Nirmalprabha Bordoloi’s body being consigned to the flames as policemen give a 21-gun salute on Tuesday. Picture by Biju Boro

Guwahati, June 1: Assam today lost a magnificent wordsmith, an icon and a woman of substance at one go when the last chapter of Nirmalprabha Bordoloi’s extraordinary life closed at a nursing home here.

She was 71.

Bordoloi, a Sahitya Akademi award-winning poet and one of the finest lyricists in the Assamese language had been unwell for nearly two months. She was admitted to a nursing home on April 18 for the treatment of severe anaemia and diabetes.

Though she was released a few days later, Bordoloi was back at the nursing home on May 29. In a brief statement, her daughter Swapna Devi said: “Mother passed away around 5 am. It was very unexpected as she seemed to be improving.”

Apart from her daughter, Bordoloi’s world revolved around her son-in-law and two grandchildren.

Chief minister Tarun Gogoi led the state in mourning, saying the former Asam Sahitya Sabha president’s death was “an irreplaceable loss”.

Bordoloi was consigned to the flames with full state honours, including a 21-gun police salute. The government declared a half-holiday, too. The pyre was lit by one of her grandsons.

The Asam Sahitya Sabha paid glowing tributes to its former president with the present chief of the literary organisation, Birendranath Datta, describing her as “one of the brightest stars of Assam’s literary sky, who will shine in the heavens till eternity”.

Before the cremation, the flower-bedecked body was taken out in a procession through the city. People lined up on both sides of the main streets in an impromptu guard of honour.

A long line of vehicles, including two-wheelers, followed the cortege. The sky opened up, appropriately, as the procession wound its way towards the cremation ground.

“It was as if the gods were shedding tears, too,” Anamika Bharali, one of the mourners, said. “She was a courageous lady, an inspiration for us all,” she said.

At the Asam Sahitya Sabha Bhavan, Bordoloi’s body was draped in the organisation’s flag. A large crowd had been waiting there for the cortege to arrive.

The scene at her residence, Srimoyee, at Geetanagar on Zoo-Narengi road was poignant. Friends and well-wishers broke down at the sight of the body. Among those who had assembled there were the chief minister and Bordoloi’s colleagues from the worlds of literature and music.

Born on June 20, 1933, in Sivasagar, Bordoloi weathered setbacks early in her life to emerge, phoenix-like, as a creative giant.

Her creativity with the pen flowed like a gushing stream: she excelled in all genres, including poetry, children’s literature, dance dramas, lyrics, operas, treatises, critiques, radio features, novels and translations.

Her greatest attribute was the ability to enrapture the connoisseur and the common man alike.

She penned the lyrics of over 1,600 songs and wrote as many as 90 books. She serialised her autobiography, Jiban, Jiban, Bor Anupam, in an Assamese fortnightly magazine.