Has anyone seen Padma?

Jaipur Hand

The first time I saw Padma Pegu, it was at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus in New Delhi way back in 2008. My husband and I took Bus no. 615 from Munirka to Brahmaputra hostel, the last stop in the sprawling green JNU campus which is in sharp contrast to the otherwise urban concrete jungle of Delhi. JNU is located in south-west Delhi on the eroded off-shoot of the old fold mountain of the Aravalli. The university stands as a beacon of light for several students from the northeast corner of the country who flock there for higher studies.

I was sitting inside the bus while my husband was waiting outside. My in-laws were in Delhi from Dhemaji. For those of you who don’t know where Dhemaji is, let me first tell you that it is perhaps the worst flood-affected district not only in Assam but in India as well. The Brahmaputra valley is sandwiched between the eastern Himalayas to the north and the Meghalaya Plateau to the south. The river Brahmaputra runs from east to west throughout Assam (the river roughly bisecting the state latitudinally) from Dhemaji till Dhubri district before draining into Bangladesh.

The south-west monsoon winds during summer after picking moisture from the Bay of Bengal hits the Meghalaya plateau where it causes the heaviest rainfall on earth in Mawsynram (earlier Cherrapunji) in Meghalaya and heads northward towards the mighty Himalayas on the east. Rain-bearing cumulo-nimbus clouds strikes the lofty mountains bringing orographic or relief rainfall. Tributaries of river Brahmaputra like Subansiri, Jiadhal, Moridhal, Simen, Gai, Sissi etc. debouches in the plains of Dhemaji first after skirting the silent mountains of Arunachal. The river Brahmaputra and its innumerable tributaries become charged with strong currents and high volume of water, eroding river banks and embankments, and flushing out the excess water discharge on both sides of the river banks as flood water.

 Dhemaji district is situated in the north bank of river Brahmaputra, tucked in the easternmost corner of the state, bordered by Arunachal to the east and north, North Lakhimpur district on the west and the river Brahmaputra forming its southern margin thereby separating the districts of Tinsukia and Dibrugarh located on the south bank. The district headquarters is Dhemaji, a small and sleepy town. It is one of the remotest districts in the country, only a dot in the map. The Dhemaji railway station is by far the least busiest in the country.

Culturally the district is inhabited by the Ahoms, various tribes like the Bodos, Mishings, Deuris, Sonowal Kacharis, Lalungs, Chutiyas all belonging to the mongoloid race. The people belonging to different ethnic groups, both tribal and non-tribal, have been residing in peace and harmony ever since the time of the Ahom rule who ruled Assam for six hundred years (A.D. 1228 – A.D. 1826). Chaolung Sukapha (reign 1228-1268), a Tai prince hailing from the Yunnan province of present-day Peoples Republic of China, founded the Ahom kingdom. Of late various non-tribals like the Kalitas, Nepalis, Brahmins and the tea-tribes have also settled in here due to easy availability of land. The recent influx into the district has been the Bangladeshi locally called in Assam as the mia or goria. Dhemaji is cosmopolitan in a bucolic way and inter-caste marriages now-a-days between Ahoms and Mishings, Ahoms and Kalitas, Nepalis and Kalitas, Mishings and Brahmins, Mishings and Bodos . . . an endless list of crosses are common.

The locals may not be cash rich but they are rich agriculturally. The farmers cultivate paddy mainly along with lentils, mustard, vegetables and spices like ginger, garlic, turmeric. It is believed that the region is so fertile owing to the rich deposits of alluvial soil that if people throw rice grains, the paddy plant will germinate after a few days. Pigs in the backyard and fish in the pukhuri (pond) are also reared by every house-hold. Apart from this fruit trees like banana, jack fruit, guava, mango, pomegranate, coconut, betel-nut, jamun, robab tenga, bogori, jalphai, aamlokhi, xilikha etc. grows in plenty, every home appears to be a sea of green. Needless to say, the people of Dhemaji are also very simple and hospitable. Girls from this part of the state are naturally beautiful (with absolutely no body hair), their beauty owing much to the natural beauty of the place with fresh air and weather, clean and clear water, no iota of pollution; are very artistic and creative where every girl learns to weave the gamosa (towel) and the mekhela-chhador. But here, men drink a lot (Arunabh being no exception). To some degree, the drinking habit is a part of the culture of the region. In Assam, we have different names for the home-made rice-bear- Xaj (Ahoms), Apong (Mishings), Laupani, Sulai etc.; used in the religious and socio-cultural festivals and ceremonies including marriage, death anniversary, ancestor worship, community feasts etc.

My brother-in-law was a research fellow in JNU who stayed in the campus and my mother-in-law and father in-law had spent a few days with their daughter and her family. From the window of the bus I saw Ritu (my sister-in-law) with her husband Rupak. They have an infant Soontu.  The couple was followed by Padma with Soontu in her arms. She was the baby’s care-taker. The baby was all milky white, very much like his parents. My husband was also a research scholar in JNU pursuing his Ph. D. from CLE, while working in an evening college under Delhi University. But owing to our work we decided to stay outside JNU.

I kept the book I was reading inside my jhola (bag) and got down from the bus to greet my in-laws. Padma appeared to be a beautiful young girl of medium height. She was probably in her early 20s. She had the innocent looks which added another bud of beauty in her. There was no dangling fancy ear-rings and absolutely no sign of any make-up. Her beauty was plain, simple and natural that required no white-wash of artificiality.  She wore a colourful top, (probably from Sarojini Nagar market) with a gaale, a sarong wore in Arunachal Pradesh (Dhemaji borders Arunachal). She must have washed her hair as it was a Sunday and her knee-length hair appeared to be very straight and fine silk. She had an hour-glass figure. She had distinct mongoloid features although her eyes didn’t have prominent epicanthic fold unlike other people of her tribe. Her nose was small but was by no means wide and flat. Her bright, yellow skin without any trace of body hair glowed in the afternoon sun as she walked with Soontu cradled in their arms.

Padma belongs to the Mishing tribe (earlier known as Miri), the second largest tribe after the Bodos in Assam but the largest in Northeast India as hill-miris are present in Arunachal too. The Mishings belong to the Tibeto-Burmese mongoloid group and their language falls in the Indo-Tibetan language group. She is not very well-versed in her dialect though she speaks Assamese fluently. The tribe is believed to be descendents of hill-Miris of Arunachal Pradesh. They worship Donyi-Polo (the Sun and Moon resp.) and are animistic by faith although many have embraced Hinduism, some even converting to Christianity.

In Assam, the Mishings are compared to the Sardars of India who are known for cracking jokes on themselves. One such joke is about a Mishing fish-seller (The joke was cracked by Arunabh’s childhood friend, also a Mishing, Girin Ngate Chayingia) who sells his catch in the Dhemaji weekly market held every Thursday and Sunday. A customer comes to buy fish and asks for the rate of the fish. Fish-seller replies- “Rs. Six Hundred only, Sir”. Customer- “Ram, Ram, Rs. Six Hundred? How come when the river Brahmaputra is so near?” The cunning Mishing fish-seller retorts- “Sir, your house in also very near to the SBI bank. But does it mean that the bank’s money is entirely yours?”

During her stay in Delhi, Padma picked-up a few Hindi words and could communicate in broken Hindi with jata hu, ata hu, khata hu, peeta hu types (yes, in Assamese pani is ‘khana’ not peena and we have a gender neutral verb unlike in Hindi. Padma hails from a remote village in Samarajan in Dhemaji district. I came to know later that since her parents were too poor she and her other two sisters- Asha and Chanu work as helpers, she in Delhi at my sister-in-law’s house and her sisters worked as domestic helper in Assam. All three daughters supported their parents who were in their fifties. Their house stood on a stilted platform owing to the perennial floods that devastates entire villages spread all across the watershed areas of the tributaries of river Brahmaputra when the dark rain-bearing clouds hovers in the sky. Padma’s chang ghar was a ramshackle made of timber, bamboo, thatch and straw, plastered with old calendar and newspapers to mask the countless holes that dotted the walls. Their house had to be rebuilt year after year owing to the damages done by the floods. A distant Assam-type house in their village was all submerged with silt after the floods, so much so that only the slanting roof and the top portion of what was once the wall of a house, was visible.

My first visit to Dhemaji was in 2001 while I was pursuing M.A. in Geography from Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi. This was also the initial year of my relationship with Arunabh (also my cousin, cross-cousin to be precise, he being my father’s step-sister’s son). I don’t remember if I was ever taken by my parents before in my growing up years to my aunt’s place in Dhemaji. My Deota was the SDO of Dhemaji in the mid 70s, before I was born.

In 2001, I went alone to Dhemaji from Kadam in Lakhimpur where I stayed with Nilakshee Hazarika, my friend from GP Hostel of Jamia. I took a bus from Lakhimpur town in the morning. My friend Nilakshee and her elder brother dropped me at the bus stand. I was full of questions once I took my seat next to the window in the left-hand side, had to request the co-passenger to offer me his seat so that I could capture every scene and scenery in my mind’s lens. I told him this was my first visit to Dhemaji while I silently thought with a smile that this beautiful naturally endowed place will be my future home, my sasural (in-law’s place). On the left I could see the meandering rivers (with ox-bow lakes) calmly gliding by as it crossed the national highway. Fishermen in boats, young girls and ladies with koloh (brass water pots) or bathing on the river bank, cows and goats tethered in the grassy fields nearly. In the distance the foothills of Arunachal Himalayas could be easily seen as one traverse on N.H. 52. The greenery is fresh and pure. However, while I crossed a place called Samarajan, there was a drastic change in the topography. The place left an eerie feeling engraved in my mind for long. What I saw was a sea of silt till the horizon with several houses buried in the silt, with dark and dead uprooted trees being the only witness of the past devastation. The place was all barren and deserted. Like in the desert, sand-dunes gulping up everything but leaving only the ‘head’ before burying alive a human-being. The difference is the sand in the desert and silt in the drainage basin.

Even middle-class families who had large tracts of lands where they sowed paddy were rendered homeless overnight. The floods knows no rich or poor, no tribal or non-tribal, for when it comes, it comes alone- ‘before’ like a snake in a chicken-coop to devour the chicks  and ‘after’ like Bordoichila- the strong local wind that blows in April-May in Assam which causes much destruction to life and property in no time. Villagers stand as one in such a time, their grief, their loss and pain binds them intrinsically. Kids, old folks, women and even men shed tears, some silently while others don’t hide their emotions, children who become orphans for life, newly-married woman who become widow at a young age, parents who are too old to work who lose their son- the only earning member of the family- all lost to the floods. My husband told me once that there are people who had a happy-go-lucky-life before the annual floods forced them to beg in places like Guwahati or other better-off towns in Assam. In Assam, the Brahmaputra is a life-giver but it is also a river of sorrow for the people.

Villagers, even kids, who knows too well about the vagaries of nature leave for higher, safer places with their cows, goats, cocks and what other live-stock they rear in the brief non-flood period. In the flood-prone areas of Assam, particularly in the areas inhabited by the Mishing tribe, the house structure is different from the other tribal/ non-tribal people.  Every house stands on a wooden platform with the ground floor being used for keeping live-stock and the family members occupying the space above. During floods, they catch fish which is found in plenty hence the flood affected people are to some extent are not deficient in proteins. After the water recedes (and this after the politicians do an aerial check of the flood damage of the flood-affected areas and its people, their lives, their houses and their standing crops); the people carry on with their life, again building their lives from scratch. Village youths get together to make bamboo bridges. Children who couldn’t attend classes owing to the floods because their school premises have been converted to flood-refugee camps, walk miles and miles or cycle down the village roads for education. It is here in Assam that some HSLC students of a particular centre were not able to arrive on the examination on time because the boatman turned up late at the ghat. Apparently he had a hangover.

The pukhuri (pond) during the rainy season is a breeding ground for fishes but the same pukhuri which dries up partially during the water-deficient days, before the monsoon outburst in the region, is changed into a paddy-sowing basin by some clever village bloke. The villagers no longer wait for government aid to trickle in even though post-flood period is the time of maximum risk as all water-borne diseases like diarrhoe can thrive at this time.

The eastern Himalayas where north-east India is hidden from mainstream India are a nature-lovers treasure-trove. It is here that the lofty Himalayas running from Kashmir in the west to Arunachal in the east takes a sharp hair-pin bend to blend with the Patkai Hills, Barail range before submerging in the waters of Bay of Bengal only to re-appear as Andaman and Nicobar group of islands. A carpet of green with the smells of wild orchids is captivating beyond description. But sadly much has been eroded due to human greed, lost forever due to rampant destruction and a great part due to ignorance of the local populace. Here, “the water tastes like water and the fish tastes like fish”. Development in this region is only a word to be found in the government files and not miserly used by politicians and bureaucrats alike. Here, construction of a bridge across any tributary in the Brahmaputra or in river Brahmaputra itself may take more than a ‘generation year’ to complete, meaning grandchildren often hearing from their grandfather, who has in turn heard from their grandfather which is passed on to their grandson,  and so on and so forth, that a bridge will be built. But how soon, only time can tell. People who could run to safer areas when the flood water stealthily creeps in thank their stars for living to tell the tale about a mother and daughter, locked in a final embrace, tied to the latent umbilical cord even in death, as they meet a watery grave in one such floods.

Padma’s youngest sister, the fourth daughter in the family was abandoned in the very hospital she was born. Her father told the doctor that if his wife delivered yet another daughter, he would only take his wife back home and not the new-born girl child. After the delivery the wife went back home, alone. Dr Medhi of Silapathar was the only doctor then in upper Assam’s north bank in the then Dhemaji sub-division, the remoteness made more so due to flood havoc that cut-off the place from the rest of Assam for most parts of the year. The kind doctor and his doctor wife accepted the new-born in their family where she got a shelter for life. Well, that is another story altogether.

My brother-in-law after completing his research moved to Manipal University in Karnataka where he joined as a faculty. His family joined him later. Padma decided to return home- to Samarajan in Dhemaji. She had saved some money and hoped to open something on her own in her native place. She had enough of Hindi while in Delhi, no tongue-twisting south Indian language for her to learn, she decided. For most Assamese, all south-Indians are Madrasis, like all Hindi-speakers are Marwaris. She returned during the Christmas-New Year time i.e. 2-3 weeks before Magh Bihu is celebrated in Assam. There are three Bihus celebrated in Assam. The first- Rongali or Bohag is celebrated in mid-April to welcome spring and to usher in the Assamese New Year. Magh or Bhogali Bihu is celebrated in mid-January, when the farmers’ granary is full, to mark the end of the harvest with a community feast and the third Kati or Kongali Bihu in September/ October when farmers plant tulsi (basil) in their field and lit sakis (earthern lamps) to pray to the Almighty for a good harvest.

Padma’s mahi (maternal aunt, younger than one’s mother) from Gogamukh had invited her for Bihu. Gogamukh is a small town on NH-52 as one leaves North Lakhimpur district and enters Dhemaji. One may find it strange to see Bihari vendors selling chana-chur, jhalmuri, bogori, jolphai in cylindrical wicker basket even in this remote part of the country. Padma was the only one in her village who had crossed Assam and reached the country’s capital. Hence, she was a star in her village plus in all the areas where her aunts, uncles and cousins lived and worked viz. in Lakhimpur, Majuli (yes, the largest riverine island in the world), Sonitpur, Golaghat, Jorhat, Sibsagar and Dibrugarh in upper Assam, in both north and south banks. These places are dotted with tea-gardens, where both unskilled and semi-skilled labour is in high demand. It won’t be wrong to surmise that one Mishing may be related to another Mishing, as I discovered from Madhumita Doley, my Mishing friend-cum-classmate from school and college days. Almost anyone with a Mishing surname- Pegu, Kutum, Taid, Mili etc. was her relative.

Padma’s looks beautified more so by her fine clothes are a major attraction for her young cousins. She treats her other distant cousins (here every Mishing is in some way related to the other) to the salty, S-shaped cookies, the only fancy-looking eatable found in the village shop which sells rice, dal, oil, salt, candle, match-box and a few spices apart from the usual tamul-paan (betel-nut and betel leaf) and bidis.

Feasting over, Padma is about to be dropped back home by her mahi. They are waiting in the national highway for the early morning bus which will take them to her home. The highway is a highway to hell- I mean if you want to shake all your 206 bones at one go. Here people joke that the road is not full of pot-holes but pot-holes are full on the road, present after every millimeter on the highway. During the non-monsoon period here, buses take a ride over the silt, pebbles, cobbles of the bank, cross the shallow water of the river to reach the other bank for the absence of a bridge. All passengers are safe except the bone therapy during the ride.

Padma and her mahi wave at the bus heading towards the district headquarters Dhemaji. It is a night-super bus which plies between Guwahati and Dhemaji. It is comfortable and spacious on non-rush days. But now due to the Bihu rush, morhas have been placed in the aisle to accommodate the short-distance travelers.  Since Padma and her mahi has to get down before reaching Dhemaji town they occupy the front seat with Padma occupying the one next to the window on the right-side. She always enjoys the bus ride except when fellow passengers vomit inside the bus. Once on her way to Golaghat to visit her other aunt she had a bitter experience. She had occupied the last left-hand side window seat. A lady 3-4 seats before her felt pukish and out popped the lady’s head to vomit. Before Padma realized what was happening, a white, sticky substance smeared her left cheek. This was 3-4 years back but she always remained alert while inside the bus from then on. She loves to smell the raw dust of the village, to watch the greenery of her native place, something she missed in Delhi, as the landscape changes with the ride after every second like a film reel. Even the greenery in JNU in Delhi appears to be artificial green to her now.

It is winter time when dense fog settles all along the highway, when dawn of the day has set in but the sun is still not bright. Part of the road has caved in at a few places but the bus driver is aware of every pot-holes and ditches. Some of the passengers from Guwahati who took the night journey are still asleep. Padma and her mahi who was still chewing pan-tamul, chatted with each other in their normal decibel unmindful of the sleeping passengers. Suddenly the bus comes to a grinding halt and passengers are tossed around. Padma feels an excruciating pain in her body for a few seconds before she faints . . .

When she regains her senses, she finds herself in Dhemaji Civil Hospital. Two days has passed – 17^th and 18^th January and she couldn’t recollect what those two days were in her life. Slowly her thoughts weaved a web of clear recollection of the bus accident. Something like a truck crashing against the bus. The pain was still unbearable for her and she felt dopey. She saw her mother and two sisters. Her alcoholic father was not around. Her mother’s eyes were like two swollen ice-bergs ready to melt. Her immediate sister Asha was soothing her by her bedside. Her head was bandaged. There had been six stitches. She enquired about her mahi and was informed that the elderly lady suffered some minor bruises in the accident. She was lucky to survive the accident but unlucky because her right hand was gone. Her lotus stem-like hand, it was truncated out of her body. Her beautiful feminine body minus the right-hand looked incomplete, like a fruit-bearing tree with its man branch chopped. Her hour-glass figure looked disfigured now. On her left hand, only two fingers remained- the little finger and the ring finger. The middle, index finger and the thumb was gone like her right-hand. The moment she realized this she cried like a widow. She would never be one because no one would marry her. Of what use was her ring-finger now?

She learnt how to weave at a very young age after dropping out of school. But now she will never be able to weave the colourful and vibrant Mishing mekhela-chaddor with her own hands in the tat-xal (handloom) anymore. With her hands she would caress the calf and the goats, fed the fat pigs which her family reared. She will never be able to prepare xukan mach (sun-dried fish/ smoked fish) and cook the tasty gahori (pork) with bah-gaas (bamboo-shoot) and bhoot joloria (the hottest chilly in the world) which her family relished. How will she fetch water from the pukhuri. No more flapping her hands and gyrating her body to the rhythmic beat of dhool, pepa, gogona for the Bihu dance or the much loved gumrag dance on the Mishing festival Pohrag. How will she live now, what will she do, how will she survive, who will take care of her? Will her parents support her for life in their poverty? Will her sisters and their husbands, when they get married? All these thoughts made her mind heavy.

Once released from the hospital, Padma would sit and brood, sit and brood, as day stretched to night. Her father who came home drunk would spend all his money which he earned on sulai, the country-made liquor (the home-made apong­- rice-beer was preserved for festivals like the Ali-Aye-Ligang). Very soon her two sisters left home because they couldn’t be without work for too long. Her mother was Padma’s only life support. There were times when she felt like plunging herself in the nearby pukhuri (pond). She felt helpless and hopeless. Soon the kids of her village ridiculed her. “Haat naikiya bai, haat naikia bai” they mocked at her. Her father would bash and kick her, even when she was monthly sick, for she couldn’t give him money, money to drink, to drink and drown in his misery. To drink and die.

Readers’ you may want to know what happened to Padma after this. I was in Gurgaon at that time when I rang up my mother-in-law in Dhemaji (saved as DheMa in my mobile) to ask about Padma’s well-being. This is what my mother-in-law narrated to me over the phone about what happened to Padma. That was before September, 2011. Once the call was over, my mind drifted to the busy MG Road in Bangalore (now Bengaluru) to attend the four days training programme on Digital Image Processing and Geographic Information System in the Regional Remote Sensing Service Centre. I was searching for a book in the open book stall in the pathway to gift my boy-friend Arunabh as a souvenir because he was a voracious reader and happily picked up Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray. When I was about to pay for the book my eyes suddenly feel on the book-keeper. Both his fore arms were missing from the elbow down. What I saw in his eyes was strength and determination for he lifted the book and with some difficulty handed the books (I took another book) to me.

My sisters-in-law and I on our part did what we could to financially assist her. I don’t even know if the money we gave her was made to good use or whether her abusive alcoholic father snatched it away from her for his drinks. Two years later I relocated to Guwahati in my home state. Padma was on and off my mind. In 2012 London Olympics when I was in Bokakhat (where Kaziranga National Park is located) I saw how Natalia Partyka of Poland played table-tennis in the London Olympics. She was born without a right hand and forearm.

When I asked about Padma again over the telephone, my mother-in-law informed me that she left with a person. I was elated to hear the news for I assumed that some kind-hearted person accepted her the way she was and was even willing to spend the rest of his life with her as husband and wife. Here, my mother-in-law corrected me by stating that she left with a Hindi-speaking person, probably a north Indian. Immediately my thoughts drifted to the villages in Sohna in Haryana where I had conducted field survey along with my classmates during M.A. under the guidance of Prof. Rocket Ibrahim of Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. In the four villages where the socio-economic survey was conducted I had met young girls from Assam who were in all probability sold off to families of young boys, boys who looked no more than 18 years; and elderly men, men who were old enough to be the girl’s father. In places like Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, the Punjab and Rajasthan where the sex rate is highly skewed, young girls from impoverished families from remote places in the north-east, West Bengal etc. are lured by nefarious men with a promise to either marry or under the pretext of providing them with a job. Innocent girls are first enticed and later trapped and exploited in sex racket and when they realize the ulterior motive of the ‘good Samaritan’ it is too late. In some cases, the family of the girl receives a paltry sum, in other cases the money never comes. In Assam due to perennial floods many have become forced refugees. Children and women living in flood relief camps become easily gullible to human trafficking in such conditions.

Padma could be in Paltan Bazar in Guwahati, in Sonagachi in Kolkata, GB Road in Delhi, sold by human traffickers to a pimp. She may be living in a bordello in any of the red-light areas of the country with a new identity as Champa, Rupa, Kamala, et. al. But deep in my mind I pray to God that the Padma whom I saw for the first and the last time is still the same Padma today. I pray that the man, with whom she was last seen, took her for the Jaipur Hand*.

By Karobi Gogoi Borgohain

*The Jaipur Hand, like the Jaipur Foot, helps disabled persons (disabled by birth or by accidents) to regain mobility and dignity by providing artificial limbs. The organization is based in Jaipur, Rajasthan.

Padma- how she would fetch water from the river and learn swimming in the noi. Her attaining puberty.