By Dr Jintu Borah.

I had a creative bent of mind from my childhood. When
I first saw the idol of Ma Sarawati at our village LP school I used to
make it by imitating the idol. Such idols I saw at the time of Durga
Puja also. My father involved in such pujas wholeheartedly. So at home
I used to make the idols of Lord Ganesha, Ma Swaraswati etc. with clay
and dried them in front of our sun baked bamboo-clay barn. I even used
some colours of flowers, herbs, ink, hairs of water lettuce (pistia
stratiotes) etc. to look beautiful and real like.

I had three bordeutas (father's elder brother). My
father was the youngest of all the four brothers and one sister. But
unfortunately I did not have the luck to see them all. Two of them had
died before my birth. I had the opportunity to spend time only with
one of my bordeutas as only he lived till I came to Guwahati. Some of
my bordeuta's sons got married before my birth. I came to know that
one of my bordeutas was a 'muktijyodha' means freedom fighter. His
name was Late Tilak Borah. He spent in jail for several months. I came
to know about him when I grew up.

One of our bordeutas' sons stayed in our local town Kohpur. When he
came I showed him my idols in front of my father. He praised me a lot.

When I was reading in an H.S. school in my native place
named Karangabari, and then I used to write poems by imitating other
poets which were not published anywhere. Even in class V or VI I
requested one senior student to write a poem for me to publish in the
magazine. The magazine did not publish for some reason .However I
remember the nice line the poet artist wrote -''Tumar tulika dal tuli
luwa bandhu

Aki juwa sundar sabi''

(Pick up your brush and draw nice picture)

The magazine when published in six or seven years
later then I could write a poem for myself without the help of others.
Before that also many of my writings were published in two news papers
published from Tezpur at that time, means in 1990s. I wrote...