Transport is by dugout and small boats, used also for fishing. Large families survive on little bits of land and the bounty of the waters. Both are gifts of the Brahmaputra whose silt nourishes the chars and gives the farmers a bounty of rich soil for cultivation every year. Yet, the river also creates havoc and devastates lives and property.

The neglect of the chars is spawning much trouble for Assam and the North East. This is seen in what the college teacher said on that muggy afternoon in 1997, a view backed by Islam. ‘This is not just a feeling of frustration but of alienation and alienation is a dangerous trend.’

‘Look around you, where is the infrastructure, there is not even proper drinking water and we have not less than 500,000 homeless during the floods every year in my constituency alone,’ he declared, tapping his cigarette case on his office table for emphasis.

The Muslims, Islam said, would back the demand for a separate state by a group calling itself the Kamatapuris, comprising basically of the Koch-Rajbonshi community, one of the martial races of the plains of Assam with a demographic imprint also in West Bengal and Bangladesh. There now is even a Kamatapur Liberation Organisation that has the tacit support of the char dwellers and other Muslim communities in the border areas and the unequivocal backing of ULFA.

The Assamese ruling elite at Dispur has woken up to the trouble that the underdeveloped chars are spawning and spreading but it is already late. In these lands and sand bars that separate the waters as the Brahmaputra widens and steadies from its Himalayan rush, the presence of the river and its overpowering influence is elemental. ‘We live and die by the river,’ said one char dweller.

This was evident from the notes of our fellow traveller, Wazed Ali Chowdhury, the MLA. His constituency, South Salmara, has one remarkable achievement. For decades, it has maintained its population and the number of voters at a consistent level. It has not seen the sudden demographic surges or drops visible in other parts of Assam. The river is taking huge bites out of South Salmara, remorselessly eroding its banks and washing land downstream. My brother, who is a doctor at Tura, Meghalaya, and a keen cricketer, recalled playing at the local cricket field one season, by the Brahmaputra. The next year, he said, ‘Arre! the field was gone, just like that, swallowed up by the river.’

What is also striking about South Salmara is that only thirty-six per cent of the population has landed property in their own names; the others are labourers. Ninety-five per cent of the population of 1,65,000 is Muslim. Literacy is low and outbreaks of water-borne diseases like dysentery and malaria are common.