The Braided River (A Journey Along The Brahmaputra)

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A scholarly and delightfully diverting journey of cultural and geographical exploration' VICTOR MALLET, author of River of Life, River of Death

The Brahmaputra is, by some margin, the largest river in India. After its confluence with the Ganga in Bangladesh, it becomes the largest in Asia.

In The Braided River, journalist Samrat Choudhury sets out to follow its braided course form the edge of Tibet where it enters India down to where it meets the Ganga at a spot marked by the biggest red-light district in Bangladesh. Woven with the tales of his varied encounters is the history of the border between India and China in Arunachal Pradesh, the formation of the Assamese identity - a matter of great contemporary relevance owing to the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act - and the ecological challenges posed by proposed dams.

This is a genre-bending book that touches upon several hot-button issues as it blends travel, memoir and history wih the present.

IT WAS ALWAYS THERE, a near and distant reality. My first Imemories of it are of the chugging sound of the old train with its smoky diesel engine changing into a loud clanging as it crossed the old iron bridge near Guwahati. It was a thrill to look out and see the swirling waters below ... more water than I had ever seen in my brief life until then, because I had not seen the sea. The clanging went on for a marvellously long time. People would rush to the windows and even to the open doors, and thrillingly fling coins into the river. Sometimes I was given a ten- or twenty-paisa coin to throw in too. It was an offering to Brahmaputra the river god, the son of Brahma ... and meagre and mindless as it was, it was good sport; a grudging attempt at the appeasement of a force of nature whose might, even to a mere child of six or seven, was apparent.

As I grew older, I became aware of other things about the river, from my distant perch - because that was how it felt - 101 km away in the hill town of Shillong. There was the time a relative who owned a gramophone player got hold of an old vinyl record of songs by Bhupen Hazarika. The delight of the moment when I first heard his clear, mellifluous voice has stayed with me. It was a delight that brought confusion with it. I heard the classic ‘Bistirno Duparer’, set to the tune of Old Man River, in Bengali, with the Ganga as the subject. A couple of years later, in Guwahati, where my father's elder brother who worked in the Brahmaputra Board lived, I heard the same song in Assamese in its avatar as ‘Bistirno Parore' with Burha Luit as the subject. I was confused. I didn't understand many of the words. And there was the Brahmaputra, and the Burha Luit, and the Ganga ... were they all the same? Was the Burha Luit, perhaps, both Ganga and Brahmaputra?

Once I wandered along the riverside with an older neighbour. The river was right there, vast, swirling. Adventure beckoned. The neighbour, who was a college student at the time and had some pocket money, marched down to the ghat and struck a deal with a boatman. He would row us out in his motorless wooden boat towards the river island of Umananda, visible nearby.

It was only a short distance but it felt like an epic voyage. I had by then learnt to row, but rowing in the calm waters of Ward's Lake in Shillong was one thing and in the Brahmaputra was quite another. The wooden oar itself was too heavy for me. I still remember the boatman talking about underwater currents that sucked away unsuspecting people to their riverine graves.

**Contents and Sample Pages**