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The gentle genius is no
more
TRIBUTE
By D. N.
Bezboruah
Dr Bhabendranath Saikia is no more. He died early on
Wednesday morning after twenty days in the ICU of the GNRC at Guwahati.
His passing away is an irreparable loss to the nation that may or may not
realize that a genius has passed away. After all, this is a nation short
on geniuses, and it would not be very surprising if people failed to
recognize the rare ones that grace this land of ours. To me, his demise is
a deep personal loss — of a friend, a genuine well-wisher, someone I
admired and respected a lot and one who was an abiding source of
inspiration. There is another sense of loss. He has left me in debt to
him. But about that later.
I knew Bhabendranath Saikia
from my Cotton College days in the early fifties, but only from a distance
as a distinguished senior student and a writer in the making. It was only
from around the seventies that I got to know him well. I had long been a
great admirer of his short stories, and in the seventies, three of my
translations of his stories got published in Vagartha, Indian
Literature and the Illustrated Weekly of India. His story
"Bats" that appeared in the Weekly was very well received, and I
think he was rather pleased with the English translation. Those were the
years I was working in Mysore, and whenever I came home on holidays, I
generally made it a point to visit him at Jalukbari where he was staying
at the University campus, not very far from where my late sister Amala
Bezboruah of the Mathematics Department stayed. We discussed his short
stories and his one film (Sandhyarag) at that point of time. I was
flattered that he should have asked me to play the role of a teacher in
his next film (Anirban), but I had to decline partly because I
wasn’t very sure of my histrionic abilities and partly because it would
not have been possible to get months of leave. However, I did the English
sub-titles for Anirban and later edited the English sub-titles for
two of his other films. The association with Dr Saikia grew when I helped
out a little bit with the Prantik in the first year of its
publication, before taking charge of The Sentinel. Thereafter, we
also discussed his stories that he wanted me to translate, particularly
after the translation of his "Rats" was published in New Letters in
the US.
I have often been asked what I
admired most about Dr Bhaben Saikia. I have admired his felicity with our
language, I have admired his vision and imagination both as a writer and
film-maker, I have admired his impeccable good taste. But above all, I
have admired what he has been able to do with his life and the way he has
managed to inspire thousands of his younger compatriots. I have admired
him more than anything else for the way he has managed to transcend the
lack of any advantages and to virtually pull himself up with his
bootstraps to be what he became. He has shown the world so well what it is
possible to do with one’s life even when one has all the disadvantages
lined up on one’s path. Everyone knows how hard life was for him when he
grew up. Think of what he lists as his childhood games — hanging on to the
water cart and then washing himself with the water being sprinkled on the
dusty road. But he also lists the innovative making of toys and appliances
as a kind of game — something that led him on to science and
inventiveness. Think of the ambition that must have fired him at an early
age. Think of the boy from the back of beyond making it to Imperial
College in London on his own steam and getting his Ph.D. in just three
years. Think of someone becoming a university Reader in Assam at the age
of 32. Think of a writer excelling as a physicist and then also as a
renowned film-maker of the country with his films spoken of with respect
all over the world. Think of someone who not only budgeted his low-cost
award-winning films like a thorough professional but also of one who could
budget his time as no one else could. But above all, think of a man who
never let a great human being be pushed under by his ambition. Here was a
man who shaped his life the way he wanted to, because he was deeply in
love with life.
I cannot claim to have read all
the short stories of Bhabendranath Saikia. But I must have missed only a
very few. From what I have read of world literature in translation, there
is no doubt in my mind that his stories are great literature by any
standard. No wonder, among Assamese short writers he is one of the very
few whose publications have at times gone into the fourth or fifth
edition. I have often felt sorry for my friends who cannot read Assamese
for what they have missed of Bhaben Saikia’s works.
A genius is a person of
exceptional intellectual creative power or other natural ability or
tendency. And that was what my friend was. What made him a far better
genius was that he was such a gentle soft-spoken and considerate genius.
My deepest source of sorrow is that my friend has gone on a journey from
which there is no returning.
I spoke of being in his debt. I
had taken on the task of translating his novel Antareep some years
ago. This was a work that remained incomplete. He was anxious that I
should finish the work. Did he have a premonition about his end being
near? I feel miserable about having let him down. But I think he has
forgiven me. There are goodbyes that one wishes that one never has to say.
This is one of them. May you rest in eternal peace, my friend.
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