Priyam Hazarika March
2nd, 1928 ~ June 3rd, 2015
Transition
Priyam Hazarika took her last breath in the presence of her only offspring Tej
Hazarika, her grandson Sage Akash Hazarika, her niece Ara Patel and her husband
Najeeb Mirza, her niece Prathana Patel and her children Enna and Jayvyn
Proscov. She died at the age of 87 due to complications stemming from a blood
clot in the main artery to her intestinal system. She was cremated on June 5th
at a crematorium in the presence of family and close friends. The next day
there was a gathering to celebrate her life in her beloved apartment in Ottawa
where she lived by herself for 40 years. In Assam, at Nijarapar on the Hazarika
family grounds, her in-laws requisitioned traditional Assamese services
spanning 11 days on her behalf ending with a Nagara Nama (a drumming and
chanting service) on Saturday, June 6th. People streamed to the homestead after
the news broke in Assam to pay their respect and condolence. Print and
television media covered the news of her demise across the state. Of her
siblings, her sister Minal Gathani, and brothers Dilip Patel and Siddhartha
Patel survive her. Priyam had survived younger brothers Anil and Kailash Patel.
Biography
Priyam Hazarika, daughter of Dr. Muljibhai and Maniben Patel, expired in
Ottawa, Canada, just before 1pm. She was born in Vadodara, state of Gujarat,
India, on March 2nd, 1928, being the eldest of her five siblings, four brothers
and one sister.
Childhood until the age of 17 was in Kampala, Uganda, where her siblings were
born. Although her parents had settled there in 1924, they maintained a strong
life-long connection to India reinforced through marriages and the educational
sojourns of siblings for whom Maniben, the matriarch, maintained a second home
in Vadodara.
Due to her creative
disposition, keen-ness and her parents' progressive outlook, she was exposed to
classical Indian dance and culture during her stays in India. She was primarily
educated in Uganda however in 1946, after completing high school in Kampala,
for further education her father sent Priyam to New York City where she
completed four years of undergraduate studies at the Manhattanville College of
the Sacred Heart-a liberal arts college whose mission was to
""educate students to become ethically and socially responsible
leaders for the global community"". Graduating in Political Science,
she continued to complete her masters in the same field at the School of
International Affairs of Columbia University.
It was during this
period that she contributed her passion for classical dancing to US General
George C. Marshall's efforts to publicize and raise funds to restore the
economic stability of a war torn Europe. For that cause she performed in front
of large audiences at distinguished New York venues as well as for functions
organized by the new Indian republic's consulates to the United Nations an
Washington DC.
In 1948 she met and
later married singer and song writer Bhupen Hazarika, a native of Assam, India,
who was writing his doctoral thesis in Audio–visual education at Teacher's
College Columbia University, New York. In 1950 after completing her masters she
flew to Vadodara to her mother's home to give birth to their only child, Punnag
Tej Hazarika in 1951. Her husband, after successfully submitting his doctoral
thesis, returned home to India. After picking up his wife and son, he returned
to his ancestral hometown Guwahati, Assam. Overnight she became the eldest
daughter-in-law of Bhupen's parents Nilakanta and Shantipriya Hazarika
undertaking the numerous responsibilities intrinsic to the life of a 'normal'
daughter-in-law in a large traditional Indian family with limited resources.
Determined to succeed
on his own terms as a singer- songwriter and filmmaker, her gifted husband was
unable to surrender to parental and societal pressure to be an academic and
stable provider for his entire family. It was a position that led to hardships
forcing Priyam to suspend her own aspirations in order to support her husband's
goals. At the same time she made supreme efforts to nurture and educate her
husband's young siblings as well as her own son, who being vulnerable to
Assam's harsh monsoons, contracted malaria at a tender age. Their solution to
this life-threatening problem was to send their infant son to his maternal grandmother
in Vadodara to heal. But he was never to return to live with both his parents.
After four years in
Assam, Bhupen and Priyam decided to leave Assam for India's eastern cultural
hub Calcutta (Kolkata). It was a move that allowed her husband to immerse
himself wholly in creative ventures while Priyam made a home for them in
Tollygunge on Golf Club Road. They began as collaborators launching their film
production company BP Films, short for Bhupen-Priyam Films. With start up money
from her father Dr. Muljibhai they produced several Assamese 'art films'
including Era Bator Xur, Mahut Bondhure and Sakuntala. She was the
choreographer (Dance Composer and Co-director) of Era Bator Xur for which she
was also the lead dancer in the film. Her solo dance performance to her
husband's immortal song Sagar Sangamat is considered an iconic artistic
landmark in Assam. Much later in 2012, one year after Dr. Bhupen Hazarika
expired in 2011, she endeared herself to an entirely new generation of Assamese
during what would be her last foreign trip when, with her son, she revisited
Assam, the land of her in-laws. She thrilled audiences by dancing at a special
performance to celebrate Dr. Bhupen Hazarika's songs at the Sutradhar Dance
Academy in Nowgoan. She was 85 and still recovering from a fall but she was so
inspired she climbed up on stage to reenact some of her legendary dance moves
from the afore-mentioned choreography for the song Sagor Sangamat. This would
be her last trip to Assam.
Around 1959, even while
her husband's artistry was being recognized at the highest levels, the
hardships and realities of that lifestyle strained their relationship to
breaking point. Being at heart a self-respecting independent woman, after being
together for seven years, she decided to separate from her husband and moved to
Kampala to be with her only son, her parents and her siblings.
In 1960 when she arrived in Uganda she found a charged and optimistic
environment of new nationhood (Independent new Republic in1962) to her advantage.
She found employment as senior news editor for Radio Uganda and soon after
became TV news anchor for the newly launched Uganda Television. In 1966 she was
inducted into Uganda's diplomatic service after training at Sorbonne University
in Paris studying protocole and French. In 1968 she was posted as first
secretary to Uganda's permanent mission to the United Nations where her son
joined her in 1969. In 1970 she was posted to the Uganda Mission in Paris. In
1972 her family in Uganda, along with approximately 80,000 Ugandan Indians, had
left Uganda to start their lives over in whichever country offered them entry.
The following year she broke her service with the Ugandan government and
immigrated to Canada permanently. Within a short period she gained employment
with the department of Access to Information in the Canadian Government working
there till her retirement in the late 90's. She remained very independent and
maintained close relationships with only a handful of people in Ottawa spending
her time reading, keeping up with world events and cooking for family and close
friends when they visited.
With special thanks to Doc, Jack, Marilyn, Bulbul, Archana, Arati, Pranab,
Anil, Ara, Najeeb, members of her extended family world wide, friends unnamed,
health workers and care-takers, all those who have cared for my mother when she
lived by herself in Canada for the past 40 years and when she traveled abroad
in recent years.
(Penned by her son Tej Hazarika)
