The Last Breath of Bamboo: Remembering Dipak Sarma

There are deaths that still the noise of the world. When DipakSarma, the internationally acclaimed flautist from Assam, breathed his last in Chennai on November 3, 2025, the air itself seemed to pause. 

For decades, his flute had spoken in a language older than words — the language of wind and water, of prayer and memory. Now that voice has faded, leaving behind a silence that feels almost sacred, as if nature itself were mourning one of its own.

Born in 1968 in Panigaon, a quiet village in Nalbari district, DipakSarma grew up among fields where music was not an art but a way of life. The rustle of bamboo, the rhythm of oars on the Brahmaputra, the hum of distant folk songs — all became part of his inner soundscape. From this world of tender noises, he found his instrument: the bansuri, a hollow reed that could hold both joy and lament. It was, in truth, a fitting companion — fragile, modest, yet capable of infinite expression.

His journey from the hush of rural Assam to international stages was not driven by ambition but by surrender. He did not conquer music; he submitted to it. In his hands, the flute became something living — it spoke, sighed, wept, and sometimes even laughed. His art held the serenity of a river’s depth, the luminosity of early morning light on paddy fields. Each note carried Assam’s soul — a union of folk cadence and classical purity. Audiences often said that when DipakSarma played, one could hear the Brahmaputra breathing.

He performed across India and abroad, carrying with him the timbre of the Northeast. Yet no matter how far he travelled, he never shed the softness of home. His flute never lost its accent; it continued to speak in Assamese — clear, fluid, and humane. Collaborations with legends such as Bhupen Hazarika and Zubeen Garg enriched his journey, while his music direction for films like  "JonkyPanoi", "JatingaItyadi", and "LuitakVetiboKune" gave Assamese cinema its subtle musical pulse. His compositions shimmered with emotion yet never drowned in excess. Even at the height of applause, there was restraint — that rare humility which only true masters possess.

Recognition came — the NETV Best Musician Award in 2006, invitations to perform internationally, and the admiration of fellow artists — but he remained untouched by fame’s vanity. “A musician’s reward,” he once said, “is not applause but silence — the silence that follows a note perfectly played.” It is that silence Assam now carries in its heart.

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The story of DipakSarma is also the story of every artist who lives for art more than for life itself. Behind the serenity of his music lay struggle — quiet, unadvertised, uncomplaining. He lived simply, devoted entirely to sound. When illness came — a prolonged liver ailment that took him to Chennai for treatment — he bore it with the same composure he brought to his flute. Friends recall that even in the hospital, he would occasionally lift the instrument to his lips, saying that music was his prayer. That image — a frail man breathing melody through pain — will remain among the most haunting portraits of artistic courage.

He was only fifty-seven. His passing has left Assam bereft, its soundscape dimmed. For years, DipakSarma had been a bridge between classical discipline and folk spontaneity, between the river’s song and the concert hall’s silence. He carried in his music the continuity of a civilisation that has always sung — from Sankardev’sBorgeet to modern Assamese film scores. To lose him is to lose a bridge — one that connected tradition with timelessness.

But his death also invites reflection on the precarity of the artist’s life in India. Why must the custodians of our culture so often struggle for dignity in illness and obscurity in fame? DipakSarma’s story is luminous but also cautionary — a reminder that beauty cannot thrive without care, that a society’s spiritual health depends on how it treats those who make it sing. To celebrate him truly is to ensure that the next flautist from Panigaon, or Tezpur, or Sivasagar does not have to choose between music and survival.

And yet, in another sense, he has not left at all. His music endures — not just in recordings but in the air, in the invisible vibrations that never die. Play any of his pieces today and one feels him there, between breath and pause, in that delicate moment when sound is born. His flute still carries the scent of wet earth, the yearning of monsoon evenings, the serenity of a prayer whispered to the wind.

For those who heard him live, the memory remains indelible — the stillness before he began, the first pure note like dawn breaking, and the hush that followed when he finished. That hush has now become eternal. But in that silence, something beautiful happens: one begins to hear life itself — the murmur of water, the pulse of the heart, the sigh of memory — all continuing the music he began.

Assam’s musical firmament has lost many of its guiding stars — Bhupen Hazarika, Jayanta Hazarika, KhagenMahanta — and now DipakSarma joins that celestial gathering. One imagines them by some eternal river, their voices and instruments blending once more, the bansuri floating over divine waters. The thought softens the grief: perhaps the concert continues elsewhere, unseen yet unending.

As the evening wind crosses the Brahmaputra tonight, it might carry a faint strain — a fragment of a raga, a whisper of bamboo, the echo of breath turned to prayer. It may be only the wind, or perhaps it is DipakSarma speaking again — reminding us that music, when born from love, never dies.

He is gone, yes, but his song remains. And in that song, the river still flows, the land still listens, and the bamboo still waits for the next breath.