Adrift

It was nevertheless Jitu who called me on that rainy Kolkata night a couple of weeks later. The island Mekhahi has gone under the water. There was a flash flood and the river tore through it. What happened to Payengs elder brother,Malbukh,who had made us sit at the only dry corner of his barn and laid out bowls of the thickest and most filling buffalo milk curd? Malbukh was the only human inhabitant of that portion of the island that had emerged from the river Brahmaputra in the near past. He lived there with his herd of two dozen buffaloes there is no news of him or of the cowherd Payeng,who had gone to search for his brother.

Earlier,Id spent a few nights and days with Payeng on the fringes of his forest a 350-400 hectare dense green belt in the island of Ouna Sapori,about two hours from Jorhat,that he personally created and nurtured for over three decades. One night,Payeng had recollected one of his escapes from a river island when a deluge arrived stealthily under the cover of a pitch-dark monsoon night. He had held on to the tail of one of his buffalos,those expert and instinctive swimmers,and swam across the gurgling Brahmaputra. If you let go of the tail for a second,the currents will drag you in, said Payeng. They had touched ground again at another small riverine island,among the many that emerge and dissolve with the cross-currents and mood swings of the great river. Payeng escaped one home to seek refuge in what would soon be another.

Since his birth in Ouna Sapori,home for 54-year-old Payeng has been a nebulous,shifting construct. It has been moulded,transformed and held hostage to the sudden twists and turns of the river,for the Brahmaputra is notorious for its rain-fed drunkenness. Each year,hundreds of small sandy islands and sandbars,chars as they are called,come up,while as many of them get swallowed by the churning waters. From the window of the flight hovering over Jorhat,they are unconnected dots and lines. But they form a spellbinding cross-stitch of survival of the char dwellers a roving population of riverine people in Assam whose lives are patterned by the elements and the slightest kinks of nature.

Having shifted from one island to another for much of his young life and looking for a steady livelihood from his herd of cows,Payeng,a Mising tribesman,sought permanence. As a six-year-old child,he had earlier seen the riverfront home in Ouna Sapori,where he lived with his parents,getting eaten by the hungry torrent. Yet,in Ouna Sapori lay his roots and this is where Payeng,then in his late-20s,decided to plant trees,hoping their deep-set roots will be an effective guard against the constant corrosion of the bare,sandy sapori island. The patch of green would also provide fodder for his cattle,he hoped,and make the island more livable. Here he could finally build a life around a home.

Aided by natural afforesting agents,he hadnt hoped for the forest to grow to its current scale or that it would begin to attract large herds of elephants,a small group of rhinos and,as the forest department officials confirmed,a visiting family of tigers,all of whom swam across the river in the dry winter season from the four wildlife sanctuaries spread across the Brahmaputra river system in Assam. Having caused destruction to life and property in nearby villages,among the first targets of the elephant herd was Payengs home.

Accompanied by forest guards,we moved through the damp air and thick undergrowth of his wild forest,for which he has received national and international recognition and the honour of the forest being informally referred to as Mulai Kathoni,Mulai being Payengs nickname. After a couple of hours,I stood in front of what was once an airy Mising-style hut built on stilts,where Payeng once dreamt of reviving his family life. On a fateful evening when the elephants emerged,he stood at a distance and watched them trampling through the home he had built within a clearing in the forest. Since then,Payeng has packed off his wife and children to stay in a village on the road to Jorhat.

We stay at what is now his new home: a mere thatched roof supported on bamboos and open on all four sides. We sleep on the dusty ground and wake up every day at dawn to the sight and sound of his cattle,breathing and looking down enquiringly on us strangers in the natural order of life there. I jump up startled but forget my mattress,on which a cow almost immediately and vindictively urinates. His cattle,having arrived in a single file from the fields where they rest at night,take over the hut in that early hour of silhouettes. Payeng tends to the young and milks the mothers,before letting them out to forage in the fields.

In between,Payeng took us to Mekhani char across the Brahmaputra where his

elder brother Malbukh has started rearing buffaloes,the milk of which is sold to agents who come daily on boats. Payeng has now taken it upon himself to forest the sandy island and carries seeds and saplings with him.

In between there is the Brahmaputra: wild and unrelenting in fury. I sit rigid on a canoe,while Payeng and two of his friends,all of them using split bamboos as rows,pray volubly to the river. Jai Brahmaputra baba,Malik,Malik their reverential pleas rent the air. In front of the canoe,one of the men sifts through the turbulent water for solid objects. The canoe hitting any of the tree branches swiftly flowing through the water could topple us into the tumid river. Up ahead,in the far distance,is the char and home to a person. In the light drizzle,its outlines seem as transitory as the lives of the people.

The distress call from Jitu returns my mind to the island,where Malbukh could spare little other than the fresh buffalo curd and an innate sense of hospitality and kindness for us. I keep calling Jitu,who is also unaware of the whereabouts of the brothers. I also keep trying Payengs only connect with the outside world his 10-digit mobile number. Two days later,the call finally goes through.

I ask him about Malbukh. Baach gaya,Payeng says in his broken Hindi. He made it to another sapori. Another char,another beginning and another home yet for Malbukh to build.

Shamik Bag is a freelance journalist in Kolkata.