My association with North Cachar Hills started quite a long time back, long before I joined ‘North Cachar Hills Community Resource Management Society’ and posted at Haflong. It was during my school days when the name Jatinga made my imagination fly high. Shillong was a place which I always thought, and dreamt, of to be full of mystery and mist. And I was not at all disappointed when NC Hills came alive with the mist, the colourful people, the beautiful landscape charming my eyes and stirring my soul.

It had been almost one year now that I left that place. And not a single thing had faded from my memory. I remember the train journey through the green hills and the tunnels..., the jhum fields, the wet terraces, the imposing Borail range... everything. Then suddenly there was another picture — a bloody one — of NC Hills. Maybe politically or historically there are lots of reasons for all these. Maybe there are ample reasons for these social trauma and maybe there are people to defend these happenings too. I am neither a political observer nor a social investigator, but just a normal citizen who is in love with the place and people.

When you tell people that you are in NC Hills you can always sense that disbelief in their eyes. Maybe for other people this name simply represents terror and violence and conflict. But during my stay of two years in NC Hills I never felt unsafe. Yes, that time also, situation sometimes became very tense but it never went that bad. But now with all the recent things happening, sometimes I get confused: Do I really ever knew the real NC Hills? I had a chance to be in close contact of the villagers, be with them, talk to them, eat with them, and maybe that’s why these happenings left me puzzled.

It hits you hard when you pick your morning newspaper up and see the headlines like ‘Violence in NC Hills again’, ‘Villages burnt down...’, ‘Open firing at villagers’, etc. These make one really worried. Is the house, where you had your meal once upon a time, safe? Or are the people with whom you spent a lot of time and played with, suffering? It pains you like dying when you switch on your television set and see all those burning villages and the heaps of ashes.

During my stay there I heard the terrible stories of the ethnic violence that rocked the place in the late 2004. I was glad that it was over. But I have never ever felt even a tint of hatred or bitterness or a feeling of revenge among those people. Of course, it haunts them but they never blame each other for this massacre. It was sad and painful that it happened but they had the strength and heart to forgive and start a new life from the ashes. What I have only seen in those people is their unshaken faith and innocence. You can knock any door at night and stay back whether you know them or not and can have food in the kitchen near the fireplace.

They say North Cachar Hills comprises more than 13 tribes, from Dimasa to Jemi Naga, from Khelma to Kuki, from Hmar to Jaintia. And I found everybody same. I could never make out any difference in them. Jhum is in everybody’s blood. The love, innocence, faith and indulgence are same. The hardship and struggle, pain and agony are also very same. All of them work very hard in their jhum fields; reach the field, maybe before the sun rises, returning back when the sun sets. Almost everybody has the same crops in their respective fields — paddy, maize, lentils, and vegetables like pumpkin, chill, brinjal, okra, squash to name a few. In every house women work round the clock. Most of the children walk for hours to fetch water on their back or head, walk for hours to even reach school. Most of the villagers go to the nearby jungles to collect firewood and other non-timber forest products to sell in the local market. Almost all of them do not know how to read and write, almost all the connecting roads to the villages become hell in rainy season. So where do you actually find a difference? Oh yes, I forgot. They speak different languages, maybe they pray different gods, maybe they have different festivals, maybe they wear different clothes, or maybe the crops they get in jhum field, are cooked differently.

When I left NC Hills, I told myself that I would love to come back to this place again after 15 years to see the progress and be happy. When I said 15 years of progress, I meant, a place where you do not see small children fetching water from a distance of as long as two miles on their back or head, where you do not see people working too hard in their jhum fields, all the remote villages are connected by roads and maybe, who knows, big multiplexes! But now I am seriously worried, 15 years down the line, will I see only villages that had been burnt down — agony and ashes? Forget about having shopping malls and fast trains, will I only see resentment and hatred?

During my stay in NC Hills, the major complaint I had, like my other team members is that NC Hills is never featured in newspaper or TV despite all its difficulties and opportunities. But if killing and burning, revenge and bitterness are the only way to catch the headline, then please, nobody wants to see NC Hills’ name in newspaper or TV. Let it remain same then. Let the people work very hard to get their living in jhum fields but at least the trust and faith will be intact, let the chilldren walk for hours to go to school but when they will come back, they will not have to go to the refugee camp, but to their familiar safe basti (village), let tea leaves and salt be the major necessities in villages, but at least you can sleep peacefully at your home, without the fear that it might be burnt down while you are asleep.

Yes, maybe it is very easy to say, very easy as an outsider when you don’t even know its history or its political attire. But I am in love with this place and I had my own conversations and memories, the green fields that remind you so much of a golf course, the clouds which are so near that you will feel like touching them, the long road to N Songkai village which remind you of Ooty, the wet terraces of Laisong, the huge Deka Chang of the Naga villages, there are lots actually. (And it’s so difficult to put it in mere words!) And I want to keep the pictures same — neither I want them to be darkened by the smoke nor shattered by the gunfire.

Sanchayeeta Gohain