As evening fell—shorter days meant that it would become dark by 5 p.m.—the smell of smoke from firewood and from dry cow dung pats would waft past the road. It was a peculiar, rich but tangy smell. As dusk grew close, clouds of this smoke would gently float across the fields. If we reached late—and that happened quite often—fireflies would light up the darkness. There were no streetlights along the highway. That remains unchanged even today—and I see little chance of this changing in the future.

In our childhood ignorance, we knew little of the angers and passions that were to bloody this pleasant land. But on 18 February 1983, all this changed for good.

In the space of six hours, Tiwas allied with other plains tribal groups and a number of Assamese to avenge two perceived wrongs.

The first and immediate provocation appeared to be the reported abduction and rape of four young Tiwa women by Bengali-speaking Muslim immigrants. The second was a longer-held, deep-seated grievance: the gradual, sure march of the miyahs, as the settlers from the old Mymensingh district of the former East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) were known, over traditional Tiwa lands. The miyahs worked them, first as sharecroppers and then as tenants before finally acquiring rights, if these could be called that.

Essentially, these rights were illegally sought, bought and acquired. For these were traditional lands governed by British-made laws that banned non-tribals from acquiring in any form or shape, land which belonged to the tribals. Not even a government seal on a piece of official paper could change this status. In the case of Nellie and its surrounding villages, those who sold their lands were the Tiwas. Their bitterness grew as they saw the immigrants nourish the soil and grow more crops, making profits on fields which were, until recently, their own.

All roads led to Nellie as the Tiwas, their resentments growing, sharpened their daos, oiled their muskets and twanged their bows and arrows, preparing for what they regarded as judgement day. Perhaps it would be better described as pay-back day.

So much of life is about revenge, so little is about reconciliation. In these twin streams, the primordial passions of love and lust, anger and grief, play central roles.

As Rajmohan Gandhi says, ‘A nation cannot be judged by a city, nor a city by a season, but the wall, the lathi and the knife are not, alas, a figment of the imagination.’7