Roots

Why are roots so important? Can't we just be an individual who needs no going back to roots.  Just like any story, which has a beginning to oscillate the course of a story, we have our roots, a feeble link which holds our life together.

It was in the year 1816, when a man decided he would carry out an adventure. Risking his life in the hills of Nepal which allowed him little scope altogether, he set on a journey. He had heard of Assam, about its river which made its land opulent. He wanted to try his luck. His dexterity coupled with his indomitable spirit led him to earn a fortune and a family. He had no formal education, but was educated enough to know what it meant to be educated. So, here you meet my great grandfather who has been kept alive among us through stories.

My ancestors, if I am to call them so occupy a clustered habitat in a remote village Gamiri, situated at Biswanath district of Assam. The one striking feature of this village is its well knit structure. We have a temple built by our ancestors passed onto us as a family heritage. On each Vijaya Dashami, the last day of Durga Puja, the village makes a call to journey back to one's roots from where our life has stemmed. Owing to the fact that there are more than fifty households at present, the people there decided to make their own convention. The rituals associated with 'dassai ko tiko' (blessing seeking ceremony) are carried out in the family temple. It's an annual affair which has kept people connected.

What interests me of all is the way people choose to hold on to their roots. We have a life here in Assam detached from Nepal, but we haven't yet detached ourselves from the customs which our ancestors taught us to believe in. I, as a child was always interested in stories, to which my grandfather would happily narrate events from the past in the form of stories. So, it is through stories that things travel, stories which are an undeniable part of people's life.

As a person who grew believing in the make-believe world fetched by the stories, I see it all. The journey through the hills towards the plains. A journey which set the course of our lives. On our visit to Nepal, my father pointed towards a hill and said, "Child, you would have been happily singing merry tunes here, had your ancestors not chose to travel to gift you a better life".  For a fleeting second, I was thrilled by the idea of having a life at hills completely detached from the modern world. A nomadic life is indeed rare but then we can't survive in a make-believe world, can we?