Wandering trails..

The Goodness Code
Kaustubh Deka


The bright colours of the Karbi shawls are gleaming in the tender spring sun and are almost swaying to the joyous tune of the Rongker spring festival flute. The gorgeous Karbi hills with thick green forests and golden paddy fields in the state of Assam in North-eastern region of India have an aura of natural harmony. Just this morning I was savouring the sweet and burnt taste of ‘Hurlong’-the home brewed liquor offered in a bamboo cup while watching with fascination Pinu(aunty) working deftly on her ‘taant’-a foot controlled weaving machine that adorns almost every household in a Karbi village. The result was magic and I was beginning to feel drowned in the powerful harmony with nature all around me. So when I first see the group of 15-16 years old with automatic rifles in hand, atop the ‘tangighar’- the bamboo house raised on tree tops and poles, I get sad and angry at this ‘intrusion’.
By evening I see the guerrilla boys in traditional Karbi attires, in chois and Rikongs, sitting in a corner of the open space facing the village elders in a ritual. As the elders murmurs their prayers and pours the liquor over the pig meat sacrificed for the Gods, I’m told that the village is praying for the boys to ‘come back’ to village life and appear for their school exams! I find out to my sweet astonishment that they been privately appearing for exams, and some villagers have been tutoring them. Tthe meat tastes better and liquor sweeter, when I learn that the villagers have decided to give certain section of their earnings from selling baskets and shawls to see that makeshift ‘tree-top school’ run fine. Sitting by the fireplace on my last evening in the Karbi hills I learn to be humble in one’s opinions, to take time to know people, to make friends, to eat and sing together, climb and fall together and then maybe one finds out that goodness prevails in all and that sometimes it is hidden in the shape of a beautiful Karbi shawl.