Another Bend in the RIVER

SAMRAT CHOUDHURY TELLS THE STORY OF AN EVER-SHIFTING BRAHMAPUTRA WITH A LIGHTNESS THAT ONLY HELPS DEEPEN HIS BOOK’S GRAVITY

- Srinath Perur

The Brahmaputra carries down into the plains enormous amounts of sediment from the Himalayas. These deposits form sandbanks and islands around which water flows in channels that meet and part— a feature called a braided river, from which journalist Samrat Choudhury’s account of travels along the Brahmaputra takes its title.

Armed with a hard-earned Inner Line Permit, Chowdhury enters Arunachal Pradesh via Dibrugarh and travels up along the Brahmaputra’s three tributaries—the Lohit, the Dibang and the Siang. These journeys are a blur of ferries, minivans, terrible roads and rope bridges. Everywhere, there are plans for dams and people who really, really don’t want them. Going up the Siang, Choudhury and his travel companion, photographer Akshay Mahajan, patiently answer questions from an endless succession of Intelligence Bureau officials until they are sent back from the village of Gelling by somewhat paranoid soldiers. They return having seen the ridge of the McMahon Line, without having got all the way there. Choudhury writes about how over the last century or so, “[a] new imagination of all frontiers as lines of control rather than zones of transition” has taken hold.