The answers were predictable: one old man said that he had been born here and his parents had come from the former East Bengal in the 1920s. He gave his age as seventy. All of them claimed to have been born and brought up on these islands. They spoke confidently in the presence of their political leaders, knowing that they were safe.

But on an earlier morning, I, Anindita, and Dilip Chakravarty, a senior journalist from Dhubri, made our way by car and then on a shaky dugout to the home of Noor Mohammad, the headman of Barholla village. We found a different story here.

Mohammad was seventy-five. Bare-chested, lungi-clad and with a frown on his face, he talked about the 5,000 people under his care. ‘At independence, there were more than 1,000 houses, now there are just 347; so many people have left because of the floods,’ he said. But even Mohammad made a distinction between locals and outsiders. While most Muslims were local, there were some who were Bhatia or bideshis (foreigners).

He was firm on one point—the local government, whether at the district level or at Assam’s capital, Dispur, had done nothing for them. There was no electricity, no paved roads or piped water.

The char-people were tough and articulate. We were struck by another fact—most of the population appeared to be either quite young children (below sixteen) or above thirty-five and forty years of age. One generation—that between these groups—appeared to be missing. We were told that many people had gone to Dhubri, Guwahati and other parts of the North East to ply cycle-rickshaws or work as labourers on construction sites. At one village, on the trip with Nurul Islam, we sat by the side of a village road and chatted with the islanders. It was dusk and the mosquitos were attacking us in swarms, obviously delighted at having some new, fresh victims. Where were the young men, I asked.

Some had gone to Delhi to work on big projects, we were told.

Were they local boys or from elsewhere?

The answer did not say much. ‘They are from here, people keep coming and going.’

By this time, the MP and his followers had returned from their trip, standing precariously on a dugout as it wended its way across a small pond inside the island. Islam was doing the ‘right thing’ by his people: he had opened a playground at a school. Both projects were financed under funds provided by the Government of India for each Member of Parliament. They were given one crore rupees or ten million rupees each to finance development projects of their choice in their constituency. The money was routed through the district administration and Islam had spent a few lakhs on building schools and playgrounds. These were important, for even if the latter were covered by water during the five months of floods, the buildings at least doubled as refugee quarters during this period.