Dil Hoom Hoom Kare…

‘Childhood shows the man and geniuses often show their mettle early in the day. A young Bhupen Hazarika was noticed by then doyens of Assamese culture, Jyotiprasad Agarwala and Bishnuprasad Rabha, when he had performed a Borgeet at the age of 10 in Tezpur. And there was no looking back.

Subsequently, Hazarika sang two songs in Agarwala’s film Indramalati (1939): Kaxote Kolosi Loi and Biswo Bijoyi Naujawan at the tender age of 12. He wrote his first song, Agnijugor Firingoti Moi at the age of 13 and he was well on his way to becoming a lyricist, composer and singer.

The lynchpin of Assamese culture for over five decades, Dr Hazarika as a singer, was known for his baritone voice and diction, while as a lyricist, he was known for poetic compositions and parables which touched on themes ranging from romance to social and political commentary; and as a composer for his use of folk music.

Some of his most famous compositions were adaptations of American black spirituals that he had learnt from Paul Robeson, whom he had befriended during his years in New York City in the early 1950s. Legendary Robeson’s lessons on humanity and universalism were to last Bhupen Hazarika’s entire life.

But to tame Hazarika in the confines of music and art is not only an impossibility but also injustice. Though widely known as a singer and composer Bhupen Hazarika dabbled in multifarious possibilities with equal prolificacy.

He was a humanist, a politician, a social activist who the people loved to love, an educationist (He earned his PhD from Columbia University, USA in 1952 on ‘Proposals for Preparing India’s Basic Education to Use Audio-Visual Techniques in Adult Education’), a teacher (He joined Guwahati University as a teacher), a litterateur (He was elected the Assam Sahitya Sabha president in 1993) and an artiste, who felt the pulse of the people and infused culture in human thought to refine their tastes, connect them to their roots and inspire them to unite, to dream and to fight for truth.

The most important thing about Bhupen Hazarika is he was the face of Assam and more than anything else, his loss is an irreparable loss to Assamese culture. He was the first to bring Lata Mangeshkar to sing the first Assamese song.

Assam has lost their icon of all times, perhaps the only Assamese who in recent years have been a personality known far and wide out in the country and abroad, largely due to the artiste’s own cosmopolitan culture, which helped him make the world his home.

He was a traveler, a pilgrim as he liked to call himself, a globe trotter with a Bohemian spirit in the lines of Walt Whitman, who sang songs of love and unity from churchyards to railway yards from Tashkent to Turkey and never confined himself to just Assam, which would have stifled the restive spirit of the genius. He belonged as much to Bengal as Bollywood.

He was highly appreciative of friends like Hemant Kumar, who is said to have brought Hazarika to Bengali cinema, as he revered the genius of Kishore Kumar. He was an avid follower of the films of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak, the three stalwarts of Indian cinema and himself turned a successful director and producer of Assamese films.

Unfortunately, his foray into Bollywood was neither seminal nor highly productive per say. He was selective with his films and even they were not paying off. First, his genre did not exactly suit the popular Hindi film taste. Second, he himself did not take much initiative in being a Bollywoodian, as he had other things to look after.

He was so active in Assamese and Bengali cinema and culture in his prime years, and his iconic popularity scaling such heights that he could hardly divert his attention to Hindi films in any big way. Third, his Hindi venture would always be an ‘effort’ to match the Assamese flavour and tune it with popular demand, which he did not have to do at home in Assam.

Here it was a spontaneous flow of emotions that his music captured with élan, which was not the case with Hindi, which was alien to him despite his mastery over the language. He could connect with his culture with such suppleness and it was so much under his skin that he never thought of sacrificing his first love for the sake of the tinsel town glitter. Also, he thought it his ‘responsibility’ to uphold and propagate the beauty of Assamese music and took the onus of being a ‘cultural ambassador’ of Assam and Eastern culture which he could hardly afford to abdicate.

But even little of what he did for Bollywood was classy and carried the quintessentially folk and Assamese tint that was equally an impediment for Hazarika as it characterized and distinguished him. He could never shed nor he wanted to, the basics of his music that drew inspiration from his Assamese roots.

This in turn formed a coterie audience for his compositions. In recent years we saw master compositions like those in Daman, Gajgamini, Saaz and the haunting all-time great Rudali, whose unprecedented success made Hazarika a national celebrity overnight and the Dada Saheb Phalke followed to cherry the cake. Dil Hoom Hoom Kare became a household anthem and the song became a milestone in Hindi cinema by its very loftiness of rendition by the 65-yr-old balladeer.

It has a grandeur in its melody apart from the contextual significance of the song in the film. Rudali introduced a pristine freshness to Hindi music. His one score surmounts composition of ten score films and Rudali can be called the culmination of his artistic genius. There could have been no Rudali if there were no Bhupen Hazarika, nor there would another me.

An era has passed with the going of Dr Hazarika and Assam is poorer without him. So is India. The maestro doesn’t need an award to adorn his plume.

The love and respect he has in the hearts of millions of music lovers across the globe, the legendry status he has gained, the passion he will continue to generate through his patriotic and socially- relevant and awakening songs compensate all and take him to a height that one can hardly dream to achieve in a lifetime.

His soul must rest in peace while we hum ‘Dil Hoom Hoom Kare’.