Neel Pawan Barua couldn’t have sold too many paintings, despite being one of Oxom’s seniormost and most respected painters. What spoke out loud about his humble existence was his humble homestead at Beltola in Guwahati, the gate to which was arched by a remarkably beautiful plant that seemed to have lived through a good part of his life and that of his wife, famed singer Dipali Borthakur, who we had gone to honour with the ‘Oxom Srestho’, an award instituted by a newspaper some years ago.

He doted over his wife, a victim of a motor neuron ailment that had cost one of Oxom’s most wondrous singers her voice. She was in pain, and had fever that day, so much so that she couldn’t turn on her side. “These folks have come here to honour you,” he lovingly told her while he wiped her forehead, as we placed the award in her hands. She seemed to understand and smiled.

Their home was kind of dark for a bright sunny day, perhaps the couple’s way of deciding how much of light they wanted in at the time, that day, that particular week. What was undeniable, perhaps, even overwhelming, was a feeling of peace and tenderness that seemed to waft through their home like a breeze.

We chatted for a bit, had tea and biscuits with Neel Pawan Barua and then left, still quite amazed by the perfect arch that the plant had formed over their gate, without even a supporting structure.

As we drove away, the world outside slowly grew noisy with cars and buses and aspirations and pedestrians and talk, unrestrained sunshine and the elements and dust; generally speaking, life as it were beyond a palate, brushes and an easel, and the magic that goes into bringing a canvas to life.

One wonders who looked after Neel Pawan Barua’s Facebook page. “1.2K followers”, it says. “Page-Artist, Not yet Rated”. His DP is slightly out of focus, as if he is beginning to see the first flashes of a painting to be, his eyes squinting, looking into a distance we cannot see. Everything is as basic as perhaps a waiting canvas. He is in a pale white vest, his beard and hair untrimmed and grey.

As one scrolls down through his life and work, he is hastagged #neelpawanbarua #artist  #neelpawanbarua  #contemporaryartist  #artistofassam #artwork #painting #ArtistNeelPawanBarua.

Neel Pawan Barua ages through the scroll, from sprightly group pictures to one where he has a cane and then one in which he is in a wheelchair. There is a picture of him standing next to his wife who is in a chair, with him feeding her something from a steel glass, with what seems a smile of contentment. They were younger then: he could still stand and she could still sit in a chair.

Through the scroll, there are pictures of his paintings: sculpture-like figures in myriad colours. One of a hunched, capped, bearded man staring into a vase of flowers, one a skeletal woman tearing, maybe combing, her hair, a bird lodged in her mind, one an appearing apparition, one a cuddled elephant, a horse, a falling Ravana, a tabla, an overwhelming mouth and tongue, buffaloes and cows, layered, multi- coloured and rural, a sort of mural that seems to tell a tale of villages and the noise of city life and the search for silence within. There is a drawing of roots:  #assam  #indiancontemporaryartist. There is no picture though of a painting of his being auctioned at Sotheby’s or Christie’s, or elsewhere.

Neel Pawan Barua was the founder of the Assam Fine Arts and Craft Society in Guwahati in 1971. His Wikideck page is in Oxomiya and has been updated. “Neel Powon Borua” it says. “Born at Teok in Oxom’s Jorhat district on June 1, 1936; Died October 28, 2022. Recipient of the ‘Oxom Xourobh’ award from the government of Assam in 2021… Studied Painting at Shantiniketan in 1961.”

Paran Banti Devi, joint secretary of the Gauhati Artists’ Guild, remembers Barua as a very amiable man with a pure heart. “He would often turn up at the Guild, take up a pen or pencil and draw something on any piece of paper, sometimes on a cigarette packet. He was a spontaneous artist. I, along with fellow artists and friends, would go to his house on his birthday. We would each do something–sing, dance–whatever one wished.”

Rating Barua and his work would have been difficult for whoever it is who made his Facebook page. Like the way he bent over and took care of and loved his singer wife who had lost her voice much before he had married her, it is said. Like that arch over the gate to their homestead, supported by unfathomable life, living and love. If it was he who made the page and updated it, there isn’t much to go on by way of the hows, the whens, and the whys of his life. That bit of the story he seems to have left to the hashtags.

(With inputs from Ali Fauz Hassan)

(Pictures courtesy Neel Pawan Barua’s Facebook page, and a Facebook upload by Raj Saikia)