Nipon Goswami's death: End of the era of great heroes in Assamese cinema

By Samudra Gupta Kashyap

With the passing away of Nipon Goswami at the age of 75 on Thursday, curtains have come down not only on the life of a great actor of Assam, but also has come to a close the era of  great heroes of the Assamese silver screen.
Born in 1947, Nipon Goswami literally belonged to the second generation of Assamese actors. Son of Chandradhar Goswami, a contemporary of Jyotiprasad Agarwala, Bishnu Prasad Rabha and Phani Sarma - the trimurty of modern Assamese culture -- , Nipon Goswami in fact had made his debut as a child actor in "Piyoli Phukan" in 1955. His father had played the lead role in that film.
A graduate of Film & Television Institute of India (FTII), his launch as a hero was in "Sangram" (1968, director Amar Pathak). It was however Brajen Barua's  thriller "Dr Bezbarua" (1969) which made him the big hero. Since then he acted in close to 50 films, which included side roles in four Hindi films, among which he  acted alongside Shatrughan Sinha in "Jaggu" (1975) and Amitabh Bachhan in "Do Anjane" (1976).

Some of his memorable films include "Manav aru Danav" (1971), "Duranir Rang" (1979), "Ajali Nabau" (1980), ""Aparupa" (1982), "Kokadeuta, Nati aru Hati" (1983), "Jiwan Surabhi" (1984), "Shakuntala aru Shankar, Joseph, Ali" (1984) and "Siraj" (1988).

Like most other actors of Assam, he had also forayed into the world of mobile theater, having earned tremendous popularity during those couple of years in the late 1970s.