Other side of India

I never travelled alone beyond the periphery of Pune, though I always wished to be out on my own. When I got admitted in IIT Guwahati, the first thing I looked at was the India Map and tried to calculate the distance from Pune to Guwahati.

Pune to Guwahati

Before leaving for the North-east, I had enough misconceptions about the land, the people, their culture, language, their behaviour, my safety, and then all the decisions, accidents, initiatives and discoveries I would make struck me like a déjà vu. Soon I came to reality.  

I stepped out from the airport with my father and was embraced by the cuddly smile of Uncle Mehfuzal, who welcomed me like a new born baby. His introductory words seemed to emerge from the lush green land of Assam and with those words, I started floating on the Brahmaputra. “Sir, madam ko le ayiye, toh hum log apko Shillong leke chalega.” I again started picturing the Map.

My initial days in my new home was keeping me quite occupied with thoughts, ideas and knowledge, but threshold, rupture, break, mutation, transformation broke the circular causality. Each day was a new day, new space, new environment, new water and new sky. The other side of India made me think where I was? Where I came from? Where I wanted to go?

I stayed in a space, equally divided, my surroundings arranged in an organised manner. But there was also a whole different life in the hostel. All were girls, but different colours, height, clothes, languages, cultures, beliefs and full of chaos.  Slowly we started entering each other’s spaces. Each day started with an early sunrise. Nights were usually filled with Buddhist chants on the hostel floor.

Passing through the corridors of this phase I never heard a sound which was familiar. It was an obvious curiosity for me, what these sounds meant? “Sangita…”, “Minakshi…”, “Kot ase?”, “Na lage…”, eventually my ears used to turn to every new voices and sounds.

A day start in the same fashion- pan IITs. Everyone appear same, walk same, talk same, behave same… Everyone enters their department and becomes a techno-freak. But when events and festivals approaches, all students removes their masks and show their true selves. I saw them too, in their element, some were singing, some were dancing, some were drinking and some were just freaking out.

Soon after that, I left the campus for a one-month break. Kaziranga was my first stop. There was no proper plan for the trip. I just started running and the others joined the marathon. There was only one clue for us - Gautam Sakhia. A man of half my height, an Assamese with a cowboy hat, he dragged us into the wide grasslands of Kaziranga. He was pretty confident and I believed in him. Inside the jungle, four beautiful cottages were waiting for us. There were no boundaries. “Boundaries are for humans, how will animal know the meaning of boundaries?” Gautam explained. There were no lights, no neighbours. “You came to jungle, jungle didn’t come to you.” His words were clear. All four days were unpredictable. We had the most amazing, juicy food. We spent every night with fireflies, stars and sounds of all kinds of wild animals.

Next I stopped when the Hornbill called in Nagaland. In the beautiful, long range of the Khasi Mountains, all tribes of Nagaland come together for eight days to celebrate the Hornbill festival. When I entered the cultural village I was stunned by the richness of the North-east. Such a clean, sophisticated life style and still undiscovered, at least by most Indians. Yes, I was more than surprised to see, that there were more foreigners than Indians. All tribal people, the kings, princes, their wives and children were showcasing their traditions, culture and customs. My concept of discontinuity, rupture, threshold, limit, succession and transformation was a result of a procedure. This procedure was an observational study which I had in the North-east. There my ideas, thoughts and knowledge were constantly being challenged. There were things which always make me think.

The concept of a matriarchal system within the society is prominent in the North-east. It is not at all an issue but a respected process within the family where daughters, wives, mothers, all are equally responsible and credited. One can only imagine the idea of no gender difference. There women are respected by both women and men equally.

Once, a friend Amy, invited us for lunch. I thought it will be a common middle-class family-lunch where the  mother will cook for us and we will eat  with all her family members. But as I said the North-East was all about the most incredibly unexpected experiences for me. While we were chatting with Amy and her mother, her father, who is a Doctor in Arunachal, cooked  a delicious meal for us. Again the other side of India influenced me deeply.