Majuli is the world’s largest river island and the religious nerve centre of Assam. Our guess was that the religious mutths on the island were the real museums which showcased Assamese culture. The museum in Guwahati and the state-endorsed literature there had thrown us into despair.

According to the flood control department of Assam, in 1950, the island used to be 1,250 square kilometres in size which, according to the Geological Survey of India, had reduced to 800 square kilometres. According to a rough estimate, in previous years, about 5 kilometres of land and 125 villages had been swallowed up by the river. I had a doubt in my mind that is used to the thrill of the rebellion of hope amidst negative fantasies: Assam can always be seen, but this natural miracle created by the Brahmaputra, Kherkutia and Subansiri Rivers may not remain forever? That morning we expressed our gratitude to the two stubborn, average-sized bulls at the Neemati Ghat who had stalled the movement and helped us catch the steamer even though we were late. Tens of people were tugging at their ropes, cursing, and the bulls were backing up from the jetty with matched steps, full of fear. After about half an hour of tug-of-war, one made a panicked jump on to the steamer. The other preened, then walked up coolly on his own, as if to say, “This is how one walks on water.”

Both doors to the cabin of the steamer were jammed shut with people. Outside, bulletins about the natures of bulls and goats were being broadcast in accordance with the rules written in the Samudrik Shastra. The narrow deck was crammed with bicycles, vegetables and bundles of household items on which people were sitting, gawking and laughing at an old drunk’s “theatre of parental affection”. He was seated in the middle, clutching a torn and dirty handmade doll. He cleaned its nose, bathed it, combed its hair, lovingly fed it rice, sent it off to school and then, all at once, began to slap it—the girl, like her mother before her, had emptied his bottle of homebrew into a drain. A schoolboy explained that two years earlier, the man’s daughter had succumbed to snakebite. Since then he roamed all over, the ragdoll in hand. Some time after noon, a dilapidated minibus traversed the burning sands of Majuli, swaying like an elephant, and dropped us near a footpath which would take us to the Natun Kamalabari Satra. Our bags and briefcases had rolled into all corners of the bus and it took us about twenty minutes to identify and claim them. Before we could receive the key to a small room in the outside portion of the mutth, we had to submit to an interview with the satraadhikari, the head official of the Kamalabari Satra, Mahant Narayan Chandra Dev Goswami. He said: “I know reporter people indulge. But is that even a country, sir! As long as you stay here, you will not eat meat or drink alcohol.”

“So shall it be, Maharaj.” Saying this in a reassuring voice, I fingered the outline of the bottle of rum in my bag, which I had bought in Jorhat the previous day just in case thinking, Who knows, Majuli may not have a single store. Mahant Narayan Chandra Dev Goswami was built like an athlete, and fragments of unhusked paddy were entangled in his long hair. His laughter possessed a rare asceticism and in his manner of speaking was a simplicity which had remained intact even in this day and age. Quite naturally, I remembered those bejewelled, potbellied preachers, surrounded by rifles, always travelling in long cars who, were they to stand at this spot, would look like hoodlums black-marketing tickets to heaven. Bundles of paddy were heaped in the mutth. One one side, paddy was being threshed. Sadhus, carrying sickles, and rope to tie paddy-bundles with, were walking to and fro. The Mahant, one of the more prominent poets of Assam, was, at that moment, engaged in the counting of paddy-bundles and the reckoning of diesel used for the pump. He gave us a long list of the articles of historical significance that the Archaeological Survey of India had asked them to safeguard, which were kept in the various mutths. He also showed us a photocopy of an Assamese newspaper, Assam Vilasini. This was the second newspaper published in the Assamese language which was brought out in 1871 from the Auniati Royal Satra in Majuli. The first newspaper, Arunoday, was published by the Baptist missionary Miles Bronson.

In the middle of the mutth was a massive, ancient naamghar built upon wooden stilts. Mridang, cymbals, flutes, and many other unknown musical instruments had been placed everywhere on the floor which was plastered with cowdung. There were no idols or any paraphernalia used for rituals. This mutth was a collective of sadhus— followers of the tradition laid down by Sankar Dev, the great social reformer of the sixteenth century—who toiled and sweated like peasants for their livelihoods and practiced meditation in the Vaishnavite traditions. Krishna is their personal deity, and their devotion is expressed in immersive kirtan-singing. Sankar Dev had propagated this new religion through dramas, songs and poems. He had also evolved a new dance-form, the ‘satriya’ which, after receiving governmental recognition, was being taught in dance schools nowadays.

Most Hindu Assamese villages are connected to some mutth or the other and the naamghar has a central role to play in the community life of the village. A naamghar is a verandah-like structure built on cement, wooden or bamboo stilts, open on three sides, where people gather to collectively perform kirtans. In gatherings which last from evening till late at night, people discuss domestic quarrels, local politics, militancy and other matters of the world. Nowadays, under the influence of Hindu fundamentalism, women are prevented from coming to the naamghar for five days of the month and this is being protested by city- based feminist organizations.

Behind the mutth, young, dhoti-clad, topless sadhus with tufts of hair on their tonsured heads were playing cricket on land from which paddy had been cleared. An immense bat, like the machete wielded by the demon is that even a country, sir! Mahishasur, had been made by hand. Bamboo wickets. From the leg-pads artfully woven out of straw, it could be deduced that LBW was a valid dismissal. With the cork ball landing on a dug-up field with the stumps of harvested rice plants, it was impossible to tell which delivery would end up a bouncer and which one a Yorker. This uncertainty had lent the game a spiritual air. Shashwat asked Kamalakant Saikia, who had recently been caught out and who sat on the boundary, crosslegged and glum, “Sadhu-ji, when you have made such extensive arrangements, why not build yourself a proper pitch?”

“Guest, the number of runs a man will make in this life, and how he will get out, everything is preordained,” came his reply, made with supreme detachment. One receding evening, I was sitting in that empty, lonely naamghar when a window, shut for ages, opened up in the darkness within me. A ray of light shafted in through a gap in the straw roof above—a blue straight footpath from space. Patches of sunlight crept secretly along on the cool, cowdung-plastered floor of the naamghar. If I would look at them, they would stop. I found myself thinking, If I ever have a religion, it will be as simple, focused and pure. Pure! What is that? …But why don’t you have a religion? Because religion brings along refined ways of hypocrisy, untouchability, fundamentalism, hatred, superstition and oppression. But these are not the faults of faith, these are crimes perpetrated by the shrewd preachers of faith. You can have an utterly personal faith which needs ratification from no one, can you not? Think, if such a thing were possible, you wouldn’t be so pessimistic, lonely and without alternatives. Your life might have a purpose. This was a terrifying thought which had assumed gale force and was touching the arid cracks of my innermost being. I shivered. I was afraid. Had the seed of spirituality taken root within me. I looked around… Where is the harm in living an aimless life? I pulled out a hip-flask from my trouser pocket, quickly swigged a mouthful of rum, and stepped out.