Brahmaputra

A decommissioned boat

The silhouette of a fisherman breaks the silence with a mild snap, and the fishing net sinks into the river. The last catboat is teeming with passengers, as some boys wait for their catch, waiting against their fishing rods. A few villages away, I see a few families lifting their valuables to the concrete shelves near the ceiling – a traditional way of welcoming the yearly flood. Overlooking the mighty Brahmaputra, the balding officer is sitting on the balcony of his official residence – a British bungalow; and a mild breeze from the river teases the few strands that stand embarrassingly on his head.

Located on the eastern fringe of India; no matter what you do and how you do, you cannot avoid the love and fury of the Brahmaputra, when you are in Assam.

The yearly flood took away large chunks of money that could have been used for overall development. And until a few decades ago, it was the only sorrow of Assam. During monsoons, when the Brahmaputra is exceptionally furious*, the loss of lives is colossal. Houses are swept away, and corpses float- that of human and of cattle. And when the last waters refuse to go back and sink inside the humid earth, the usual wave of deaths follow with endless diseases.

So what happened a few decades ago?

In the monsoon of that year, the flood did arrive. But with it came the sound of gun shots. Read more in my next post.

*Many believe that it happens when the Tsangpo was ill treated in China. But by the time it reacted, it crosses the invisible man made boundary and flows into India. But such are the wild stories that people talk around the hearth during winter evenings – months away from the monsoon and THE FLOOD.