Ol' man Brahmaputra

As the city that claims to be the center of Assamese culture, Tezpur is underwhelming. You can cover most of the sights—a couple of temples and the picturesque Cole Park with its artificial lake--comfortably in half a day. The top tourist attraction is Agnigarh--in Sanskrit, the fortress of fire—on a hillock overlooking the Brahmaputra.

Stories from Hindu mythology tend to be long and involved, with many characters and sub-plots, so I’ll give you the short soapy version. Usha, daughter of Banasura, the thousand-armed king of central Assam, fell in love with Aniruddha, grandson of Lord Krishna. As relationships go, this was a non-starter, because Banasura was a devotee of Krishna’s sworn enemy, Shiva. Banasura tied up Aniruddha in a mess of snakes and packed Usha off to the Agnigarh fortress which was surrounded by a ring of fire. A bloody war between the forces of Krishna and Shiva—a scene vividly depicted in stone sculptures on the hillock—followed. Wise Lord Brahma stepped in, told them both to behave, and brokered the deal which ended with Banasura agreeing to the marriage. From the legendary battle, Tezpur earned the name of “city of blood.”

After a steep ascent on a hot, sticky day and a heavy dose of Hindu mythology, Stephanie and I needed lunch and a less taxing afternoon schedule. We decided on the city museum, housed in a British colonial-era bungalow, where we hoped to find AC along with the sculptures, crafts and Ahom-era cannons. There was no one on duty at the ticket office, so we entered the garden and looked for the entrance. On a covered stage near the gate, a small group of men had gathered for a ceremony around a makeshift altar with an offering bowl, incense sticks and framed photographs. I approached them.

            “Is this the entrance to the museum?”

            “Sorry, it’s closed today,” one man replied. “We’re celebrating the birthday of Bhupen Hazarika. Would you like to join us?”

            This was not the first time I had heard the name of Hazarika, the much-revered artist and musician who literally put Assam on India’s modern cultural map. He was a singer, composer, lyricist, poet and film-maker, widely credited with introducing the culture and folk music of Assam and northeast India to Hindi cinema at the national level. He was also a tireless campaigner for social justice.

In 1935, nine-year-old Hazarika moved to Tezpur with his family. His public rendition of a classical Assamese devotional song, taught to him by his mother, caught the attention of the playwright and pioneer Assamese filmmaker Jyoti Prasad Agarwala and the artist and revolutionary poet Bishnu Prasad Rabha. Under their patronage, Hazarika recorded his first song at a Kolkata studio in 1936 and went on to sing in a 1939 Agarwala film. Meanwhile, he started writing his own songs.

In 1949, after earning an MA in Political Science and working briefly for All India Radio, Hazarika won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York. He completed his Ph.D. in mass communication in 1952. In New York he became friends with the African-American singer, actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson. The imagery, theme and melody of one of Hazarika’s most famous songs, Bisitirno Paarore (On Your Wide Banks), was heavily influenced by Robeson’s rendition of Ol’ Man River in the 1936 movie version of the musical Show Boat. Oscar Hammerstein II’s lyrics to Ol’ Man River contrast the struggles of African-Americans with the endless, uncaring flow of the Mississippi River. In Hazarika’s version, the Mississippi becomes the Brahmaputra, flowing silently through a world of suffering and moral decay:

Bistirna paarore (On your wide banks)
Axonkhya jonre (That are home to countless people)
Hahakar xuniu (In spite of hearing their anguished cries)
Nixobde nirobe (So silently and unmindfully)
Burha luit tumi (Oh you, Old Luit [Another name for Brahmaputra])
Burha luit buwa kiyo? (How can you flow?)

            After a brief spell of university teaching, Hazarika established himself in Kolkata as a music director and singer. He made several award-winning Assamese films, composed scores for Bengali films and in his later life for Hindi films. As a singer, he was famous for his baritone voice and diction. As a lyricist, he was known for poetic compositions and social and political messages. His songs, including Bisitirno Paarore, were translated into Bengali and Hindi. Hazarika dabbled in politics and for five years served as a representative to the Assam Legislative Assembly, but he always saw his music and films as the most effective forums for social action.

By the time he died in November 2011 at age 85, his fame had spread far beyond his native Assam. An estimated half a million mourners attended his funeral in Guwahati, the state’s commercial capital; a monument opened four years later is now a place of pilgrimage. Fittingly for the artist who composed an ode to a river, Hazarika’s name is on India’s longest bridge, opened in May 2017 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. More than five miles long, it spans a major tributary of the Brahmaputra, the Lohit, linking Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, saving 100 miles and five hours in travel time between the states.

            Stephanie and I joined the group, which included two writers and a film maker, on the stage, lit incense sticks and scattered lotus petals on the altar. There were short tributes to Hazarika, then the group sang one of his songs. Afterwards, we chatted and thanked them for making us part of the ceremony. “Please wait a few more minutes,” one insisted.  Soon, one member of the group who had slipped away entered through the gate carrying a gamosa, the traditional Assamese scarf, a white rectangular piece of cloth with a red border on three sides and red woven motifs on the fourth. I stood, feeling humble, while two others draped it around my neck.     

Smart city

The city of Ahmedabad sprawls across the scrubby coastal plain of the northwestern state of Gujarat for what seems like an eternity. And perhaps it is an eternity, because it is reportedly the fastest-growing city in India. The 2011 census put its population at 5.6 million; it’s now well over seven million, with a million or so more in the metropolitan area, making it either the fifth or sixth largest city in India, and the seventh largest metropolitan area. By the next census in 2021, 60 years after it first passed the million mark, it could have nine million.

Ahmedabad was not on my radar until June 2015 when I visited with my UNICEF colleague, Mario Mosquera, to check out the Mudra Institute for Communication (MICA), which had bid to host a workshop on communication for development for UNICEF staff. I had no idea the city was as large as it was, nestled in the population table just below Bangalore and Hyderabad. Flying in from Delhi, I assumed the terminal where we arrived was the airport itself and thought it looked rather empty. I soon saw signs pointing to three more terminals. Ahmedabad was building for future growth.

Ahmedabad was originally a city of textile mills—some called it the “Manchester of India.” It’s in the cotton-growing region of Gujarat, and also imports raw cotton through the ports of Mumbai and Kandla. Climatic conditions are suitable for spinning, and water from the Sabarmati River for dyeing. The city had a large pool of skilled labor, investment capital and good road and rail connections to Mumbai and other cities. The textile industry remains an important part of the economy, but Ahmedabad has diversified. Over the last decade, the main growth has been in sectors such as auto parts and pharmaceuticals, with a business-friendly state government offering cheap land and tax breaks to industry. It was the so-called “Gujarat economic miracle” that helped propel the state’s Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, onto the national stage. He went on to leadership of the Hindu Nationalist Party, the BJP, and then to become prime minister.

From the airport, Mario and I drove for almost an hour on a freshly tarmacked four-lane ring road across a construction site landscape. Workers were laying water and utility lines on both sides of the highway and planting shrubs on the median. Large areas of former farmland were dotted with signs and surveyors’ stakes announcing future industrial and technology parks. In the sweltering heat of the early afternoon—late June is the start of the monsoon season—workers with scarves tied around their heads clambered between the steel and concrete pillars of half-finished factories and office buildings, hoisted bamboo scaffolding poles into position, mixed cement, and carried bricks, effortlessly balancing them in baskets on their heads. Billboards marked the designation of economic zones, often expressed as acronyms, such as the Gujarat International Finance Tech (GIFT) City, a “smart city” initiative.

Ahmedabad is one of more than 100 urban areas across India designated by the national government to become a “smart city.” It’s a catchy, if vague, slogan. Officially, a smart city is an urban region with top-notch infrastructure, making it attractive to businesses and residents. That means wide roads, commercial and industrial real estate, modern apartments, schools and medical facilities, all wired together with high-speed links. Ahmedabad was one of 20 cities selected in the first round in January 2016 for government funding.

Knowing the average connection speed of Indian bureaucracy, it may take some time for the money to arrive. The state and city governments were not waiting on Delhi but plowing ahead with infrastructure. Ahmedabad will likely always be a work-in-progress, because there are few geographical limits to expansion although eventually the city planners will run up against the Char Desert, which covers a wide area of the northwest in the states of Rajasthan and Gujarat. In late afternoon, as we drove away from the MICA campus through the borderland between construction sites and cotton fields, we passed camels hauling carts of hay for animal feed. Somehow, it did not seem incongruous to see camels and herders on a modern highway among the yellow Tata trucks and SUVs. The line between the urban and rural in modern India is constantly shifting.

I began to wonder if Ahmedabad was anything more than highways and construction sites. I was happy to discover an older city on a one-hour sortie to have my suitcase repaired. The screws securing the pull-out handle on my suitcase had fallen out. One advantage of working in a developing country is that it’s almost always cheaper to have something fixed than to buy a new one. The hotel gave me the name of a shopping center where luggage was sold. My auto rickshaw driver had a better idea. He pulled up beside other drivers who rooted around under the seats in their vehicles for screws. After 10 minutes, I signaled that I wasn’t prepared to wait and we set off again. The next stop was a hole-in-the-wall hardware shop, but again nothing fit. We set off again through the maze of streets of the old city and eventually reached a roundabout. The luggage repair wallah sat under a canopy on the narrow sidewalk, his sewing machine in the road, piles of used luggage behind him. He inspected the suitcase, dipped into a bag, pulled out two bolts and nuts, screwed the suitcase together and fixed a torn zipper. “How much?” I asked. He shrugged. “Whatever you think is right.” I gave him 150 rupees (about $2.25), got back into the auto rickshaw, thought about it again, and gave him another 100. I fear that his days are numbered. There’s no place in the smart city for people who hang out a shingle at a busy roundabout and fix things. Maybe they’ll give him a cubicle on the ring road and a web site domain. And no one will come.