The Assam Trails: Adventure for some

The reason for my relative (and apparently conspicuous) absence these last couple of days has been a little stay in a nearby village "to rough it out" (as Sunil uncle put it with a glint in his eye). How different could it be from my previous experiences with roaming, working and living in the villages of Gujarat, I asked myself. I was soon to find out.

An hour-long exhilarating bike ride later, I am dropped off at the house of the coordinator of the biggest cluster that Aagor works with- the Mangolian cluster. Abo Dipali, the petit, soft-spoken and diligent (as I was to later find out) coordinator greets me with quick questions, "How long would you want to stay? Do you know how to ride a moped? Should we go?" I barely gasp for breath, and answer her the best I can. Owing to my inability to ride mopeds ("on those roads!" I'm tempted to say), and her lack of confidence in riding doubles, we're left with having to walk. It works out well for me because it reduces the difficulty in communication while on the move, and I agree cheerfully. She looks a little suspicious about my ability to walk the distance, but says nothing of it, and we're on our way.

Of course the Assamese weather decides to be unpredictable yet again and- for the first time since I'm in Assam- the sun beats down mercilessly that day. We walk long distances, and I chatter with her for the most part. Abo Dipali is in her early thirties, and has been working with Aagor for seven years. She has been married for three years, and has a young son of two. Noticing her relatively good spoken Hindi, I quiz her about her education. "I've studied till ninth standard. We were too poor to afford education beyond that. My father died when I was young, and my mother struggled to support her five children," she says matter-of-factly. I ask whether it is fairly common for women in her village to marry this late. She nods, and then quickly adds, "Of course there are the really good-looking girls who end up eloping or marrying early. Most do it because they are not educated or have no value for it." I laugh. Clearly, the "beautiful and dumb" stereotypes are not just restricted to the urban set-up.

We talk about her life and she quizzes me about mine as we walk through several villages. The huts here in Assam- much like the rest of it's landscape- strike me with their simple beauty. What exactly it is, I fail to put a finger to, but something about the clean, simple exteriors coated with white mud and the abundance of greenery around is aesthetically pleasing. I can't stop clicking pictures, and Abo looks at me with a bemused expression. "How different are the huts in Gujarat?" she asks. "It's not this green there," is all I can manage. Maybe that's what it is, I think to myself. It's this generous greenery that infuses everything here with an almost ethereal beauty.

As we enter a village, I notice how most of the huts closely surround each other, sharing walls, often even courtyards. Wherever we go, people come to find out who this differently dressed young girl is, and unabashedly shower me with questions. Unfortunately, most of these are in Bodo or Assamese, and I shake my head to indicate I do not understand a word. "Delhi," I say. And they understand. Abo Dipali then fills them in about me, every single detail I have shared with her, and they all respond with appropriate expressions. Most even try to tell me how sad it is that they do not know Hindi, and their genuineness is heartbreaking. Try finding this sincerity and curiosity in the city, and you'll go round in circles.

I am offered tea everywhere, and having already let them down on the language front, I give in. I'm usually not a big fan of chai, but the delight with which they offer it to me is quite irresistible. As a result, by the end of our walk, I have downed about eight cups of chai, more than I've consumed in my entire twenty years of existence. That, coupled with the my recent rate of intake of betel nut, is going to have my mum seriously questioning how much 'good' this might be doing to me!

Often, the problem with not knowing the language of a certain place, apart from the not-being-able-to-communicate bit, is the constant feeling of being the topic of conversation. Even worse is when your fears are confirmed. As we sit around in one of the houses, the ladies animatedly talk for a while, and occasionally burst into laughter. One of them asks me a question that I cannot comprehend. After looking around for some translation and realising I wouldn't get any, I take a chance and shake my head, hoping against hope this isn't some fatal flaw. There is collective laughter, and guessing I haven't done half badly, I breathe. As we leave, Abo Dipali finally translates. "She said you should drink some sharaab, alcohol!" I am totally puzzled, but decide against asking why. I figure some things are best left alone. I don't want to know.

As we finally walk back home after the long day's work, Abo tells me about the impact Aagor has had on the lives of these weavers. "They are able to earn a living more easily," she says. She goes on to tell me how a majority of the women we met during the visit didn't have husbands. They were either dead, or had run away in the fear of all those to whom they were heavily indebted. My instinctive question is to ask what the alternative to weaving would be. Daily wage labour, she informs me. Mostly paddy, grown from about May to December provides ample opportunity to earn daily wages. But it is mainly a hand-to-mouth existence. Weaving, on the other hand, allows them to save. They form groups of about five to ten members, save money on a regular basis, and give loans to members whenever the need arises. It is microfinance at its most basic.

As we walk back, another thought quickly strikes me. I recall being told about the villagers' love for meat. And it has been playing on my mind for a while. I look for a way to subtly weave it into the conversation. I start by asking about their daily diet. And while she describes it to me in detail, I quietly break the news. "You don't eat meat?!" she exclaims, "Not anything?!" "I eat egg," I say. "Oh," she says with a remorseful sigh, "We love feeding our guests meat. I was thinking I would make some for you tonight." The sadness is palpable in her voice. Heartbreaking. For the first time in my life, I wish I ate meat.

By the time we get to her house, I am starting to look forward to a nice bath. It has been a long exhausting day, and a long bath would be heavenly. Little do I know I'll get more than I bargained for. Sure enough, almost on cue, she asks, "Do you want to take a bath?" I nod. "We don't have a bathroom. Do you mind bathing in the river?" I smile, memories of my childhood crowding my head. "Not at all, I'd love it," I say.

As soon as we get to the bank of the river, a fair distance from the house, I realise there's a bigger problem. With the entire river bank being a never-ending plain, getting in and out of clothes was going to be an issue. But it's just a process of letting go of your inhibitions, I figure. And once inside the water, I'm ready to forget everything. I prance around for a little bit, dive in and out, feel the sand beneath my feet and between my toes, and rediscover the me that has always lived up to being a 'fish in the water'. Before I know it, half an hour is up, and the sun threatens to disappear and leave us in darkness. I rush out, sheepishly apologizingly for losing myself, and we head back.

Back in the house, Abo enters the kitchen to start cooking. I follow. No cooking gas, she informs me. No electricity either, she adds apologetically. I smile and offer to mince the onions. She refuses and tells me to sit. We get chatting while she cooks on the little hearth. I ask how she stays away from her son while working. "My husband takes care of him. He doesn't work because someone needs to take care of him" she informs me while feeding more wood into the fire, "he even cooks when I get late." I'm mighty impressed. How often do you hear of the woman being the sole bread-earner of a family by choice while her husband chooses to stay home and rear the child? It's a heartwarming role-reversal, radical even by urban standards. Even as we chat about other things, it keeps playing at the back of my mind- would I ever find a guy who could support my passion like that? Even by the low light of the oil lamp, I can tell she is happy, contented.

We then eat, and since it's too dark to do anything else, fall asleep soon afterwards. I look at my cell phone. It is 7:30pm. The time I'd usually get up from an afternoon nap at in Delhi. My biological clock, having endured so much abuse in the last month during the exams, was being turned upside down. Yet again. For some reason, homesickness chooses to hit me at the most unsuspecting moments- moments such as these. Most often it hits you like a freight train going downhill- and you're a wreck before you know it. One more month, I tell myself. Thankfully, sleep comes soon enough and I drift into dreams of home and family.

I wake up the next morning to a cacophony of sounds. The rooster, the baby, the dogs, the pigs, the chicken, and drowning them all out, pouring rain on the tin roof. I lie in bed and take it all in for a while. The rain soon subsides, and ultimately stops. I then head out, clean myself, and Abo proudly shows off the bicycle she managed to borrow for the day so we each had one to ride. Soon, a steaming hot cup of tea and a very burnt tongue later, we're on our way. The rain is gone, but has left huge puddles that need to be navigated around, and I can tell it's going to be an entertaining cycle ride.

As the day before, we stop at several weavers' houses. And this time we get to observe them in the different stages of weaving before the yarn even ends up on the loom. There are several stages, each incredibly monotonous and time-consuming. And so it is no wonder that setting up the yarn to be put on the loom becomes a community-building exercise. All the neighbours come together, chat, sing, and get the work done. "If you don't go to help someone else, they won't come to help you," Abo informs me. Clearly, 'to each his own' is an alien concept here. Here, everybody's business is everybody else's. They weave together, eat together, live as one.

When we are done with the last village and are heading back, dark ominous looking clouds gather, and before we can take shelter, the heavens descend upon us. When it rains in Assam, it pours. Unapologetically, wholeheartedly. Abo asks me to open the umbrella she's fixed to the back of my bicycle, and I gladly follow her directions- constantly concerned about my camera. However, riding with one hand on the bicycle and the other holding the camera proves to be more of a challenge than I earlier imagined. There still are the puddles to be navigated around, and now there is a steady gust of wind. I nearly topple over a few times, but manage to save face overall. I am so engrossed in my difficulties, I forget to look around. But when I finally do, it takes my breath away. Just when I thought it wasn't possible, Assam gets even more beautiful. I have to fight the temptation to get my camera out and click away, but I try to drink it all in. And suddenly, I feel a rush of overwhelming happiness. What an adventure, I think. I could do this many times over. All of this.

As I lie in bed that night I think about my adventure. And in a sudden moment, I realise what is an adventure to me is everyday reality for most here. Would it still be as appealing, I wonder. As beautiful?