By Anup Dutta
Machkhuwa (Dhemaji): It was the afternoon of September 19 when people of the land of diverse languages (where 40 languages are spoken), distinct communities (over 100) and more than 30 major groups came out on the streets in Assam and across India screaming “Aamar loratu gol” (Our son is gone).
Yes, the son who connected all of us was gone. The son, who rose when the careers of many like me and the lives of common Assamese people were under stress in the 90s. Those were the days when in the walls of government premises in Chariaali (a market square where four roads from different directions met) or in district headquarters, incomplete project sites, broken dollong (bridges), lampposts, in public bus stands of far-away villages, the writings in dark red paint, cold handshake slogans written were clear.
Electricity, telephone wires were cut, roads were dug, markets were shut, kerosene, petrol and diesel remained dried away for week after week, while seini (sugar), allu (potato), aru nimokh (and salt) remained short of supply for months and months. Torchlight and diya baati (earthen or kerosene lamp) were our hope and companion in dark night for young boys and many like us.
It was not easy for the Xhom - caught in between terror and raids, gun shots and deaths. The highlight- several young ones carrying personal emotions and pain disappeared – some went underground. Some returned after months, holding different colour flags, badges and many others plunged into another darkness of its worst kind. After the Assam agitation, followed by political unrest, President's Rule and Operation Bajrang, people felt safe at home and in the village. Many say the main commercial lanes of town, like Jorhat, Dibrugarh, Tezpur, Tinsukia, etc, buzzing during the daylight would become a ghost town by evening, even before the cattle would return from the grazing fields and enter the gohal (cattle shed). And for a student like me, an insider but considered to be an outsider, we felt safe on reaching Guwahati Railway Station or in the adjoining Assam State Road Transport Corporation office.
Under the influence of fear and protest, mistrust and divide, the ancient environment of fairies and folklores of love and emotions that Xhom is universally known for saw crumbling and fast disappearing. Music, melodies, and theatre slipped seamlessly from Assam’s mainstream. Glamour, romance and comedy got abducted while grief and emotions took centre stage.
Everyone on the sets of altogether different Assam had heard about so much of blood, pain, and separation that were never an intrinsic part of Xhmoiya’s cultural milieu. At this time, another culture flourished in other parts of the country and globe. A parallel world of grace, glamour and golden smile seamlessly slipped from the map of Assam. Designers, painters, poets recreated the melancholy of and nostalgia for the universal court of love, emotion, entertainment and fun when adverse conditions, severe decisions, unmanageable public emotions, and all kinds of problems were interacting in Assam.
That was the time when inland letters and postcards of death and sorrows took more than two weeks to reach us in Bhopal, or sometimes never reached. And when we visited Assam after a gap of two years (under my late father’s LTA plan), the first 3-4 days went in hearing and hearing, sad and painful stories of death and despair of our relatives, childhood friends of parents, with little window about atrocities and incidents of high-handedness of officials. Traditions, morals and virtues were upheld. The phase the state etched out to be in popular memory as sinking Assam. This time, not because of the floods but in some act of mystic vengeance.
The sinking impact left many to boycott school, colleges, universities, and many others took to road blockades and many other things. All such scenes tried to infuse the pathos into different characters. Several broken and disillusioned students deserted the classroom. Some picked up guitars, keyboards, and some picked up a gun.
It turned out to be a different time, a different world.
And in the same world, a student of J B College, Jorhat, holding a keyboard (Zubeen became a singer afterwards), emerged to play a role as one of the closest to his heart.
He lit a lamp in the face of the blazing sun.
This self-discovery, perhaps, helped Zubeen to decide his fate in many ways. He sang in love about love, sang ina different language but in our language. He rose behind the script written for Assam. He became the glimmer of hope of 30 major groups, 100 distinct communities and the voice of 40 different languages amidst the period of darkness, despair and dilemma. In the years to come by, the heavy hearts and so much darkness admitted defeat. So beautiful that bitter fairies died with envy.
He was renamed Amar Zubeen, by whom he had khaini (mashed tendu leaf) in a roadside shop, Pagol (crazy) Zubeen -by them on whose medical emergency he spent money, provided oxygen cylinder and Amar lora Zubeen- by the hands he accepted gamosas. Not to mention here that on many occasions, when people offered him gamosas or flower bouquets, he humbly requested instead: “Plant a tree in my name—that will live longer than flowers or gamosas.”
With his death, Assam is haunted with the King-size image of Zubeen, his connect, his deeds for the raiz (meaning public in Assamese language), forever embedded into the public consciousness. Zubeen and Xhom fed into each other. The king left behind a bond of love and warmth with us.
(Anup Dutta is a senior journalist and teaches at Makhanlal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism and Communication, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.)
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