But, especially, in the North East, time and again, people have appeared out of the blue or situations have developed where a number of things have meshed at a particular time, telling a particular story. I remember sitting outside the office of the chief minister in Tripura in the late 1980s and virtually dozing off as I waited interminably. There was no light, the soft drink I ordered was warm and it was extremely hot and humid. It was all very, very tiring. A police officer took the chair opposite me and sensing that I was a journalist asked if I had come to scout for stories. We introduced ourselves to each other. I thought to myself, what the heck? Let me tell him that I’m looking for the Government of India’s connection to the Chakma insurgency in Bangladesh. He smiled and in the next quarter hour gave me details, locations and names. But he was not to be quoted. This was off the record—any publication of sources would get him into trouble. We understood each other well. He was then summoned to the chief minister’s office and then left soon after with a cheerful goodbye. I never met him again.

But I had my exclusive for the New York Times. So, when the chief minister blandly denied the whole thing, I could afford to smile. The accuracy of the officer’s assertions and briefing was borne out by a visit to one of the sites he had named, and interviews with underground leaders.

The event at Chilmari Ghat was similar yet different. I became personally involved, even though to a limited degree in this ‘story.’ In the other situations, I was an excited but uninvolved reporter doing his job, exposing the government, or revealing various aspects of life which were not known to the public in India and abroad—whether it was the secret police-organized killer gangs in Punjab, or the Indian army running riot in the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka, or the secret negotiations for an out-of-court settlement of the Bhopal gas disaster.

With my own visits, as well as those of researchers, over the next years to Keramat Bhai village near Chilmari Ghat, his story acquired a life of its own as it shaped the writing of this book as well as my own understanding of an irreversible flow, of an immutable situation.

First of all, the location.

The difficulties of a place like Chilmari emerge from a map that is over two centuries old. A look at maps over the centuries, including those with satellite imagery details, show a conflict that is as old as the land itself. The conflict is between familiar foes—land and water. In this case, the flatlands of what is now Chilmari and Kurigram and their veteran opponent and destroyer, the Brahmaputra and its tributaries.