The world's largest river island -VIII

In my case it turned out to be a Bihari family, from somewhere in Ballia or Chhapra. Juginder Yadav was full of the changed scene in Bihar since Laloo had taken over, and was all set to return in a couple of years. They have no family here — all the women and children stay in the village ('Who would bring them here to be corrupted by this society'). They live an itinerant life, following their amazingly huge buffaloes as they swim across the Brahmaputra from island to island. It is like the agriculture here — virtually no input at all, and low output, but enough to get by on. In their case it is milk, one litre each from each of the massive creatures, who now respond to names. I was struck by the difference in the encounter I had earlier in the day, the animal pawing the ground like an enraged bull, looking in our direction, and in the night, having to step over their prostrate forms while they lay outside the door, savouring the smell of hot rotis, or maybe just basking in the warmth of human company. It must have been almost eleven at night when I finally slept, sharing a bed under the open sky, sated on hot rotis and subzi and warm milk, thick with cream. The next morning when I woke up night was just breaking, and there was a cool breeze. I walked around the island (later discovered it was called Kumuliya Sapori), dug up the rest of my crew from where they were buried, in a Mishing house, and began the long journey back to Kamlabari — first by coaxing a reluctant engine to get us across the river to the ferry ghat, and then walking, and taking a row boat, and then walking again. We set out at six in the morning and reached Kamlabari just after twelve. In a couple of days I was back in Jorhat, and now writing almost a month after the experience, it seems almost as if it were a dream....

The last boat to Salmora
It took us almost four hours to reach Salmora from Kamlabari. We were in a hired boat, a small dhuk-dhukky, that made a lot of noise, but appeared to be standing still when going against the current. It had turned out to be a clear, hot, cloudless day, and with the gentle breeze and the rocky motion, we were all in a fairly soporific frame of mind. We were carrying medicines and tubewells, and our crew included five mistries, Ritu (an architect who is part of the AVARD team), Sunil (another member of our team, a doctor who hasn't taken any medicines of any kind for the last nine years), the two crew members (both from Salmora) and myself. We had spent the last month travelling to the most interior villages on the island, and were now becoming quite blase about the situation. It was our first trip to Salmora, which is to the far east of Majuli.

Till 1974, Salmora was like any other community on the island — mostly agricultural. Nuclear villages, with fields in the periphery, stretching out as far as the Brahmaputra, five miles away. Bhola Hazarika reminisced, with emotion and nostalgia. It was truly an emerald isle, steeped in the rich green of harvests. At this time of the year, on a sunny day, you could smell the dust in the air as the grain was threshed and cleaned, and hear the rhythm of the dheki as you passed by the houses. There were many naamghars where people would assemble to watch bhaonas and have discussions, or simply join in the kirtans every evening.

Today the scene is quite different. Salmora has disappeared off the map, and has the status of an 'abandoned' settlement. The people pay no taxes and get their work done. The village of over six hundred houses has been reduced to an embankment, the households just a few metres apart. There are no open expanses of land, just water all around. The unpredictable Brahmaputra flows past their doorsteps, taking houses and land at will, a hunger that has not been appeased. Yet people stay on, for their ties to the land are primeval. Mohendra Bhuyan tries to explain. 'We have a relationship with the river, and with the land. True, we have lost most of what we had, but the river still provides for us: the fish, the firewood. And we're basically artisan communities, depending on the sale from our pots and boats to see us through.'

Virtually every family in the rural North East has a tradition of craft — clothes, houses, food production, farm implements — but in few cases you will find a concentration of craft families as you do in Salmora — where they produce not only for themselves, in the house, but as their primary means of survival and food security. The major occupation of the people is pottery and boat-building. They are a well-selected combination — the pottery provides the sustenance during the winter months, and into the summer, and the boat-building thereafter. The process of pottery involves excavating the mud from about thirty feet below the surface, fashioning it by hand — they do not use the wheel — sundrying it, and baking in a furnace. The fuel for the furnace comes from driftwood found in the river. The pots have little value locally, but as they are taken further afield, their value increases disproportionately. For instance, a small tekeli (pot) costing three rupees in Salmora would fetch up to four times as much in Sadiya. Their boats laden with pots make the month-long journey to Sadiya, where they are exchanged for grain, approximately one pot for one kilogramme, a fair exchange. We passed these boats sometimes, laden with round mud pots, surreal multiheaded craft struggling on their way upstream.

Although the women actually fashion the pots by hand, there are so many ancillary activities on which they have to depend on the men that they find it difficult to manage on their own. I spoke with Bhoni and Bulu Mai Hazarika, orphaned three years ago. Bhoni is twenty-two, her younger sister is eighteen. They stay alone. They have an elder brother, Nagen, but since he got married, there was tension in the crowded household and they felt it would be better for all concerned if they moved out. In spite of the idealised picture we paint of life in rural areas, it is filled with as much of drama and intrigue as any modern day TV soap — you only have to scratch the surface. Since Bhoni and Bulu Mai are unable to take the small boat into the river to collect firewood, and cut grass; or dig the mud from thirty feet below the surface, as is required for the pots, they find themselves restricted to working as labour on a piece-rate basis.

Even if they somehow manage to do these tasks, there is no way in which they can manage the long journey that culminates in the sale, really adding value to the product. So they are confined to earning forty rupees per thousand pots fashioned, about twenty rupees a day — less than the minimum wage. Bhoni and Bulu Mai are not alone. In a quick count, we found that there were twenty-four families like them, of the five hundred odd families living in Salmora today.

The floods this year have been a blessing in disguise to Salmora. Moyna Bhuyan, a Kumhar and traditional boat-maker, says that it is the best season that he has seen. Normally the demand comes from lower Majuli, and from Dhemaji, Jonai, areas in which floods and water have been a part of life for years — but this year, for the first time, the demand has come from Jengrai, from families and villages who just had a cursory relationship with water. Now a boat has become an essential commodity for the families in Ujani Majuli as well, and that has opened up the Salmoa market manifold. The wood that they use is the prized azhar, but there is so little of it available now that cheaper substitutes are used, like uriyam, for the sides, and uoi for the bottom.

The amazing thing about Salmora is the technology that they are using — still primitive hacksaws and blades, chisels and rivets — no lathes, no drills or machines. The economy is sort of locked into a sustainable cycle of production and consumption. They produce a little, but there is an easy market. If you improve the productivity, upgrade the technology, suddenly there will be more production, perhaps even better quality, and cheaper, but where are the markets?

But back to the life in Salmora. The village now is a three-kilometre thin stretch of land houses clustered densely on either side. There are two distinct ecologies — the upper and middle part of the village, mostly Kumhar families, divided by a two hundred yard stretch of the Brahmaputra that ate through the embankment, and on the other side, which is connected to the mainland, that 'other caste' families — some Koibarta and some Rajbonshi. This divide is not just ecological — there are differences in rituals, traditions, work cultures. As you cross the breach, there are fewer radio sets, fewer tubewells, and a general sense of ennui. On the other hand in the upper portion there is a tension in the air, almost as if people want to make the most of the sunshine. In fact there are some parts of the boat craft that require strong sunlight — when for instance they smear the waterproof tar coating along the joints. Even the potters leave their ill-shaped vessles to dry in the sun, coming from time to time to add a few touches. Even in the late afternoon, as we walked around, people were busy with their own work, finding it difficult to take time off to come and have a general discussion on the siting of the tubewell. Only two kilns were fired when we were there, lighting up the night sky in a warm glow in the distance.

Till recently, the people from Ujani Salmora had to pay a private fare of two rupees for every trip across the channel — but a month ago, the government stepped in with a free ferry service. The breach occurred five years ago. During that time, the amount spent on just transport across the breach could have rebuilt the embankment three times over — but Salmora lacks the political clout to make it happen. Those who are better-off have invested in land and properties elsewhere, and their interests are now in Dhemaji and Dibrugarh, in and around large cities of which they have become a part. The government gave land to seven families in Mariani, one bigha each. The other abandoned children of Salmora are all awaiting their turn.

In a sense, Salmora in Majuli is a microcosm of Majuli in Assam, and an Assam in India: those that stay behind left to their own devices to fend for themselves, while the elite build bridges with their counterparts in the 'mainstream' and step across the river, watching the drama unfold from the outside, critical of the system, but never a part of it.

The floods and after
(from Majuli, our newsletter) Kamlabari, January 5, 1997
After the floods last year, it has taken many months for life to come back to normal. Now you can just about get around everywhere, but often having to by-pass bridges and roads that have been washed away. It is just three months till the next monsoon, and there are no signs of repair starting,
but life goes on. In the early mornings there is inevitably a silver of mist hanging over the island, and as the sun emerges, and the golden yellow mustard fields come into view, it seems like a picture of paradise.

The highlight of the last three months has been the Ras, a festival celebrated by virtually all the hundred and fifty thousand people on the island. In this depiction of the birth and life of Sri Krishna, every village that aspires for recognition stages a performance, and parts are decided with Machiavellian intrigue, with so many potential aspirants.

(Excerpted with permission from Sanjoy's Assam, edited by Sumita Ghosh and Published by Penguin Books India)