How do I bid farewell to my friend Navakanta? I have no answer. In truth, I don’t want to. Each and every moment I spent with him will linger in memory, as fresh and clear as raindrops. I will carry those sepia memories to my grave and that I believe will be quite a task. Why?

Navakanta and I shared the same passion for music. He gave me the words, I set them to tune. Because for both of us, poetry and song were two beautiful birds playing in the same courtyard. Navakanta had summed the similarity profoundly. "Every song is a poem," he used to tell me.

Navakanta’s poems smiled with happiness and bloomed into the heart of the people. I have seen the beauty of his poetry capture the attention of the country, I have seen his immense popularity at Santiniketan and other centres of learning, and the the respect intellectuals all over the globe had for him.

Today, many images of our friendship crowd into my mind. But what I cherish most is an evening when Navakanta asked me to compose a "new song".

The Sun, I remember clearly, was just setting on the horizon and both of us were lost deep in thought. I wrote, "Natun Nimati Niyorore Nisha...". Even now I can clearly see his face, lit up in the twilight.

Another enduring memory is of the time when I first put to tune lyrics that Navakanta wrote especially for me... "Niyorore phul apah phulil, apah soril keni..." (flowers of dewdrops...). Those were the halcyon days of the radio and my renditions of Jyotiprasad Agarwalla, Bishnu Rabha, Purushottam Das and Parvati Barua were often broadcast by Akashvani.

"Niyorore phul..." went on to become a big hit and Navakanta was ecstatic. Later, very often he would pass me a sheaf of pages with poems scribbled on it and ask me shyly, "Just see whether this feels like asong."

When his younger daughter Junuka died in 1999, Navakanta called me up and said, "Bhupen, ‘Niyorore phul... apah soril (one has fallen)’." Today, I tell the world, a friend who was like a flower of dewdrops has passed into another world.

I have lost one of my greatest friends, the people a beloved poet who smiled his way into their heart. The world is poorer with Navakanta’s death because he gave us more than what we could give him. Thank you, friend.

Courtesy: The Telegraph (2002)

The heart mists over even as I bid a silent goodbye to a poet Colossus. The man who anchored my own love for poetry. With those affection I was blessed through the past five decades and more.

True, poetry has been my enduring passion since childhood. True also that I first absorbed the art of words from the myriad sights and sounds of our land. However, it was Navakanta Barua’s verses that inspired me to choose the difficult path of modern poetry. He was, after all, the pathfinder, the stalwart of post-war modern Assamese literature.

As students we used to often discuss Navakanta Barua’s poems. His poems His poems charmed us all, especially the famous Endhar Ratir Elegy, Palas and others written in the Fifties. I used to read the poems over and over again, captivated by the lyrical flow of the verses. No wonder they won the hearts of people all over the country!

Navakanta Barua dominated the realm of modern Assamese poetry. His verses blended the traditions of Assamese, Indian, nay even world poetry. He was by far the true representative of modernism and will forever remain one of the all-time greats of Assamese literature.

A monumental poet has passed into another world, casting a pall of gloom on the literary scene. But even now I see reflected in my mind’s eye his smiling, affectionate face and the memory of that affection that he had for all will, I am sure, give us all the strength to endure the loss.

Courtesy: The Telegraph (2002)