The Quest

By Mridul Dutta

The Quest is a fiction set in the northeastern region of the country with a rural backdrop. Madhab, the narrator, who is a young Major in a crack infantry battalion of the Indian Army is set to get married in a few days. Just then, a tragedy strikes the family. Madhab's twentythree year old younger brother gets killed in a motorcycle accident. Madhab smells a rat and strongly feels that the accident was stage managed. He vows to get to the bottom of it at any cost.

Sometimes, Major Madhab's progress is hindered due to certain strict parameters that come with his profession, but being a hardened commando, his quest for the truth becomes unrelenting, often landing him in a do-or-die situation.

The tale as told by this versatile armyman will make you fantasize about the romanticism in the army; he will give you a new meaning to the vexed issues of human relationships, he will transport you to some of the most exotic and little known places on earth, and he will make you wonder what he will do next.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Nov 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781482840766

Mridul Dutta

Mridul Dutta is a diehard infantryman. He was felicitated with an award by the President of India for his distinguished service when he was in command of an operationally-committed brigade. An acclaimed sportsman and adventurer, he now lives in Noida where golf, bridge and literary activities keep him fully occupied.

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Copyright © 2014 by Mridul Dutta.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

1 In Limbo

2 Settling Down

3 Adventures on the Dihing

4 Into the Future

5 A Brother is Lost

6 Frantic Arrangements

7 The Burmans of Sonarpur

8 In Search of Clues

9 Narangi Cantonment & Beyond

10 The Mafioso of Chabua

11 Vacation Gets Frenzier

12 A Dying Declaration

13 An Engineer is Kidnapped

14 A Tryst with the Adversary

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to:

Raema, for her infinite patience with me and hours and hours of toil at the computer.

Sanjeev, Arjun, Devika, Aakshi and Vaani for being the best cheerleaders.

Krishna, for being my guide, friend and philosopher and a great source of inspiration.

To

My Family

1

In Limbo

A VISIT TO THE RAJKHOWA household, our good old neighbor for several generations, was long overdue. So leaving everything aside one afternoon, I set out to call on Suren, the youngest of the four Rajkhowa brothers. It was in the cold but joyous month of January, when the festive spirit of Magh Bihu hung all over the Brahmaputra Valley. This was also the time when the housewives became extra generous and the only thought that came to everybody’s mind was good eating, be it at their own place, their friends’ place or at their relatives’ place. On no other occasion was the bonhomie so very palpable.

Suren had seen life for over five years more than me. When I got my commission ten years ago at the age of twenty, Suren was still struggling to clear his matriculation examination as a private candidate. Even then, he was a good friend of mine, a confidante and a genuine well-wisher since our childhood. He lived in the same ancestral bari or compound, as his three brothers, each enjoying an independent unit spacious enough for a mid-size family of four to six members. The bari was real big, perhaps as big as a small to a medium size tea estate in Assam and resembled a bagan bari of a rich Bengali zamindar on the outskirts of Kolkata, both in terms of layout and size. They also had acres and acres of wetland where they carried out paddy cultivation. In other words, they were self-sufficient as far as their requirement of food was concerned for the entire year including their daily requirement of fish, which they used to catch with fishing nets and tackles from one of the three pukhuris, or tanks they had in their compound. Maintaining a cash flow, however, was a major problem for these four brothers, although rumors were afloat that they often indulged in the unethical practice of selling their garden produce, even fish sometimes, and sacks and sacks of surplus paddy to the Marwari hoarders who came from outside the village. This was done very surreptitiously after darkness had set in because such items could be sold only to the residents of the village in keeping with the village council’s wishes.

Now, of course, only two of the four brothers were alive – Suren himself and his eldest brother Horen. The age difference between the two was about twenty years. The two middle brothers passed away almost two decades ago, both due to cancer, within a short span of three years or so. What the bloody hell is this?, I remember Suren exploding with a terrible anger once, a couple of years after his second brother’s demise. Both my brothers died of cancer and they were barely in their fifties. Worst is, they didn’t even know they had cancer till it was too late. Do you know that this killer disease is most rampant in the Northeast as compared to any other part of our country, and maybe in the whole damn world? And yet, there is not a single cancer hospital in the whole region – can you imagine? And, this is the twenty-first century! They talk about GDP; they talk about India shining and all that bullshit. Do you know Madhab, it’s because of lack of empathy and concern for the people of Assam, both by the central and state governments that our living conditions have hardly improved since Independence?

Yes, yes, you are right. What else could I say? Any argument or even a mild disagreement with an angry Suren had never been a wise thing to do for anybody. No, not even his own father.

It’s because of poverty, he continued, and it’s because of total lack of employment, because of lack of industries and infrastructure and because of lack of medical and proper education facilities that insurgency has become the greatest menace in our state today. I am happy about it. The government deserves it.

During this entire outburst I had maintained complete silence like a statue. What else could anybody do or say in such a situation?!

Horen Rajkhowa was a well-known personality of Jorhat. He was one of the founding members of an organization called Moina Mel, the main purpose of which was to rigorously promote and encourage the activities of young children and their welfare. Sixty years down the line, it is still very popular all over Assam.

Horen’s popularity got the biggest boost when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru came on his first state visit to Jorhat. Horen was one of the chosen few who got an opportunity to share the same platform with the first Prime Minister of Independent India when he made his public speech at the open fields adjacent to the district court, the same spot where Piyali Baruah was publicly hanged in 1858 due to his involvement in the War of Independence the preceding year. Things got even better for Horen when Nehru publicly appreciated his constructive efforts relating to the Moina Mel. "Children are the greatest asset of a nation. They are our future leaders and our nation building efforts will depend entirely on how they shape up. I am happy to see the Moina Mel curriculum that has been adopted with so much of interest and vigour", he had proclaimed, or words to that effect which was later broadcast verbatim on All India Radio. Thus, with this visit of Chacha Nehru, another Chacha in the form of Horen Chacha was born in Jorhat.

The Chacha thing, however, never got going – firstly, because the word was very unfamiliar to an Assamese speaking person those days, specially the children and secondly, in Assamese phonetics, there is no ‘cha’ or ‘sha’ as such. It is only ‘sa’. Champion, for example, would be pronounced as sampion, chance as sance and shoes as soes. Years ago, when I was doing my schooling in Chail, a Bengali friend of mine asked me, "Tell me Madhab, why do you Assamese pronounce sarkari as charkari and service as charvice?’

What do you mean, you Bong? Just because your dad happens to be working in Guwahati, you think you know my language better than I do? You actually go home to Kolkata, don’t you? I retorted.

‘Aren’t you talking crap Madhab? Have you ever bothered to read what is written right across all your state transport buses? It goes like this: Charkari Motor Chervice Asom. Am I correct?" he asked.

"Friend, we read it as Sarkari Motor Service Asom. Period."

We had a good laugh!

Horen was a diminutive man with a very lean and thin body. His height at best would have been a little more than five feet. He had a thick head of hair, always well-oiled and combed slightly backwards with a side parting. Not a single strand of hair would ever be out of place. He had small eyes and a sharp nose and he clean shaved daily. His dress sense had a Gandhian touch to it. He was always in sparkling white khadis, a Punjabi kurta going down to about three inches above the knees with either a dhoti or pyjamas. Occasionally, he also wore a Gandhi cap but the fact that he did not like it a bit was quite apparent. He looked more sleek with a bare head with the type of hair he was gifted with. To keep up a good public image, he sometimes changed his dress three to four times a day. He was soft spoken and always carried a half smile on his face. Many felt that his smile was merely cosmetic because even when he smiled fully, it never reached his eyes.

Horen’s formal education did not go beyond the intermediate stage, but he was well read. He read mostly Bengali books because Bengali literature was much more classy and richer than Assamese literature, he often used to tell everybody and anybody he met. Yes, to a great extent he was not wrong there, for in those days Assamese literature had its own limitations, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Horen also chose his social circles very carefully. He would go the extra mile to make friends with only those who had good educational qualifications, like the teachers, lecturers and professors not only at Jorhat but also in the distant towns of Sibsagar, Dibrugarh, Tezpur and Tinsukia. He also made friends with the slightly richer class of people who had some educational background. His mannerisms and his circle of so called friends were all a good indicator of a future political leader in the making.

Despite his impeccable mannerisms, astuteness and strict dress code of a true congressman, Horen had failed to see one vital flaw in his public relation stratagem. He invariably cold shouldered the poor aam admi or the common man in the village completely, nor did he attend any of the their functions, which according to his perception were below standard, meant only for the uneducated and lesser mortals. He, however, never gave a miss to an event that drew large gatherings, like a wedding reception, a football match, a musical concert, a theater or a public meeting and so on, where he got the due importance with considerable satisfaction to his ego and soul. Gradually, the village folk began to see through him and categorized him as a genuine fake. The younger lot even called him a snake in the grass.

Manos, my cousin, and I were close friends and neighbors in our childhood. Being born under the same star sign, our names started with the same alphabet ‘M’ and we had similar traits of naughtiness and other habits, except one. While Manos talked too much wherever he went, I was comparatively less vocal in all our group activities. In the summer of 1954, both of us took admission together in Class IV in Jorhat Government High School, at a distance of about a mile and a half from our village. We usually walked the distance or some older boy gave us a lift on his bicycle to and from school whenever possible. Our English teacher was one Hussain Sir, who gave us some basic spelling lesson day after day – things like c-a-t, cat, d-o-g, dog and so on. One day Hussain Sir got very angry with our class because of our inability to learn fast enough. In order to find a good excuse to punish us for it, he thought of asking us the spelling of a very difficult word so that if we failed to answer it correctly, the subsequent punishment that was to be meted out to the whole class would be fully justified. So he asked, Is there anybody who can spell the word box? I repeat … box.

The question brought forth a long period of pin drop silence and as things were beginning to look hopeless, Manos poked me with his pencil on my side and whispered to me to get up and answer the question, be it right or wrong for the sake of the whole class. Instinctively, I pushed my bench back with the back of my knees and stood up, in the process drawing the attention of the entire class to myself. My fear was palpable. Hussain Sir was not a forgiving kind of teacher. But when I opened my mouth, my stored up knowledge came out loud and clear ; b-o-x, box".

Say again, said Hussain Sir.

I repeated.

Good …very good, said Hussain Sir, gesturing to me to sit down. Next time you all good for nothing fellows come unprepared to the class, I will skin you all alive, he added for effect and continued with his c-a-t cat and b-a-t bat, but the class was saved from quite a nasty situation.

Though a small incident on the face of it, it was definitely a very significant one for a nine year old. My self-esteem began to grow by leaps and bounds. I made more and more friends in the class, became the favourite of Hussain Sir, and above all, the motivation to take good care of my spellings got strengthened enormously from this day onwards. But sadly, along with this, a dampener had also begun to surface between Manos and me. I felt that from Manos’ side a bit of a strain in his relationship towards me had begun to develop. The usually talkative Manos was very quiet when we walked back home from school and he did not mention a word about my brilliant performance in class earlier that day. Even then, our friendship survived and we played together as frequently as we could.

Unfortunately, all good things do not last forever. Midway through the academic session, one day I was suddenly withdrawn from my school. Reason: I was to go to Shillong and join St. Edmund’s College a month later.

Thereafter, time passed at lightning speed for me. After a hectic schedule of a year or so in my new school, I was happy to be back home on a three month vacation. My reunion with Manos was warm and joyful. On our very first meeting we did a hi-fi handshake like the West Indian cricketers and exchanged notes on everything under the sun. He told me that he had joined the Moina Mel and was learning the tabla and public–speaking twice a week. He got promoted to Class V with good marks in English but his overall position was fifteenth in a class of fifty because of which his parents were not too happy with him.

When I talked about my new school he seemed quite impressed, especially about the teaching staff, which comprised entirely Irish brothers and sisters. When I told him that everybody in the school conversed only in English and that I was going to church every day, his jaws dropped in awe. "Why, don’t you have a namghar or a temple there, and have you stopped praying to our own God, Lord Krishna?" he asked.

No, no, no, nothing like that, I said and shifted the conversation to cricket which was the most popular topic of conversation those days. Thank God, I did not say I also had beef on certain days.

Unlike me, Manos was not on holidays and since he was attending Moina Mel activities regularly, our meetings became less and less frequent.

After a few days break we met again at a wedding. One of our parents’ younger cousins was getting married. The bride’s place was at Titabor, a small town which is about thirty minutes’ drive from Jorhat, if one took the Na- Ali route. The baraat or the bridegroom’s entourage was a large one. Manos and I were to be part of it along with our parents. An Assamese wedding ceremony per se is very, very lengthy. It goes on through the night till daybreak unless one bribes the priest quite handsomely to cut the ceremonies short which did not happen in this instance. So one of our uncles arranged for a Matador to drive us back home sometime after midnight. The ladies protested. Don’t you know there are no streetlights in Na-Ali, and going back in a rickety Matador at this unearthly hour from Titabor to Jorhat can be dangerous? What if the Matador has a breakdown on the way? Their protest was not entirely unjustified. They were wearing very heavy jewelry as all Assamese women were wont to do on such occasions. Not their fault, Assamese jewelers did not know how to make light jewelry. The menfolk would, however, listen to no such excuses, especially my father. Assamese males can be quite chauvinistic when it came to dealing with their women. That said and settled, nothing untoward happened on the way and we were home by 1.30 am.

The following day, Manos skipped his Moina Mel tabla class and instead came to look me up at my place. As he approached me, I could see from a distance that Manos had a terrible frown and a big sulk which made his face look like a pumpkin. His eyes were downcast, and both his hands were in his pant pockets.

Oye, what’s wrong, why are you looking so glum today? I asked as we sat in the two white – painted cane chairs which were a permanent feature in our portico.

I am not.

And don’t you have your tabla classes today?

"I do but I am not going to attend any more of those Moina Mel classes in future. Moina Mel can go to hell for all I care."

Won’t your father give you a good thrashing for skipping classes like this?

Let him, but don’t you go and sneak to him about it.

At this point our conversation ceased for a while. I went inside to fetch us some cheeselings and a glass of lemonade each.

When we settled down again, it was Manos who took the initiative to resume the conversation, but not before making sure that there was nobody within earshot of us.

Listen Madhab, I want to tell you something. Swear to me you won’t repeat it to anybody he started in a much lowered down voice.

I swear, I assured him.

You know last night when we were returning from Titabor, something very, very terrible happened to me. Manos said and seemed to be in a state of bewilderment and half shock.

What is it? Be sure I will speak to nobody about it, I assured him in order to get the thing out of him as quickly as possible. I was losing my patience.

"You remember we were sitting in the front seat of the Matador alongwith that ‘rat’, whom you all so respectfully call Horenda".

Yes, I do. Go on, I responded, quite taken aback by Manos’ scornful reference to Uncle Horen as ‘rat’ for the first time.

You were seated left of the driver, Manos continued. "I was between you and the ‘rat’ who was sitting in the window seat. Our parents and the others were in the rear seats. After a while both of us fell asleep. Then I had a dream. I dreamt that I was catching fish with my hands in the stream next to my house. The water was very shallow, maybe about knee deep. Then I felt a bit scared and woke up with a start and found that my hand, the left hand, was held tightly by the wrist by that rat of a fellow and was made to rest you know where? On his private part! He was also pulling my hand under his dhoti. It was only then that I realized that I was not dreaming at all. I was so furious that with my right hand I tried to give him a solid knock on his dirty face. The blow fell on the right of his neck. Then, with my left foot I kicked him hard on his right calf and with my left hand I squeezed his balls so hard that he let out a series of suppressed and painful groans. I am sure he was in terrible pain. The driver, hearing the commotion asked, ‘Horenda, anything wrong?’ There was a very weak ‘nothing, nothing’ in response .Five to ten minutes later we reached home".

Struck by his horrendous tale I advised Manos to report it to his parents.

No, I can’t tell my parents about it, but Madhab, you can be rest assured I will gradually spread the word around the whole village as to how dirty a fellow this Horen is. As promised, you will do nothing about it. You enjoy your holidays now and when you come home next time, I will update you on everything.

A few moments of silence ensued. The sun was setting behind a grove of bamboos in the far distance. Manos got up, said bye and disappeared.

The following day, Manos’ father came over to meet my father. They were having a good chat in the drawing room over a cup of tea, while I was straining to listen to what they were discussing from the adjacent room. Suddenly, I heard my father call out to me Madhab, Madhab, just come here for a moment. Manos’ father wants to have a word with you.

Nervously, I faced Manos’ father, my eyes downcast, wondering what was in store for me.

Madhab, I want to ask you something, he began, with a rather serious tone in his voice. Since we returned from the wedding yesterday, Manos has become very quiet. He is not even eating properly. Something is worrying him a lot. His mother and I tried to make him speak up, but he just wouldn’t utter a word. Yesterday, when he met you, did he tell you anything?

No, I said with a stoic expression on my face. I had to keep the promise I had made to Manos.

The plight of eleven year old Manos was but one case that came to light, albeit in a limited way. There are a countless number of Horens who are always on the prowl in all societies throughout the world. The simple village folk, in their desire to inculcate greater community and family feelings tend to push this terrible reality called child abuse under the carpet. Undoubtedly, the so called dadas and uncles in the village are the biggest offenders of child sex abuse.

My three months of winter vacation was shrinking rather fast. Manos’ condition was not showing any signs of improvement. He continued to remain aloof and sulky most of the time. With his father’s encouragement, I took him to the Joydeo Bari, a huge playfield close to our house to play football, cricket or even seven tiles with the other boys whenever it was conveniently possible. When he refused to go and meet other boys, I coaxed him to play either ludo or carrom, but I often wondered if all this was indeed helping Manos to get his own self back on road. In fact, his parents’ worries increased by the day.

A couple of years later, I learnt that Manos’ mother was able to extract, not under duress but by gentle handling, the detailed facts of the case from Manos within months of my rejoining Edmunds’ after my holidays. She and her husband were shocked beyond words. They were also greatly relieved that once the problem was properly identified, finding a solution could become much simpler.

Manos’ parents were happy that their son would now be on his way to recovery from a state of total indifference to normalcy. On the other hand, it was apparent that the battle lines were clearly drawn between the Rajkhowas and Manos’ family!

Nothing remained a secret for long in a village environment. With the passage of time, a whispering campaign ensured that more and more people came to know about another shady side of Horen Rajkhowa’s character qualities. His presence in the Moina Mel became less and less visible, and the youngsters maintained a safe distance from him. People even began to conjecture that he was dealing with illegal opium trade in Tinsukia and Dibrugarh, two areas which were contiguous to the infamous Golden Triangle in neighboring Myanmar and beyond. The white new Ambassador car he bought recently is all out of black money, I heard Manos’ father say so once to my father. A black or white Ambassador was branded as a VIP car even in those days and if anybody used the car to carry out any nefarious activities like Horen did, it drew minimal attention of the law enforcing agencies.

Irrespective of what the people talked or opined about him, Horen Rajkhowa managed to get an excellent wife for himself. And why not? Horen, after all, was not only a propertied gentleman and a potential congress leader but was also known to none less than the Prime Minister of India! As far as Horen as a family-man was concerned, he could not be faulted. He produced four wonderful children in quick time, one boy and three girls, all of them taking after their mother. The son did well for himself and became an engineer with Oil India, Digboi. The girls grew up to be as beautiful and accomplished as their mother, and they exercised extreme caution and pragmatism in selecting their respective husbands, who were doing well in life.

Horen’s concern for his three brothers and their families was also praiseworthy. He delegated clear cut responsibility to each one of them. The youngest brother looked after the family estate, supervised the paddy cultivation and attended to the cows, goats, cats, dogs, ducks and the pigeons. The other brothers were made in charge of two shops – a book store and a general store, which were established by Horen in the busiest part of Jorhat town. But within a year or so, these shops had to be shut down permanently as both these brothers started hitting the bottle hard and proved to be bad shop keepers. In any case, people in the village said that these shops were merely a front for Horen’s illegal opium business.

The layout of the four houses of the Rajkhowa brothers did not conform to the book. They were located in a haphazard manner, perhaps for the sake of convenience and the lay of the ground. The houses were separated from one another by about fifty paces. They were typically Assam-type houses with half brick walls and corrugated tin roofs. The four houses came up within a span of about five years after three of the brothers got married. Earlier, they were a joint family with their parents in an old and modest house. This was not visible to a passer-by from any direction because of the newly constructed pukka houses in front of it. It was always in a dilapidated state since it was made of easily available local resources – bamboo walls, bamboo doors and a roof of bamboo and thatch combination. The floor, however, was not a bamboo floor. It was made with layers and layers of black clay which made it as hard as a rock surface. The trick was to mix some cow dung with the clay so that the floor became firm and hard. Later on, this bamboo house became a shelter for four workers who did all the outdoor work like growing vegetables in the bari, rearing and catching fish in the fish tank, looking after the domestic animals, doing the paddy cultivation and generally keeping the surrounding area clean. These workers cooked their own food and they were paid a monthly allowance of Rs. 60/- per head. They were not allowed entry to the new house as they were of a lower caste who came from some distant godforsaken village. The entire complex lay on the north side and close to an unmetalled link road that connected the two major portions of the village.

On the whole, the Rajkhowa complex looked okay, even aesthetic when seen from a distance. But what irked a visitor who wanted to call on one of the brothers were the entrances to the four houses. They had only two gates, one each for a pair of houses. Nobody understood why such an arrangement was thought of. No, it was not for security reasons. One could be absent from his house and leave it wide open throughout day and night without the slightest fear of theft. Even the poorest of the poor were honest people in the village, and outsiders never entered the village with any bad intentions. So, if a known visitor wanted to visit one of the Rajkhowa brothers without drawing any attention of the neighbouring brother or any of his family members, he had to open the gate very quietly like a thief. I did exactly that and almost tiptoed for about thirty steps or so up to the front door of Suren’s house, hoping at the same time that I did not draw the attention of any member of Horen’s family. Suren’s house was the smallest because the size of the house was directly proportionate to the age-wise seniority of the four brothers, irrespective of the size of their families!

When you visited the house of an Assamese, knocking on the door or ringing the bell was generally not a done thing. Instead, you simply shouted, Anybody home?, or called out the name of a known person in the house being visited. In this instant situation, all this was not applicable, for the front door of Suren’s house was already half open. I just forced out a light cough and went right in to find that Suren and his nine year old son sitting on two stools facing each other with an open atlas on a small table between them. Suren was probably giving his son a lesson in geography. He was about to give a whack on his son’s head with a wooden foot-ruler, which acted as a whip. Luckily for the little boy, my entry caused a distraction for Suren and prevented him from completing his heinous act. I could see that the boy was almost in tears. I took my seat on a cane sofa while Suren ordered his son to ‘buzz-off’ and to do his studies somewhere else. Then turning towards me, the first thing he asked was, Oye, have you brought my stuff?

What stuff? I asked, a bit puzzled.

Why, you were supposed to get me a Black Knight from the CSD canteen in Lichubari. Weren’t you?

Oh yes, yes, but you know Suren that I have been extremely busy with the wedding preparations. The good thing is that I have a Triple X at home. You may collect it anytime you like.

Madhab, you are no longer a riff-raff. You are now a Major in the Indian Army and getting my stuff from the CSD canteen should be no problem for you. You must get me a few bottles of good whisky, something even better than Black Knight after the wedding. Give me your word, said Suren, almost ordering me.

Okay, okay I will, I said trying to end this silly conversation as quickly as possible.

Suren was as tall, or to put it more appropriately, as short as Horen. He had a pot belly which looked like a big jackfruit that hung down from his chest region, and his trademark dress of a tight bush shirt with a pair of baggy pants did not help in hiding his bulge in any way. But today he had a brand new eri sador, a shawl for men only, wrapped around him which made the bulge look much less pronounced for a change. So I remarked, Hey, you are looking good today.

As always, you should have added, he quipped, without bothering to repress his proneness to flattery, and immediately started lecturing me on how genuine his sador was. He said it was so authentic and warm because he got it directly from a weaver at Sualkuchi, a hamlet on the north bank of the Brahmaputra opposite Guwahati which formed the defacto core of the widespread silk industry in Assam. He also said that eri was known worldwide as ahimsa or non-violent silk. The reson for this was that its manufacturing process allowed the pupae to develop fully into adults and only then the open ended cocoons were used for turning them into silk. That, I thought, was some useful bit of information coming from Suren.

Suren did not like wearing a dhoti and, therefore, could never visit the village community prayer hall or the namghar, as was locally known, where any form of Western wear was considered blasphemous. If you compared his character qualities with Horen’s, it was a good study in contrast. I don’t want to live my life hiding behind a mask of politeness all the time. I am what I am, he told me a couple of times when he got a bit high on his favorite Black Knight. That was right; he did not care much about others’ opinion of him, and had scant regard for the multitude of social norms in the village. His voice was rough and he liked being a bully with children. However, the children did not dislike him. They nicknamed him Genda Suren or Suren the Rhino. As to how this word genda came into the Assamese vocabulary in this part of the state is still not clear. Children also made fun of his educational qualification, that he was a double MABF, meaning matric appeared but failed twice over. Suren took all this in good fun, always living for the moment with a happy-go-lucky attitude under all circumstances.

The appeal of the drawing room in Suren’s house lay in its simplicity. It had a cane sofa set; a three seater and two single seaters in their natural cane shade. A few red and yellow cushions were thrown about to create a bit of brightness and comfort. The centre table was placed on a very finely woven bamboo mat. In one corner was a medium size Philips radio. On top of it was a photograph of Horen with Pandit Nehru mounted in a silver frame. On one wall there was a printed picture of Gandhiji with a spinning wheel. On another wall hung a large colorful map of India which could be rolled up or down depending on the requirement. Above all, the most striking feature of the drawing room was the aura and warmth it exuded which by no means could be matched even by the most expensive decorative pieces that abound in a modern day household.

As Suren and I kept talking about the mundane issues of life in general, his wife, Mamoni, entered the room holding a tray with two cups of tea and some