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| A living history himself, my Abo (father in Galo language) Sokjar Gamlin is a great story teller |
‘You need to look up the exact dates; it should be in your computer. I can only narrate the events’ warns my Abo, Galo for ‘father’. Struggling with fading memories in his twilight years, Abo is telling me the story of the Great earthquake of Assam which had struck the region on August 15, 1950. In a cruel coincidence, that it was India’s 4th Independence Day and completion of 3 years of Sodinta (Swadinta, for Independence, in Hindi), as he recalls the day.
“We reached Gauhati the very same day that the great earthquake shook the entire Assam region,” He attempts to recall the exact date of his journey to Gauhati in 1950 from Bahadur Hill, a part of Abor Hills that runs parallel to the river Sipu on the left bank till Sipu merges with Siyom River.
Those days’ government orders/notifications used to come from Shillong to Pasighat where the Political Officer (PO) and the Assistant Political Officer (APO) were stationed as administrative heads; and from thereon it was disseminated to other destinations including Along. The entire Abor Hills, along with the Mishmi Hills were part of Sadiya Frontier Tract. About the challenges faced in administration during early period after India’s independence, he says, ‘Telegram was the fastest mode of communication. We didn’t have computer (referring to electronic mail) and mobile services (referring to short message service).’ About himself, he thinks, ‘I was a young bachelor, with no baggage except the desire to serve the community and the nation as a whole- it was quite romantic and idealistic.’
‘On August 12, 1950, I was summoned by the then Assistant Political Officer (APO) to his office.’ The first administrative head to be posted at Along was KT Khuma, a Mizo, who, designated as APO, was the highest authority then. [KT Khuma died sometime back. He is survived by his second wife whom he married after the death of first wife, four sons and two daughter]. Khuma Saab, as Abo fondly remembers him, informed him that he was to be part of the three-member Political Interpreter (PI) delegation representing the Adi community of Siang.
’You see, unlike today, we Adis were not divided then. We were called Adi-Galo, likewise they were Adi-Minyong but together we were all Adis. Above all, we were a large family called ‘Siang People’,” he expresses his unease with bifurcations and divisions.
His narrations are peppered with lot of wandering commentaries like these, but the moment I grimace with impatience, he comes back to the main thread.
‘Khuma Saab asked me to report to the then PO Bharat C. Bhuyian at Pasighat the next day to proceed further to Gauhati, to pay our last respects to the departed soul of the first Chief Minister of greater Assam, Gopinath Bordoloi, who had died exactly a week ago on August 05.
‘Next morning, I set off for Pasighat even before the roosters crowed and I walked the entire day on August 13 to reach Pasighat and joined the two other members of the delegation who were senior to me in service.‘I was designated to represent the Galo community along with Bibing Otik [Kutik Moyong, father of Omem Moyong Deori the first female MP and first Padamashree awardee from Arunachal Pradesh], who was the then Head PI, the boss of the entire PI of undivided Siang. Bibing represented the Adi community and Banom Perme represented the Padams. Our delegation was led by Bibing Otik who was then considered an elderly statesman and a gentleman.’
With moisture in his fading eyes and with a deep breath full of nostalgia, he recalls ‘Bibing Otik had a very dry sense of humour that bloomed only after sunset with his standard couple of pegs’. That time, Jairamdas Daulatram and Bishnuram Medhi were the Governor and the Chief Minister of Assam respectively, and Rustomjee was the Advisor on Tribal Affairs based at Shillong.
This leads him to another diversionary reminiscing, till I gently prod him back on track.
‘On August 14th we had a briefing session and on August 15th we flew down to Gauhati by a helicopter!’ I can see a gleam come back in his eyes and his shoulders pull up with enthusiasm as if he was re-living his first flight in a big fat plane. Abo gives a graphic description of what the interiors of the ‘Pvtta Gaari’ (literally ‘bird-vehicle’ in Galo, for an aeroplane) looked like but still I am unsure of its make. In all probability, it was a DAKOTA since it was the most commonly used air-craft after the World War-II in this region.
‘As soon as we reached Gauhati, we headed straightaway to meet Mrs. Bordoloi, wife of Gopinath Bordoloi, to pay our condolences. As we were ushered in Bibing Otik took the lead, followed by Banom and me in order of seniority,’ he recalls, ‘We were much disciplined and followed norms to the tee. These were etiquettes we learnt during the Raj era at Sadiya and Pasighat. PL James, under whom I had started working in official capacity, was a strict disciplinarian.’
After meeting Mrs. Bordoloi, the three of them headed for tea in one of the ‘shaamianas’ erected for the visitors from Siang, Ziro, and Sadiya. ‘I don’t remember whether it was a school or a college but, for sure, the entire set up was that of an educational institution where arrangements for huge gathering were made’.
Among the faded memories, there’s a moment that still has the clarity of yesterday.
He pitched up his voice and with some drama, he says, “The first lot had finished tea around 6.30 pm and we were in the second lot, queuing up for our turn to have tea. It must have been around 7 pm when tea in the cups started to spill out….suddenly, the earth started shaking vigorously. A big tree in the playground, next to where the tea was being served, swayed like a feather…thereafter, it was all helter-skelter. It was a massive earthquake.”
He lowers his tone and slows his pace.
‘News of devastation was trickling in from Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, Sadiya and parts of NE Frontier Tract which were better connected, but we- Bibing, Banom and I-didn’t know what was happening in our home-towns. There was no way of finding out about the situation in Pasighat and Along. We were anxious for information. The only piece that we got through the official sources was that Abor Hills has been impacted, but we didn’t know the severity of the devastation. Those days shall never be forgotten.’
‘Our misery started thereafter. The government machinery was deployed for relief and rescue operations, so we had to make our own arrangements for the return journey. It took us good 7 days to reach Tinsukia from Gauhati. We had to change our mode of transportation many a times - trekking for miles, riding on mule or horseback, at times on truck and if lucky on crowded jeeps.’
He continues with his narrations of great tragedy that struck the region at pace of 8.5 Richter scale on of Independence day
‘Railway tracks were washed away by raging rivers and rivulets. Highways caved-in for miles together. There were craters, puddles filled with stinking sludge water and when the wind blew, a foul smell was blown to every direction from the bodies of human and animal remains.’
‘Those days shall never be forgotten’, he murmurs again, recalling the Great Assam Earthquake of 1950.
The earthquake, which changed the course of mighty Brahmaputra and of Sadiya forever, where my Abo earned his first salary in few anas; and the earthquake that, compelled the union government to rethink and reorganize the administrative set-up.
Abo was right. The information is available on internet. Google search on internet in the computer threw up the exact dates. After the very same earthquake, the then Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru visited Assam for 4 days between September 4 and 7, to get a first-hand assessment of the situation.
Two days later on September 09, 1950, he addressed the nation, through All India Radio: “…It was the evening of August 15….Soon after half past seven, the earth trembled and shook and heaved up or subsided and houses tumbled …. The epicenter of the earthquake was somewhere in Tibet, near a place called Rima some miles from the Assam Frontier…”
So, now we know it wasn’t 6.45 or 7 pm, as Abo described. It was 7.30 pm on August 15, 1950. The then Prime Minister of India, Pandit Nehru said so.
This was one of those moments of history that I have relived through my Abo's eyes.
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