It's evening of life, heroine hasn't seen her film made 67 yrs ago

It's evening of life, heroine hasn't seen her film made 67 yrs ago
SAMUDRA GUPTA KASHYAP

GUWAHATI, JULY 30: Assam's First Lady of the silver screen is in her last leg of life. In her eighties, deaf and with rapidly failing vision, Aideu Handique, the female lead in Assam's first talkie, appears like she's slipping away, but she can still rewind the long journey that yanked her out of anonymity and pushed her into instant stardom and just-as-instant oblivion.

It all started with a steamer. In 1933, little Aideu, from a little village called Pani-dihingiya near Kamargaon in Golaghat, wanted to see a jahaj (steamer) which, she had heard, sails on the Brahmaputra. She would pester her uncles and brothers to take her to the river four kms away. Around the same time, Jyotiprasad Agarwala, from Tezpur in northern Assam, had returned from Germany after a course in cinematography. Jyotiprasad had scripted his dream project: the first Assamese talkie, Joymati. And he wanted a female lead.

The advertisement caught the attention of Dimba Gohain, Aideu's cousin, who was also Jyotiprasad's friend. He mischievously told his cousin: ``You want to see a jahaj, don't you? Come with me. I will not only show you one, but will even take you on board a ship.''

The next morning Aideu, accompanied by her younger brother Keshab and cousin Dimba, was at Dhansirimukh, from where steamers would arrive from Upper Assam's tea districts. No sooner had the three boarded the steamer than it took off, for Gamiri-ghat, on the other side of the river. Little Aideu was terribly scared, and pleaded with Dimba to take her back home. ``Don't cry, silly girl. I am taking you to a place where the very shape of your life will change,'' Dimba told her.

From Gamiri-ghat, she was taken to the Bholaguri tea estate belonging to the Agarwala family, where the huge tea warehouse had already metamorphosed into a makeshift film studio. ``I wept and wept for one whole day and night. The women of the Agarwala family, who were helping Jyotiprasad, consoled me. They also told me that I was required to play the role of Joymati for a few days and then would be sent back home safely,'' Aideu recalls.

Joymati was a courageous woman from the Ahom era, whose name is etched in golden in Assam's history for her fight against an autocratic king, Lora Raja. It was her sacrifice that saved the Ahom kingdom from the tyrant's misrule.

``Dimba had reason to abduct me to act in the film, I later learnt. For taking me there, he too got a minor role in the film. And for that he got a good scolding from Jyotiprasad in front of everybody,'' says Aideu. In the meantime, Jyotiprasad had telegrammed her father Nilambar Handique, and he rushed to Bholaguri by the next steamer.

Then began her training in acting. ``Jyotiprasad was a perfect artist. He showed me how to act, how to deliver dialogues. And I did whatever he told me to,'' Aideu recalls. ``There was a lengthy scene in which an officer of Lora Raja was supposed to beat me up with a thorny stick to extract information about Joymati's husband Godapani, a youth from one of the 14 royal clans. The actor who was playing the officer actually beat me up! Jyotiprasad had arranged for some betel palm barks to be used as pads, but the actor thrashed me in parts not covered by the bark as well. My back swelled up, and I can still feel the beatings,'' she recalls.

After several days of shooting, Aideu finally returned to Pani-dihingiya village. But then, those were the thirties. Not only did the village refuse to accept Aideu back, but also threatened to ex-communicate her family. ``I had not only brought shame to the family, but to the entire village by acting in a talkie, they said. My father tried to eplain that I had committed no crime. But they simply refused to listen,'' she recalls. Nilambar Handique and his wife were summoned to the community prayer hall,`tried', and made to pay a fine of one rupee four annas and an arecanut and a betel leaf, only after doing they were accepted back. But the hostility ran deep: when her younger brother Keshab died of small pox a few years later, few came forward to lend a hand. ``And when my parents began looking for a groom of me, not a single boy dared to come forward,'' says Aideu, who never married. She still lives at Pani-dihingiya village with her nephews.

Did she see Joymati at all? ``No. Where could I have? There is no cinema hall here. I only kept hearing from people that I had acted very well,'' says this one-film wonder. About 40 years later, she saw a documentary film made by Bhupen Hazarika on the life and works of Jyotiprasad, which contained some clippings from Joymati, which was released in 1935.

Recognition came to her only in 1985, when the Assam government celebrated the golden jubilee of Assamese cinema. ``They took me to Guwahati in a car, and I was felicitated at a huge public function. Even Amitabh Bachchan was there,'' she says.

Today, Aideu lives a life of severe solitude. The Assam government had announced an artistes' pension for her in 1984, but even that money comes irregularly. In 1985, the state government gave her a tamra patra too. And in 1991, after years of hostility, the village youth set up a girls' middle school named after her. And when she fell terribly ill and nearly died last year, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta's government came forward to help.