My Cycling Sojourns Gave Me Surprises A Many... But This One In Assam Was The Most Beautiful

Hereafter it became a ritual of sorts. Every morning, I would excitedly take my cycle out, come rain, sun come storm and ride to Uncle’s village. There was this initial hesitation from both his and my end but it disappeared little by little with every new day and a new conversation we had. He would wait for me to show up and only then start weaving the Khorahi. He treated me like a kid. Once he asked his grandson to get a packet of biscuits from the market because he didn't want me to have laal chah without anything to munch on. His daughter in law would show me the gomachas and mekhlas she wove at home. ‘It's been awhile since I wove something, she said once while dusting off the mud on her wooden machine with a yarn wheel.

Every time Uncle would take a break, he’d look at me, softly slapping his forehead, saying ‘ arey bobaaa, itna dur se cycle chalaake aaya, ye toh tumhe market mein bhi milega na?’ But he gives the widest grin, when i tell him ‘ market mein seekhne ko nai milta na uncle, aapse mai seekhega!’ And as he chuckles loudly, his face wrinkles even more.

I see us weaving something more than a Khorahi, I see us weaving a bond, a friendship that I’d cherish in the times to come.

Places and people that my cycle takes me to…

My resolve of not buying anything soon became i don't want to leave anything :P Jokes apart, I ended up picking two items. Few arguments with the husband and some miles later we stopped at another stall with more bamboo stuff beckoning me. ‘One last thing’ I said to Tee and picked up a Daalah ( a round sieve used for rice grains etc). I had no idea what I'd do with them. Perhaps I picked them up so that I could find Danasur Uncle someday. Travel and serendipities go hand in hand. No?

A week of settling down in the countryside of Assam, the urge to ride on the road less taken got the better of me. I started to explore local weekly farmer markets on my cycle where the villagers sold everything, right from pottery, plants, seeds of local vegetables and flowers, jaggery for humans and animals( didnt even know the other kind existed) fish, meat, utensils, local handlooms like mekhlas and gomchas, andddd some more bamboo stuff. This was what defined malls for me now.

While walking along with my cycle in a jam packed narrow Thursday market lane, my eyes moved around the bamboo stalls. But no this time i wasn't keen on buying, i wondered who made them, how they made it from scratch. I walked up to the vendor and asked him ‘Bhaiya ye kahan banta hai?’ ‘ Gaon mein log banata hai’ On further probing him with a million queries I found out that a small town, some 25 kms away, near the highway had tons of weavers who sat down at their homes making bamboo handicrafts. You know what the next agenda was right? Yep.. riding those 25 kms on my cycle to find out people whose effort we flaunted at our homes.

Meanwhile, a blogger friend who’s extensively travelled in the north east, after seeing my cycling stories on Instagram, suggested that I try out the local Assamese tea called Laal Chah. One Saturday morning, I took off on my cycle, geared up to ride 30 odd kms one way, to find out the village where local tribes wove bamboo baskets. I raced along my shadow, peddling by the tea gardens, watching women pluck tea leaves wearing the traditional bamboo hats called Japis. I decided to stop by a dhaba to try the much famous Laal Chah( black tea with crushed ginger) . I'm not a tea person but I quite relished that local flavour. After all it came straight from those tea gardens I whizzed by. Never realised what all a cup of tea was made of until today.

While chatting with the Dhaba lady, I found out that the place I was going to had only shops but no weavers. ‘Young log ko ye sab banana nahi aata. Aaj kal ka baccha ko apna culture mein interest nahi hai na’ She was the third person today who told me the same. So is there no one around who makes stuff. She told me that the lady sitting two shops away could help. Her father was really old but he made baskets and sieves. While my search for local artisans took me to different places in the last two weeks, what remained constant was people's inability to understand why I wanted to ride all that extra mile to find a weaver when I could simply buy it from the roadside shops at equally reasonable rates. Their craft was just another chore to them. I wish they could visit places like Dilli Haat or Dastkar once in their life to see what their effort and hard work meant and how much it was valued ( quite literally!). The lady at the shop asked me to come over the weekend and agreed to take me to her place, to see her old father whose old wrinkled hands created magic out of nothing.

Sunday came sooner than I thought. I had butterflies in my stomach as though I was off for my first date. I was a tad nervous too for what if the old man didn't humor me well. I reached the dhaba and took out a 5 Rs coin and ordered a cup of laal chah. People around didn't stare at me like before. This was my fifth visit to the dhaba and this place slowly began to feel like home. There were occasional Hi’s and Namastes too from the passersby like in the picture below.

A young boy came on his cycle and asked me to tag along with him. He happened to be Danasur Uncle's grandson who was sent to guide me to their village. Riding on the country roads with a complete stranger to a stunning offbeat village to meet another stranger was turning out to be a story that I'd love to write and remember in the years to come.

Tall supari trees dotted the muddy compound of their house while bamboo fences marked the boundary. A deep well stood in a corner where i dug my face and shouted out loud to hear my voice echo from inside( how old am I? I was just kicked to see a typical Assamese village house. Beside that a small mud walled shed that had a mandir inside while washed utensils lay on a bamboo table, left to dry in the harsh sun that showed up after a week long time. My eyes ran around the other side of the compound where tiny chickens played merrily, hopping in and out of a huge dollah on which laid freshly plucked tea leaves.

Another mud walled storage kind of shed stood in that corner with round bamboo frames hanging by the pole and under that shed sat an old man, diligently working on the bamboo.There he was, his face with a thousand wrinkles,frale and lanky, eyes a bit sunken yet all lit up and happy. He didn't look up until I walked up to him and wished him ‘Namaste’. He asked me to sit down and quipped ‘ Itna dhoop mein cycle chalaake kahaan se aaya?’ ‘Paani leke aao baabu ke liye’. The daughter in law came with a glass of water in her traditional mekhla and asked me if i'd like to have tea. How are these people so nice! I quipped ‘Laal Chah banayega toh peeyega”.

I sat down next to uncle seeing him make stuff from scratch. I told him how I wanted to see the entire khorahi in the making and he was kind enough to let me sit and record him and even more patient to answer every lame query of mine. He started with a huge bamboo pole and cut it into a smaller piece. While it sounds all simple, the effort that I witnessed was of humongous magnitude. Keeping a sickle on the cut bamboo piece, he sliced it into yet another half. He then cut that part into more thinner pieces.

He didn't stop slicing it, he made it still thinner until he made thinnest straws out of it. It took him an hour to make 30 straws and honestly I was so blown away by his sheer perseverance and stamina at 75.

It was a week long rendezvous and I guess a lifetime of a bond for every time I see the baskets swinging my plants when it's breezy, it reminds me of Uncle and his warm wrinkled smile.

On the last day while paying him money for the Khorahi he made for me, I decided to gift him a shirt out of respect and love that I developed for him. A man of high morals, he perhaps didn't want to accept something without paying for it and so he gifted me another khorahi for which he wouldn't allow me to pay him a single penny. His eyes glistened with tears that warmed my heart like never before.

I wonder if he remembers me as fondly as I think of him but I am just so grateful to my wheels and to the Dhaaba lady who made me endless Laal Chaahs and introduced me to this gem of a man, my oldest friend in town Danasur Uncle.

On my quest to find local bamboo artisans, I found so much more. I befriended village kids, cycled along random villagers at times, women who picked up their kids from school, a lot of times lending my cycle to village boys for they were so kicked to wear that helmet and ride a bike with gears, learnt how to climb a Taungsi (a watch hut in the farms) witnessed local farmer markets, and at times simply raced all by myself along with my shadow under the bluest unadulterated skies.

Next time you buy any bamboo crafts or cane stuff, remember Danasur Uncle and a million more artisans, whose sweat and effort lies etched in those beauties adorning your homes.

And somewhere in all those sojourns I did'nt realise i was unknowingly finding the same old joys in the unknown that i did when i travelled to a new place. Corona has changed travel to quite an extent but backdoor travel or local travel is another therapy that i explored in the last few months and trust me you'd be amazed by the wonders around your place that you’d otherwise never know. Lucky Ali's song now made sense 'Anjaani Raahon Mein Tu Kya Dhoondta Rahein, Dur Jisko Samjha Woh Toh Pass Hai Tere.'

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