The Search for the Real Hero (Original post Sept 2012)

“Kahini eti likha, xeware bixoye, koisilu bohu bohu baar”…… Dr Bhupen Hazarika sang these beautiful lyrics in a soulful composition decades ago. The song is about false heroes, a tired language, false imaginations, a falsity of assumed truth, the constant slipping of time and the search for the real hero. He goes on to say that the stories that you and I don’t write will be written by history – “ji kahini tumi nelekhila, etihaaxe xeye likhibo…..“

Sad but true for the Assam of today. We grew up to the sounds of military trucks barging by, mothers wailing for their teenaged sons lost to the so-called Assam Agitation and the bloody elections that happened. Did I say bloody? Yes, those elections were bloody. My generation remembers it. Stuck in a state that was like the IRA-infested Northern Ireland, the lucky few of us went out of Assam to study and live in a Disneyworld. And I did too. But time does nudge and knock at the door. And the time does come when the soul stirs and is restless. Trying to comprehend the enormity of what has happened in Assam in the last few months has left me feeling totally helpless. My quest is to probably still find and protect something before it is too late. I think of this also as our time to search for the real heroes. And when we find them, can we ask them to be trail-blazers for the less fortunate?

I start my blog today with pictures taken by Durlov Baruah and Monali Bharadwaj . Both took time off from their busy schedules in Mumbai to provide aid in the relief camps at Kokrajhar where people have gathered from several hundred villages with minimum aid and support during the recent ethnic clashes. They both encountered logistical nightmares of sending relief and were in a high danger zone throughout their stay there. Let my silence speak to you through these pictures. They will indeed tell you everything.