From My Notebooks In 1977: In Assam At The Manas Tiger Project

Bengal Tiger at a reserve in India. Photo by Soumyajit Nandy.

Thursday January 13th

After morning ride with Debroy, back to tent, a meagre breakfast (one egg and a chapati between us) and packing. To see the Beat Officer, a curiously evanescent character whose ornate English phrases are unequal to the thoughts he tries to capture.

“I will be performing my utmost to render your visit…” and so on. But his answer to all questions an enthusiastic but uncomprehending, “Yes.”

We talk a little. He says his superior has decided to waive the camping charge, and we get off with 30 rupees each for three days. He presses me to take the boat ride, but I demur. I ask him about himself. He is 27.

“You cannot say I have many years. Still there is the main part to come.” And, “loneliness is my companion.” He repeats this several times. Wistful, and more endearing than before.

So we ride away, much faster and surer than before over the loose surface. Carol has the beginnings of a toothache. We are both hungry and looking forward to a meal. Then the plot suddenly takes a strange twist. At the point where, on the way in, we did our mistaken loop off the main road, we keep on the road and are unexpectedly stopped by a painted barrier held down by a padlocked cable.

A man asks us to show passports. I’m so surprised, I react a bit uppish, but we follow him in as it dawns on me that this is a police post of some sort which we inadvertently avoided on our way in. The two men who take our passports go through a very similar routine as the two at the frontier of Assam, but this time roles reversed.

The writer is an unusually sophisticated young man with a cultivated understanding of our feelings. The other is a ponderous, bull-headed man. He and I start with a foolish argument about how we came to take the wrong road coming in. He says there’s a sign. I protest that there is none. The suave one cuts in saying very pleasantly, “Please sit down. Did you enjoy Manas?” Then they read through the passports and Carol has to tell them that she’s a history teacher. We too smile and joke about the misunderstandings.

“You do not have a permit for Manas.”

“This is the permit here, given in Katmandu.”

“But it does not mention Manas.”

“But we were told it was valid for Manas.”

“You should have a special permit.”

“How were we to know. We have told everyone we were coming here. No-one mentioned that a special permit was need, etc., etc.”

After consultations and phone calls they say our passports must be sent to Tezpur.

“How far away is that?”

400 kilometres.

“And what do we do meanwhile? Stay here?”

The writer smiles apologetically.

In a heated fashion I ask whether the First Secretary in Katmandu will be put to the same inconvenience for misleading us. After another pause, he says our passports will be sent instead to Barpeta Road to save us inconvenience. A man will take them on a bus and we should report there to the police station.

We leave, and I lose an opportunity to convey to the civilized one that I respect him.

At Barpeta we go to the Sikh truck stop to eat paratha, rice and curry. Then to the IB [Inspection Bungalow]. Where we meet Debroy and tell him our story. He ponders the matter, but it seems he can do nothing to affect the issue. The IB is very pleasant and homely – nice beds, clean carpet, a dining room, new mosquito nets, and bright lighting – a real pleasure.

So we leave for the Police station. The duty policeman already has our passports. He seats us and asks what it’s all about. My explanation runs through three quarters of its length before he interrupts. (I am never able, really, to explain the whole thing to anyone. It’s as though they are listening for another kind of meaning behind my words}.

He is increasingly polite and friendly – a good-looking, athletic – warlike – man. He was in Kashmir for the Pakistani war. He apologises that his superior is at the market and will return in half an hour. Then we will get our passports back. While waiting, observe the office. A door behind us opens onto the Super’s office. On my left two barred metal doors labelled Male and Female lockup. On the facing wall another such door labelled Malkhana – which means House of Evidence where case exhibits (like our passports) are kept. The floor is eroded cement. A dusty box has a collection of empty bottles standing on it. Some standing shelves between the lockups have old files, all very dusty.

We ask leave to go and return in half an hour. At the IB is a medical officer travelling around heath centres to eradicate smallpox. He has studied the map on the bike, explains that he has understood exactly where I come from and what I have done.

“This is the Union Jack,” he says jovially. “We were saluting this flag for a long time.” Then he tells me immediately who he is and what he does.

“We have succeeded in almost eradicating it.”

We go back to the station. Now we are received by the Superintendent. (Actually, a sub-Inspector) a precisely efficient (if humourless) man in khaki.

“What is your problem?” he asks. How can he fail to know? He claims to be principally concerned that our passports were taken and no receipt given.

“This should be penalised,” he says. “I shall take action. Meanwhile if there is anything I can do . . .” and he offered immense but unspecified services. Then the extraordinary man in the orange scarf and the jacket from Chicago, already quite drunk, came in and added to the profusion of wishes, compliments, promises of immediate restitution, justice and unlimited aid. Then he started singing ‘Clementine’ followed by ‘Yippy-yippy-yay’ and an unknown song about Seven Lonely Days and Seven Lonely Nights. As he sang the superintendent held his hands before his face in mute embarrassment. But then I began to sing with the drunk and perhaps that helped. Anyway we were brought tea and rasgulis (delicious) and told that next morning, as soon as the Supt. had his instructions, we would receive our passports. Meanwhile we were to be the guests of the drunk, and we followed him to his cramped quarters where the duty policeman and some others were already helping themselves to brandy and water.

The drunk sang and talked and quoted proverbs. “If this drink is intoxicating, why is not this bottle dancing?” and so on. And the others also warmed up. One was a nice but sober Brahmin landlord – owns a lot of the land of Barpeta. The other was, astonishingly, introduced as India’s foremost actor of stage and screen, a Mr, D……… Pal who smiled shyly. And so we all trooped out to the lawn in front of the polices station where some constables had lit a wood fire.

Then came another dramatic transformation. This ragged band of PCs, some with bare feet, some with cloths round their heads, some in civilian clothes, became an eloquent tribal group of dancers and drummers. The drunken sub-inspector had kept up a continuous level of song and nonsense, but so far there was no sign that anyone else’s spirits were raised at all.

Occasionally to the tune of Clementine he danced a strange little jig, with one leg bent and the other sandalled foot raised and jabbing at the air under his tubby body which also twisted about. Sometimes he took the ends of his endless scarf and held them out from his body like some ceremonial dress, in a rather feminine gesture, while sweet expressions suffused his face. Though of course from one point of view he was just a drunk making a fool of himself, in this context he was a catalyst for all of us to lose our senses.

He had promised songs and dances. The drummer came across from the other side of the fire, a lean man with a fine grin, hooded by a scarf. His drum was of the truncated egg variety with string longitudinally stretched on the body. He tapped the rhythm on the side with a stick – double hand clap to four-time, then finished each sequence with a great flourish of beats in quite subtle combinations. “This is the bull” says the Inspector.

The first dance took us quite by surprise. The DSI (Drunken sub-inspector) was declaiming something to the houses but this time his remarks are greeted by a chorus of responses and animal growls. Then the Duty Constable (DC) raised his arms and went into a sinuous dance while the others with one sustained howling first note broke into a song of simple, powerful forms supported by drum and hands. The group in the firelight became as solid and intense as the Turkana were at Lodwar, and it was all the more extraordinary because these were policemen in uniform and the trappings of their trade were all around, while we, sitting there as honoured guests, had our passports locked up in their Malkhana.

The dancing continued with even greater effect. The DC’s hands moved with great eloquence over his forehead and behind his back. Another young man joined in and danced a completely different movement that may have been from another area. The DSI continued his jig, weaving among them and occasionally confirming that they were all in heavenly ecstasy due to our presence. The DC also kept telling us not to mind.

“Don’t mind.” We danced ourselves. Carol wore the DSI’s shawl, made by his mother, and then the scarf too. I wore his funny leather peaked hat. He called us brother and sister.

While my enjoyment and appreciation were undiluted, I still recognised a small voice murmuring “tomorrow maybe they’ll throw you in the lock-up.” Not pure paranoia, though I recognised the South American influence. But the emotional ties that bound us to them tonight were fireworks, and would be dead sticks in the morning. Meanwhile we were there under their supervision and they had our passports.

[By this time I had discovered that we happened to have arrived on a day of state-wide celebration called Bihu.]

Eventually the dinner was ready. The Supt. and the Brahmin came over saying “Yes please,” in that strangely abrupt way they have which leaves you wondering whether you’ve been invited or ordered to come. In the circumstances one wondered whether the sober ones were quite as friendly towards us as the drunks. But the landlord was very friendly to Carol at the feast, and the Supt. continued offering his services vociferously into the night. Although his persistent idea of giving us a constable to guard over us had a sinister side.

We did our best with the food, served on segments of banana trunk. It was delicious but far too much. Then we were whisked off with extraordinary speed and violence. The DC who was now smelling heavily of liquor seemed determined to walk us (or march us) back to the IB and was pushing and prodding us toward the exit. Then the Supt. took over and we were bundled into the jeep instead. There was scarcely time to say goodbye to anyone, enhancing the feeling that we were mere cyphers, or symbols, or ghosts at the feast.

Contemplating it all afterwards I felt as uncertain about the next day as if the celebration had never taken place. One other thing occurred to me. The Superintendent’s emphasis on the business of receipts for passports echoed loudly Debroy’s own remarks when we first told him of our troubles. Had Debroy quietly called a friend and suggested this line of defence against the SIB. Perhaps we’ll never know.

[The SIB, or simply IB, was India’s Intelligence branch, supposedly capable of making life very unpleasant, or worse.]

The moment I sit down to write this memoir, a knock on the door. Our hero, the DC, had come out on foot. Why? “Are you all right?” he demanded, as though he had just relieved us from a siege. He seemed to swell up and fill the door frame, beaming down on us with drunken eyes and breath. “Anything you want, you may call for me,” and then astonishingly he advanced on me, seized both my biceps in his hands and kissed me firmly on each cheek. And in the same mood of heroic resolution, he did the same for Carol, though there was a brief moment when his mouth seemed to be aimed at hers and only a mighty effort deflected it at the last moment. Then he stumbled off into the fog, nursing his Punjabi passions.