Akashitora

Guwahati, Feb. 8: Her pleasing personality and talent have lent glamour and substance to many television programmes and films, but few can see the pain behind that pretty face.

Model, actor and writer Akashitora Dutta, whose father Kamala Saikia was the first journalist to be killed by Ulfa militants, is working on a cathartic second novel that will lay bare the erosion of the values which the banned militant group claims to uphold. Coming 15 years after her father?s death, the novel is based on real-life events ? from the journalist?s murder to the kidnapping and killing of social worker Sanjoy Ghose.

Akashitora, now 35 and a mother of one, is writing the novel in Assamese, but it will also be published in English and Bengali. ?This is not only my story, but of all those who have suffered because of militancy. It has to be told not only to those who read Assamese, but to all in the country and outside,? she said.

The multi-faceted actor?s previous novel, Xei Prem, was moderately successful.

?In my first novel, I described how my life was moulded by my close association with my journalist father since the Assam Movement. Today, I have got the answers to all my questions, including why my father was killed. My father and many other journalists were killed by Ulfa because certain elements in the outfit do not believe in values, or their values change to match their requirements,? she said.

Akashitora, who earned a PhD from Gauhati University for her thesis on the Changing Profile of the Educated Assamese Housewife, said the Robin Hood image of Ulfa militants had become a myth. ?My father, who was a fountainhead of inspiration, was killed in a brutal manner just because he took up cudgels against some of the wrong ideologies adopted by the outfit. I remember the days when the outfit threatened my father not to write a single word against them,? she said.

After Kamala Saikia was killed on August 9, 1991, his shocked daughter moved away from the limelight for a while.

But acting was too close to her heart and she returned to tote up an impressive oeuvre of more than 45 television serials, 50 telefilms and six films.

Akashitora?s initiation into acting was on a stage in Sivasagar when she was just four. Playing the role of little Krishna, she impressed the audience so much that one admirer gifted her a gold coin. She never looked back after being adjudged as the best actress and debater in a Gauhati University youth festival in 1987. So convincing was she as a Naga woman, Kemi, in a drama staged during the festival that the name stuck.

As a writer, Akashitora focuses primarily on women. ?Some people have branded me as a hardcore feminist. But at the core of my being, I am just a humanist,? she said.

Not surprisingly, her new novel will be a tribute to her father and his ideals. ?Even 15 years after his death, I feel his presence. Today I am what my father stood for.?