he chose not to. He returned to embrace poverty and attend to his true calling, that of a street singer, a fakir as he called himself. Someone who dreamt, felt and breathed freedom and took it upon himself to spread that idea of freedom to the entire world.

I was a protected seventeen-year-old from an upper-class background a celebrated film-industry one at that. Yet, I had a childhood full of agony and pain, because my father, whom I loved, was an incorrigible alcoholic. So, was it that I jumped from the frying pan into the fire? Was it because Bhupen was my fathers age that I subconsciously got attracted to him? Was it because I contributed to Bhupens reinvention and weaned him from self-destruction and alcoholism that I felt redeemed? Because what I had not been able to do for my father, I managed to do in the case of Bhupen.

I was innocent and starry-eyed from the innumerable Mills & Boon romance novels I had been reading at that age. When I met the forty-five-year-old Bhupen, I instantly thought of the dhumuha, which, in Assamese, means a short tempestuous storm that swirls across the riverine civilization bordering the Brahmaputra. Bhupen epitomized that storm. The dhumuha is eternal and comes year after year to sweep everything and everyone away in its wake. Bhupens personality at forty-five was like the dhumuha: charismatic, wild, passionate, talented, with an unmatched intellect; and yet which, like the whirlwind, loved, empathized, and uplifted, especially his region, the north-east, to integrate it into a brotherhood with India. I was partially aware of his background. But I fell in love like any young girl would with the crease of his smile, the crinkle of his eyes, the silvery warmth of his laughter, his gentleness and his all-encompassing generosity.

I understood the meaning of the word dhumuha only after I saw in my minds eye the wild, lumbering, dark passion that enveloped Bhupen. I saw him walking, talking, singing, communicating, laughing and I whispered to the wind, O, dhumuha, you are my Bhupen, charismatic, wild, passionate, prodigious. He refused to be contained within the boundaries of relationships and artistic conventions.

Moy jetiya ei jiyonor maya eri ghusi jaam (When I leave all my attachments and depart from this world) filled the entire riverscape in Bhupens rich timbered voice. His brooding beautiful brown eyes reflected the agonizing depth of the masculine Brahmaputra. Here was the scion from the fishermans dynasty, who carried his love for his riverine civilization and spread it to the entire world.

At forty-five, coming from a different generation and background, Bhupen Hazarika was bewildered and could not comprehend this display of love and passion from a girl almost three decades younger. She was nowhere his ideal mate. She did not know his language, his poverty, his pain, his anguish and musical angst. She did not know what humiliating oppression he had been through with society in Assam for being the voice of the downtrodden, a voice that railed against the exploitative establishment and the tyrannical Brahminical caste system. I didnt know where Guwahati was, and when I asked him one day, his demeanour changed, and he sternly replied, Dont behave like an ignorant, arrogant Xavierite Brahmin. I had completed my education from St. Xaviers College, Bombay (now Mumbai), and I came from the exalted background of the Saraswat Brahmin community originally from the lush valley of Kashmir.

Why do I want to share my story with the entire world? My love story with Bhupen Hazarika was unique. Forty years of an eventful, personal, tumultuous journey with Bhupen, marked by important socio-cultural and political events that deeply impacted our personalities, are what I want to talk about. Our nations influence on Bhupen and his artistic conscience and, in turn, Bhupens complete devotion to his art and uplift of the underprivileged and plea for regional recognition went hand in hand. I slowly realized I was always in love with Bhupen and Bhupen was always in love with the nation. I was always in love with his artistic genius and he was always in love with his native soil. I was always in love with his innocence whereas he was, till his last breath, torn with anguish, angst and inexplicable pain for the condition of his fellow beings, not only in eastern India but also in India and Bangladesh.

In the initial days of our relationship, Bhupen was a far cry from my world of Enid Blyton and Mills & Boons and was in no way the fairy-tale prince I used to dream about. His poverty, his frustration at not being accepted overshadowed his vision, knowledge, wisdom and creativity. He would reminisce years later that had he been born in the northern or the western regions of India, he would have had greater acceptance as an artiste for he could have penetrated both urban and rural society with the help of Hindi. Knowing only Assamese and Bengali restricted his creative expression. He told me he was ambitious yet shy, tremendously self-confident yet strangely hesitant about pushing his way through, reluctant to do what it takes to be part of the rat race. I was too young then to understand his agony. Being abandoned by his wife after twelve years of marriage added to the chaos and conflict in his life. She did not allow his only son access to him, stating that Bhupens shadow would destroy the child. This left him totally broken as a man and took away all his self-esteem. Bhupen took to drinking and became an alcoholic.