Two Days in Guwahati

When I was told by my boss that I have to go to Guwahati for a couple of days on a business trip, I got quite perturbed.
Guwahati is the largest city of Assam and had been at the center of separatist/extremist movement for quite sometime.
It is strange that when you are not particularly involved or interested in a certain thing you hear less and less about it. My knowledge of Assam turmoil was limited to occasional reference to it in the DD news before I could change the channel or an unintended glance at a news item when I was a little slow in jumping from front-page to sports-page in the newspaper.
In a nutshell all I knew was that there is a state of Assam in the Indian Union and that Rajiv Gandhi orchestrated a ceremonious Assam accord and ushered in peace with an equally young student leader, but lately things are again headed south when new militant groups have emerged. I had also heard of some tribal internecine conflict, but maybe it was Mizoram or some other state somewhere in the remote north east.

Ever since I came to know of my impending business visit, either there was a spurt of unpleasant activity in Assam or my highly filtered senses got acutely aware of the events there and began to pick up signals pertaining to it. Whatever it was, the picture was gloomier than I had imagined and I began to get increasingly uncomfortable.
If it was any consolation, I could talk my way to get an airline conveyance from Delhi to Guwahati. Those days in India, air travel was a luxury, either the rich or high government officials got to travel by air. I fell in the third category - Fortuitous.

All my fantasies about cancellation of the visit remained fantasies and I found myself flying with a colleague, Jatin, parallel to the mighty Himalayas and into the state of Assam.
I was kind of relieved to find that Guwahati was not very different from most of the other Indian cities. The turmoil that I had heard about was at least not visible on the surface.
However, the first signs of what lay beneath became apparent when our jeep reached the government guest house atop a hillock through a serpentine road. The road had pickets set up by the paramilitary forces at a number of places and their presence only increased as we got closer to the guest house.
On all its four sides the building had paramilitary entrenchments and on the front gate was a huge picket with sandbags, camouflage mesh and soldiers with machine guns.
It was strangely eerie but also gave a secure feeling at the same time.
The guest house was a colonial bungalow built in late nineteenth century with high thatched roof, columns, and pediments. It even retained the warm colonial yellow on the exterior.
To some extent it is the building that influences the behavior of its residents and so I was not surprised to walk into an establishment that still held on to its colonial charm, in fact I sort of expected it.
After having ushered to our rooms we were greeted with freshly brewed aromatic darjeeling tea served in exquisite china and silver in library cum lounge.
The library was all teak and mahogany with worn out wooden floor and smoothened walls with the passage of more than a century. It was clear that the place had seen better times. Now the bookshelves were largely empty with some odd cardboard cartons egregiously stacked; a white ceiling fan stuck out like a sore thumb, hung from the ceiling clumsily tied with an aluminum wire to the wooden beam, it was one of those modern looking fans designed for a modern setting, here it looked like a contaminant in an archaeological site. It also looked remarkably small in that imposing room, small not just in size but also in its overall appearance. The paneled walls still had a number of trophies neatly arranged and there even were some old oil paintings.
The staff was very courteous, smartly dressed in whites and very efficient. I felt a little embarrassed dressed in a pair of jeans for our “high tea”.

The business meeting next day went pretty smoothly. The people here were not rushed at all, unlike Delhi, where you are running most of the time. Lunch is usually followed by a siesta and only after a couple of hours of lunch does the work start again. Our contact person was a "Bihari" and had his own misgivings about the natives. Most of his theories about the locals were amusing, but some were just preposterous. I started out asking about the reason why things are pronounced differently in the local language – So for example there is a place called “Chandmari” and anybody would pronounce the “Ch” with the sound as in “Check”, but for some unknown reason it was pronounced “Sandmari” with a “s” in the local language, well unknown to me but our Bihari associate had a "physio-linguistic" explanation –

“It is because these people chew tobacco a lot”.

I raised an eyebrow trying to make a connection. He took that as a cue for further explanation –

“Well you see, if you have tobacco under your tongue then you don’t want to lift it that often. ‘Ch’ needs some effort, these people are too lazy, they just go with ‘S’ sound.”

While he was explaining this earnestly, he nonchalantly fished a sachet of “gutkha” (scented tobacco) from his pocket and devoured it in one smooth movement.
Our Bihari associate also doubled up as the guide in the evening when we went out for a quick city tour. There wasn’t enough time to cover all the major attractions so we went to an ancient temple on a hilltop.

The Kamakhya temple is one of the oldest and most sacred in Assam. The current structure was built (or rebuilt) by a local king in 1665, but there are references to it in the famous Allahabad inscription (~335 AD). It is believed that when Sati, the wife of lord Shiva committed suicide after she and her husband was insulted by her father, Shiva spread her remains over a large part of the country. Each of these locations came to be known as “peethas”. Kamakhya temple stands on one of those “peetha” where her uterus fell. There is a small water pool in the sanctum sanctorum of the temple which has the symbolic uterus covered in a red cloth. It is said that the water in the pool turns red on a certain day of the year symbolizing the menstruating Sati.

The native Assamese are very likable people, easy going and very friendly, however, some people I met could not disguise a cringe when they learnt that I am from Delhi. Some asked me strange questions about some minister in Delhi, about his policies and decisions with respect to Assam, of which I had no clue.
Sensing this veiled animosity I quickly paraphrased my answer to add that I am originally from a city in UP.
I was tempted to say that a majority of people in Delhi know almost nothing about Assam and those who do know don’t care too much, but I held back.
I found rather amusing the way people casually used the phrase "Waise koi problem nahi hai" (Otherwise there is no problem) during the conversation.
So they would tell about killings that happened a few days ago and that travel at night was risky, but then they would add “Waise koi problem nahi hai”. They would advice against going to the neighboring state of Meghalaya because of trouble there and just a few days back some outsiders were hacked to death but then would casually add “Waise koi problem nahi hai”.

Back at the guest house after the evening tea I felt relaxed and at ease. I was warming up to the place and was actually beginning to enjoy the idyllic setting, cool weather and the laid back environment.
There was one strange thing though, the people were not forthcoming in answering questions about the insurgency, they were either reserved because of the “Delhi factor” or they were scared talking openly about it, I didn’t know for sure.

It was around 2am, at first I tried to dream it off but then woke up with a start to a loud banging sound on the roof. I came out of my room and saw Jatin who had also woken up, in his pajamas. He looked visibly shaken and was squinting; he looked very different without his glasses.
We assumed it was a rebel attack on the guest house. Tentatively we decided to ask the paramilitary guard outsides about what was going on.

“It is the monkeys” the officer said with a wry smile, a little irritated as we had bothered him.

I could hardly sleep after all that excitement.
In the morning there was some unusual activity in the guest house. On asking around, to my horror we found that one of the soldiers was found dead in the morning, shot in the chest. My heart skipped a beat.
We wanted to know all about it but the conversation was in Assamese. All I understood was that the officers are investigating and it looked like a suicide. I wanted to help by letting them know about the monkey episode at night but they were not interested. Nobody I talked to knew about the soldier, who he was or where he came from, nobody had even heard the gunshot, which was strange as it was a very quiet place.

We had to check-out of the guest house by the afternoon as our flight was around 4pm, but we had a short meeting before that, so we proceeded to the office.

“You must leave now or you could get stuck here” Bihari told us the minute we entered his office.
“It is the raising day of the insurgents and they have called for a state-wide strike”

We were told by the few people who had turned up for work that day that these things are usually accompanied by some clashes with the military and police, resulting in a curfew, sometimes for days.
I was surprised that no body had mentioned about it yesterday or the day before.
I had still not recovered from the shock of the death of the soldier back at the guest house, this sudden turn of events made me queasy.

“You could get a police escort if you want to the airport, but I would advise you to take a taxi. You see, the police and military vehicles are their primary targets” - Bihari said carefully maneuvering his lower jaw to hold back the gutkha he had just popped.

A few minutes later we were sitting in an auto-rickshaw headed to the airport. (as Bihari advised us to be low key and not take a car-taxi)

“Where are you going to Sahib?” asked the auto driver.

“Well…umm...going to a city in UP” I kept the Delhi reference out.

“Good for you, this place may get violent today, you see the chief minister is a tout of Delhi. These people are screwing Assam”.

“So what do the insurgents actually want?” I couldn’t help ask again.

The auto driver considered. Then said - “I do not know for sure as I am not one of them, but we care about Assamese pride. We do not want to be remote controlled from Delhi. This used to be beautiful place and now the clashes with Indian military are destroying it.”

“But I still don’t understand what the problem is. This is like any other Indian state, I don’t think there is any more poverty here than in other places, so if government is neglecting its duty it is equally neglecting the whole country” – I pressed on even while Jatin eyed me through his thick glasses.

“I don’t know, I think people in Delhi have all the money and power. We are very peaceful people. But you don’t think too much of this situation, today there may be some shootings here and there in the city but…..Waise koi problem nahin hai”

Back home in Delhi I scanned through all the newspapers and listened to the news both on TV and radio but there was no mention of the turmoil there. Nothing!