Cultural icon Bhupen Hazarika always felt that he and Kalpana Lajmi should celebrate their love story as it was special and unique given the conservative construct of society, the filmmaker wrote in her memoir.
Lajmi, who was suffering from kidney ailment, passed away early Sunday morning at a hospital in Mumbai at the age of 64. She was Hazarika's companion for nearly 40 years. Hazarika predeceased her in 2011.
Lajmi was just 17 when she met Hazarika for the first time. He was 45 then.
My eyes sparkled with love at first sight and I saw their reflection in his eyes just when the light of his life was about to be extinguished - 40 years later, she wrote in her just-released autobiography Bhupen Hazarika: As I Knew Him, co-authored with Sunanda Shyamal Mitra.
Our lives, from youth to old age, were a continuous journey of mutual passion and love. We stepped into various chapters of our lives, sliding in and out of relationships with men and women, making memories along the way. We cherished some of them, but there were some we wished we could forget, she wrote in the book, published by HarperCollins India.
So why was she attracted to Hazarika?
What was the idea behind the book?