Slow Passage Through the Brahmaputra

Patangia integrates the story of Barua’s family into the narrative with sharply etched accounts of Jashoda’s and Bina’s visits to see Barua’s pregnant wife and children. We see the children lay out a little piece of sacking for the old lady to sit on; and then we see the little boy hide the kitchen vessels in the shallow side of the stream, away from the eyes of the white soldiers. At another moving moment, we see Barua return for a final glimpse of his wife and children before making his escape. With what little food she has, rice and boiled yam, salt and a chilli, his wife cooks dinner for him, denying her hungry children in the process: but Barua feeds a fistful of rice to each of the children, singing “Kadam, kadam, borhaiye ja, khushi ke geet gaye ja”.

Even as the drama of the freedom movement unfolds, however, we see the inner drama of Bina’s quest for personal freedom. The brightness of her mind and her eagerness to learn about the world are quelled by the sheer force of social mores. “We women are like a piece of white cloth,” even her grandmother tells her. “Even a light stain shows prominently.” Bina is pulled out of school as soon as she reaches puberty; and she is married off, against her wishes, to a man much older than her and completely different in temperament.

The compelling success of Patangia’s narrative is that instead of presenting these events with excessive emotion or long passages of interiority, the story remains grounded in the rich texture of the Assamese family life that it describes, the everyday details of food, garden, weaving and bhaonas, of silk mekhelas, oronis and chadors, of a Ragha borali fish with, eerily, a dead man’s hand inside it — all the little things that take up most of the women’s days. But in the midst of this rich detail, Bina’s emotions are not glossed over but presented as piercing, painful flashes of anger or disappointment, all the more intense for being as vivid and as unforgettable as the brilliant bakul, keteki and kopou flowers that colour the landscape.

Dawn is a rich, moving story, and this translation is a valuable addition to the great translation project that can form a crucial way for us to interpret the different parts of this varied country for each other.