[Xonzoi (Sanjay) Barbora]
Tarun Bhartiya suffered a massive cardiac arrest and died on 25 January, 2025, in Woodlands Hospital in Shillong. His passing was sudden and unexpected for his family and friends across the world. Tarun had recently exhibited his mesmerising black-and-white photographs of the everyday lives of people, places, and objects of religious significance in Ri Hynniewtrep. Titled ‘Niam/Faith/Hynniewtrep’, the exhibition drew curious crowds in places like Wayanad (Kerala) and Ahmedabad (Gujarat). It was the last exposition of a life of observation, engagement, and solidarity that many of us were blessed to be a part of. He had so much else planned out for 2025 and beyond.
A sea of humanity turned up to see him off on the day of his funeral on 27 January, 2025. Representatives from the Hawkers’ Association, the Nurses’s Union, colleagues from the media and mass communication centre that he nurtured in St Anthony’s College, activists from the region and mainland India, singers, and his family came to pay homage to a person who loved and lived among communities where care, affection, and sharing is unquestioned. As people spoke, those listening were reminded of all that Tarun had done for the region, since he returned to the town of his youth in the late 1990s. Having been part of internationally feted media initiatives as an editor, one of his students described him as one of Shillong’s most famous personalities. She was not exaggerating.
With his passing, Northeast India (and Shillong in particular) has lost its foremost archivist and chronicler of sad, happy, ordinary, and extraordinary events and people. Most academics, researchers, journalists, and activists who have been to Shillong will attest to having shared a cup of tea and biscuits with Tarun, Angela, and the two imperial cats who graced their home in Lumpyngnad. Angela was often busy with her advocacy work, so Tarun would welcome visitors home as he juggled household chores and conversation. He was a storehouse of information, advice, and kindness, and he always listened to what his guests were saying. He would modestly narrate his recent engagements when asked, reminding us how he quietly inspired so many people. I often teased him about appearing in two recent bestselling books where Shillong was an important backdrop. Kynpham Nongkyrih’s Funeral Nights and Janice Pariat’s Everything the Light Touches referred to him by name, with affection and respect that only a few can evoke.
Tarun grew up in Shillong at a time when the city offered refuge for children of middle-class people from the Northeast. The 1970s and 1980s witnessed much civic and political unrest in Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura. Parents who could afford to send their children to Shillong did so, hoping they would remain safe and cocooned from the political unrest in their home states. It made Shillong an unlikely place where various identities coexisted and sometimes thrived. He came of age in a left-wing, scholastic home. His father, Prof MN Karna, was one of the founding members of the sociology department at the North Eastern Hill University (NEHU). Prof Karna’s colleagues at the department included some of India’s best-known social anthropologists, such as Profs Virginius Xaxa, AC Sinha, and C Nunthara. Tarun and his siblings were drawn into the lives of their father’s colleagues in a typical South Asian way, and he remained close to them until the end.
After school, Tarun moved to Delhi, where he enrolled as an undergraduate at Kirori Mal College (Delhi University). The 1990s were a difficult time for Delhi University students. The anti-Mandal agitations polarised students on campus. However, two other significant events have left their mark on campus politics, perhaps permanently. The first was the implosion of the Soviet Union, and the other was the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Far from becoming despondent, Tarun decided to take matters into his own hands. He left his hostel room, leaving a note for his local guardian. “Tell father that the bird has flown the coop,” the note allegedly said. After several phone calls (in the pre-mobile phone era), the guardian discovered that Tarun had left for Ayodhya. He had volunteered as a peace activist and was staying at the local office of the Community Party of India (CPI). It was something that only Tarun would have conjured. He had to be at the place where the world was likely to change irreversibly and try to stop the tide of hate.
Returning to Shillong towards the end of the 1990s was a characteristically deliberate decision. It was the worst time in the Northeast to be young and idealistic. Meghalaya was subjected to military, paramilitary, and police actions, ostensibly against insurgents. Shillong became the crucible of ferment, grievances, and repression of every kind. Decades of poor governmental planning and excessive privatisation of community resources (like coal) led to rising inequalities.
Furthermore, the union government had decided to mine for uranium in Domiasiat (South West Khasi Hills) against the local community’s wishes. Tarun dived into this fecund environment, ensuring he never lost hope and spreading as much of it as possible. Armed with his camera and some microphones, he spent weeks and months amplifying the voices of resistance. He met his icon in Domiasiat: Kong Speciality Lyngdoh, who died in 2020, leaving him mourning her passing for several months. She epitomised the genius and generosity of the human spirit that he saw in abundance in the region. That is why he remained in Shillong, voyaging out to places for work that validated his decision to return.
In the years since his return, he devoted his time to projects that others would have found difficult. He was an integral part of the Shillong Digital Archives Directory, along with the Australian historian and author of The Empire of the Clouds in North-East India, Andrew May; he conspired to do a photo essay or book on the paradoxical world of mining and agriculture in the Khasi-Jaintia hills with the Swedish anthropologist, Bengt Karlsson. Recently, he collaborated on decoding the diaries of Heraka prophetess Gaidinliu with the Naga anthropologist Arkotong Longkumer. Few people in India would have the capacity to make sense of this almost delirious universe that Tarun inhabited.
He described himself on his social media accounts as a “middle-class, Marxist, Maithil documentary image-maker from Shillong.” He consciously invoked each of these identities to challenge received notions about what they represent. He wanted his middle-class identity to reflect the unwavering socialist disposition of past generations; his Marxism belonged to an old-fashioned era, but it understood the angst of Gen Z and tolerated the vacillating behaviour of millennials; he embraced Maithil in its culturally expansive ability to belong to the Buddhist-Ashokan past, as well as its Indo-Nepal borderland identity of the present; he was an exacting editor and image-maker whose photographs, films, and documentaries help us raise questions that we did not know we could ask. Finally, in his assertion of belonging to Shillong, he left us with a world of affection, occasional despair, and everlasting hope that the town would remain a sanctuary for those seeking shelter.
I write this obituary in disbelief and grief from Santa Cruz, California. We met barely a fortnight ago in Guwahati, where I coaxed him and Angela to participate in a silver jubilee celebration. He was much more than a friend. We shared an inexplicable love of trivia, Eduardo Galeano, sentimental Urdu poetry, rice beer, road trips, staring at Sohra sunsets, and our small circle of comrades, friends, and family. I will always remember him as someone always happy because the universe had been unbelievably generous with him. Every moment he spent with his partner, Angela and their children, Abia, Kyntang, and Maïan, were gifts he treasured immeasurably. That is why he did not have a trace of envy in his relationships with other people.
He would have wanted me to make sense of his absence by referencing everything happening worldwide. Will the ceasefire between Hamas and the brutal Zionist regime hold? Why can’t the wealthiest country in the world contain wildfires, even as they send expensive bombs to Israel? Can we (in South Asia) be inspired and learn from our local revolutions in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and (earlier) Nepal? Can we avoid majoritarian hubris in our modern nation-states?
I have no credible answer that would satisfy him. However, as my bereaved heart tries to make sense of his absence, I take refuge in the Bill Morrissey song that I am listening to (and one that I know he would endorse):
“…And you won’t leave now because I know
You’re just like me, with no place to go
No place to go; it’s just a matter of time
You’ll find somewhere, it’s just a matter of time
This ain’t Hollywood
It never really gets so good
Call it love if you think it should
(But) no need to explain.”
‘Inside’: Bill Morrisey
Leit Suk, Bah Tarun!
