As we mark the birth centenary of late Dr Bhupen Hazarika, the bard of the Brahmaputra. This voice gave emotional vocabulary not only to Assam but to the idea of human belonging across borders. His song “Manuhe Manuhor Babe”(“Humen tfor one another”), and its Bengali and Nagamese renderings, articulated a humanism that travelled effortlessly across linguistic and national borders. Whereas “Bistirno Parore” (“O wide riverbank…”), later reimagined as “Ganga Behti Ho Kyon” by Gulzar, the river itself becomes a witness, questioned for its silence in the face of human suffering across the country. They are still hunting moral inquiries.
Yet, Bhipen Hazatrika’s cinematic imagination — where many of these questions first took visual form — remains less discussed. I was reminded of this not while listening to a song, but while standing before a poster at Aideu Cinema (named after Aideu Handuqe, the lead of the first Assamese movie Joynmotee in 1934) Hall in Guwahati. The poster was of Lotighoti(1966). The poster, stylised in bold, theatrical, and modern theme, seemed like a fragment of an unfinished thought.
The poster reminded me of a Sunday afternoon of the 1980s, when I watched the film as a kid in Doordarshan’s regional slot. We used to watch whatever aired. And when it carried Bhupen Hazarika’s voice, it had an intimacy that needed no explanation. The movie flashed through my mind. I remember I did not enjoy Lotighoti (confusion and Chaos) that time: no dhisum dhisum, or real entertainment for a child like me. Described as a comedy, the movie turned out to be a satire, a genre I was not acquainted with. Now we find the movie was self-reflective and a bit unsettling for the time, just as the poster itself was. It opened with “Asomiya holu buli eman nuwari” (“Not more can be added for Assameseness...”). It was merely a song; now the lyrics reveal themselves as a question of my multiple identities fighting with each other. The storyline followed a group of Assamese enthusiasts who travelled to Kolkata to make an Assamese film. Their intention was earnest: to include every symbol, every song, every visible marker of identity. But the protagonist (Bijay Sankar), with the Bard's POV, reflects on the paradoxes. While including everything, the movie risked losing its storyline, and it never quite materialised.
Lotighoti appears less as a story and more as an act of introspection — a culture looking at itself without certainty. In one unforgettable dramatic recitation, the protagonist self-reflects on the essential question with the still-popular track "The Fierce Storm Questions Me" —Tell me, what is your desire? The other songs also linger in the gullies and towns of Assam even today, asking what a man wants “Xohoxro jone mok prosno kore” (“A thousand people question me”) or the melancholy of a lonely life “Moi aru mur xa” (“Me and my shadow”) — where the artist stood face to face with himself reflecting on the essential question of identity and path. At the same time, it records the adjustment we make with songs like “Jibon tu jodi abhinay hoy” (“If life itself is an act”). Beneath the humour lay something more enduring — the anxiety of representation itself.
In many ways, these questions were not Assam’s alone. They echoed a larger Indian concern: how does a people define itself without reducing itself? How does identity remain alive without becoming rigid?
Long before regional cinema became part of India’s national cinematic conversation, Bhupen Hazarika was already exploring these questions through film. His early work, such as Era Bator Sur (1956), explored the folk tunes of the north east with a realist approach. Contemporary to Pather Panchali, the emergence of this movie reflected the broader awakening of Indian cinema to its own cultural landscapes. This visual artistic state of Bhupen Hazarika, as detailed in this poster, also remains overshadowed by his lyrical depth and charismatic voice. It is a reminder that his imagination was not confined to a single medium. His association with M. F. Husain's Gaja Gamini reflected his ease in moving between artistic worlds.
Amidst uncertainties that made identity an everyday reality rather than an abstraction, Bhupen Hazarika’s voice remained a constant presence — not narrowing Assam into exclusion, but expanding it into shared humanity. Standing before that poster on that day, in his centenary year, it feels less like an artefact of the past and more like a mirror still held up to the present.
Because somewhere within it, the question remains.
Not only for Assam.
But for all of us.
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