Priyam Hazarika

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)