People sing naam at Bhupen Hazarika’s cremation site on the Gauhati University campus on Monday. Picture by UB Photos

Tini dinot tiloni, doh dinot doha, emahot sraddho … Even till a few decades ago, these were the rites of passage in death in these eastern plains.

Tiloni on the third day would have the first rites: did the moment of passing come at an auspicious time or were there extra rites needed to ease the passage of the soul skyward? Doha was on the tenth, more puja, this time by the river, ashes brought home from the funeral now prepared to be kept till they are taken to Haridwar sometime later, time, mostly money permitting, and sons in mourning would shave their hair and beard, an unintelligible attempt at cleansing perhaps, of the scars of death on the living. The days in between would be those of interspersed silence and relative calm and gentle talk of the one who was.

The thirtieth day after the passing would be the shraddha, the ritual when kith and kin would meet and pray, sing and remember. The day after would be the bhoj, a day of feasting when the village meets for a meal with the family of the dead. Meat and fish are served, oil is once again allowed in the cooking, as is the common salt. The hearth at home is lit once again. The reaper would have, by now, once again walked the road, in search of the next one who would fall.

Just a few decades ago, for many, the gathering at the feast would be cut down to after just 11 days or 13 from that terrible day when a loved one lay still, as relatives from the city would have to return, and farmers in a slowly drying land would return to their fields. Matters of life had slowly turned more pressing than those of death. Death itself could now be seen in passing and the one who had passed, in perspective, as if a tree that had grown from seed to sapling to a provider of support and shade. The separation would have, in gentle phases, through chants and incantations, time and prayers been made a part of life. The one who now lies encrusted in memory can be viewed, and cherished, from a distance.

Today is Bhupenda’s shraddha. Yesterday would have been Bhupenda’s doha. Yet something seems to have changed forever in his people’s rites of passage. Days and weeks haven’t been allowed in between the moment that was, and them. They have just flowed, tugging their drums behind them, songs on their lips, prayers in their hearts, to Jalukbari, where flames of fire reached to the sky to seal their separation from their bard 11 whole days ago. And the singing goes on.

Beneath this big banyan, now grown bigger since his passing, time has stood still, the multitude gathering night and day, praying and singing. Here it’s about worshipping the roots with the heart, not just those that spread beneath the soil and away from sight, but those that reach for the earth from the highest branch. Such are this bard’s moorings. In small crowds, like gatherings in a courtyard they sing: Brahma adikori jibo joto, ramo ramo ramo ramo ramo, maya xojya maje asoyo ghumoti jai… (All creations, beginning with Brahma,… they all lie asleep in the bed of maya). Silence and songs and tears flow but none will let go.

Elsewhere in his land, people have searched for a name for the minstrel. Rupkonwar, Kolaguru, Roxoraj, Gitikobi, Natasurya… so many are given — to his gurus; would one have imagined there would be one who it is thought could have surpassed them all? “Have I succeeded?” Bhupen answered a question with a question one time, smiling, on being asked what he thought of what people said about him. He has been named the Sahityacharya; and now Vishwa Ratna, for having taken the myriad hues of his hinterland home to the world.

But what would one be christened, if one may ask, if he has brought the hues of the world to the cowherd at home? ‘Moha xunyat upagraha rakhi, eya gono xonjug korowar jug, aru anobik xoktik danobor pora ani manobor xewat logowar jug’ , he had told him in his tongue. (This is the time to place satellites in space and mass communication, this is time to get atomic power from the beast to use for the good of man). And didn’t he sit with the cowherd to take his tunes to the world when he sang ‘Gorokhiya herou gorokhiya, ki xur bojali duporiya… jogot nijan pori jai gorokhiya …’ (What tune do you play o cowherd this noon… the world falls silent with your tune…). And had the cowherd not let the bard reword his lullaby and turn it into the song of his aspirations? Hadn’t Bhupen dared turn Amare moina xubo e, barite bogori rubo e, barire bogori poki xoribo, amare moinai butoli khabo (The little one sleeps as they plant the berry tree; when they ripen and fall the little one will be there to eat them…) into Amare moina xubo e, xonali dhanoni dabo e, no saulore sira bhaji dime, bati bhori bhori khabo… (the little one sleeps, he will one day reap the golden fields… He will eat bowlfuls of the snack we make him with the new rice). Will anything stand with him more when he stands alone in the rain, than this ditty of his dreams?

Just now, though, the hundreds and thousands, cowherd and capitalist, student and scholar, father and son and sister and mother and the bent grandmother and grandfather, throng their place of pilgrimage. The bard now flows with the breeze and the rivers that run beneath it. Ganga, Padda, Krishna, Xowanxiri, Brahmaputra Kaberi… Xobe mili Bharot mohaxagorole jai rongote bagori bagori (Ganga, Padma, Krishna, Subansiri, Brahmaputra, Kaveri; they together take Bharat to the ocean laughing as roll along…) the bard had sung. Today, the ashes from the fire flow in every river of Assam, and Arunachal and in the Teesta. Bharat flows to the sea.

It’s as if so many have stepped out from his songs onto the sacred shade of the banyan. “It’s in the fire-singed days of 1983 that my brother disappeared,” the bard had sung in Juye Pura Tiraxi, the story of those who died in the Assam Agitation. “With my brother,” he sang, “was Rongpi, Pegu, Gogoi, Basumatary, Rahim, Kurmi and Joseph. With him were Chetri and Tiwari and Harbansh, Tegh Bahadur’s disciple… They all disappeared in those dark days of 1983…” Today, under the banyan, they are his notun purux, the new man, who has emerged from the shadow of his daily life to light his lamp before him and won’t let go. The Chetris have named their proudest possession — their pugri as it were — after Bhupen the bard, and want to place his ashes on the Kanchengunja they worship. It’s not perhaps about what he created in song, but what he could do with their lullaby.

It helps to have no gharana. To be a bird to be able to dance by the Ganga and Padma alike. As he sang: “Ipar xipar konpare nejano, rajhonxo pakhi meli, o moi dui nodite naso…” (I know not which bank; like a swan, I spread my wings and dance by both the rivers…). Why name a minstrel — beyond perhaps Bhupen?