With life getting busy, it does not quite happen every year that I get to plan a getaway and spend a few days during Bohag Bihu in Dalgaon, a quiet town set in Darrang district around 25 kilometers from Mangaldai, the district centre.
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Dalgaon, a small place with a big heart and even better people, is a conflux of different religions, tribes, and identities – a coming together of so many ideas and opinions that even a newcomer like me, with almost no experience of ever organizing a 3-day Rongali Bihu Sanmilani, was heard and made to feel included.
My grandfather, Late Buddhi Ram Saharia, had established our present residence here more than 65 years ago, after moving here from Sipajhar, in lieu of his work. He also helped others settle here around the areas where thriving communities exist today.
Unfortunately for us, he passed away even as my father had not completed his first year and left behind a grieving widow with her 3 children, all of whom were under the age of 10. It is this story of my late grandmother, Sulabha Saharia, whose fortitude and foresight to educate her children even under the most difficult circumstances – the drive to excel, willingness to work and to persevere even when situations are not going the way we want, made sure that my father and his siblings end up with successful careers of their own.
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As I write, an overwhelming sense of responsibility pulls the emotional strings of my heart, as the realisation sets in that this was the very place my grandfather, my father and his siblings looked on as their own and a place that had remained alien to me, for I was born and brought up far away.
The month of ‘Bohag’ with all its cheerful anecdotes and nature’s bounty, the history of its beleaguered populace never giving up hope and their identity, and a celebration for a better life tomorrow through music and dance – all found a new meaning for me this time in Dalgaon.
Anurag Saharia, General Secretary of the Sanmilani was kept busy the past one month calling and managing a group of selfless volunteers to undertake new duties every day under strict instructions for the successful organizing of the 3-day festival. As I kept watching him in his element, he mentioned how his own work as a professional got affected because of his duty towards the community, a duty he loved and adored, a commitment to uphold a practice and position which his departed father had once held.
As I asked one volunteer who was running around with receipts of the donations received about how he would describe the work he was doing, his reply was, “Rongali Bihu only comes once a year Dada, and everything will be worth it at the end of the final day.”
Dalgaontown and the surrounding villages, together with Dalgaon legislative constituency are predominantly inhabited by the Muslim community of which the Bengali Muslim community forms the majority.
This fact, along with the timing of month of Ramzan this year, made it extremely tedious for our volunteers from the Muslim community who kept their fast but had to travel to the nooks and corners for any help, in cash or kind, in order to make the Sanmilani a success.
Arrangements in case of rain or thunderstorms, together with proper seating for guests and artists, the food for the organizers, their families and performers and the disbursement of funds to the service providers took a lot of effort, a collective will and an endearing belief to better serve a community, in need of solace from the monotony of life.
Be it Rongali Bihu in the month of Bohag, or Eid in the month of Ramzan, the people of Dalgaon have always stood up for their own in any time of need.
The cacophony of noises due to the ongoing election season, can do little to usurp the synergy and syncretism imbibed in the daily lessons imparted to the youngest child here, in the largely agrarian part of a state, whose values of Shankar and Azan will be long-remembered even after we are all gone.
