Lakshminath Bezbarua

Lakshminath Bezbarua (14 October 1864 to 26 March 1938) was a poet, essayist, novelist and playwright, widely called the father of the Assamese short story. He was one of the central figures of the Jonaki era, the age of romanticism in Assamese literature, and through his essays, plays, fiction, poetry and satire he gave new energy to a literary tradition that had grown stagnant. His satirical works responded sharply to the social conditions of his time and sustained a case for change.

He was uncertain of his own birth date. In his autobiography he writes that his parents could not remember it exactly and that he invented 1868 when he needed one for official records, though he was born in 1864.

Cinema owes him a debt twice over. His play on the Ahom princess Joymoti Konwari is the source for Jyotiprasad Agarwala's pioneering film Joymoti (1935), the first Assamese feature, for which he is credited as writer. His collection of folk tales, Burhi Aair Sadhu, is the foundation of Bhaskar Hazarika's Kothanodi (2015).