India's Remote River of Tea

By Roderick Eime

CARRY ON: Hindu men pray to the Hindu Sun God during the religious festival Chhat Puja in Guwahati, Assam.

The engines pushed and pushed, churning great clouds of silt in the water, but we were stuck.

The Brahmaputra River, a wide voluminous waterway, carries enormous amounts of water and silt all the way from Tibet on its journey to the Bay of Bengal, where it joins forces with the mighty Ganges just north of Calcutta.

The current flows strongly around the port town of Guwahati (Guwahati) and spreads out to create immense sand bars - and the MV Charaidew is stuck on one.

The local newspaper trumpets our misfortune with headlines like Ship stuck in sand, foreigners taste the Orient while two heroic river tugs work noisily throughout the night to free us. By breakfast, however, we are under way, embarrassed, but otherwise undamaged.

The 24-berth MV Charaidew is one half of Assam Bengal Navigations (ABN) fleet of classic river steamers plying both the Brahmaputra and Ganges on cultural and nature-based itineraries throughout the region.

In 2003, the ABN found her languishing sadly in the mud and duly rescued her from despair. The subject of a complete refit, her life of toil was over and new adventures on the river awaited.

Our snail-paced journey upstream allows us plenty of leisure time on the broad rooftop, sundeck. We mingle with the fellow passengers and generally take it easy, enjoying the delicious local tea by the gallon.

"May I?" inquired a dapper old chap with a Sandhurst accent.

I indicate the chair is free and as he sits, careful not to spill his steaming cup of chai, I notice a nasty scar across his shoulder.

"Ah, yes, that. A Jap sniper got me just as I was about to toss him a grenade."

As the discussion unfolds, I learn I am taking tea with Colonel James "Jimmy" Evans (retired) who served as a young officer with the Gurkha Rifles when the Japanese made their last ditch effort to invade India in 1944.

I find his tales enthralling as he relates to me the story of a largely forgotten campaign during which he was awarded the Military Cross.

Jimmy and his charming wife, Jenifer, are accompanied by more retired Gurkha Rifles officers and our entourage soon takes on a jolly "Carry On Up the River" feel.

The tone is lifted further with the arrival of the British High Commissioner, his wife and son.

Apart from tea and toffs along the river, the itinerary expands into numerous shore excursions that include village visits, wildlife safaris and temple tramps.

At the farthest extent of our travel, we overnight 32km past Tezpur at Diphlu River Lodge, ABN's newest jungle lodge, strategically placed to allow access to nearby Orang and Kaziranga National Parks.

Both are inscribed in the Unesco World Heritage catalogue and home to species of endangered Asian Rhinoceros, Barking Deer, tiger, birds and elephants.

Take an elephant-back safari and be sure to see the elephant feeding as the infant pachyderms scramble around the grounds playing tag with visitors while their mothers, munching contentedly, look on unperturbed.

Among the surrounding villages are acres of tea plantations. The produce, described as red, black and white is often marketed under the breakfast tag and can be purchased directly from the factory door.

Assamese tea, as distinct from highland varieties, has a strong brisk taste, bright colour with a characteristic maltiness due to the hot, humid weather.

Ladies in bright saris move slowly among the bushes, their arms delicately caressing the branches as they pick and stow their tiny harvest. On a good day, a woman will pick 20 kilograms and earn about three dollars.

While travel in India is a test of patience and endurance for many, Assam is devoid of much of the intense, fatiguing tourist experience common in the major centres. While poverty is ubiquitous throughout rural India, Assam seems less affected by obvious hardship. Even the usually nail-biting road travel is a little more docile here.

My pack crammed and wafting fragrant aromas, from now on every simple cup of tea will transport me back to Assam and my many riverside adventures.

IF YOU GO

Travel in India is subject to Australian DFAT warnings. Check the latest updates at smarttraveller.gov.au.

Assam Bengal Navigation conducts four, seven and 10-night cruises along the Brahmaputra combined between October and April with lodge stays and wildlife safaris. Prices are calculated at $US350 (NZ$495) per person per day plus taxes. Single supplement applies. Discounts are sometimes offered.

The RV Charaidew accommodates 24 passengers in 12 air-conditioned, twin cabins, each with private facilities. Included buffet meals are served in the dining room and there is a separate lounge/bar/library in the bow plus a large rooftop sundeck.

Nasim Akhtor Leads The First Ever Team From Northeast India to Climb Mt Everest

By Teresa Rehman

It's a bold decision to take at the age of 53. But Nasim Akhtor, the first woman mountaineer from Northeast India, is as strong as the lofty Himalaya. At an age when most retire from sports, she has taken the ultimate vow - to lead the first ever team from Northeast India to climb Mt Everest. There is no tinge of misgiving to her resolve. "I have everybody's love and prayers," she says.

She had always nurtured a dream to conquer the Everest. "I may not be that strong physically now but I have mental conviction. I have never wanted to go it alone. Instead, I wanted to lead a team from the region. Today, many years have gone by and I am old, but at least the dreams of many other young mountaineers will be fulfilled," she smiles. She narrates the story of a mountaineer who tried to climb the Everest twice but could not complete either attempt. He was then asked "Why the Everest?" To which he replied, "I wish I knew. Then I would not have gone."

The young mountaineers who will be part of the expedition throng her residence for advice in Guwahati, the capital of the state of Assam in Northeast India. On July 20, 2009, she led a pre-Everest trek to Kolai peak in Kashmir. In March 2011, she expects to lead the team to Mt Everest. "We are hoping for sponsors since the cost of the expedition will be around Rs 3 crore," she says. She rues the cricket obsession in the country and observes, "Big companies only want to sponsor cricket, not other sports. There are occasions in the past when I had wanted to do something but failed because of the lack of money." In fact, as the Secretary of the Northeast Adventure Foundation, Nasim has long been planning to set up an adventure institute in the region because its pristine nature lends itself to adventure sports, but things have not worked out yet.

A school teacher by profession, Nasim prefers to call herself a 'mountaineer'. And why not? Mountaineering has given a new meaning to her life. Born into a middle-class Muslim family in Guwahati, it was only because of the constant encouragement of her liberal mother, Mazida Begum, that she could indulge her tomboyish obsession. Her father, a contractor in the army, died when she was only two years old.

Nasim always stood out within her circle of friends. She still remembers the day when she got her first pair of trousers stitched for a mountaineering expedition. It caused many taunts from people who did not understand what mountaineering was about. Her mother then told her, "You will have to be appropriately dressed on all occasions. If you do mountaineering, you will have to be dressed like a mountaineer." She also remembers her mother reassuring her by explaining that whenever a person does something pioneering, it is inevitable that he or she will face impediments. Those words helped her become even more determined to pursue a passion many considered as 'manly'. And she did face challenges - both physical and social - so much so that even marriage proved to be an elusive proposition!

But Nasim always managed to juggle her government job with mountaineering. "Sometimes I went without pay, sometimes on special leave and sometimes without increment," she laughs. She was fortunate that Guwahati's Nehru Stadium was close by and she could easily access its sporting facilities and meet people associated with adventure sports. The doyen of mountaineering in Assam, the late Rohini Bhuyan, was her mentor. Nasim also had the opportunity to meet world-famous mountaineers and work with them at the New Delhi-based Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF). She was a Governing Council member of the IMF for nine years from 1989 to 2009.

Nasim was only 16 when she met the ace mountaineer, Tenzing Norgay, at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling, where she had gone trekking as part of a 25-member team from Assam. Recalls Nasim, "I had heard about him since I was a child, read about him in books. I was excited to see him." She met up with him several times after that and Norgay once told her, "You will fall in love with Baba Himalaya." After she came back from the Himalaya, he asked her, "How did it feel?" She could only say, "I want to go back." Since then she has always looked upon the Himalaya as a father, constantly giving her strength. "He seems to reassure me. He seems to tell me, look, I am standing tall in spite of all odds, you should learn from me," smiles Nasim. Whenever she is alone or in trouble, she asks Baba Himalaya to give her the fortitude to move ahead. "When I lost my dear ones, Baba Himalaya always gave me the courage to pick up the pieces of my life once again," she remarks.

She also met Edmund Hillary several times while she was in Delhi and he had even expressed an interest to come to Guwahati. That visit did not work out, but Nasim was able to bring Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei, the first woman to climb Mt Everest, to her city and get her to interact with local mountaineers.

Nasim has several feats to her credit. She was part of the All-Assam Ladies Expedition in 1986 to Kangyisay in the Ladakh Himalaya, scaling a height of 21,132 feet. The expedition holds a record for being the first Indian women's team on the Ladakh Himalaya and the world's first all-women team to reach the Kangyisay peak. The highest she had managed to climb was to the White Needle peak at the Zanskar range in Jammu and Kashmir in 1987. "I have seen the Himalaya from every location - from Kumaon, Darjeeling, Kashmir, Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh. It looks magnificent from all angles," she says.

Like all serious mountaineers, Nasim views climbing as a vocation and not as some kind of glamorous activity. Every time she confronts the Himalaya, she feels like dedicating her whole life to it. Whenever she sits in a tent pitched up on a snow-covered mountainside with the moon shining on the snow, she feels as if she is in some kind of communion with God.

When her mother, who had stood like a rock behind her, breathed her last, Nasim was busy organizing a national rock climbing training programme in Guwahati. After three days of her demise, she was back at the camp. "I felt like I had lost everything yet I went back to the camp. My mother used to tell me that even if she dies, I should not give up my mountaineering," says Nasim.

Nasim, incidentally, is a firm believer and she always appeals to the Almighty to come to her aid before she commences on a climbing expedition. Ever the pilgrim, she now plans to surrender herself to the tallest peak in the world and create history for herself and her region.

Womens Feature Service covers developmental, political, social and economic issues in India and around the globe. To get these articles for your publication, contact WFS at the wfsnews.org website.

The Learning Curve

‘Having thrown away our tribal values, what we are clinging to today are simply remnants of a lost culture’

By Patricia Mukhim

Last week in these columns, I looked at the neighboring state of Mizoram in an effort to understand its society better. After all, a state without a people is a vacuum. The article elicited a phenomenal number of responses from the Mizo Diaspora spread across the universe and from Mizos residing in Bangalore, Delhi, Pune, you name it. There were, of course, responses also from Mizoram and from Shillong where I live. Mizos living outside this region were positive and felt that internal churning is healthy for every society.

Reactions from Mizos closer home, including some research scholars from NEHU, bordered on the hostile. They said Mizos should be left to themselves because they are the only pristine group today, since all other tribes have been assaulted by cross-cultural fusion that was not exactly healthy. They were supportive of the Inner Line Permit, which they felt was a gate-keeping mechanism to keep out non-tribes from proliferating in Mizoram. They pointed to the non-tribal traders in Shillong, Dimapur, Itanagar and the like and said Mizos would not like to follow that beaten track. Well, to each his own.

Self-introspection, leave alone self-criticism, is not a virtue of any of the tribes. There is an inherent need to showcase the best to the world even if inside we are crumbling to pieces. Understandably, this is a tribal trait that emerges from two things. One is the deep sense of insecurity that if the world knows what is not so good about us, we would lose our social pride.

Secondly, our tribal worldview is juxtaposed to that of mainstream Indian worldview. This is a very problematic position. Every tribal inwardly acknowledges that the non-tribals are way ahead of us intellectually, having been recipients of wisdom from a 5,000-year-old civilization. I have my doubts about this rationale. What causes insecurity is that if others know too much about our weaknesses, they might capitalize on those weaknesses.

Tribal values

Social inbreeding such as that practiced by Parsis has its own constraints. Nature has other ways of maintaining a healthy equilibrium. But for now most tribes still believe they have a right to privacy and “others” have no right to pry into that private domain.

Interestingly, we look upon our social pride as something quite exclusive and distinct from other forms of behavior. Tribes are quite sharp in their criticism of politicians.

States like Mizoram and Nagaland are usually referred to as Christian states. On the political front, however, politicians from these states and also from other tribal states portray a homogenous culture of venality and we are ruthless in countering these misdemeanours and criticising acts of corruption.

But in using two separate yardsticks to judge social and political behaviour, we forget that the same human beings, who are in politics, are also part and parcel of society. And that if political behaviour is getting more and more venal, then society itself must have produced that venality. After all, politicians don’t drop down from outer space.

What every tribal group forgets perhaps is that prior to the arrival of Christianity to these hills, there were deeply embedded tribal values that were our moral compasses. These indigenous gems of wisdom tell us with no ambiguity that it is wrong to steal; that we should always return what does not belong to us; that we have to conserve nature and use resources judiciously and sustainably. We were told then as we are now that it is wrong to kill or harm another and that sharing resources will take us much further than hoarding everything for ourselves.

Winds of change

Our wise ancestors told us to take only what we need and that need was so well defined that it never transgressed into greed. Above all, our ancestors told us categorically that we should not pine for what we have not earned. They exhorted us to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow.

The valuable codes of conduct were transmitted from one generation to the next by parents and grandparents as they sat round the hearth in the evenings, lulling their children and grandchildren to sleep. Things have certainly changed a lot since then. We have graduated from the hearth to the dining table. With that we have also lost the best nuggets of our cultural values. Today, conversations are reduced to monosyllables. Even younger children are multi-tasking and how! They watch television while eating and therefore have no time to talk.

Our younger generation, no matter which tribe it belongs to, no longer values its heritage. The young know so little of their social and cultural moorings. They have just one behavioural code — what you see is what you have. An all-pervasive culture of instant gratification is what is starkly visible. Parents can afford to give their children everything except time. Time has a different connotation to a tribal, which is not linked to the clock or to her watch.

Time is life itself because life is counted by the time we have on this earth. But could it be because of our inner contradictions that we are afraid to give time to our children? And if we do give time, it is only to take them to the shopping mall or for very material pursuits. It appears that life itself has lost its quality and meaning.

Reality check

There is nothing to distinguish a tribal child from “others” if one assesses them on the basic indicators of “needs and wants”. This is where the claim to being tribal and unique rings hollow. Having thrown away our tribal values, what we are clinging to today are simply remnants of a lost culture.

The word “tribal” is purely a political instrument. Ironically, the all-pervasive role of the church both in Mizoram and Nagaland has failed to correct our deviant behaviour.

The other day, a non-Naga working in that state wondered why every government function is prefaced by a prayer. Yet there is such a wide, almost unbridgeable chasm between the prayers and the actions of those who lead the state and its bureaucracy. Often it is a mockery of Christianity, which to all intents and purposes preaches one basic tenet — love for fellow human beings. Those who live by the teachings of Christ would know it is wrong to divert money from the health department into their private coffers even while so many women and children die from lack of health facilities.

But isn’t this happening in all the Christian states?

These discordant notes need reflection and corrective action. If we claim a pristine tribal culture but fail to practise those tribal values because we believe they have lost currency after we embraced Christianity, then we need to do a serious reality check.

It is also time to grapple with the eternal truth that no society is pure and that we all evolve and imbibe new cultures.

Change, as someone said is the only permanent thing. And sociologists tell us that if we do not manage change, then change will manage us. Our problem as tribes is that we refuse to accept that we have changed, sometimes volitionally and at other times because we have been pushed to change.

The learning curve is the average rate of knowledge gained over time. Every society has its learning curve. While some graphs depict steeper curves, others are more flat. I often wonder what sort of learning curve we have as tribes and whether that actually affects our worldview and therefore our interface with the world.

(The writer can be contacted at patricia17@rediffmail.com)

Battle Over Cannons of Waterloo

Aizawl, Mar 30 : Battle lines have been drawn between the Mizoram unit of the Indian National Trust for Art and Natural Heritage (INTACH) and the Assam Rifles over possession of two cannons which were used in the battle of Waterloo in 1815, reports PTI.

The Mizoram unit of INTACH said that the two pieces of artillery displayed at the Assam Rifles battalion headquarters since 1892 were taken away in 2003 by their custodian, the First battalion of AR, to Tuensang in Nagaland.

P Rohmingthanga, a retired IAS officer and convener of the state’s INTACH said that the two historic cannons were placed at the Assam Rifles battalion headquarters here by Lt Colonel J Shakespeare in 1892.

Shakespeare, in his book ‘The Making of Aijal’ (as Aizawl was known in those days) published in 1939 wrote that the cannons were among those used by the Duke of Wellington’s troops which were part of the combined armies of the Seventh Coalition to defeat French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in the battle of Waterloo. He wrote that they were part of armament of a Burma-bound warship that was docked in the Chittagong Port (now in Bangladesh) in 1857.

“When the detachment of the 34th Native Infantry mutinied on November 18 that year as part of the Sepoy Mutiny, the cannons were thrown overboard to prevent them from falling in the hands of the natives and were fished out after crushing the mutiny and brought to Aizawl,” he wrote.

“Though Shakespeare was an army officer, he was also the civilian administrator of the then North Lushai Hills, the northern part of the present Mizoram state,” Rohmingthanga said.

He claimed “anything installed by the civilian head of a district could not logically belong to the armed forces, certainly not by the Assam Rifles, which came into existence only in 1917.”

“Historically and legally the cannons belong to the people of the state and have high heritage value and not to the central para-military forces,” he said, while conceding that the Assam Rifles could have custody of the artillery pieces, but they must be kept in Aizawl.

However, the Assam Rifles and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the controlling authority of all the country’s para-military forces, do not agree with the contention of the Mizo INTACH.

“The cannons are war trophies that changed hands from the British Indian Army to the Assam Rifles,” the MHA officials held.

The MHA, in a note on June nine, 2009 said that as per service norms, war trophies were kept by respective units and formed an integral part of the battalion’s history and legacy.

“These (the cannons) are kept with honor and pride by the Assam Rifles and it is proposed to shift them later to the Assam Rifles museum,” the note added.

The museum is situated in the Assam Rifles headquarters on the outskirts of Shillong in Meghalaya.

The MHA stuck to its guns even after Yogendra Narain member-secretary of the INTACH intervened on behalf of the Mizoram unit saying that Mizos were robbed of the heritage cannons by the Assam Rifles.

A top AR official, however, said, “the Assam Rifles has been in existence since 1835 though it was not known as the Assam Rifles then, but we do not want to get into any argument on anything that belongs to us.”

The INTACH Mizoram unit, on the other hand, refused to budge from its stance with Rohmingthanga saying that he has written again to the MHA and spoken to the Union Home Secretary. “We also sought the help of Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla, who is also a member of the INTACH, to ensure that the cannons are back at their original place in Aizawl,” he said.

“The cannons belong to the people of Mizoram, not to the para-military forces. Let them (Assam Rifles) have the custody of the cannons, but they must be in Aizawl.”

Mawia, a 61-year-old resident of Aizawl said that the two cannons displayed in front of the historic Quarter Guard of the Assam Rifles battalion headquarters at a place now known as the Mahatma Gandhi Square was a prize possession of Aizawl.

“It was said that if you point a finger at the two cannons they will be fired on you, so as young boys, whenever we went past the Quarter Guard we pointed our fingers inside our trouser pockets so that the cannons would not know that we were pointing fingers at them,” Mawia chuckled.

Tripura Constitutes Police Accountability Commission

Agartala, Mar 30 : The Tripura government has constituted a police accountability commission to ensure "impartial and efficient" policing, an official said here Sunday.

"The four-member commission, constituted Saturday, would formulate guidelines for efficient, effective, responsive and accountable policing and identify performance indicators," the police official told IANS.

Former Tripura advocate general D.P. Kundu was appointed as its chairman while social worker Champa Dasgupta, and legal experts Bimal Bhowmik and Dipak Kumar Chowdhury are its members.

The official said: "The commission will look into allegations of serious misconduct against police personnel or any other case referred to it by the government, the director general of police or any member of the public."

He said Tripura was the second state in northeast India after Assam to constitute such a commission.

IANS

Meghalaya Plans ‘Seed Money’ For The Weaker Section

Shillong, Mar 29 : The Meghalaya government has planned to arrange ''seed money'' to the weaker sections of society to raise loans and take up income generating schemes. "The government is planning to introduce a scheme to provide seed capital to beneficiaries to raise loans and take up income generating schemes.

This will facilitate the enhancement of the flow of credit to marginal farmers, especially BPL families," Finance Minister Mukul Sangma told PTI. An amount of Rs 5,000 is proposed to be provided to a family as seed money for opening bank accounts. "At the initial stage, 6,000 families are proposed to be covered, with an outlay of Rs 3 crore," Sangma said.

The financial inclusion, he said, will ensure access to financial services and timely credit to the weaker sections of the society, especially those residing in rural areas as banks have been requested by RBI to open at least one account for each family. Initially four districts East Khasi Hills, Jaintia Hills, Ri Bhoi and West Garo Hills have been identified for 100 per cent financial inclusion.

"The deputy commissioners have been asked to assist the banks in a village household survey to be conducted through the block development officers," Sangma said.

PTI

The Best Paper Fold Pinhole Ever

We've seen our share of pinhole cameras before, including a room sized pinhole and one that uses Polaroids. However, we've never seen a pinhole camera as nice as the one from Francesco Capponi (AKA dippold) before.

You can print it on paper (A4!) so all you really need to have is a printer (and if you are reading this via computer, I assume you have one right to your left).

You'd need a thick paper though, or some cardboard, to glue your instructions to. You can probably use the cereal box leftovers from the snoot you made.

Or better yet, print it on a big A4 sticker and mount it on that cereal box.

The diagram is available here. Instructions come in a step by step pictorial (above), just like that old Lego ship you built a few years back.

The design is very slick and it uses a dying breed of 35mm film.

You can communicate (with dippold & with each other) about the pinhole cam here, on the original instructions page.

via make

Northeast Woman Makes Computer Learning Easy

Indrani Medhi

Guwahati, Mar 29 : A young woman from Assam has achieved honors in the challenging realm of computer literacy. What is more she, along with two co-workers, have earned a patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office last year.

Indrani Medhi, an associate researcher with Microsoft, has developed text-free user interfaces designed to help illiterate and semi-literate users for whom the computer appears as an alien tool. Her design, according to experts, “would allow any first-time illiterate person…to immediately realize useful interaction with minimal or no assistance.”

The achievement was important enough to gain attention of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and she was featured in the Technology Review, the institute’s magazine on innovation. In the March 2010 edition, Medhi’s work has been described in some detail.

The magazine’s TR 35 list, in which she is mentioned, recognizes just 20 individuals under the age of 35, whose work shows exceptional brilliance in fields such as biotech, materials, computer hardware, energy, transportation and the internet. Medhi’s contribution is in the area of computer and electronics hardware.

Significantly, Medhi’s work was exemplary in its land-to-lab linkages. An architect trained in NIT Nagpur and Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Medhi spent long periods in the slums of India, Philippines, and South Africa understanding the genuine needs of the under privileged communities.

According to the Technology Review, during her research Medhi discovered that illiterate people with no experience with computing were intimidated by technology. The young innovator surmounted the problem by preparing full context videos with a storyline that made the technology easily comprehensible to the user.

Speaking to The Assam Tribune, Indrani’s mother, Meera Medhi, said that her daughter was always keen to develop something that would benefit the poor and marginalized. “Now her innovation has made her realize a dream,” the proud mother remarked. She said that the creative imagination that enabled Indrani to develop the new product could have its roots in her childhood spent in drawing and reading.

Indrani’s father, Bimal Medhi, revealed that despite a busy schedule, she offers voluntary service in a Bengaluru-based animal welfare facility.

It is worth mentioning that the TR 35 list was prepared by a distinguished panel, which included K Vijay Raghavan, Director, National Centre for Biological Sciences, TIFR, PK Sinha, Chief Co-ordinator, CDAC, and Viswanath Poosala, Head of Bell Labs India, among others.

via The Assam Tribune