A tribute – Remembering Syed Saadulla

In the lazy 90s of Dibrugarh, an invisible precept would fold our nuclear family of four around the EK Cole radio on December 7 at 7:30 pm in anticipation of the warm harmonization of the theme song of Barnali, followed by the sonorous introduction by Syed Saadulla. My father managed the volume of the show - increasing it during portions that brought smiles to our lips and decreasing it during portions where the sarcasm was beyond my early teen years. Dibrugarh inhaled the 15-minute bittersweet, funny-serious airtime collectively for many years.

Much later, I would marry into Syed Saadulla’s family and understand that bittersweet, funny-serious was a way of life in the family. Ours was a family where talking aloud was discouraged, while at theirs, I could guffaw audaciously at my father-in-law’s jokes. I was like a hungry piece of dry cotton soaking everything - from music to jokes. I spent a lot of time with him when he visited our home and got to know him. He narrated stories that were somewhere between fact and fable. His voice carried the same cadence I had grown up listening to on the radio - measured, playful, and rich with a kind of wisdom that didn’t announce itself.

Slowly, I began to understand the man behind the microphone, the guitarist behind the guitar, the musician behind the composition. The satire, the tenderness, the gentle mockery of life’s absurdities - they weren’t merely creative choices; they were reflections of how he moved through the world.

It’s been 40 days today since his untimely demise on 30 October 2025. It feels as though a quiet, steady voice in our lives had suddenly gone silent. The man whose voice once gathered an entire state around their radios and television sets, and later gathered me into the warmth of his family, was no longer there to fill a room with his stories and music. These will continue to echo in the spaces he once inhabited, in the pauses between conversations, and in the ways we still find ourselves laughing at life’s contradictions. For me, the loss is braided tightly with gratitude: that a voice I grew up hearing became a presence I grew to love and respect, and that his legacy will always hum beneath the surface of my days. Today, on his chalisa, we pray to Allah to grant him eternal peace.

– Zeeshan M Nofil

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