I had called Devashish and asked him to book a room for me in Assam House for my next Mumbai visit a month later. Well, that was the buffer period he had requested from me for room booking as demand exceeded availability. The subsequent socially expected interaction revealed their oncoming camp to Haflong. I was the Deepsikha biographer, I guess I will really have to write the book now, and I needed to know how they functioned during the camps. So far it was just sporadic discussions with Mrinmoyee over mung dal ka cheelas and chicken barbeque pizzas which did give a fair idea behind the workings of the organisation, but Juri wanted to see the action and not just on a video streaming out of a compact disc. I requested to go. Devashish was obvious in the skepticism towards the request, but he is a polite man, and training for his professional duties further reinforced the niceness. I called him again to confirm my going, and well, they took me.
I was excited about going to Haflong. It was known for its pristine beauty and Jatinga, which are nice things to be famous about. But it was also famous for gun toting freedom fighters, which was not a nice thing to be famous about, but which made the road trip in an ambulance sound all the more exciting. Co-nuts like me will understand. We were handed Deepsikha T-shirts in the ambulance. Thoughtfully, they had ordered an extra large for me. Shirt guys, not booze. Sigh! Even Biswajit and Abhishek, the head and neck oncosurgeons got only 'large'. I thought I had become smaller but the shirt was truthful. I graciously accepted the present moment.
Haflong was not beautiful. It was dry and dusty and the trees on the hills were a little nude-ish. It hadn't rained for six months and the lack of water had shorn the place of its beauty. The hills which bear Haflong are parts of the lesser Himalayas. The route to where the awareness camp and screening was held included the new highway which was still under construction. Large parts of the hills had been dug out to construct an amazing road. The bare hills walling both sides of the road were black fossils which would have turned to coal in a thousand years. The technology was fascinating, especially as it had been used in such a remote part of the country successfully, but it also saddened me. It was murder of trees and hills, they are living beings too. But perhaps that is life. Something has to be destroyed for something to be created.
The village was an amazing place as were the Deepsikha team and the musicians who accompanied them. They parked the ambulance in the middle of a steep narrow hilly road flanked by the market place. A smorgasbord of humanity assembled once the guitar started strumming and Bipul Kathar sang a Bhupen Hazarika song in to the microphone, powered by a portable battery. Haflong is a hotbed of oral and esophageal cancer, and awareness for early detection was an absolute necessity. Devashish delivered the awareness talk in impeccable Hindi with an energy that continued to amaze me throughout the trip. The energy was infectious and the crowd gathered was infected and so was I and I realised it was an energy that rippled back and forth between the Deepsikha team members. The energy that invests itself in goodness, I also realised.
It was a lovely trip. Haflong was dehydrated because of the lack of rains but the journey with Deepsikha was beautiful. The people of Haflong made up for the lack of its physical beauty. The dinners were hosted by them, and they are lovers of music. The company made the food amazing. I now look forward to dinners that have good co-diners. I also reserve the remaining details for my book
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