It was innate desire to go to Sambalpur to find out any information available about Sahityarathi late Laxmi Nath Bezbaruah after joining NALCO. But I could not make the trip till recently due to the busy industrial life and also because of non-availability of good communication. Meanwhile, many years had passed by and communication had improved considerably. One fine morning, my eyes caught a news item published in The Time of India a few days before and I came to know that there still stands a house at Sambalpur where Laxmi Nath Bezbaruah lived in the later part of his life. My heart was filled with joy and my mind got ignited for a trip to Sambalpur. I contacted two local scribes, Arjit Nayak and Deepak Panda of Sambalpur and collected all the relevant information to locate the house.
It was a pleasant morning with a moderate temperature on February 18, 2010. I took a city bus service to Talcher Road, the nearest railway station and took a train to Sambalpur. At the station, Panda received me as planned and we drove down to the old house of Bezbaruah where he lived once. It was noon by then.
The house is located at the Kachary Chowk, now renamed as Nelson Mandela Chowk just on the bank of the Mahanadi river. Tears rolled down my cheeks at the first sight of the dilapidated house with broken brick walls and cement plasters from where the doyen of Assamese literature reached a great height in the field of literature. He stayed in the cottage in the later part of his life till 1936. Laxmi Nath had come to Sambalpur in 1917.
Full report here Assam Tribune
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