Chandubi Experience : A Certain Class of Assamese Tourists and Their Behaviour!
Sanjeev Kumar Nath

It was reported recently that the number of tourists in Kaziranga was on a decline, and people associated with the tourism industry were complaining that one reason why the number of tourists visiting Kaziranga was not increasing satisfactorily was that the tourists had nothing to do there after completing jeep safari and elephant safari.

That is quite true. In spite of many possibilities of developing ecotourism in Kazaringa and the other national parks of Assam, nothing worthwhile has been done.
Environment-friendly ecotourism activities—such as hiking, trekking, village visits, and showcasing local culture—provide tourists with enjoyable engagements, and they tend to stay longer in a place where such activities are properly organized.
It is a fact that the tourism sector in Assam has not progressed in the manner it should have. The number of government tourist lodges and other facilities are not adequate, and a lot needs to be done even for making bookings and reservations online and easy.
Nowadays, people plan their holidays in advance, and they expect to be able to book accommodation and other things easily online. Before visiting specific places in many parts of India today, tourists are able to do their bookings online quite easily and in advance. Not so easy with all destinations in Assam. If private enterprises have made online bookings somewhat easy, the government facilities are mostly still not hassle-free.
Thus, although we have beautiful national parks and other places, and also a rich cultural heritage, we are not able to attract tourists the way other states of India are.
However, there is one more thing that is required for the prosperity of the tourism sector. It is the behaviour of the local populace. In places where tourists’ footfall is high, (in Himachal, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Karnataka, etc.,) the local people are friendly to tourists. Besides, when local tourists mingle with other local or foreign tourists, they are well behaved.
We the Assamese tend to think that as a people we can be proud of our hospitality and our manners. However, after what I experienced during a brief stay at a tourist destination quite near Guwahati, I am inclined to revise my optimism concerning the manners of the Assamese—at least of a section of Assamese society.

My wife and I visited Chandubi a few days ago. We chose Chandubi because of a number of reasons: we had heard about its beauty, it is quite near Guwahati, and a weekend is quite enough to see and enjoy the place. The drive to Chandubi was beautiful, and a part of our route ran by the side of Deepor Beel. I cannot say I was happy to see Deepor. Since I had seen what it was many decades ago, the sight of the waterbody now always makes me sad.
So called “development and progress” have taken their toll, and the beel is now greatly reduced in size, and the water is not clean. All kinds of pollutants and garbage are being thrown into it constantly.
This Ramsar cite is witnessing lesser and lesser numbers of migratory birds every passing year and mills and factories and houses are marching right into the waterbody all the time. A railway track cuts through it. Without any doubt, Deepor is one of the loudest reminder of our failure to even appreciate what wealth nature has given us free.

As we neared Chandubi we saw the sal trees which are quite abundant in the forests of the area, and driving through passages where these trees stood on both sides, was an exhilarating experience, particularly because at this time of the year the mature leaves of the trees were a bright golden yellow. Trees on the roadsides have become a rarity in most parts of “developed” Assam. Thousands of trees have been felled for expanding the highways across the state and for constructing fly-overs.
In Guwahati alone, hundreds of trees have been felled for constructing fly-overs. In fact, the first thing the road construction companies in Assam do is to mercilessly destroy all the trees.
One wonders how cities like Mysore and Thiruvananthapuram have been able to achieve much better in terms of “development and progress” without sacrificing their beautiful old trees. One wonders why in spite of the feverish (and dirty, dusty and smoky) “development” going on in Guwahati, its place in the list of “smart” cities is at the bottom.

Chandubi is beautiful. I was told the place is jam-packed by picknickers in January, and so we deliberately did not visit it in January. (I think it is better to picnic in one’s own garden, or even verandah or on the roof instead of jostling with a crowd and shouting in the mad pursuit of “pleasure”–frightening the birds and animals of the area and irritating the local people.)
Developing this place as a tourist destination has obviously benefitted the local villagers, most of them from the Rabha community. From what I observed during my weekend stay in the place I concluded that the villagers are well-behaved people with a natural warmth of friendship, but that can hardly be said of many of the tourists from Guwahati who thronged the place in their plush cars.

Since our reservation was in a resort across the beel, we took a boat to reach there. It was a pleasant ride through the quiet beel. Our boat smoothly slid past lots of red water lilies in full bloom, and we also saw many other kinds of water plants, both on the surface and inside the water. At places it seemed there was a lovely green forest of soft, beautiful plants inside the water.
Moorhens, herons and other birds were there everywhere, some with their little ones. Whistling ducks, being nocturnal in nature, dozed on the shore. The sky was somewhat gloomy, but little birds flitted around, and occasionally groups of parakeets wheezed past in great speed.
There were clusters of trees on the shores of the beel, mostly big sal trees, and lots of birds seemed to inhabit the groves and the beel. The boy who rowed our boat, as all others who do that work, is from one of the local villages, and it was pleasant talking to him. They seemed to enjoy the work they did.

At the resort, we checked into our room and them came out to the dining space overlooking the beel to have our lunch. We enjoyed a lovely vegetarian meal, but they also offer lots of non-vegetarian stuff, including local delicacies. While we were having our lunch we saw a group of Assamese young men and a young woman sitting and talking quite loudly under some trees in our resort.
Obviously, they didn’t give much importance to the “No loud talk”, “No loud music” notices the resort management had hung all over the place.

Besides, a board explains that it is a no-smoking zone, and that alcoholic beverages are not allowed inside the resort. The group of young Assamese men and women were obviously in high spirits. But we didn’t mind much—after all they are young, energetic people, not elderly like us. Let them make some noise. It doesn’t matter much. That’s what we thought.
That’s what we thought first. Gradually, the group exhibited their capacity for noise, chaos and disorder, and we were no longer in a mood to ascribe all that to their youth. They were plain ill-mannered rowdies. We felt they were a nuisance in a place like this. But we didn’t stay there to watch their antics, because we wanted to rest for some time, and went into our rooms. Of course, we could hear their boisterous laughter and talk from our room, too.
After a brief rest we set off for a walk in the village, and before leaving we noticed that some more guests had checked in, but the ones who made their presence really felt were the gleeful Assamese group. As we left for the village, we saw one of them beginning to play a dhol, the loud Assamese drum, and the others frisking around him and recording the performance.

The Assamese dhol is certainly a wonderful instrument, and it can instantly fire up the atmosphere during the Bohag Bihu celebrations. But beating a dhol in a resort with a “silent area” notice? What kind of behaviour is this?
But not being a South Indian film hero bashing up or at least quietening all the bad guys, and in fact being just a frail middle-aged man, I slunk away with my wife, without confronting the Assamese baddies.
We had a most pleasant walk in Joramukhuria village. Big sal trees were there on the roadside, and on one tall tree denuded of its leaves, I spotted a flock of wood pigeons. There were many other birds, including some on a patch of marsh and water connected to the beel. Most of the houses were mud and bamboo structures, but the houses and the courtyards were all immaculately clean.
In some places, people were constructing new houses, some cement and brick ones. We saw several people working with bamboo, either preparing to complete a fencing or making an implement of household use with split bamboo.

The villagers were using ecologically sustainable technology to build their houses and make tools and implements, while in the cities we see the destruction of nature and the rise of concrete jungles everywhere. We were also struck by the quietness of the place. No notices for silence, but the people just didn’t shout and make a noise. They went about doing their work silently, or talking softly, when necessary.
Then we crossed a patch of paddy field where only the stamps of the paddy remained after the harvest, walked a little more and reached a grove near the beel on another side. (The beel winds its way in a rather zig-zag manner). There we found benches to sit and enjoy the serenity of the beel. We could do that in our resort too, for they have installed benches and swings on the shores of the beel, but here it was much more peaceful.
We watched the boats gliding here and there on the beel, the tourists arriving on the other side, the ancient sal trees in the grove and hundreds of rose-ringed parakeets screeching and busing themselves with god knows what on the tree tops. From the distance, from our resort, the sound of the dhol reached us here too, but it was only a soft sound because of the distance.

Thankfully, the dhol episode ended by the time we returned in the dusk. The evening was quite pleasant and we sat on the chairs and swung on the swings near the beel in our resort, enjoying the silence. The energetic young Assamese people were nowhere to be seen. We had an early dinner and after some time went to bed. We planned to go on a walk on a different track in the morning and do some boating on the lake before leaving for Guwahati after breakfast.
Then in the middle of the night I woke up to the sound of what I took to be a quarrel outside. The Assamese group had not left, as we had imagined. May be they were only resting after all the activity. Now, they were apparently having some kind of midnight party somewhere in the resort. They were talking, laughing, quarrelling quite loudly. Some of the voices sounded drunk.
At one point I heard the young woman shout out, “Xi haaraami! That bastard does not even leave me. Break-up o nokore xi!” I was alarmed by the noise because although I can usually go back to sleep after such disturbance, that may not be the case with my wife. I looked at her furtively, and was relieved to see her asleep. But the noise went on for quite some time.
The resort management’s efficiency in keeping the place quiet and peaceful—as envisaged by them and as planned—can certainly be questioned, but at the same time, they are perhaps unwilling to displease customers. If guests stop visiting them, their business will not flourish.
However, if people from other parts of India visit this resort and are upset with the noise and the hooliganism of the local tourists, are they likely to choose Assam as a tourist destination again? Are they likely to recommend such a tourist destination to their friends?
There is no doubt that the government needs to do a lot to improve the tourism industry in our state. But is that enough? Nature has endowed Assam with abundant beauty (although some of us are constantly engaged in destroying it), and infrastructure has improved (although more needs to be done), but what about the behaviour of the people? Who will want to visit a place where hooligans disturb your sleep?

Some time ago when Patricia Mukhim had made some apparently adverse comments about tourists from Assam who crowded the tourist destinations of Meghalaya, social media and news media in Assam erupted with criticism of her views.
To be honest, I too felt somewhat hurt, not because I too am guilty of rash driving and displaying “arrogant and insolent” behaviour in Meghalaya, but simply because I happen to be an Assamese.
“Can our people be so bad? Isn’t she exaggerating things?”—that sort of a doubt made me feel bad.
However, my experience at Chandubi has made me realise that may be, Mukhim was only understating the truth about a certain class of Assamese tourists.
I am saying “a certain class”, because obviously all Assamese tourists cannot be rowdies, but I also think that this “certain class” is the majority who throng tourist places. They mostly constitute the uppity middle class of Assamese society—people with enough money and leisure, but hardly any sense of manners or social sense.
By the way, another kind of noise startled us as we rested by the beel after breakfast next morning. This time, however, the more I heard the noise, the happier I felt, wanting to see the noise-makers in the forest nearby—hoolock gibbons making a racket!

(Sanjeev Kumar Nath, English Department, Gauhati University, sanjeevnath21@gmail.com)
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