Robin Bordoloi and Manisha Hazarika (extreme right) offer prayers during the yagna

Guwahati, Aug. 4: The house stood empty, in brooding silence, as if waiting for its master, Bhupen Hazarika, whose life song has permeated its walls.

A nearby house, belonging to Hazarika’s late brother Jayanta, also stood empty on the campus.

Hazarika’s family members had joined the city to pray for the speedy recovery of the maestro who successfully underwent a bypass surgery at the Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital in Mumbai today.

Hazarika’s sister-in-law, Manisha, attended a yagna at a temple in Sharabhati where people offered prayers for the Dada Saheb Phalke award-winner and priests chanted shlokas amidst ululation by women devotees. “We all prayed for his quick recovery and long life,” she said, adding that the yagna had been organised by the Bharatiya Dalit Sahitya Akademi. She is likely to travel to Mumbai to provide post-operative care to her brother-in-law.

East Guwahati legislator Robin Bordoloi, who also attended the yagna, said Bhupen Hazarika was “like a member of our family and we are all praying today”. He said the yagna was a “small affair as we did not want it to become a hyped event. We all prayed silently for his speedy recovery”.

The MLA said when his father Gopinath Bordoloi was the chief minister of undivided Assam, “Bhupenda often used to stay with our family in Shillong. He was a favourite of my father who had predicted that one day Bhupenda would become the pride of Assam.”

People have also been offering prayers at the Kamakhya temple. Nabakanta Sarma, the secretary of Kamakhya Debuttar Board, said, “Many devotees offered special prayers for the well-being of Bhupen Hazarika.”

Afternoon prayers were also offered at local mosques for Hazarika. “He is a symbol of religious unity and we offered special prayers for his quick recovery,” said the imam of a mosque.

Anup Boro, the director of GNRC Heart Institute, who had implanted a pacemaker on Hazarika last year, said the singer would “have to stay in the hospital for seven to eight days for post-operative care.”

“The main effort will be to stave off any chance of infection. But given the stature of the hospital and the highly experienced doctors, this is unlikely. However, even after his discharge it will take Hazarika at least two weeks to start a normal life,” the surgeon added.

Always a humanist, Hazarika’s songs have always dripped with the essence of universal brotherhood of man, carrying in them the age-old wisdom of religious tolerance. In the prayers of people from all walks of life, the singer once again stood tall as the man of the masses.