Border Line

When a nervous army officer came between the writer and the village. An extract

We said goodbye to him and his assistants and resumed walking. We had walked perhaps a couple of kilometres without seeing another person or car when the sound of a large vehicle groaning up the track reached us. This time it was a Border Roads Organisation truck. We climbed in with two men in uniform who drove us in wordless silence to the village of Bona, 10 km from Gelling. Getting out, we stopped for a cigarette break at a roadside shop selling the usual knick-knacks: cheap biscuits from unknown brands, potato chips, dry cells for torches and slippers.

The man behind the counter was busy counting a fat bundle of hundred-rupee notes. He regarded us with the usual suspicion and proceeded to ask more questions than even the IB agents. The answers did not seem to satisfy him, but he eventually ran out of questions. We finished our cigarettes, filled our water bottles from a roadside tap and resumed our march.

After another kilometre or so of walking we heard again the happy sound of a vehicle coming from behind us. The morning traffic had been pretty much all in our direction, and everyone had given us a lift. This time it was a dumper truck. And in the cabin next to the driver, wearing his maroon robe, was the monk from the Tuting monastery who I had stopped to ask about the car in the glass case!

He stopped the vehicle, and asked us to get in at the back. We clambered up. The truck was loaded with fine river sand and bags of cement. Four scrawny labourers stood atop these bags. We joined them.

It was, by some margin, the bumpiest ride of my life. While going to the Lake of No Return on the Stilwell Road in Myanmar some years ago, I had bumped my head a few times on the roof of the Maruti Gypsy four-wheel drive we were in, as a result of being hurled out of the seat. This time there was fortunately nothing to bump one’s head against even though I spent many long moments suspended in midair. Encountering a branch of a tree in one of those moments would have been unhealthy.

The road wound steadily up, as it had since Pasighat, with the Siang by its side.

At Gelling, we ran out of luck.

A convoy of army trucks was parked on the narrow single lane road in front of us. The dumper stopped. There was no path forward. All of us got off to walk towards the village, visible less than a hundred metres ahead. An army man in battle fatigues called out to Akshay, and stopped him.