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The Braided River: A Journey along the Brahmaputra
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 from 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. Along the way, he meets suspicious Indian spies, gets packed off on the back of a cement truck by soldiers, visits a shelter home for baby rhino and elephant orphans in Kaziranga, and hops from river island to riverside town meeting the locals. The tales of these encounters spice up a story that weaves in the history of the emergence 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 – environmental, military, and political – as it blends travel, memoir, and history with the present.
According to the author Samrat Choudhury, ‘This book is primarily a travelogue following the Brahmaputra, from the McMahon Line in Arunachal Pradesh at the edge of Tibet on the disputed India-China border down to its confluence with the Ganga near the fabled ghat of Goalando in Bangladesh. It is a journey through places, times, and issues along the way…sometimes serious, sometimes hilarious, occasionally adventurous, and often illuminating.’
In The Braided River, journalist Samrat Choudhury sets out to follow its braided course from 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. Along the way, he meets suspicious Indian spies, gets packed off on the back of a cement truck by soldiers, visits a shelter home for baby rhino and elephant orphans in Kaziranga, and hops from river island to riverside town meeting the locals. The tales of these encounters spice up a story that weaves in the history of the emergence 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 – environmental, military, and political – as it blends travel, memoir, and history with the present.
According to the author Samrat Choudhury, ‘This book is primarily a travelogue following the Brahmaputra, from the McMahon Line in Arunachal Pradesh at the edge of Tibet on the disputed India-China border down to its confluence with the Ganga near the fabled ghat of Goalando in Bangladesh. It is a journey through places, times, and issues along the way…sometimes serious, sometimes hilarious, occasionally adventurous, and often illuminating.’
424 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 21, 2021
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May 23, 2021
In its sheer volume and width, the Brahmaputra is an Indian river like no other. I still remember the sense of profound awe I felt when I first crossed the river on my way from Guwahati to Siliguri. As the bridge stretched on with no land in sight, the Brahmaputra seemed less river to me, and more ocean.
In The Braided River, journalist Samrat Choudhury takes on the formidable task of documenting the human history of this confounding ‘waterworld’ with the ‘fresh eyes of an outsider, and something of the knowledge of an insider’. It is a unique, shifting landscape that he traverses, composed of chars and chaporis (river islands and sandbanks), constantly punctuated by the sound of the river devouring the land, its people struggling to keep up with this ceaseless ‘cycle of creation and destruction’. However, Choudhury doesn’t confine himself to the river itself and often ventures inland to set the larger context for the drama of human life in the Brahmaputra Valley.
Much like the river, the structure of the book is braided, in that it’s composed of short thematic chapters dealing with strands of historical analysis, travel anecdotes, and character sketches that combine to yield an expansive narrative. He begins his account with a brief natural history of the Brahmaputra and the mythology surrounding it, before delving into his travels along the course of the river, from Gelling near the Tibetan border to Goalanda in Bangladesh where the Brahmaputra (or Jamuna) - a river of many names - meets the Ganga.
The first section of the book deals with the Lohit, Dibang & Siang rivers that combine near the Dibru Saikhowa National Park to become the mighty Brahmaputra. Choudhury liberally peppers the narrative with colonial-era accounts that evoke the perilous journeys undertaken by surveyors to map the course of the river, the upper reaches of which were once thought to harbour the world’s greatest waterfall (instead it turned out to have the world’s deepest canyon). Here, an important point Choudhury raises is how excessive anxiety in India about Chinese dam-building activity along the Siang (called Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet) may be misplaced since the Brahmaputra acquires much of its volume from rain fed streams in Arunachal Pradesh and other tributaries in Assam.
The next two sections that form the bulk of the book are largely set in Assam, an astoundingly multi-lingual, multi-ethnic state that’s a veritable ‘India in miniature’. Like any good travelogue, Choudhury takes us on a journey through both space and time, with a host of fascinating digressions into Assam’s past - from the process of Assamese identity formation in the medieval era through assimilation into the Ahom administration; the surreal episode of Guru Tegh Bahadur being roped in by the Mughals to counter Assam’s black magicians and sorceresses; the story of tea cultivation in Assam; from how steamboats dramatically reduced travel times in the 19th century; to how the colonial encounter led to a 'new imagination of all frontiers as lines of control rather than zones of transition' which lies at the root of Sino-Indian border tensions in the region today.
Along the way, Choudhury encounters a diverse range of characters: scamsters, timber smugglers, environmentalists, suspicious soldiers, boatmen, and tea estate managers who lead lifestyles that still ‘retain remnants of the old colonial aura’. Choudhury does a great job of foregrounding the people he meets instead of making the book about himself. The writing is lucid and doesn’t seek to draw attention to itself. It’s apparent that an impressive amount of research has gone into making the book a well-rounded guide to the Brahmaputra valley for the lay reader. The book also has some gorgeous photographs by Akshay Mahajan, Choudhury’s travel companion on parts of the journey.
However, one drawback with the book’s structure was that the short chapters sometimes ended abruptly without any closure, which marred the otherwise smooth flow of the narrative. Also, the fact that Bangladesh was covered only fleetingly in the final twenty pages seemed like a missed opportunity to document the political economy of riverine Bangladesh from an Indian perspective. But these minor quibbles aside, The Braided River is a delightful work of travel literature that succeeds admirably in doing what all good travel writing ought to do: open the reader’s eyes to the beauty and wonder inherent in the ordinary and the everyday. I hope it inspires budding travel writers to undertake similar expeditions that do justice to the various regions and sub-regions of India.
Reproduced from my review in The Indian Express:
https://indianexpress.com/article/boo...
In The Braided River, journalist Samrat Choudhury takes on the formidable task of documenting the human history of this confounding ‘waterworld’ with the ‘fresh eyes of an outsider, and something of the knowledge of an insider’. It is a unique, shifting landscape that he traverses, composed of chars and chaporis (river islands and sandbanks), constantly punctuated by the sound of the river devouring the land, its people struggling to keep up with this ceaseless ‘cycle of creation and destruction’. However, Choudhury doesn’t confine himself to the river itself and often ventures inland to set the larger context for the drama of human life in the Brahmaputra Valley.
Much like the river, the structure of the book is braided, in that it’s composed of short thematic chapters dealing with strands of historical analysis, travel anecdotes, and character sketches that combine to yield an expansive narrative. He begins his account with a brief natural history of the Brahmaputra and the mythology surrounding it, before delving into his travels along the course of the river, from Gelling near the Tibetan border to Goalanda in Bangladesh where the Brahmaputra (or Jamuna) - a river of many names - meets the Ganga.
The first section of the book deals with the Lohit, Dibang & Siang rivers that combine near the Dibru Saikhowa National Park to become the mighty Brahmaputra. Choudhury liberally peppers the narrative with colonial-era accounts that evoke the perilous journeys undertaken by surveyors to map the course of the river, the upper reaches of which were once thought to harbour the world’s greatest waterfall (instead it turned out to have the world’s deepest canyon). Here, an important point Choudhury raises is how excessive anxiety in India about Chinese dam-building activity along the Siang (called Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet) may be misplaced since the Brahmaputra acquires much of its volume from rain fed streams in Arunachal Pradesh and other tributaries in Assam.
The next two sections that form the bulk of the book are largely set in Assam, an astoundingly multi-lingual, multi-ethnic state that’s a veritable ‘India in miniature’. Like any good travelogue, Choudhury takes us on a journey through both space and time, with a host of fascinating digressions into Assam’s past - from the process of Assamese identity formation in the medieval era through assimilation into the Ahom administration; the surreal episode of Guru Tegh Bahadur being roped in by the Mughals to counter Assam’s black magicians and sorceresses; the story of tea cultivation in Assam; from how steamboats dramatically reduced travel times in the 19th century; to how the colonial encounter led to a 'new imagination of all frontiers as lines of control rather than zones of transition' which lies at the root of Sino-Indian border tensions in the region today.
Along the way, Choudhury encounters a diverse range of characters: scamsters, timber smugglers, environmentalists, suspicious soldiers, boatmen, and tea estate managers who lead lifestyles that still ‘retain remnants of the old colonial aura’. Choudhury does a great job of foregrounding the people he meets instead of making the book about himself. The writing is lucid and doesn’t seek to draw attention to itself. It’s apparent that an impressive amount of research has gone into making the book a well-rounded guide to the Brahmaputra valley for the lay reader. The book also has some gorgeous photographs by Akshay Mahajan, Choudhury’s travel companion on parts of the journey.
However, one drawback with the book’s structure was that the short chapters sometimes ended abruptly without any closure, which marred the otherwise smooth flow of the narrative. Also, the fact that Bangladesh was covered only fleetingly in the final twenty pages seemed like a missed opportunity to document the political economy of riverine Bangladesh from an Indian perspective. But these minor quibbles aside, The Braided River is a delightful work of travel literature that succeeds admirably in doing what all good travel writing ought to do: open the reader’s eyes to the beauty and wonder inherent in the ordinary and the everyday. I hope it inspires budding travel writers to undertake similar expeditions that do justice to the various regions and sub-regions of India.
Reproduced from my review in The Indian Express:
https://indianexpress.com/article/boo...
December 29, 2021
This book is an excellent travelogue along many places along the Brahmaputra, interspersed with useful nuggets of historical and political commentary. Some passages were very well written and humorous.
Having said that, the thing I found extremely annoying was the paternalistic tone taken towards the people of the North-east. From exaggerated colonial stereotypes of the ‘lazy Assamese’ to terming tribal chiefs of Arunachal Pradesh as being ‘straight out of Kung fu movies’, some of these bordered on being racist. I chose to ignore these in favour of the more interesting travel and history writing for the rating.
Having said that, the thing I found extremely annoying was the paternalistic tone taken towards the people of the North-east. From exaggerated colonial stereotypes of the ‘lazy Assamese’ to terming tribal chiefs of Arunachal Pradesh as being ‘straight out of Kung fu movies’, some of these bordered on being racist. I chose to ignore these in favour of the more interesting travel and history writing for the rating.
October 12, 2021
With a keen interest in travelogues I always look forward for indian authors and when I came to know of the upcoming book I did preorder.
But i must say i was terribly disappointed. The book - while giving decent info on Brahmaputra - was overall abrupt and not coherently put together. Also, I think the latter part of the book either seemed to be of a different travel date or undertaken solo as compared to the earlier part where the author had a friend along.
Further the author brought in his political leanings and kept repeating things like Brahminism and Bania ad nauseum without even - I am sure - having a clue of what the former means. Also, he believes that that all the development work happens to people can make money and nothing else.
But i must say i was terribly disappointed. The book - while giving decent info on Brahmaputra - was overall abrupt and not coherently put together. Also, I think the latter part of the book either seemed to be of a different travel date or undertaken solo as compared to the earlier part where the author had a friend along.
Further the author brought in his political leanings and kept repeating things like Brahminism and Bania ad nauseum without even - I am sure - having a clue of what the former means. Also, he believes that that all the development work happens to people can make money and nothing else.
June 29, 2021
The book is a welcome step towards telling the story of Brahmaputra, a seemingly endless river with its own stories. Writer touches upon stories of Assam also along the journey. What I wanted more in the book is more description of the river, rather than focussing on the political commentary on the state. Some of views of the author seems to be one sided and i need not necessarily agree with it. Nonetheless, its an welcome addition of a book on the river. The story of Brahmaputra and it's impact on the social economic life of Assam and all the way to Bangladesh deserves to be heard more often.
December 7, 2024
What comes to your mind when you think of the first travelogue you have read? For me, it was a lot of condescension, and a display of superiority which now I think as Naivety and bluster, fit to impress only an innocent 5 year old, whom I was then. My first experience of reading Travelogues was at that early age in my mother tongue Tamil. Written by some of the popular writers of those times who always bragged about their visits to Europe and the West, in an effort to impress the masses who did not have means to travel themselves.
Later years, as I grew up and started travelling to all those places, I realised how shallow their narratives were. By then, my reading had expanded into much deeper subjects and I wanted to see more from a travelogue. Particularly, I wanted Travelogues to provide me with historical background on behavioural aspects of the people and the culture of the places I read about.
All the while I was looking at places outside my Country, thinking those are the places I knew little about.
Oh how wrong I was, I realized, when I started reading Samrat choudhury’s “The Braided River”, a Travelogue along the Path of Brahmaputra. That is when I also realized the lack of my understanding about cultures and people in my own country. This lack of understanding is not singular, but something I share with most of my countrymen, particularly so in the southern part where I hail from.
The picture of the North east most of us have is all about the Lush green mountain Valleys, gushing mountain streams and an air of mystery that rhymes with the misty photos of the mountains we see.
Particularly during these troubled times, that lack of understanding has been prevalently used up by the motivated sides to set narratives that are being lapped up by the larger population and is dividing the nation slowly but surely.
When I started reading this book, slowly those mists started unravelling for me. The book, a slow starter nevertheless, is a painstaking effort in not just narration of strange landscapes and customs, but a more elaborate effort in providing a peek at the cultures, their histories, their current state and their political and actual realities.
The author stays true to his stated objective all along the book with just a dose of natural, dry, easy air of joviality that does not divert the focus from the grim facts and simple people.
“Going off on quests was what people in books written by rich people with social security or trust funds did. I loved those stories, but staying alive and earning a living were the quests that I had been brought up to understand as real.”
“The sensible thing to do, it seemed, was to say no. So I did what anyone in such a situation ought to do – I said yes without sweating the details, and plunged right in.”
“New jungle saying: Pretty mountain stream makes for nice scenery, not nice swim.”
“I walked down to a boulder in the river and filled my water bottle with the cold, clear water. Dipping more than a finger or toe was out of the question. No one who got into this water was likely to get out alive. It’s said that everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die, and that is absolutely true – and quite sensible. After all, the existence of heaven is a matter of considerable doubt, whereas the existence of death is not.”
The first false notion that the book expels is about the river as a singular entity. As we move forward we understand the full gravity of the name “Braided river” that displays the multiple tributaries and distributaries that at times are completely different from other siblings, just as the people along the shores are.
“somewhere around Dibru Saikhowa in Assam where three other ribbons of blue, representing the Siang (also known as Dihang), Lohit and Dibang, meet untidily to become the Brahmaputra.”
“This is where the rivers Siang, Lohit and Dibang merge in the area around the massive river island, roughly 35 km long and 10 km wide, on which the park is located. The untidy tassels of water they together form is the Brahmaputra.”
“Hydrologists call it a ‘braided river’. The term starts to make sense when you see the Brahmaputra, not from a bank, but from somewhere in the middle. Braids of water run into one another. Sometimes a channel seems to flow in a direction opposite to the channel next to it. The dance of creation and destruction is visible in the play between sand and water. The fine, silvery white river sand accumulates over time to form sandbars, which turn into little islands. Then some subtle balance in the forces at work may shift from one side to another. The water may start to nibble away at the island.”
“In some places, the forest gives way to fields on one side of the road. We crossed an occasional village with thatched bamboo houses, paddy in the fields, banana plants and coconut trees, chickens, goats and cattle. The people there are not rich, but they seem to have enough of what they need – food and shelter, clean air, good water. Small dish antennas on the roofs of some huts indicated that they also have entertainment, but that’s where trouble starts: they might not remain contented with their simple life for long. The advertisements with their siren songs and TV news with its frequent messages of hate must have, along with all the wonders that flow into mobile phones, started working on their minds.”
The politics of the countries that these bands of river pass through is so much mired in past historical acts of errors, intentional and unintentional.
“China has never recognized the McMahon line that India considers the boundary between the two countries. In Chinese maps, roughly 83,000 square kilometres of the Brahmaputra river basin in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam is ‘Southern Tibet’.”
“There is, however, considerable popular suspicion that anything that happens to the waters of the Brahmaputra or Siang must be due to Chinese perfidy. While there are good reasons for being suspicious, the suspicion tends on occasion to slide into conspiracy theory. In December 2017, reports began to appear in the Indian media of the waters of the Siang turning turbid and grey. The cause for it was not known, but as usual, suspicion immediately fell on China. ‘Images show China may be using a secret tunnel to divert Brahmaputra water into desert,’ a headline in an Indian online publication called The Print announced. The alarmist report, by a retired colonel named Vinayak Bhat, accompanied by low quality satellite images, announced that ‘latest satellite imagery shows a massive new dam on the Brahmaputra river – Yarlong Tsangpo in Tibetan – with an underground tunnel that seems to engulf the entire water flow for almost one kilometre.’ The images showed that ‘The purpose of this project is possibly for diverting a portion of the Brahmaputra to the parched areas of Taklamakan desert,’ the officer declared. He had an explanation for the darkening waters of the Siang. ‘Satellite imagery shows that polymer resin adhesives are being sprayed by China all around this project area as a dust suppressant system,’ he noted. He also saw, in the satellite images, stone crushers and cement plants at the site. The report was picked up by other media outlets and created a furore in India.”
“Such deep suspicion between the two Asian giants is fairly recent. The Indic and Sinic cultures have coexisted and influenced one another and all of Southeast and East Asia besides, through thousands of years, without ever coming into direct conflict. The high-altitude desert of Tibet and the Himalayan mountains were considerable barriers. Although the route over the mountains and through the Tibetan plateau represented the shortest route between the political and cultural heartlands of the two countries, even as late as 1951, Tibetan representatives of the Dalai Lama who signed away their country’s sovereignty to China through the Seventeen Point Agreement travelled back from Beijing via the easiest route – by ship from Shanghai to Kolkata and then overland through Sikkim into Tibet on horseback.25 It was the death of distance, made possible by modern transport and communication technologies, that led to the first tussles between the two countries.”
The book also recounts the wildlife along the path that we have rarely heard of and has a lot of surprises packed for naturalists and photographers.
“Dibru Saikhowa is famous for its feral horses, which inhabit the grasslands. The more thickly forested areas have wilder animals, including elephants and tigers.”
“It was a herd of wild water buffaloes, a rare and endangered species. There are only around 3,400 of them left in the world. The wild buffalo is one of the most dangerous animals in the jungle. The Cape buffalo was considered one of the ‘big five’ by hunters in Africa, the other four being the lion, elephant, rhino and leopard. In India, the tiger substituted the lion in most places in the big five rankings. The water buffalo, which weighs around a ton, replaced its smaller African cousin, the Cape buffalo.”
As we meander along the Arunachal and Assam, the demographic pastel along with the dismal public facility is striking and revealing
“The dysfunctional ATMs contrasted with the smoothly functioning places of worship all over the town. I spotted a gurdwara, Hindu temple, Buddhist temple, Donyi Polo Vidya Niketan with images of Goddess Saraswati and Bharat Mata at the entrance, and churches of various denominations.”
“Donyi Polo is a codified version of the old animistic nature worship of the Adis. The sun and the moon are its presiding deities.”
More than anything how the political cauldron is being stirred up by the right wing narratives set by their omni-present operatives are revelations.
“The Adi experience in Arunachal was part of an ongoing tussle between various tribal communities across India wherein the RSS, which was working for Hindu consolidation against what it perceived as aggressive proselytization by some Muslim and Christian organisations, had been trying to draw animistic tribal religions into the greater Hindu fold.”
The heart of the matter is, in the fact that we often think northwest in a very wishy-washy way… the fact is every group there are not “purely” indigenous to that geography. Also the history of Ahoms which was much invisible to history of India until the Sangh appropriated it to suit its narrative is a chequered one. Longest dynasty in Indian history, whose first genesis started by those who came from Yunnan in China is a tale to behold. The fact those who were of animistic faith were given “Hindu” identity by Bengali Brahmin onslaught is a typical Indian story
What is striking and pertinent to understand is that the land we are looking at has people who are rarely “completely indigenous” to the land they inhabit as is peddled today.
“The fact of the matter is that the Ahom dynasty was established by a group of men from the Shan hills of Myanmar and adjacent areas in what is now Yunnan province in China. A prince named Siu Ka Pha or Sukapha had migrated from there through the jungles and hills with a band of followers in the early years of the thirteenth century.”
“Today, much of this long and complicated history is forgotten. What is remembered by some chauvinists is a battle between the Ahom forces, characterized as a Hindu army, and the Mughal forces, seen as a Muslim force. This is a vast oversimplification; it was a battle between two empires, not a riot between two religious communities. Not only was the Mughal general a Hindu Rajput, there were also Muslim commanders in the Ahom army at key positions. One of them, Bagh Hazarika alias Ismail Siddique, is remembered for having slipped into the Mughal camps and disabled their cannons before the Battle of Saraighat. His name, Bagh Hazarika, is really a title. He was called ‘Bagh’, meaning tiger, because legend has it that he fought and killed one with his bare hands. The Hazarika title was given by the Ahom king who put him in charge of 1,000 foot soldiers..”
“Assamese ‘jatiyobadi’ chauvinists tend to remember it in different ethnic terms. For them, it was a battle between Ahoms and Bongals. In their language, the world consists of Axomiyas, meaning Assamese, who are true sons of the Assam soil, and Bongals, who are not. Technically even a Portuguese mercenary – some of whom fought in the Mughal navy – would thus be a Bongal, though here skin colour begins to play a role; the white outsiders used to be called Boga Bongals, meanings white Bongals, by the Ahom kingdom’s peasantry. Local hill tribes, though, were and are recognized as having distinct ‘insider’ identities; thus the Jaintia, Bodo, Kachari, Naga, Adi and other tribes from the neighbourhood, while not Axomiyas, were also not Bongals. The Rajput Ram Singh from Jaipur, who led the Mughal invasion of Assam on Aurangzeb’s command, and the Persian from Isfahan, Mir Jumla, were both Bongals by this definition. Their identities are largely forgotten; in popular lore, only Lachit’s name remains and the memory that he inflicted a crushing defeat on the Bongals. The term came gradually to be identified with speakers of the Bengali language and, after the birth of Bangladesh in 1971, with Bangladeshis. Following the advent of British colonial rule in Assam and the standardization of languages that accompanied the spread of the printing press, linguistic identities came to be fixed, and what had previously been a political conflict between neighbouring kingdoms now became an ethnic conflict between neighbouring ethnicities. Even the Battle of Saraighat became, in this imagination, a conflict between Assamese and Bengali forces, or Hindus and Muslims”
“The old tantrics have largely disappeared from view, even at Kamakhya. Hinduism alone among the great world religions openly preserves within itself the ancient pagan past, but it has undergone a process of gentrifiction going back centuries. The old gods of Greece and Rome, Egypt and Persia and Arabia, Mexico and Scandinavia … they are all long dead. Hinduism retains its ancient polytheistic traditions and flows in multiple braids, but under the influence of a political Hinduism with a distinct Brahmin–Baniya flavour, the faith is, for better and for worse, becoming homogenized and getting ‘cleaned up’ to be more vegetarian, more abstemious and less Shakta.”
The compelling fact that the book brings out is that, Microcosm of every issue that ails India is in the north east.
In the end the mist that surrounded our perception about the North East is slowly dispelled. But I am not sure that I like the scene that is revealed anymore. But the Important thing is that we climb down from the dreamy land that we have in our imaginations and realize we have a responsibility to the lands that we claim as part of the nation and to the people we call our brethren.
Later years, as I grew up and started travelling to all those places, I realised how shallow their narratives were. By then, my reading had expanded into much deeper subjects and I wanted to see more from a travelogue. Particularly, I wanted Travelogues to provide me with historical background on behavioural aspects of the people and the culture of the places I read about.
All the while I was looking at places outside my Country, thinking those are the places I knew little about.
Oh how wrong I was, I realized, when I started reading Samrat choudhury’s “The Braided River”, a Travelogue along the Path of Brahmaputra. That is when I also realized the lack of my understanding about cultures and people in my own country. This lack of understanding is not singular, but something I share with most of my countrymen, particularly so in the southern part where I hail from.
The picture of the North east most of us have is all about the Lush green mountain Valleys, gushing mountain streams and an air of mystery that rhymes with the misty photos of the mountains we see.
Particularly during these troubled times, that lack of understanding has been prevalently used up by the motivated sides to set narratives that are being lapped up by the larger population and is dividing the nation slowly but surely.
When I started reading this book, slowly those mists started unravelling for me. The book, a slow starter nevertheless, is a painstaking effort in not just narration of strange landscapes and customs, but a more elaborate effort in providing a peek at the cultures, their histories, their current state and their political and actual realities.
The author stays true to his stated objective all along the book with just a dose of natural, dry, easy air of joviality that does not divert the focus from the grim facts and simple people.
“Going off on quests was what people in books written by rich people with social security or trust funds did. I loved those stories, but staying alive and earning a living were the quests that I had been brought up to understand as real.”
“The sensible thing to do, it seemed, was to say no. So I did what anyone in such a situation ought to do – I said yes without sweating the details, and plunged right in.”
“New jungle saying: Pretty mountain stream makes for nice scenery, not nice swim.”
“I walked down to a boulder in the river and filled my water bottle with the cold, clear water. Dipping more than a finger or toe was out of the question. No one who got into this water was likely to get out alive. It’s said that everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die, and that is absolutely true – and quite sensible. After all, the existence of heaven is a matter of considerable doubt, whereas the existence of death is not.”
The first false notion that the book expels is about the river as a singular entity. As we move forward we understand the full gravity of the name “Braided river” that displays the multiple tributaries and distributaries that at times are completely different from other siblings, just as the people along the shores are.
“somewhere around Dibru Saikhowa in Assam where three other ribbons of blue, representing the Siang (also known as Dihang), Lohit and Dibang, meet untidily to become the Brahmaputra.”
“This is where the rivers Siang, Lohit and Dibang merge in the area around the massive river island, roughly 35 km long and 10 km wide, on which the park is located. The untidy tassels of water they together form is the Brahmaputra.”
“Hydrologists call it a ‘braided river’. The term starts to make sense when you see the Brahmaputra, not from a bank, but from somewhere in the middle. Braids of water run into one another. Sometimes a channel seems to flow in a direction opposite to the channel next to it. The dance of creation and destruction is visible in the play between sand and water. The fine, silvery white river sand accumulates over time to form sandbars, which turn into little islands. Then some subtle balance in the forces at work may shift from one side to another. The water may start to nibble away at the island.”
“In some places, the forest gives way to fields on one side of the road. We crossed an occasional village with thatched bamboo houses, paddy in the fields, banana plants and coconut trees, chickens, goats and cattle. The people there are not rich, but they seem to have enough of what they need – food and shelter, clean air, good water. Small dish antennas on the roofs of some huts indicated that they also have entertainment, but that’s where trouble starts: they might not remain contented with their simple life for long. The advertisements with their siren songs and TV news with its frequent messages of hate must have, along with all the wonders that flow into mobile phones, started working on their minds.”
The politics of the countries that these bands of river pass through is so much mired in past historical acts of errors, intentional and unintentional.
“China has never recognized the McMahon line that India considers the boundary between the two countries. In Chinese maps, roughly 83,000 square kilometres of the Brahmaputra river basin in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam is ‘Southern Tibet’.”
“There is, however, considerable popular suspicion that anything that happens to the waters of the Brahmaputra or Siang must be due to Chinese perfidy. While there are good reasons for being suspicious, the suspicion tends on occasion to slide into conspiracy theory. In December 2017, reports began to appear in the Indian media of the waters of the Siang turning turbid and grey. The cause for it was not known, but as usual, suspicion immediately fell on China. ‘Images show China may be using a secret tunnel to divert Brahmaputra water into desert,’ a headline in an Indian online publication called The Print announced. The alarmist report, by a retired colonel named Vinayak Bhat, accompanied by low quality satellite images, announced that ‘latest satellite imagery shows a massive new dam on the Brahmaputra river – Yarlong Tsangpo in Tibetan – with an underground tunnel that seems to engulf the entire water flow for almost one kilometre.’ The images showed that ‘The purpose of this project is possibly for diverting a portion of the Brahmaputra to the parched areas of Taklamakan desert,’ the officer declared. He had an explanation for the darkening waters of the Siang. ‘Satellite imagery shows that polymer resin adhesives are being sprayed by China all around this project area as a dust suppressant system,’ he noted. He also saw, in the satellite images, stone crushers and cement plants at the site. The report was picked up by other media outlets and created a furore in India.”
“Such deep suspicion between the two Asian giants is fairly recent. The Indic and Sinic cultures have coexisted and influenced one another and all of Southeast and East Asia besides, through thousands of years, without ever coming into direct conflict. The high-altitude desert of Tibet and the Himalayan mountains were considerable barriers. Although the route over the mountains and through the Tibetan plateau represented the shortest route between the political and cultural heartlands of the two countries, even as late as 1951, Tibetan representatives of the Dalai Lama who signed away their country’s sovereignty to China through the Seventeen Point Agreement travelled back from Beijing via the easiest route – by ship from Shanghai to Kolkata and then overland through Sikkim into Tibet on horseback.25 It was the death of distance, made possible by modern transport and communication technologies, that led to the first tussles between the two countries.”
The book also recounts the wildlife along the path that we have rarely heard of and has a lot of surprises packed for naturalists and photographers.
“Dibru Saikhowa is famous for its feral horses, which inhabit the grasslands. The more thickly forested areas have wilder animals, including elephants and tigers.”
“It was a herd of wild water buffaloes, a rare and endangered species. There are only around 3,400 of them left in the world. The wild buffalo is one of the most dangerous animals in the jungle. The Cape buffalo was considered one of the ‘big five’ by hunters in Africa, the other four being the lion, elephant, rhino and leopard. In India, the tiger substituted the lion in most places in the big five rankings. The water buffalo, which weighs around a ton, replaced its smaller African cousin, the Cape buffalo.”
As we meander along the Arunachal and Assam, the demographic pastel along with the dismal public facility is striking and revealing
“The dysfunctional ATMs contrasted with the smoothly functioning places of worship all over the town. I spotted a gurdwara, Hindu temple, Buddhist temple, Donyi Polo Vidya Niketan with images of Goddess Saraswati and Bharat Mata at the entrance, and churches of various denominations.”
“Donyi Polo is a codified version of the old animistic nature worship of the Adis. The sun and the moon are its presiding deities.”
More than anything how the political cauldron is being stirred up by the right wing narratives set by their omni-present operatives are revelations.
“The Adi experience in Arunachal was part of an ongoing tussle between various tribal communities across India wherein the RSS, which was working for Hindu consolidation against what it perceived as aggressive proselytization by some Muslim and Christian organisations, had been trying to draw animistic tribal religions into the greater Hindu fold.”
The heart of the matter is, in the fact that we often think northwest in a very wishy-washy way… the fact is every group there are not “purely” indigenous to that geography. Also the history of Ahoms which was much invisible to history of India until the Sangh appropriated it to suit its narrative is a chequered one. Longest dynasty in Indian history, whose first genesis started by those who came from Yunnan in China is a tale to behold. The fact those who were of animistic faith were given “Hindu” identity by Bengali Brahmin onslaught is a typical Indian story
What is striking and pertinent to understand is that the land we are looking at has people who are rarely “completely indigenous” to the land they inhabit as is peddled today.
“The fact of the matter is that the Ahom dynasty was established by a group of men from the Shan hills of Myanmar and adjacent areas in what is now Yunnan province in China. A prince named Siu Ka Pha or Sukapha had migrated from there through the jungles and hills with a band of followers in the early years of the thirteenth century.”
“Today, much of this long and complicated history is forgotten. What is remembered by some chauvinists is a battle between the Ahom forces, characterized as a Hindu army, and the Mughal forces, seen as a Muslim force. This is a vast oversimplification; it was a battle between two empires, not a riot between two religious communities. Not only was the Mughal general a Hindu Rajput, there were also Muslim commanders in the Ahom army at key positions. One of them, Bagh Hazarika alias Ismail Siddique, is remembered for having slipped into the Mughal camps and disabled their cannons before the Battle of Saraighat. His name, Bagh Hazarika, is really a title. He was called ‘Bagh’, meaning tiger, because legend has it that he fought and killed one with his bare hands. The Hazarika title was given by the Ahom king who put him in charge of 1,000 foot soldiers..”
“Assamese ‘jatiyobadi’ chauvinists tend to remember it in different ethnic terms. For them, it was a battle between Ahoms and Bongals. In their language, the world consists of Axomiyas, meaning Assamese, who are true sons of the Assam soil, and Bongals, who are not. Technically even a Portuguese mercenary – some of whom fought in the Mughal navy – would thus be a Bongal, though here skin colour begins to play a role; the white outsiders used to be called Boga Bongals, meanings white Bongals, by the Ahom kingdom’s peasantry. Local hill tribes, though, were and are recognized as having distinct ‘insider’ identities; thus the Jaintia, Bodo, Kachari, Naga, Adi and other tribes from the neighbourhood, while not Axomiyas, were also not Bongals. The Rajput Ram Singh from Jaipur, who led the Mughal invasion of Assam on Aurangzeb’s command, and the Persian from Isfahan, Mir Jumla, were both Bongals by this definition. Their identities are largely forgotten; in popular lore, only Lachit’s name remains and the memory that he inflicted a crushing defeat on the Bongals. The term came gradually to be identified with speakers of the Bengali language and, after the birth of Bangladesh in 1971, with Bangladeshis. Following the advent of British colonial rule in Assam and the standardization of languages that accompanied the spread of the printing press, linguistic identities came to be fixed, and what had previously been a political conflict between neighbouring kingdoms now became an ethnic conflict between neighbouring ethnicities. Even the Battle of Saraighat became, in this imagination, a conflict between Assamese and Bengali forces, or Hindus and Muslims”
“The old tantrics have largely disappeared from view, even at Kamakhya. Hinduism alone among the great world religions openly preserves within itself the ancient pagan past, but it has undergone a process of gentrifiction going back centuries. The old gods of Greece and Rome, Egypt and Persia and Arabia, Mexico and Scandinavia … they are all long dead. Hinduism retains its ancient polytheistic traditions and flows in multiple braids, but under the influence of a political Hinduism with a distinct Brahmin–Baniya flavour, the faith is, for better and for worse, becoming homogenized and getting ‘cleaned up’ to be more vegetarian, more abstemious and less Shakta.”
The compelling fact that the book brings out is that, Microcosm of every issue that ails India is in the north east.
In the end the mist that surrounded our perception about the North East is slowly dispelled. But I am not sure that I like the scene that is revealed anymore. But the Important thing is that we climb down from the dreamy land that we have in our imaginations and realize we have a responsibility to the lands that we claim as part of the nation and to the people we call our brethren.
November 14, 2021
Interesting account of the author's travels along the Brahmaputra river, from Arunachal Pradesh to the Sunderban delta. The author succinctly describes the cities, their history, the culture, the people and his interactions with them. The book gives the reader sufficient insights into a region relatively unexplored/less promoted
September 11, 2022
A gifted writer that has woven an excellent strory about the Bramhaputra/Jamuna as it is referred in Bangladesh. The book was elaborate,touching and refreshing to read about the accounts of various places & history of those places the river passes through.
A great read !
A great read !
May 23, 2021
I have never been to the north east with Siliguri being the max “east” of my travels. Samrat has brought this world alive for me. His easy prose makes you feel that you are the trio with him. What stood out for me was his attempt to give historical context to all of the places, something which one can miss even as you are passing through that place. And his description of the encounters, tea, food et al paints the whole scene in front of our eyes
October 2, 2021
The author has undertaken very painstaking journey to remote places in order to understand the life and culture around Brahmaputra. Written in very lucid language.
April 25, 2024
History, culture and politics, carved my might river often neglected by people of india.
Great work to bring these fact and event from our past
Great work to bring these fact and event from our past
July 17, 2023
The common Hindi boast "Ghat ghat ka pani piya hai" (I have drunk the water of many ghats) now has some basis thanks to the author Samrat Choudhury, who set out on a journey to follow the Brahmaputra, drank the water of its tributaries and of the river itself, and took a dip in its water.
The Brahmaputra is also known as the braided river due to the multiple tributaries and vast channels that run parallel to this great river. The river changes its name and sex once it enters Bangladesh, From Barhamaputra (masculine) to Jamuna (feminine), merges with the Ganges, then becomes Padma, and finally plunges into the Bay of Bengal with the name Meghna.
Hydrologists call it a braided river. The term starts to make sense when you see the Brahmaputra, not from a bank, but from somewhere in the middle. Braids of water run into one another. Sometimes a channel seems to flow in a direction opposite to the channel next to it. The dance of creation and destruction is visible in the play between sand and water. The fine, silvery white river sand accumulates over time to form sandbars, which turn into lite islands. Then some subtle balance in the forces at work may shift the island. from one side to another. The water may start to nibble away, and it is possible that the island may disappear. Or it may not.
The Brahmaputra, it is older than the Himalays:
In the Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era, a sea called Tethys existed between the Tibetan and Indian land masses... which was later uplifted by a geological upheaval into the Himalayan mountain range. A corollary to this hypothesis is that in the prehistoric past the Tsangpo had actually flowed from east to west. The Brahmaputra is called an antecedent river, and a paleo-Brahmaputra is generally accepted by experts to have flowed in what is now the Tibetan plateau before the Himalayas rose. The tributaries of the Tsangpo, even today, allow east to west, which is opposite to the Tsangpo's current flow. The Cretaceous period lasted from approximately 145.5 million years ago to 65.5 million years ago. It followed the Jurassic period. Dinosaurs still roamed the earth; their extinction is believed to have occurred at the end of the Cretaceous period around the time when an asteroid hit the earth in the Yucatan peninsula in what is now Mexico, though it is not certain if the asteroid caused the extinction. The Himalayas had not yet formed at that time. The mountains are estimated to have started forming around 20 million years ago. Geologists estimate they achieved their great heights less than a million years ago. Before they rose, a river flowing south of the watershed that became the Himalayas may have 'captured' a stream flowing to its north - the ancestor of the Tsangpo - thus giving rise to the Brahmaputra. In Dibru Saikhowa, this is where the rivers Siang, Lohit and Dibang merge in the area around the massive river island, roughly 35 km long and 10 km wide, on which the park is located. The untidy tassels of water they together form is the Brahmaputra.
To think only the main channel is the river is folly; in fact, the whole combination of channels and sandbanks constitutes the river. The Dibru, too, is a part of it. So is the river channel we had seen on our first day out in Dibrugarh.The river is the sum of its parts, and much more. It has come to be that the Siang, which is the longest and strongest of its three formative tributaries, is seen as the Brahmaputra; but the part is not the whole. In terms of water volume, the Siang is at best about a third the size of the Brahmaputra. The Lohit, which meets the Siang on the northern shore of Dibru Saikhowa, is no minnow. And the Dibang in monsoon carries a surprisingly large volume of water, more than the Lohit. It is almost as big as the Siang in the rainy season. Many other tributaries that are great, powerful rivers in themselves, such as the Subansiri, Manas, Teesta and Kopili flow into the Brahmaputra, making it the phenomenon of nature that it is.
Let's review the actual route of the river from its Source to its destination :
The river that is bright and clear on the map, a somewhat tasselled ribbon of blue winding its way down from... well, somewhere around Dibru Saikhowa in Assam where three other ribbons of blue, representing the Siang (also known as Dihang), Lohit and Dibang, meet untidily to become the Brahmaputra. Its origins, according to all authorities, lie in Tibet, near Mount Kailash, at an altitude of around 5,150 m, where it starts life as the Yarlung Tsangpo. From there, it flows from west to east before making a U-turn (The Great Bend) and entering Arunachal Pradesh. There its name changes to Siang. The Siang then gathers more streams and flows down through the Arunachal hills towards the plains of Assam. At the foothills, it meets the Lohit and Dibang. Downstream of this confluence, it is the Brahmaputra. The Brahmaputra in turn flows through Assam, gathering yet more streams, before entering Bangladesh. Upon entering that country it undergoes one more change in nomenclature, this time accompanied by a sex change - the 'male Brahmaputra, for some reason, becomes the 'female Jamuna. The Brahmaputra as Jamuna makes its way towards an eventual confluence with the Ganga, known in Bangladesh as the Padma. This great river of many great rivers finally flows into the Bay of Bengal, after undergoing yet another change of name the Meghna. Its whole length is 2,880 km.
A river is not a canal. It is a living, organic entity. It changes with the seasons. It ebbs and flows. The word for the river's rise is 'jwar', and its fall is called 'bhata, and these words are inscribed into the geographies and cultures of the riverine lands. Its ebb and flow are the life pulsating through the land. In the rains, up in the green forested hills of Northeast India, the earth rejoices in songs of water. Its gurgling, splashing sounds, as it makes its way down towards the Brahmaputra, soft but insistent, are everywhere - and in every little trickle, there is, in a sense, the Brahmaputra. It is a time of rejuvenation and rebirth - a time etched into the human geography of the land as fertility rites, such as the Ambabuchi Mela at Kamakhya celebrates the menstruation of the goddess.
Fluidity is the very essence of water. It is the nature of the river to be fluid; it has no fixed name, no address, no unchanging course. You can call it the Tsangpo in Tibet and the Siang in the hills of Arunachal, the Dihang in the plains, the Brahmaputra after, the Jamuna in Bangladesh, the Padma after it merges with the Ganga, and the Meghna at the end before it loses itself in the Bay of Bengal. You can call it what you will - because those are but mere local names, and they have no fixity. I can show you a Yamuna in north India too, that was once a river like the Jamuna in Bangladesh. They are names on maps, a human invention that came into being scant centuries ago after the river that is older than the Himalayas had lived, in one form or another, for a few million years.
At the birth of the river more than 1000 km upstream where the braids of the Siang meet those of the Dibang and Lohit. The place where the Brahmaputra is formed is inexact. It had not been easy to find the river itself, gigantic though it is, because I had been looking for a reality that reflected the neatness and order of lines on a map. I was looking for three streams of water called Siang, Lohit and Dibang meeting at one point, after which there would be one big stream, Siang plus Lohit plus Dibang, called the Brahmaputra. It was of course stupidity. There is no such point. The Brahmaputra is not a single big stream made up of three smaller streams.
The map is never the territory. Somewhere in the vague recesses of my memory, there is a story, perhaps read ages ago, of a man who wants to draw the greatest map of all time, the most detailed ever. He eventually draws a map as large as the earth itself. Even that map would be inexact, for it would be in two dimensions, not three. To accurately model the earth in all its detail would need another earth. "This is China,' we say, and this is India, and downriver from here is Bangladesh.' The river doesn't know, and it doesn't care. When an earthquake causes a landslide to muddy the waters of the Tsangpo in eastern Tibet, the fishermen in Goalpara lament their falling fish catch. When China and India plan dams and river diversion or interlinking projects, farmers and fisherfolk in Bangladesh anticipate devastation.
The devastation of flood visits the riverine lands every year. There are floods in the floodplains of the Brahmaputra in Assam and further downriver in Bangladesh. A company called The East India Company, naturally interested, like all companies, in maximizing revenues, had marked some of these lands near the river as wastelands and eventually put them to use for paddy and jute cultivation. It was great for the economy, but the river doesn't know or care that there are now permanent human settlements on the lands that are part of its annual monsoon home. Of course, we are powerful, we can dam the river. We just don't fully know what harm that will eventually do to the cycle of life in the lands through which it flows, and to the ocean into which it flows.
To see the river in its entirety is to see the connectedness of nature and love the intricate workings of the cycle of life - that cycle which pulses with the seasons, and the movement of water from sea to mountain and back to sea. We may dam the river on land, but if we wish to survive as organic beings, we cannot dam the great river in the sky that flows with the monsoon clouds. From the Himalaya to the Bay of Bengal, it is all one unity, and the smallest fish that spawns in a wetland of the Kaziranga in the Brahmaputra's seasonal floods is as much a part of it as the largest elephants that head up the Karbi Hills to escape the rising waters. The Brahmaputra is not a canal. It does not flow between two neat banks. Its untidy braids, channels of history and commerce, witness to the ebb and flow of empires, are the architects of the surrounding landscape of nature and of humans.
Waters, peoples, languages and cultures have flowed into one another along the entire length of the river for thousands of years. Many streams of humanity have flowed in to become braids in the cultural mainstreams of the riverine lands by the Siang, Brahmaputra and Jamuna. Industries that shaped the economy have emerged from global interactions along its banks; Assam tea became Assam tea with the contributions of forgotten Singpho chieftains, Chinese growers, British planters, men and women of the tea tribes, and Calcutta merchants. Time and movement have added variety even to the river itself. Take the water hyacinth, for example. No sight is more emblematic of the river's flow than a clump of this plant bobbing downriver with the current. It seems an ageless sight, a part of the Brahmaputra's landscape. It is a plant from South America that came to India with ships in the British colonial period, and survived all attempts to exterminate it. Like its South American cousin, the potato, and the chilli plant from Mexico, it has flowed in, across space and over time, and become ancient in its new home.
"Mahabahu Brahmaputra' is, as Bhupen Hazarika sang, the pilgrimage of great confluences. You cannot know the river without knowing flow.
The Brahmaputra is also known as the braided river due to the multiple tributaries and vast channels that run parallel to this great river. The river changes its name and sex once it enters Bangladesh, From Barhamaputra (masculine) to Jamuna (feminine), merges with the Ganges, then becomes Padma, and finally plunges into the Bay of Bengal with the name Meghna.
Hydrologists call it a braided river. The term starts to make sense when you see the Brahmaputra, not from a bank, but from somewhere in the middle. Braids of water run into one another. Sometimes a channel seems to flow in a direction opposite to the channel next to it. The dance of creation and destruction is visible in the play between sand and water. The fine, silvery white river sand accumulates over time to form sandbars, which turn into lite islands. Then some subtle balance in the forces at work may shift the island. from one side to another. The water may start to nibble away, and it is possible that the island may disappear. Or it may not.
The Brahmaputra, it is older than the Himalays:
In the Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era, a sea called Tethys existed between the Tibetan and Indian land masses... which was later uplifted by a geological upheaval into the Himalayan mountain range. A corollary to this hypothesis is that in the prehistoric past the Tsangpo had actually flowed from east to west. The Brahmaputra is called an antecedent river, and a paleo-Brahmaputra is generally accepted by experts to have flowed in what is now the Tibetan plateau before the Himalayas rose. The tributaries of the Tsangpo, even today, allow east to west, which is opposite to the Tsangpo's current flow. The Cretaceous period lasted from approximately 145.5 million years ago to 65.5 million years ago. It followed the Jurassic period. Dinosaurs still roamed the earth; their extinction is believed to have occurred at the end of the Cretaceous period around the time when an asteroid hit the earth in the Yucatan peninsula in what is now Mexico, though it is not certain if the asteroid caused the extinction. The Himalayas had not yet formed at that time. The mountains are estimated to have started forming around 20 million years ago. Geologists estimate they achieved their great heights less than a million years ago. Before they rose, a river flowing south of the watershed that became the Himalayas may have 'captured' a stream flowing to its north - the ancestor of the Tsangpo - thus giving rise to the Brahmaputra. In Dibru Saikhowa, this is where the rivers Siang, Lohit and Dibang merge in the area around the massive river island, roughly 35 km long and 10 km wide, on which the park is located. The untidy tassels of water they together form is the Brahmaputra.
To think only the main channel is the river is folly; in fact, the whole combination of channels and sandbanks constitutes the river. The Dibru, too, is a part of it. So is the river channel we had seen on our first day out in Dibrugarh.The river is the sum of its parts, and much more. It has come to be that the Siang, which is the longest and strongest of its three formative tributaries, is seen as the Brahmaputra; but the part is not the whole. In terms of water volume, the Siang is at best about a third the size of the Brahmaputra. The Lohit, which meets the Siang on the northern shore of Dibru Saikhowa, is no minnow. And the Dibang in monsoon carries a surprisingly large volume of water, more than the Lohit. It is almost as big as the Siang in the rainy season. Many other tributaries that are great, powerful rivers in themselves, such as the Subansiri, Manas, Teesta and Kopili flow into the Brahmaputra, making it the phenomenon of nature that it is.
Let's review the actual route of the river from its Source to its destination :
The river that is bright and clear on the map, a somewhat tasselled ribbon of blue winding its way down from... well, somewhere around Dibru Saikhowa in Assam where three other ribbons of blue, representing the Siang (also known as Dihang), Lohit and Dibang, meet untidily to become the Brahmaputra. Its origins, according to all authorities, lie in Tibet, near Mount Kailash, at an altitude of around 5,150 m, where it starts life as the Yarlung Tsangpo. From there, it flows from west to east before making a U-turn (The Great Bend) and entering Arunachal Pradesh. There its name changes to Siang. The Siang then gathers more streams and flows down through the Arunachal hills towards the plains of Assam. At the foothills, it meets the Lohit and Dibang. Downstream of this confluence, it is the Brahmaputra. The Brahmaputra in turn flows through Assam, gathering yet more streams, before entering Bangladesh. Upon entering that country it undergoes one more change in nomenclature, this time accompanied by a sex change - the 'male Brahmaputra, for some reason, becomes the 'female Jamuna. The Brahmaputra as Jamuna makes its way towards an eventual confluence with the Ganga, known in Bangladesh as the Padma. This great river of many great rivers finally flows into the Bay of Bengal, after undergoing yet another change of name the Meghna. Its whole length is 2,880 km.
A river is not a canal. It is a living, organic entity. It changes with the seasons. It ebbs and flows. The word for the river's rise is 'jwar', and its fall is called 'bhata, and these words are inscribed into the geographies and cultures of the riverine lands. Its ebb and flow are the life pulsating through the land. In the rains, up in the green forested hills of Northeast India, the earth rejoices in songs of water. Its gurgling, splashing sounds, as it makes its way down towards the Brahmaputra, soft but insistent, are everywhere - and in every little trickle, there is, in a sense, the Brahmaputra. It is a time of rejuvenation and rebirth - a time etched into the human geography of the land as fertility rites, such as the Ambabuchi Mela at Kamakhya celebrates the menstruation of the goddess.
Fluidity is the very essence of water. It is the nature of the river to be fluid; it has no fixed name, no address, no unchanging course. You can call it the Tsangpo in Tibet and the Siang in the hills of Arunachal, the Dihang in the plains, the Brahmaputra after, the Jamuna in Bangladesh, the Padma after it merges with the Ganga, and the Meghna at the end before it loses itself in the Bay of Bengal. You can call it what you will - because those are but mere local names, and they have no fixity. I can show you a Yamuna in north India too, that was once a river like the Jamuna in Bangladesh. They are names on maps, a human invention that came into being scant centuries ago after the river that is older than the Himalayas had lived, in one form or another, for a few million years.
At the birth of the river more than 1000 km upstream where the braids of the Siang meet those of the Dibang and Lohit. The place where the Brahmaputra is formed is inexact. It had not been easy to find the river itself, gigantic though it is, because I had been looking for a reality that reflected the neatness and order of lines on a map. I was looking for three streams of water called Siang, Lohit and Dibang meeting at one point, after which there would be one big stream, Siang plus Lohit plus Dibang, called the Brahmaputra. It was of course stupidity. There is no such point. The Brahmaputra is not a single big stream made up of three smaller streams.
The map is never the territory. Somewhere in the vague recesses of my memory, there is a story, perhaps read ages ago, of a man who wants to draw the greatest map of all time, the most detailed ever. He eventually draws a map as large as the earth itself. Even that map would be inexact, for it would be in two dimensions, not three. To accurately model the earth in all its detail would need another earth. "This is China,' we say, and this is India, and downriver from here is Bangladesh.' The river doesn't know, and it doesn't care. When an earthquake causes a landslide to muddy the waters of the Tsangpo in eastern Tibet, the fishermen in Goalpara lament their falling fish catch. When China and India plan dams and river diversion or interlinking projects, farmers and fisherfolk in Bangladesh anticipate devastation.
The devastation of flood visits the riverine lands every year. There are floods in the floodplains of the Brahmaputra in Assam and further downriver in Bangladesh. A company called The East India Company, naturally interested, like all companies, in maximizing revenues, had marked some of these lands near the river as wastelands and eventually put them to use for paddy and jute cultivation. It was great for the economy, but the river doesn't know or care that there are now permanent human settlements on the lands that are part of its annual monsoon home. Of course, we are powerful, we can dam the river. We just don't fully know what harm that will eventually do to the cycle of life in the lands through which it flows, and to the ocean into which it flows.
To see the river in its entirety is to see the connectedness of nature and love the intricate workings of the cycle of life - that cycle which pulses with the seasons, and the movement of water from sea to mountain and back to sea. We may dam the river on land, but if we wish to survive as organic beings, we cannot dam the great river in the sky that flows with the monsoon clouds. From the Himalaya to the Bay of Bengal, it is all one unity, and the smallest fish that spawns in a wetland of the Kaziranga in the Brahmaputra's seasonal floods is as much a part of it as the largest elephants that head up the Karbi Hills to escape the rising waters. The Brahmaputra is not a canal. It does not flow between two neat banks. Its untidy braids, channels of history and commerce, witness to the ebb and flow of empires, are the architects of the surrounding landscape of nature and of humans.
Waters, peoples, languages and cultures have flowed into one another along the entire length of the river for thousands of years. Many streams of humanity have flowed in to become braids in the cultural mainstreams of the riverine lands by the Siang, Brahmaputra and Jamuna. Industries that shaped the economy have emerged from global interactions along its banks; Assam tea became Assam tea with the contributions of forgotten Singpho chieftains, Chinese growers, British planters, men and women of the tea tribes, and Calcutta merchants. Time and movement have added variety even to the river itself. Take the water hyacinth, for example. No sight is more emblematic of the river's flow than a clump of this plant bobbing downriver with the current. It seems an ageless sight, a part of the Brahmaputra's landscape. It is a plant from South America that came to India with ships in the British colonial period, and survived all attempts to exterminate it. Like its South American cousin, the potato, and the chilli plant from Mexico, it has flowed in, across space and over time, and become ancient in its new home.
"Mahabahu Brahmaputra' is, as Bhupen Hazarika sang, the pilgrimage of great confluences. You cannot know the river without knowing flow.
July 12, 2023
"The Braided River: A Journey Along the Brahmaputra" by Samrat Choudhury
takes readers on an enthralling expedition along one of Asia's most captivating waterways. With its vivid storytelling, immersive descriptions, and profound insights, this book is a remarkable tribute to the majestic Brahmaputra River. From the very beginning, the author's passion for the subject shines through every page. Their meticulous research and personal experiences blend seamlessly, creating a rich tapestry that allows readers to delve into the depths of this mystical river. The author's writing style is both lyrical and informative, effortlessly transporting readers to the vibrant landscapes and diverse cultures that line the Brahmaputra's banks. The narrative is structured as a journey, mirroring the physical and metaphorical voyage along the river. We embark on a profound exploration, uncovering the historical, cultural, and ecological significance of the Brahmaputra. The author seamlessly weaves together tales of local legends, environmental challenges, and the everyday lives of the people who call this region home. The book offers a deep understanding of the inter connected nature between humans and their environment, and the delicate balance that must be maintained. One of the book's strengths is its ability to convey a sense of place. The author's vivid descriptions bring to life the ever-changing landscapes, from the pristine snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas to the lush floodplains of Assam. The prose is infused with a genuine love for the region, and readers will find themselves immersed in the sights, sounds, and aromas that define this part of the world.
"The Braided River" is not merely a travelogue but a profound exploration of the Brahmaputra's significance in the wider context. The author masterfully tackles topics such as climate change, water resource management, and cultural preservation, shedding light on the challenges faced by the communities along the river. Through their encounters with local inhabitants, the author highlights the resilience and resourcefulness of these communities, adding a poignant layer to the narrative.
It is a captivating and enlightening read. It offers a compelling blend of adventure, cultural discovery, and environmental awareness. Whether you are an armchair traveler, an environmental enthusiast, or simply someone seeking a beautifully written and thought-provoking book, this literary voyage along the Brahmaputra will leave a lasting impression. Highly recommended for those who seek to expand their horizons and explore the wonders of our interconnected world.
takes readers on an enthralling expedition along one of Asia's most captivating waterways. With its vivid storytelling, immersive descriptions, and profound insights, this book is a remarkable tribute to the majestic Brahmaputra River. From the very beginning, the author's passion for the subject shines through every page. Their meticulous research and personal experiences blend seamlessly, creating a rich tapestry that allows readers to delve into the depths of this mystical river. The author's writing style is both lyrical and informative, effortlessly transporting readers to the vibrant landscapes and diverse cultures that line the Brahmaputra's banks. The narrative is structured as a journey, mirroring the physical and metaphorical voyage along the river. We embark on a profound exploration, uncovering the historical, cultural, and ecological significance of the Brahmaputra. The author seamlessly weaves together tales of local legends, environmental challenges, and the everyday lives of the people who call this region home. The book offers a deep understanding of the inter connected nature between humans and their environment, and the delicate balance that must be maintained. One of the book's strengths is its ability to convey a sense of place. The author's vivid descriptions bring to life the ever-changing landscapes, from the pristine snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas to the lush floodplains of Assam. The prose is infused with a genuine love for the region, and readers will find themselves immersed in the sights, sounds, and aromas that define this part of the world.
"The Braided River" is not merely a travelogue but a profound exploration of the Brahmaputra's significance in the wider context. The author masterfully tackles topics such as climate change, water resource management, and cultural preservation, shedding light on the challenges faced by the communities along the river. Through their encounters with local inhabitants, the author highlights the resilience and resourcefulness of these communities, adding a poignant layer to the narrative.
It is a captivating and enlightening read. It offers a compelling blend of adventure, cultural discovery, and environmental awareness. Whether you are an armchair traveler, an environmental enthusiast, or simply someone seeking a beautifully written and thought-provoking book, this literary voyage along the Brahmaputra will leave a lasting impression. Highly recommended for those who seek to expand their horizons and explore the wonders of our interconnected world.
June 17, 2021
The North-East of India is as much of an intriguing region as it is neglected. So it was a joyride to go with Samrat Choudhary on his quest along the Bramhaputra. His research is impeccable. Thus we get not just his personal experiences as he meets the unique people along the different streams, put there by choice, by government or by happenstance, but also an elaborate context of what is flowing underneath the surface of these mighty waters. The fragile impermanence of this region through ancient times to the current days is the lasting feeling. The topography and its human or other biological existence are constantly challenged by nature, by changing notions of development, by shifting attention from politics in search of identity or from uncertain militancy. The stories of survival against elements natural or otherwise, quite a case in point about who survives and who thrives.
The younger generation keeps going away, few return. Some sadness, some humour, some deep dives into the history intertwined (braided) with the mythology gives beautiful broad and close views of a long journey.
I would have liked a greater focus on the women, whose stories might show how the survival is actually executed. They seem to be the ones keeping life going. We get glimpses, with them lining up at the medical boat for getting children vaccinated, as partners in the tea garden resorts or as friends who guide the traveller.
Overall, a highly recommended read.
The younger generation keeps going away, few return. Some sadness, some humour, some deep dives into the history intertwined (braided) with the mythology gives beautiful broad and close views of a long journey.
I would have liked a greater focus on the women, whose stories might show how the survival is actually executed. They seem to be the ones keeping life going. We get glimpses, with them lining up at the medical boat for getting children vaccinated, as partners in the tea garden resorts or as friends who guide the traveller.
Overall, a highly recommended read.
January 4, 2022
The book starts off as a brilliant piece of literary travel writing and then tapers off to rather ordinary travel writing, interspersed extensively with excerpts from historical travel documents. It's still one of the best travel books that I have read in a long time, written by an Indian author.
It's sad that the author was stopped from going to Gelling by the Indian Army even though he had a valid Inner Line Permit. The author was also repeatedly interrogated by Intelligence Bureau officials. The Army also deleted his innocuous photos of general scenery. They were not photos of sensitive military installations. If Arunachal Pradesh does not want tourists, they should state it.
While a general map of the Brahmaputra is printed, section specific maps would have been useful.
There are several editing errors in the book. Apostrophes are missing and words are misspelt. There are printing problems too. Ink is missing from some of the characters. It's an expensive book (₹600). I expect better quality from the publisher.
It's sad that the author was stopped from going to Gelling by the Indian Army even though he had a valid Inner Line Permit. The author was also repeatedly interrogated by Intelligence Bureau officials. The Army also deleted his innocuous photos of general scenery. They were not photos of sensitive military installations. If Arunachal Pradesh does not want tourists, they should state it.
While a general map of the Brahmaputra is printed, section specific maps would have been useful.
There are several editing errors in the book. Apostrophes are missing and words are misspelt. There are printing problems too. Ink is missing from some of the characters. It's an expensive book (₹600). I expect better quality from the publisher.
May 12, 2025
Was interested in this area as I knew someone from the region "in a former life" (as they say). Back then, other Indians needed permission to visit the area, let alone foreigners. I understood it had to do with some sort of hostility to outsiders, but no specifics.
This story of the author's travels filled in the gap well. He and his companions were generally treated well, but there was a separatist movement in Assam, with resentful locals identifying more with neighboring Burma and Thailand than India. As expected, it's a sort of "leftover" area that wasn't Muslim enough to fare well as part of partition East Pakistan (later Bangladesh). Moreover, there's lingering resentment of colonial imposition of Bengali as the accepted "local" language.
Still, it seemed an interesting trip, with the usual travel narrative adventures. Audio narration was well done, although Indian English syllable stress differs often enough for me to have been momentarily distracted my attention. Definitely recommended to learn more about this unique region.
This story of the author's travels filled in the gap well. He and his companions were generally treated well, but there was a separatist movement in Assam, with resentful locals identifying more with neighboring Burma and Thailand than India. As expected, it's a sort of "leftover" area that wasn't Muslim enough to fare well as part of partition East Pakistan (later Bangladesh). Moreover, there's lingering resentment of colonial imposition of Bengali as the accepted "local" language.
Still, it seemed an interesting trip, with the usual travel narrative adventures. Audio narration was well done, although Indian English syllable stress differs often enough for me to have been momentarily distracted my attention. Definitely recommended to learn more about this unique region.
February 16, 2025
I am from Assam, and have lived along the Brahmaputra all my life at different places along its course.
Reading the book felt like reading my own history, telling my story. It has legitimized generations of spoken history, that I listened to with awe as a kid from my father and grandfather and uncles, which had lost its importance as I ventured out of my home in Assam to the wider world.
This book also provides various avenues to go deeper into the very interesting but often overlooked history of this NorthEastern part of India, of the intertwined lives of communities that live around this area were, that are now separated by international borders.
It's a fascinating read and I would recommend all my friends to read about this travelogue plus chronicle of this mighty river that defines my homeland.
Reading the book felt like reading my own history, telling my story. It has legitimized generations of spoken history, that I listened to with awe as a kid from my father and grandfather and uncles, which had lost its importance as I ventured out of my home in Assam to the wider world.
This book also provides various avenues to go deeper into the very interesting but often overlooked history of this NorthEastern part of India, of the intertwined lives of communities that live around this area were, that are now separated by international borders.
It's a fascinating read and I would recommend all my friends to read about this travelogue plus chronicle of this mighty river that defines my homeland.
January 14, 2025
A wonderful travelogue. The writer blended nature, history, religion, and politics seamlessly. He gave a vivid description of the "Bangali Khedao" politics in Assam. The only problem with the book is the factual problem. The water of Brahmaputra flows to the Bay of Bengal through Chandpur, not Sundarban. The Ganges feeds the rivers of Sundarban, while Brahmaputra is not a tidal river. So, Joar and Vhata in the Brahmaputra are irrelevant. But even considering those, this is one of the best epilogues I have read.
October 31, 2025
Though a lot of places and peoples within this book were new to me, the writing, for whatever reason, never really managed to captivate me. Sometimes you feel like the author's just put everything he's done onto the page, including the most mundane (in a poor way). But other times you wish that the chapters were longer and the scene could be explored in more depth. A shame because the Brahmaputra and its surrounding cultures are quite fascinating.
May 25, 2022
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in understanding the wonderful state of Assam and it’s history. The author has done a great job of making you feel like you are traveling along with him on this journey down Brahmaputra.
October 28, 2023
Nice book regarding everything related to Brahmaputra.
It very well explains the history, geography, cultures, religions of the regions in the vicinity of the river.
This book mainly covers assam and arunachal very less number of chapters are dedicated to Bangladesh.
I felt the chapter named Citizenship Tensions was not required in this book.
It very well explains the history, geography, cultures, religions of the regions in the vicinity of the river.
This book mainly covers assam and arunachal very less number of chapters are dedicated to Bangladesh.
I felt the chapter named Citizenship Tensions was not required in this book.
February 23, 2025
Choudhury brings several advantages to this book, he speaks the main languages of the region and he has an inherent understanding of the culture. He knows the history of Assam and explains the tangled threads in a comprehensible manner. He's also a reluctant traveler, which adds charm to the text.
December 26, 2024
Loved the vivid description of the places familiarised by Satyajit Rai and Tagore. Then there is this big river unlike any other, so intriguing and captivating
Excellent read…
Excellent read…
June 3, 2023
Enjoyable travel writing, entertaining and informative at the same time.
September 14, 2021
Mr. Choudhury’s book a pleasant read. Covers a large part of the river’s length from its earliest point in India to the mouth of the river in Bangladesh. Strewn with many fascinating social, economic, cultural, and historical details, it is packed with information for the curious reader.
The biggest drawback is the skimpy attention paid to maps. The book goes into very detailed description of the places along the river, some of them major, and others nondescript. Without maps, we are left out.
But, overall, it is a pretty detailed and covers a lot of ground.
The biggest drawback is the skimpy attention paid to maps. The book goes into very detailed description of the places along the river, some of them major, and others nondescript. Without maps, we are left out.
But, overall, it is a pretty detailed and covers a lot of ground.
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