Stories from Assam – Life in Lakhipur | Fifty Shades of Random Ramblings

INTRODUCTION

This is an anecdotal account of some incidents in the life of a twenty-something young man from Kolkata fresh out of banking training college and posted in rural Assam on his first independent assignment as an officer of a nationalized bank. The four years of exile from the metropolitan city passed slowly but there was no dearth of varied experiences for all that. In fact, some were downright unforgettable.

My employer bank of the time had nearly a hundred and fifty branches in the North Eastern part of India spread across all the seven states. Many of these branches were located at far flung and truly God-forsaken places by urban standards. I was lucky to have got a branch at a hick place called Dhaligaon that was not too far from a town called Bongaigaon

Bongaigaon had very acceptable infrastructure including a couple of nice vegetable markets, some grocery stores, some simple eateries, a handful of medicine stores, a hospital of sorts, a telephone exchange, a few schools, half a handful of doctors, two movie halls, a railway junction and assorted other support services and lacking only in the supply of tap water and cooking gas.

Life was hard, far from being urban, electricity was forever in short supply, the summers were hot and extremely humid, the rains were really heavy and the winters were chilly. There was no piped water supply and we had no water filter. There was hardly any public transport. Snakes visited often and one had to be careful not to step on one, on the visits to the external toilets at night. For someone born and brought up in cities, it was a daily dose of adventure. Add to that the chronic attacks of waterborne stomach diseases and you have the complete picture.

One word of caution. The stories may be anecdotal in nature but they have been fleshed out in order to improve readability. Therefore, this is not an autobiography by any stretch of imagination.

(Most of the photos and sketches used in this collection have been collected from the internet, without attribution, because I did not know the names of the photographers/artists)

LIFE IN LAKHIPUR

One day in September 1979 Personnel called up from Guwahati and instructed me to proceed to Lakhipur for a month. “Immediately, if you please”.

Apparently, RNR, the Branch Manager there, needed to be relieved from the branch by, like, yesterday. His wife was in a hospital for a premature delivery.

I dithered at first because I was planning to visit my parents during the Durga Puja holidays coming up in a fortnight’s time.

As usual, Personnel persisted and eventually won. I told Personnel, dash it I didn’t even know before today that a place by such a name existed let alone know how to find my way to it even if I had to go there to save my life!

“No problem”, assured Personnel. “Ask your Branch Manager”. And he disconnected, leaving me holding the phone.

So, I approached my boss who made five or six phone calls and came back to me with a route plan. “First things first” he said. “You can forget all about your darling Mac scooter” he said. “There is not a petrol pump within sixty kilometres in either direction of Lakhipur” he said as my heart sank. “Unless you were planning on a one-way trip”.

“There are two ways of getting there “, he advised me. “You take a three-hour bus ride southwards to Dhubri, cross the Brahmaputra by whatever means available and catch another bus, if you can find one, to Lakhipur. Alternatively, you take a bus northward to Goalpara and take another bus to Lakhipur from there. “He reflected for a while and said, “If I were you, I would try the Goalpara route, because at least there is certain to be a bus from there to Lakhipur”. And so I went, on the crack of dawn the next morning. With a kitbag on my shoulder and a prayer on my lips.

The bus left Bongaigaon at seven o’clock and dumped me at around eleven at Joghighopa, unable to traverse the causeway road over the Brahmaputra into Goalpara town as it was under the already swollen muddy brown monsoon waters of the Brahmaputra. And what a sight it was!!

The river is at its narrowest point at Jogighopa and the crossing here is much shorter than elsewhere. Only about two kilometres. On the flip side, as the river flows through very high and rocky banks at this point a sort of funnel effect happens when the water passes through. Venturi Effect, I believe they call it in Fluid Dynamics. That means the velocity of the fluid increases as the cross sectional area decreases, with the static pressure correspondingly decreasing, to satisfy the principle of Conservation of Mechanical Energy. Or some such.

Anyway, the river was roaring down with such ferocity at this point that the sound could be heard from a good distance away and though I should have been scared at the prospect of crossing it I felt no fear as only fools could feel…

Fortunately, a launch service was operative and I duly crossed over, took a three wheeled rickshaw into town and by a stroke of luck made it to the only daily bus between Goalpara and Lakhipur, which departed at two pm each day, in the nick of time. Thoughts of lunch just never entered the head. The bus, instead of taking the shortest route travelled through a very circuitous route touching places like Agia, Krishnai, Dudhnai etc and finally dropped me at my destination after four hours, around six in the evening, after passing through some really interesting countryside and some very dense forests. Though officially the distance was not much, but the bus, being the only one of the day, had to stop at every village on the way to load or unload people chicken and children.

RNR, the Branch Manager at Lakhipur, who looked as if he had ants in his pants, finished within fifteen minutes the process of handing over charge of the branch to me which mainly consisted of the five or six thousand rupees of cash in the vault. Then he was out of the branch in a flash, like a scalded cat.

Then a long-forgotten voice said, “Long time no see” at my elbow.

I did a double take – and found Esskay – an old friend from my college days with whom I had acted on stage during our college Fest for two years running, grinning from ear to ear. Well, after a lot of quick catching up with Esskay, Lakhipur, which had seemed earlier like such a strange place, was not so strange any more.

The branch had a total of three employees including the Manger, plus the mandatory guard who carried a stick instead of a gun. Esskay was the number two man in terms of seniority and he had just one other person junior to him. Esskay lived in a single storied largish house with his wife and his retired parents, where he took me to stay until alternate accommodation could be found. At this point of time his whole family was away for two months and he offered me his parents’ room for my entire tenure. But the PWD Inspection Bungalow nearby was also available and I moved the next day and stayed for the regulation maximum of three days at a time at three rupees per day. And the next three days I stayed at Esskay’s house. And this alternating accommodation became the routine for the next one month. Time passed rather nicely as we had lots to talk about discussing our fellow students and who was doing what and which girl got married to whom and….“did you know that so-and-so eloped with so and so….?” kind of dialogues.

Lakhipur was a much larger village than Dotma in size, in that it was well spread out- had well laid, though non-metalled, roads and a history of sorts which I could never quite get the hang of. But it did have an old palace, which the locals called RajBari- the King’s Residence – surrounded by many large trees and which is said to have belonged to the erstwhile ruling kings of Lakhipur who were related to the kings of Coochbehar or Dimasa, or so people said.

There were multiple madrasas – religious schools, some junior primary schools and an English school, some Block Level Government offices and an office of the Jute Corporation of India which was actually a direct collection centre for buying the raw jute from the farmers at a support price fixed by the Government, and a Primary Health Centre.

There were some tea gardens nearby which I never got to visit and logging seemed to be an activity which engaged some of the population of, may be, three to four thousand people. The most prominent commercial venture was a big medicine shop whose owner, a smart looking bald chap with a chequered golf cap forever stuck on his head, spent most of his time roaming around the uneven streets of Lakhipur on his Bajaj Vespa scooter.

I always wondered how he managed to get the petrol when there was not a petrol pump within miles. He was quite friendly with us and told us stories of the village folk based on the inferences drawn by him from the kind of medicines they purchased from his shop.

Of particular interest were the stories of prominent citizens who regularly purchased performance enhancing medicines made by Himalayan Drug House in order to keep their multiple spouses happy.

There was no regular market in Lakhipur apart from a few stray shops and the statutory grocery store whose owner also doubled as the village money lender as was the standard practice almost everywhere those days.

Sunday was the weekly market day when lots of sellers descended on the village and set up their stalls by the roadside, usually on the ground, from five in the morning – with vegetables, livestock, chicken, mutton, fish, eggs, utensils, hurricane lanterns, bats’ eyes, country made medicine and other nick knacks. You get the drift. The market wound up by ten o’ clock when the Sun became too strong for comfort.

One remarkable feature of this market was that prices of perishable items like meat and fish went up as the supply dwindled, as opposed to other such markets where the prices generally fall as the day progresses and the sellers want to dispose of their remaining stocks and go home in a hurry. But not in this particular market. For instance mutton would sell for five rupees a kilo at five o’clock and go up hourly so that the same mutton, now down to the most unworthy parts remaining, would sell for ten rupees a kilo by nine thirty…

Life in Lakhipur soon fell into a pattern, like it happens everywhere else. Esskay and I left for work together and walked the two kilometres to the branch in companionable chatter. The power went off, always on schedule. We sat around in the branch doing damn all the whole day and maybe reading yesterday’s newspaper. Wrote letters until lunch time. Went out for lunch to the house of Pradeep (not his real name) the third and remaining employee of the branch, a young bachelor clerk who lived with his younger brother not very far from the branch. He was quite adamant that since our families were not resident in the village, we must always eat in his house only as he had the necessary infrastructure. And he absolutely refused to accept any financial contribution or compensation or participation from either Esskay or me. More than any other reason, Esskay and I acquiesced in order not to hurt his fine sensibilities.

Pradeep’s brother Sudeep was a very sweet chap studying in class seven at the time, in morning school and he was back home by twelve. It was his duty to keep house and cook lunch and dinner for all of us. And he did a very good job of it, and was still full of smiles at all times. I recall eating fifty-eight identical meals comprising of rice, lentil-Dal, and boiled green papaya with a side dish of salt and green chilies in this house.

Only one meal was different. That happened on my last Sunday in the village when I insisted that I be allowed to sponsor mutton from the Sunday market for all of us and have a real feast in view of my imminent departure. To this Pradeep relented.

It sometimes seemed to me that the National Dress of the village was the lungi – a wraparound cloth that I was familiar with but had never worn. I prefer to wear pyjamas or shorts when at home, depending on the weather. And never in my life had I ever stepped outside my house in anything but proper dress and shoes.

But here, a man wearing anything else but a lungi stood out like a sore thumb. And for the first and the last time in my life I had to break my own dress code, and finally, one Sunday morning Esskay and I went out for a walk along the village main road with me wearing a borrowed pair of lungis, bathroom slippers and a contrived nonchalant expression, to my huge secret embarrassment and to Esskay’s huge amusement…

In the evenings Esskay and I left office at five o’ clock sharp and walked around the village till it got very dark. The high point of the evening usually was to walk up the main road to reach the northern end of the village and to look at it critically from the north, then to walk down leisurely to the southern end of the village and to look at it critically from the south. And in the course of these journeys of exploration, we exchanged pleasantries with the neighbours that we met on the road. This being autumn the heat was not excessive, though humidity was still very high. Power supply was near non-existent. And when it was existent, it was short lived.

Fortunately, I had my four battery Commander Torch with me at all times. Otherwise, it would have been extremely difficult to discourage the packs of ferocious looking street dogs that came at me out of every street corner during the long and lonely post prandial treks back to the PWD Inspection Bungalow through the dark, powerless nights. The concentrated beam of the four-battery torch got the dogs a bit confused and by and by they started avoiding me when they saw the torch in my hand.

The first night I spent at the PWD Inspection Bungalow was memorable. They allotted me a room with two single beds. The other bed was vacant. Although people did mention that the place was “not good” but I had seen nothing irregular and had moved in and had fallen off to deep sleep before long. Around midnight there was a sharp-ish thud on the false ceiling made of asbestos sheets that separates the tin roof from the room. This was followed by some weird screeches and more thuds and other noises that sounded like multiple footfalls. I swear I could have had a heart attack right there and then so startled was I. But the sounds stopped just as suddenly as they had begun and the rest of the night passed peacefully enough. Inquires made from the caretaker the next morning revealed the culprits to be a variant of giant lizards that lived under the tin roof and who were in the habit of getting a bit playful in the middle of the night, and a lot of people mistook the noises as those made by ghosts and evil spirits. Hence the warning given to me when I moved in.

Another morning I woke up with a shock to find the empty bed next to me occupied by a body wrapped in a sheet. This time it turned out to be a government official who had checked in well after midnight. But how they entered my locked room in total silence remains a mystery to me till date.

During the third week of my stay the branch received two notices – one from the Block Land and Land Revenue Officer (BLRO for short ) about a piece of disputed land against the security of which the bank had granted a loan, and another from Dhubri Court requiring the attendance of the Branch Manager in connection with a loan default case.

So I went across to see the BLRO first as the matter was urgent and the date of attendance in court was still a week away.

The BLRO turned out to be a lady of about my age, but older in demeanour, maybe because she was a government official and needed to look stern and severe in the office. She was also rather pretty, I’m not ashamed to admit. The BLRO not only sorted out the issue within half an hour, she offered me tea and also invited me to over to her residence for evening tea the next day, which I happily accepted.

The BLRO (sorry I have completely forgotten her name) was a widow and she lived alone with her four-year-old daughter in the erstwhile RajBari – the king’s palace. All her family members were dead. I realised she really had no one to talk to outside of the office. At home, she turned out to be quite chatty and she put me at ease in no time at all. A couple of hours passed quite soon and suddenly it was time for me to take my leave.

This was followed by another round of high tea including Luchi Mangsho and nice, long and lively conversation a few days later. Life was looking up!

But my old friend Esskay didn’t approve of this socialising. “So what?” I thought. I didn’t care. Being a twenty-seven-year-old bachelor, I lived life on my own terms.

Being a Bank Manager in a small place has its advantages as also its disadvantages. Everyone knew and respected you and getting things organised is very easy, but on the flip side it is also like living in a fish bowl, forever in the public eye.

So, after spending two very pleasant evenings in the RajBari in the otherwise dark, dull and dead village, I thought it prudent not to overtax the BLRO’s hospitality any further because it was leading to all kinds of speculation and gossip in the village society. Public life has its disadvantages, alas!

I had gone to Lakhipur on Mahalaya / New Moon Day, at the end of Pitrupaksha – the fortnight devoted to the remembrance of one’s departed ancestors – in late September, for a period of one month. That month finally passed, due in part to the nice people of the branch and the village and due also to the fact that SK and I were friends from the same college and there was no shortage of common topics for small talk, particularly of scandalous gossip, exchanged during the long powerless evenings, while sitting cross legged on the floor next to a hurricane lantern half-heartedly playing a card game or ludo …

In the process I never even knew when the Durga Puja and Laxmi Puja came and went. I never heard anyone mention the word Durga Puja in my presence. I never heard the beat of the Puja drums which are so close to my heart and so much of an integral part of the festive season. I never saw people in festive clothes and smiling faces. There was simply no indication of these important festivities anywhere in my immediate environment. It was as if I was in a different country altogether. Which was all a bit sad.

RNR finally came back to re-join his post and to relive me of my assignment the day before Diwali. I handed over charge of the branch. We bid our goodbyes and at six o’clock the next morning, the day of Deepavali, I took the red ASTC bus bound for Goalpara town.

As the bus passed the RajBari I craned my head for one last look and then the bus turned a bend in the road and the kings’ palace containing the lady BLRO and her daughter was lost from view forever.

The above picture is only for representational purposes. Courtesy the internet

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