Jayashree Chaliha (middle) in front of the statue of Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla in Jorhat on Monday. Picture by UB Photos

Jorhat, Jan. 17: It was a confluence of cultures and a daughter’s fond recollections of her father — literary giant and cultural doyen Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla — as a strict disciplinarian, at the Shilpi Divas function at Marwari Thakurbari here today.

Shilpi Divas is observed on January 17, the death anniversary of late Agarwalla, in Assam every year.

Jayashree Chaliha, the eldest daughter of Agarwalla, said she was very young when her father passed away in 1951, but she remembers that he was very strict and maintained discipline among his seven children.

“Each morning my father made out a long list of what to do or what not do for us and placed it on a big xorai before leaving home. Being brought up in a tea garden (Tamulbari tea estate) with lots of help around, the servants ensured that we stuck to this list. One servant was asked to ring a bell at 11am sharp so that we all went indoors to take our bath,” she said.

Chaliha, who is also the vice-president of Sivasagar Municipal Board and president of Sivasagar Mahila Samiti, said they were all very scared, and since “deuta did not like too much of a racket, we had to keep the volume down when we fought among ourselves.”

A writer herself, Chaliha also remembers her father sometimes teaching her how to recite a poem correctly or how to sing.

As chief guest of the function organised by the Jorhat Municipal Board, the daughter paid tribute to her father by reciting Asomiya Swalir Ukti, an Assamese poem penned by him.

Vice-president of Asam Sahitya Sabha Kanak Chandra Sharma, who earlier unveiled the statue of Agarwalla at the AT Road-Marwari Patty intersection, also spoke reverentially of this “great man who ushered in the modern age of Assamese literature.”

In his encomium, Sharma further said that Agarwalla may have hailed from another state but his great contribution to the different genres of Assamese literature and to the culture of the state cannot be overstated, and he is “more a son of the soil than any Baruah and Saikia. Victorian philosopher and essayist Thomas Carlyle once said that if the people of Great Britain were asked to choose between their empire and Shakespeare then they would choose Shakespeare. Likewise, if people of Assam were to choose between their state and Jyoti Prasad, then the latter should be their choice, because Jyoti Prasad cannot be thought of as apart from Assamese culture and society.”

In a coming together of cultures — Rajasthani and Assamese — Marwari women, decked in traditional Assamese mekhela sadors, sang the Jyoti sangeet — Gose gose pati dile phulore xorai — alternately in Assamese and also in a translated Hindi version.

The statue of Agarwalla, sculpted by Binode Daw, was erected on a small plot of land provided by the Jorhat Municipal Board at a cost of about Rs 5 lakh, donated entirely by the Marwari community here.

Among those present at the ceremony were Jorhat MLA Rana Gooswami, municipal board chairperson Prasanta Bora, ward 6 commissioner Ashok Malpani, Asam Sahitya Sabha assistant secretary Binanda Baruah and writer Prafulla Rajguru.