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 – 17th and 18th
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.
