THE HILLS HAVE EYES!

A young damsel wearing a fly-away material ensemble to ‘unmatch’ her obnoxiously garbed beau and to somewhat match the exotic location, gyrates to the thumping beat of a western remake of a bangla song. Impressive, I presumed but maybe the movie has been made keeping the young people in mind, not really caring about a generation who had decades of nostalgic reminisces and who had probably grown up dreaming to someday direct like The Satyajit Ray. No evidences of Ray’s artistry in this movie though, nor in the next song, which was No.3 of a countdown show on S Bangla. So far so good! I mean we have to accept the changes and carry on. The music faded and the VJ, a podgy 20 something in glasses and wearing a tee-shirt which literally merged with the white background, twanged a false note on the guitar before he started talking. This time, I stopped what I was doing ‘cause the VJ was actually talking of something very interesting. Soon, I realised as he continued with his rhythmic monologue in Bengali that he was mentioning of someone closer home; Zubin Garg. I quote his translated version, “Ok people, so I am sure you know Zubin, Zubin Garg? I met him the other day and I asked him to sing a song. Zubin said that to listen to my song, you will have to come to Assam, to my studio. I said, bapre, Assam? It’s a jungle out there. I cannot move around that place alone.”

Jungle? Hmm. I wonder what you meant when you said that?  You have hit the wrong chord in my heart, Mr. VJ. I really don’t appreciate unwarranted information being told about my state and especially not on television. Looks like a lot of people are taking the opportunity to put Assam in the news for the wrong reasons.

But ofcourse, coming to the word ‘jungle’, several years back, much before you and I were born, Assam was a jungle; even better than most rain forests of the world. But not anymore!

Around 1651, when Mirzumla invaded Assam, he also brought with him a historian, who recorded all the happenings of their tour. Sihabuddin Tahlish followed Mirzumla to upper Assam and stayed for three months in Gargaon. He wrote extensively about the rich and diverse vegetation found in the state. His wide travel through Assam gave him an insight of the agricultural trend the people followed. In “The Chronicles of Sihabuddin Tahlish,” the historian wrote in detail about the jungles of Assam. “There are just dense forests all around. It rains for all the nine months of the year and the three months of winter also has drizzles of rain. And these dense forest covers are infested with venomous reptiles, insects and wild animals.”

All this sounds like some bizarre scene of a movie, set in an Amazonian jungle. Well, sadly, we are no longer in the box-office era of the past where Assam could be proud of such a dense forest cover. The hills are bereft of trees and soon enough, if predictions prove right, we will be transformed into a desert, maybe a second Kalahari, where the women would have to walk miles for an urn of water. I just hope not ‘cause I shudder to even imagine the consequences thereof. With the rampant and insensitive cutting down of trees, the day is not far when we will be looking towards the sky for a drop of rain for days on end and maybe even sing the very distressing song from the yore, “Allah megh de, pani de.....” (Oh God, give us clouds, give us rain....).

Incidentally, the original inhabitants of Assam had always learnt to live with nature. They were mostly hunters and gatherers. It would be twigs and broken branches they gathered from the forests for their hearth to cook their food. They would never cut down a tree for any reason. However, the first felling of trees in the state started during the British Colonial regime, when they noticed that the forests in Assam were dense with precious trees which could very well be utilized for endless purposes. So they conspired to start plywood factories, wherein they cut down hundreds and thousands of valuable trees in turn to export the wood to Britain. Today, we wouldn’t even know the different varieties of trees that might have disappeared in the process of this incessant and insensitive felling when the English businessmen started a plywood factory both for export and for building sleepers for trains.

The colonial plywood factories might have closed down but today, the trend continues unabated, noticed yet least bothered. It pains me to see huge patches of hills bereft of trees, clearings in the forest, which might have had huge tall green foliage in the past, now barren. Will we have any more trees left in another couple of decades?

Recently, my logical argument fell on deaf ears when a couple of my friends hit back at me blaming the government vociferously for the city being transformed to Venice with only a ‘small shower’. Well, friends, I wish you would have heard me out and understood that Arunachal Pradesh is actually the catchment area. Since, the state has no other means of earning revenues, they fell trees for commercial purposes. And now, the hills are slowly crumbling, leading to major landslides. Initially, when the rains came, they would first hit the trees, then seep down slowly. Now, with three-tier forest vegetation in the hills of Arunachal  a thing of the past, the rain water rushes down to the valley to flood the Brahmaputra, which is gradually becoming shallow with excessive siltation. So, a ‘small shower’ disturbs the Luit, causing it to overflow its basin, flooding the city and making it totally difficult for anyone to commute. A couple of decades back, when it rained, even before the water rushed in to the plains from the hills, the water in the valley would have drained out. But these days, with no more trees in the hills, the water rushes down at the speed of light, eroding everything in its stead, to create a swirling river when it merges with the already stagnant water in the city.

Now, all of us are in a Catch 22 situation, blaming each other, especially the government. But to get a clearer picture of the present day situation, we do have to go back into history. This ‘quagmirical’ situation was not created in one day. So, Mr. VJ, you can be sure to be safe in Assam and in whatever ‘little’ jungle we have as of now but it would be prudent for you to read our history that we are so proud of before you jump to any conclusion.