Dr Bhabendranath Saikia is no more. He died early on Wednesday morning [August 13, 2003] after twenty days in the ICU of the GNRC at Guwahati. His passing away is an irreparable loss to the nation that may or may not realize that a genius has passed away. After all, this is a nation short on geniuses, and it would not be very surprising if people failed to recognize the rare ones that grace this land of ours. To me, his demise is a deep personal loss — of a friend, a genuine well-wisher, someone I admired and respected a lot and one who was an abiding source of inspiration. There is another sense of loss. He has left me in debt to him. But about that later.

I knew Bhabendranath Saikia from my Cotton College days in the early fifties, but only from a distance as a distinguished senior student and a writer in the making. It was only from around the seventies that I got to know him well. I had long been a great admirer of his short stories, and in the seventies, three of my translations of his stories got published in Vagartha, Indian Literature and the Illustrated Weekly of India. His story "Bats" that appeared in the Weekly was very well received, and I think he was rather pleased with the English translation. Those were the years I was working in Mysore, and whenever I came home on holidays, I generally made it a point to visit him at Jalukbari where he was staying at the University campus, not very far from where my late sister Amala Bezboruah of the Mathematics Department stayed. We discussed his short stories and his one film (Sandhyaraag) at that point of time. I was flattered that he should have asked me to play the role of a teacher in his next film (Anirban), but I had to decline partly because I wasn’t very sure of my histrionic abilities and partly because it would not have been possible to get months of leave. However, I did the English sub-titles for Anirban and later edited the English sub-titles for two of his other films. The association with Dr Saikia grew when I helped out a little bit with the Prantik in the first year of its publication, before taking charge of The Sentinel. Thereafter, we also discussed his stories that he wanted me to translate, particularly after the translation of his "Rats" was published in New Letters in the US.

I have often been asked what I admired most about Dr Bhaben Saikia. I have admired his felicity with our language, I have admired his vision and imagination both as a writer and film-maker, I have admired his impeccable good taste. But above all, I have admired what he has been able to do with his life and the way he has managed to inspire thousands of his younger compatriots. I have admired him more than anything else for the way he has managed to transcend the lack of any advantages and to virtually pull himself up with his bootstraps to be what he became. He has shown the world so well what it is possible to do with one’s life even when one has all the disadvantages lined up on one’s path. Everyone knows how hard life was for him when he grew up. Think of what he lists as his childhood games — hanging on to the water cart and then washing himself with the water being sprinkled on the dusty road. But he also lists the innovative making of toys and appliances as a kind of game — something that led him on to science and inventiveness. Think of the ambition that must have fired him at an early age. Think of the boy from the back of beyond making it to Imperial College in London on his own steam and getting his Ph.D. in just three years. Think of someone becoming a university Reader in Assam at the age of 32. Think of a writer excelling as a physicist and then also as a renowned film-maker of the country with his films spoken of with respect all over the world. Think of someone who not only budgeted his low-cost award-winning films like a thorough professional but also of one who could budget his time as no one else could. But above all, think of a man who never let a great human being be pushed under by his ambition. Here was a man who shaped his life the way he wanted to, because he was deeply in love with life.

I cannot claim to have read all the short stories of Bhabendranath Saikia. But I must have missed only a very few. From what I have read of world literature in translation, there is no doubt in my mind that his stories are great literature by any standard. No wonder, among Assamese short writers he is one of the very few whose publications have at times gone into the fourth or fifth edition. I have often felt sorry for my friends who cannot read Assamese for what they have missed of Bhaben Saikia’s works.

A genius is a person of exceptional intellectual creative power or other natural ability or tendency. And that was what my friend was. What made him a far better genius was that he was such a gentle soft-spoken and considerate genius. My deepest source of sorrow is that my friend has gone on a journey from which there is no returning.

I spoke of being in his debt. I had taken on the task of translating his novel Antareep some years ago. This was a work that remained incomplete. He was anxious that I should finish the work. Did he have a premonition about his end being near? I feel miserable about having let him down. But I think he has forgiven me. There are goodbyes that one wishes that one never has to say. This is one of them. May you rest in eternal peace, my friend.

Courtesy: The Sentinel (August 2003)