Growing up in the sleepy little town of Kokrajhar in the 70s - before Assam agitation was a bliss.
For those who are not familiar with Kokrajhar - in those days Kokrajhar used to be sleepy little subdivisional town in the western edge of Assam with a population not exceeding 20,000. Geographically Kokrajhar is in the Terai region close to the foot hills of Bhutan. The subdivision offered a rich flora and fauna - with an abundance of green vegetation with plenty of streaming rivers, rich wild life such as golden langur, leopards, tigers, wild elephants, deers, the famed Himalayan hornbill. The forest of Ultapani in the foothills of Bhutan does boast the most diverse collection of butterflies in the world.
The diversity in flora and fauna was matched with its ethnic diversity as well. The main ethnic group - Boro Kacharis lived in peaceful co-existence with Koch-Rajbongshis, Rabha, Garo, Bengali, Nath, Nepalis, Santhals, Biharis - each contributing to the cultural diversity of the subdivision.
Crime was virtually unheard of. So much so that Assam state police personnel - when posted in Kokrajhar - considered it as a leisure posting. State government officers from all over the state treasured their posting in Kokrajhar town and many of them settled down in that peaceful town.
This was the Kokrajhar of 70s and early eighties where my precious pre teen and teen age years were spent.
Childhood in this town was no less than a blessing. Although Kokrajhar was very poor in terms of sports and other recreational infrastructure - the youths in Kokrajhar invented their own ways to keep themselves engaged in a variety of activities.
There was no dearth of empty fields - where we used to assemble after school for a game of football in the summer, for cricket and badminton in the winter. Traditional games like kabaddi, tang-guti (gili-danda) used to happen round the year.
The school I attended - Kokrajhar Boys Government Higher Secondary - was very famous for its football team ( National Subrata Cup Champion) and its NCC (National Cadet Corps) program. Our school had the unique distinction of winning the best NCC team in the annual state wise camp organized in Narengi Army Camp for more than 10 times in a row. Many cadets represented the Assam state in the Republic Day Parade in New Delhi and eventually went on to join the Indian Armed Forces.
Those of us - who participated in the NCC program - used to assemble for basic military drill and march in the school ground after the academic instructions. The biggest attraction was the warm Kachoori or Samosa that was served after the basic drill as a refreshment.
Bi-cycling was also a big part of growing up. We would often form a group and take a 8 km ride to the Baukhungri hills which offered some excellent hiking and picnic spots. In the New Year eve, we would pitch a tarpaulin tent and feast out. Small games such as rabbits or pigeons hunted with sling-shots or bows added to the menu. There were leopards and reportedly even tigers in that forest, but who cared -- we carried our khukris and sling-shots :) But lucky us - we never had any encounter with those big cats.
That was the era when "Enter The Dragon" and Bruce-Lee became a craze. Kokrajhar did not yet have a martial arts school. But a cousin of mine did procure a book called "Manual of Karate" by Masoyama - which we studied back to back. Four of us would assemble in a nearby semi forest adjacent to the town where we had dug out a "dojo" on the ground and practice Kyokushinkai style of Karate going by instructions in the book. That resourceful cousin of mine - thanks to his elder brother who was in St Edmunds, Shillong - even procured the famous "Guerilla Warfare" by Che Guevara. We studied that book as well and played war games with dummy rifles carved out of wood. We learnt how to dig in foxholes, lay booby traps, set up ambush and basic survival techniques. We even became quite adapt in rope climbing, Tarzan rope swing techniques. Every other day -- we would have full contact sparring without any gear and come back home with bruises and bloodied noses :) We used to call our 4 member club as "Hidden Hunters" or HH for short. We all aspired to be commandos in the Indian Army. We were in grade 8.
And book lovers we were ! Devoid of the gadgets such as video games or TVs, we literally feasted on comics and story books. Though Kokrajhar was a small town, it had a decent library which had a nice collection of Assamese and Bengali books which we literally devoured. Also it had a small little bookstore called "Binoda Bhandar" - which used to sell Phantom and Mandrake comics published by a publisher called Indrajal Comics. My father used to occasionally bring Asterix Oblix, Tin Tin and War Comics from Guwahati - which were of course special treats.
The only commercial form of entertainment available in Kokrajhar township was movies. At one point of time Kokrajhar boasted of 3 movie theaters which screened mostly Hindi movies. Movie halls were always very crowded and one had to indulge in literally a wresting of sorts to manage movie tickets. One famous IPS officer - Daulat Singh Negi, SP in Kokrajhar - had quipped "The biggest policing job was maintaining a queue in movie ticket counters" . The blockbusters of that era were "Sholay", "Julie", "Yado Ki Barat", "Noorie", "Hum Kissisey Kum Nahin". A few of the naughty and adventurous ones would bunk classes and take a train ride to nearby town of Bongaigaon where for some reason movies were released a bit early compared to Kokrajhar.
Festivals were always fun of course. Be it the Bihu, Durga Puja, Kali Puja or Saraswati Puja. Saraswati Puja used to be my favorite. Well, not because of any religious reason - but mainly because you were not supposed to do any class work on that day and it provided us with the rare opportunity to make a trip to the Girls' School - where the girls would be dressed in their best "grown up costumes". It was sort of our "Valentine Day". Days before the Puja -- we would work to collect bamboos to set up the pandal, collect banana leaves for serving the "khisdi". We could of course procure the bamboos or the banana leaves from our neighborhood. But then it was always a fun to do a 8 km hike to Baukhungri hills with khukri to collect those from the forest. We would bring the idol - and camp out in the school on the pretext of guarding the idol where we would cook "khisdi".
The story of those teen age days would go incomplete unless I mention about group tete-e-tete sessions we had around the hang-out spots in different parts of the town. One popular spots were "Akaashbaani" - the shop that used to sell radios and gramophone records in near the police point. They literally used to blast out the popular numbers of that era. Us teen agers would hangout listening to the blaring music. Other popular spot was the railway overpass and many culverts in the township. Every evening, different groups of teenagers would assemble in their favorite hangout joints and literally discuss any topics you could even imagine - from movies to sports to academics to their heart throbs of the opposite sex. What was always missing was the politics. And true to Kokrajhar's reputation of being a town of communal harmony - the groups of teen agers were always multi ethnic.
Such was Kokrajhar of the 70s and early 80s - the wonder years of childhood I would not trade with anything else.
For those who are not familiar with Kokrajhar - in those days Kokrajhar used to be sleepy little subdivisional town in the western edge of Assam with a population not exceeding 20,000. Geographically Kokrajhar is in the Terai region close to the foot hills of Bhutan. The subdivision offered a rich flora and fauna - with an abundance of green vegetation with plenty of streaming rivers, rich wild life such as golden langur, leopards, tigers, wild elephants, deers, the famed Himalayan hornbill. The forest of Ultapani in the foothills of Bhutan does boast the most diverse collection of butterflies in the world.
The diversity in flora and fauna was matched with its ethnic diversity as well. The main ethnic group - Boro Kacharis lived in peaceful co-existence with Koch-Rajbongshis, Rabha, Garo, Bengali, Nath, Nepalis, Santhals, Biharis - each contributing to the cultural diversity of the subdivision.
Crime was virtually unheard of. So much so that Assam state police personnel - when posted in Kokrajhar - considered it as a leisure posting. State government officers from all over the state treasured their posting in Kokrajhar town and many of them settled down in that peaceful town.
This was the Kokrajhar of 70s and early eighties where my precious pre teen and teen age years were spent.
Childhood in this town was no less than a blessing. Although Kokrajhar was very poor in terms of sports and other recreational infrastructure - the youths in Kokrajhar invented their own ways to keep themselves engaged in a variety of activities.
There was no dearth of empty fields - where we used to assemble after school for a game of football in the summer, for cricket and badminton in the winter. Traditional games like kabaddi, tang-guti (gili-danda) used to happen round the year.
The school I attended - Kokrajhar Boys Government Higher Secondary - was very famous for its football team ( National Subrata Cup Champion) and its NCC (National Cadet Corps) program. Our school had the unique distinction of winning the best NCC team in the annual state wise camp organized in Narengi Army Camp for more than 10 times in a row. Many cadets represented the Assam state in the Republic Day Parade in New Delhi and eventually went on to join the Indian Armed Forces.
Those of us - who participated in the NCC program - used to assemble for basic military drill and march in the school ground after the academic instructions. The biggest attraction was the warm Kachoori or Samosa that was served after the basic drill as a refreshment.
Bi-cycling was also a big part of growing up. We would often form a group and take a 8 km ride to the Baukhungri hills which offered some excellent hiking and picnic spots. In the New Year eve, we would pitch a tarpaulin tent and feast out. Small games such as rabbits or pigeons hunted with sling-shots or bows added to the menu. There were leopards and reportedly even tigers in that forest, but who cared -- we carried our khukris and sling-shots :) But lucky us - we never had any encounter with those big cats.
That was the era when "Enter The Dragon" and Bruce-Lee became a craze. Kokrajhar did not yet have a martial arts school. But a cousin of mine did procure a book called "Manual of Karate" by Masoyama - which we studied back to back. Four of us would assemble in a nearby semi forest adjacent to the town where we had dug out a "dojo" on the ground and practice Kyokushinkai style of Karate going by instructions in the book. That resourceful cousin of mine - thanks to his elder brother who was in St Edmunds, Shillong - even procured the famous "Guerilla Warfare" by Che Guevara. We studied that book as well and played war games with dummy rifles carved out of wood. We learnt how to dig in foxholes, lay booby traps, set up ambush and basic survival techniques. We even became quite adapt in rope climbing, Tarzan rope swing techniques. Every other day -- we would have full contact sparring without any gear and come back home with bruises and bloodied noses :) We used to call our 4 member club as "Hidden Hunters" or HH for short. We all aspired to be commandos in the Indian Army. We were in grade 8.
And book lovers we were ! Devoid of the gadgets such as video games or TVs, we literally feasted on comics and story books. Though Kokrajhar was a small town, it had a decent library which had a nice collection of Assamese and Bengali books which we literally devoured. Also it had a small little bookstore called "Binoda Bhandar" - which used to sell Phantom and Mandrake comics published by a publisher called Indrajal Comics. My father used to occasionally bring Asterix Oblix, Tin Tin and War Comics from Guwahati - which were of course special treats.
The only commercial form of entertainment available in Kokrajhar township was movies. At one point of time Kokrajhar boasted of 3 movie theaters which screened mostly Hindi movies. Movie halls were always very crowded and one had to indulge in literally a wresting of sorts to manage movie tickets. One famous IPS officer - Daulat Singh Negi, SP in Kokrajhar - had quipped "The biggest policing job was maintaining a queue in movie ticket counters" . The blockbusters of that era were "Sholay", "Julie", "Yado Ki Barat", "Noorie", "Hum Kissisey Kum Nahin". A few of the naughty and adventurous ones would bunk classes and take a train ride to nearby town of Bongaigaon where for some reason movies were released a bit early compared to Kokrajhar.
Festivals were always fun of course. Be it the Bihu, Durga Puja, Kali Puja or Saraswati Puja. Saraswati Puja used to be my favorite. Well, not because of any religious reason - but mainly because you were not supposed to do any class work on that day and it provided us with the rare opportunity to make a trip to the Girls' School - where the girls would be dressed in their best "grown up costumes". It was sort of our "Valentine Day". Days before the Puja -- we would work to collect bamboos to set up the pandal, collect banana leaves for serving the "khisdi". We could of course procure the bamboos or the banana leaves from our neighborhood. But then it was always a fun to do a 8 km hike to Baukhungri hills with khukri to collect those from the forest. We would bring the idol - and camp out in the school on the pretext of guarding the idol where we would cook "khisdi".
The story of those teen age days would go incomplete unless I mention about group tete-e-tete sessions we had around the hang-out spots in different parts of the town. One popular spots were "Akaashbaani" - the shop that used to sell radios and gramophone records in near the police point. They literally used to blast out the popular numbers of that era. Us teen agers would hangout listening to the blaring music. Other popular spot was the railway overpass and many culverts in the township. Every evening, different groups of teenagers would assemble in their favorite hangout joints and literally discuss any topics you could even imagine - from movies to sports to academics to their heart throbs of the opposite sex. What was always missing was the politics. And true to Kokrajhar's reputation of being a town of communal harmony - the groups of teen agers were always multi ethnic.
Such was Kokrajhar of the 70s and early 80s - the wonder years of childhood I would not trade with anything else.
2 comments:
Yes, ofcours those were the golden days.
so well written, reminded me of my idyllic childhood days in haflong …
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