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.
