Dilli River. Photo by Dipankar Gogoi on Unsplash

One of the uncanniest memories I have of my childhood is of Dilli, the river near my house. I grew up in a small township named Aranyak, situated at the foothills of the Patkai Hills in the extreme southeastern part of Assam. Aranyak was a charming township filled with love, respect, and regard for its people. Aranyak evoked warmth among the communities of people living there. Such warmth is a rarity these days. I would be more than happy if I am proven wrong in this case!

Like the friendly and warm-hearted people who lived at Aranyak, the place too was girdled by nature’s bounty pulsating the same warmth and affection. Even today, I believe, Aranyak’s beauty, coupled with the warmth and love of the people, is inimitable. At times, one would feel as if Aranyak was a miniature India, encapsulated with love and warmth, distanced from the demands of democracy or secularism. People belonging to different regions of the country came and lived there. Some came for employment in the industries that marked the dawn of economic progress at the stake of nature’s regression, but never mind, as they were the initiatives of the state and central governments; some came for business; and quite a few who had been living there for generations after they were forced to migrate from Chattisgarh and Odisha to serve in my the tea gardens at the north and south of Aranyak.

Aranyak was located at the bank of Dilli—a silent yet malevolent river that made its presence felt every year in the lives of the people by expressing her wrath in the most heinous way people could recall. The river was a witness to the region’s industrial growth, surrounded on both sides by people who otherwise lived happily, were concerned about one another, and were more like families than friends. This silent, yet malevolent river flew on the edges of the township of Aranyak, a township known to have India’s first fertiliser factory, which used natural gas for producing nitrogenous fertiliser; one that was known to have one of the country’s first petrochemical plants, which promoted the manufacturing of methanol using natural gas, which was available in the oil fields of Assam; and one of the two rich reserves of coal at the foothills.

All of these industries which promised growth and prosperity, somehow banked on the silent river that was periodically wrathful and expressed its grievance once a year by silently engulfing young men and women of Aranyak. The foothills of Patkai submissively looked at the atrocities of Dilli with no option but to be hand in glove with this demonic river. Such submissiveness, man has with nature!

A part of nature, an epitome of beauty, Dilli attracted crowds year after year to celebrate picnics and observe festivals. Amidst its wrath, it offered an incredible room for merriment and joy. Dilli attracted people at the end of the year who would flock in for a picnic.

What mighty ways does one need to know the wrath of nature, if one has lived on the banks of Dilli?

The vegetable vendors from the other side of the river would routinely cross Dilli on the boats in the afternoon, sell their produce in the daily market of Aranyak, and return home late at night. Dilli would be their only avenue for sustaining their families, supporting their agricultural affairs, and helping them trade without an intermediary trying to rob them of their field produce. Aranyak was blessed to have a profuse market of fresh vegetables, fruits, and dairy products, and these would reach out to each household crossing the river that silently carried the waste of the factories and chemical plants which promised development and prosperity to the region. It was a sight to see and cherish how actively the river intruded in the lives of the people of Aranyak, at times flourishing families and at other moments, depriving families of their loved ones!

Silent yet malevolent, it flowed. Year after year!

Like any mountain river, Dilli had its own captivating beauty. Clear stream of water. From a distant highland to a gradual descent, always soothing with a cool breeze, it flowed with unwavering courage and was always decent in its demeanour, never flooding Aranyak. Heartlessly inconsiderate, of the damage it had done to the lives of the people, the ripples on its stream reflected the many lives it had carried with itself and never returned. Those ripples were pages of a book holding the life stories of lives Dilli had swallowed. Dilli had been astoundingly appreciated for the beauty and serenity it offered to the tourists who flocked in to admire its scenic beauty, but for someone who lived just a kilometre away from the river, it remained a malevolent, ruthless, and vengeance-seeking manifestation of nature that silently settled its scores.

Dilli could never be appreciated by me. I grew up seeing its wrath, counting its merciless attempts at snatching kids away from their mothers. And, at times, I felt Dilli was very choosy about the people she wanted to take. Dilli would always carefully pick from families who struggled to make ends meet.

In the house where I lived, only a kilometre away from Dilli, I heard stories of her cruelty at least once a year. Stories. Yes, they were stories! Though only a kilometre away from my house, I never witnessed once how Dilli drowned young kids playing in the water or snatched young men and women who would be doing their daily chores in the river.

Stories of Dilli’s mischief would come mostly from Phoolmari, who would occasionally bring them to our ears. Phoolmari was a hardworking, neat, and clean woman of fifty who worked at my house for many years. A lady who lost one of her eyes years ago owing to some infection or accident and relentlessly attempted to commit suicide by drinking phenyl three times in her lifetime. I am still unaware of the reasons for her blindness and of her attempts to commit suicide. But she really used to take good care of me when my parents were away at work. In the evenings, when my parents would be back home, she would occasionally visit us, sit on the floor in the veranda, take her cup of tea, and bring stories of people in her community. She somehow was confident that her narrative kept my parents glued to her stories.  With great pride and authority, she narrated these stories, believing it was her special acumen much like her skill of doing the vessels spotlessly. My parents would lend their ears, as they admired her way of working and her sincerity.

Phoolmari’s community was different from ours. And our houses, too, were different. Though we lived in the same part of the township, in the same area, and, to be honest, on the same premises, our houses were different. Premises? Yes. Phoolmari’s son Krishna and his family stayed in our servant quarter, and so at times, she would visit them in the evenings and would drop in to just say "Hi!’ to us. Sometimes, she would stay overnight when they would have a hurriyah party.

The story of Phoolmari’s son’s family would end up in a novella. And I would love to narrate it someday. Achcha! Let me not digress much from Dilli; otherwise, with my poor narrative skills, I am afraid you would lose interest in my story. Dilli had never been kind to many people in Phoolmari’s community. Somehow, Phoolmari and her people never felt at home in Aranyak. Ever since their great-grandparents were forced to migrate from Chattishgarh in the times of the British Raj, the community had always existed as a class of people who were mainly called for manual labour, whether at the tea gardens or in the households of people living in Aranyak. They always lived with the meagre income they earned and somehow imagined their lives would be better if their children could be sent to school. For those dwelling in the row houses of the tea gardens, domestic fuel problems were taken care of, but for those who lived in the servant quarters or did labour work in the township of Aranyak, they had to fetch firewood for cooking. They were horrified by Dilli, but many times, Dilli was the one on which they depended. Dilli would be the one that provided a one-stop solution to their fuel problem. Logs of wood floating from the hills down the stream could be fetched, cut into firewood and stored for a longer time, or else this firewood could be sold for bonfire during the winter to the sahebs and memsahebs in whose servant quarters they were sheltered. Even during these errands, Dilli would choose one or two young boys and take them along with her, never to return them either dead or alive.

Not very different from Phoolmari’s accounts was the story of Sumbori, a girl from Phoolmari’s community. Sumbori was around seventeen years old when she came to our house to work as a maid—a full-time maid. Before she began work at our place, my parents did cross-check her background as she would be living with us and taking care of me. Since Aranyak was a small township, my parents came to know that Sumbori was the daughter of Karana, whose first wife drowned in Dilli. When Sumbori was a month or two old, Karana’s wife went to fetch firewood to the bank of Dilli carrying Sumbori on her back. She kept baby Sumbori on the bank in a safe spot and started collecting firewood at a nearby spot when she slipped and was swept away by Dilli. And the sole witness to the event was baby Sumbori! This incident in Sumbori’s life could never be erased, though Sumbori’s stepmother later took good care of her and her siblings. Sumbori’s life was always around Dilli. It felt as if Dilli had great scores to settle with Sumbori. After her marriage, Sumbori started living a very happy and contented life with her husband, Sanyal, on the other side of the river. Sanyal used to work in a tea garden, and they started their small family in one of the row houses of this tea garden. A shift from the industrial township of Aranyak to the tea gardens on the other bank of Dilli was like a shift of destiny for Sumbori. Sumbori was happy and was soon blessed with a daughter. After a few years, their family grew and they were blessed with a son.

One day, while Sumbori was doing her household chores, somebody came running to give her the news that her husband had taken poison in the tea factory and killed himself. Sumbori could never believe what she heard as they were leading a very happy and peaceful life. I am sure, even to date, Sumbori may not know the reason behind Sanyal’s suicide. When Sanyal died, Sumbori’s son Shibu was only a year old. After a few years, Sumbori left her tea garden quarter and travelled to Bangalore to work as a live-in maid with a known family from Aranyak. Sumbori would visit Aranyak once a year after she started working in Bangalore.

It is strange, but I do think of how Sumbori’s happiness never lasted long. And during one of those visits, after which she never went back to Bangalore, another tragic incident hit her. After her husband passed away, Sumbori earned every penny to make the lives of her kids comfortable. The kids were good at studies and were raised by their grandparents. The daughter was raised by Sumbori’s parents, and the son was raised by Sanyal’s sister and his parents. Shibu was taken very good care of at his grandparents’ house, and he was growing up to be an intelligent boy, dedicated to his studies, studying in the only English-medium school that was there at Aranyak. Shibu was good at his studies. With all the money Sumbori earned, she supported his studies. During his summer break in Class V, Shibu went to swim and play with his friends in Dilli and got drowned.

Sumbori’s life was shattered! One by one, everyone in her life was snatched away either by destiny or by Dilli. Dilli was Sumbori’s destiny.

At the banks of Dilli, the people of Aranyak celebrate Chath Puja, a festival expressing dedication, devotion, and surrender to the mighty Sun god. During that time of the year, Dilli is surrounded by fun, frolic, and the spirit of festivity. Dilli’s bank, which would otherwise be witness only to the cremations and the burning of pyres, would be wiped and cleaned, making it ready for the devotees to set up their places, as they waited the whole night, after fasting for days together, to pay their homage early at dawn to the Sun god.

Dilli, overlooked by the foothills of Patkai, the eternal companion of Aranyak, silently watched these affairs, carrying the waste from industries, and marched with pride thinking how insignificant and trivial human lives and their actions were which could never succeed in controlling its wrath!