The Death by Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi (Translated by Jyotirmoy Prodhani from the Assamese short story, ‘Mrityu’)

Gaonburha Indi Phinya felt lonely, though not for lack of company; on the contrary, he was surrounded by a throng of relatives, perhaps too many for his liking. The families of his children have expanded over time, making him the de facto patriarch of the sprawling family line. With approximately twenty-one children from his three wives, along with a cacophony of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, he often confused the exact numbers. However, despite the bustle, a deep and persistent pain afflicted him. None of his twenty-one sons are alive today, their absence a palpable void. But then this void was filled by the lively presence of his grandchildren, who enveloped him in unwavering love and protective care, ensuring constant company around him, never letting him feel lonely or abandoned. Materially, he was well-appointed with all the essentials of a comfortable life—shelter, sustenance, clothing, and even transportation in the form of a car. Each family member was eager to ensure his happiness, tirelessly seeking to uplift his spirits. Every one of them wanted to be always there by him, and whichever household he chose, it became a hub of activity, attracting a constant stream of visitors from near and distant villages and towns with an assortment of gifts as tokens of their devotion and love for the patriarch. The countless gifts would include almost everything on earth, from exotic delicacies to branded clothes, footwear to an array of modern gadgets— luxury watches, latest mobile phones, radios, tape recorders and sundry other things. But old Indi Phinya neither had time nor the inclination to make use of them. Nevertheless, he made it a point to keep them carefully, at least to make sure none of his overenthusiastic admirers is disappointed. They jealously surrounded him with too much love and care, as if the old man was a precious pre-historic relic. They kept up a flurry of activities – offering food, posing excitedly for photographs, expressing endearments.

Despite the bustle around him, old Indi Phinya felt very lonely. He would try to communicate with them as much as he could through signs and gestures, yet he could neither talk nor understand what they say. He felt the strong urge to tell them his stories, about his village that he had left behind, his beautiful memories from the past, about the fabulous people he once knew but who were no more. He had so much to tell, so much to narrate, but he could not say a thing about all this — the splendid world of his time, the wonderful landscape, beautiful birds and animals, many of which are not spotted these days. He had a world inside to speak about.

It is not that old age had turned Indi hard of hearing or dumb; he could jolly well speak and his ears were still sharp and alert, though his vision had weakened, making it difficult for him to recognize things from a distance. That’s about it.

Despite being healthy, his organs in order, living a life without paucity of things and material worries, with love and care from all, the old man was unhappy. He was not sure if ever anyone on this earth had been haunted by such a pain. What caused that pain? He was sad. He was sad for his mother tongue, which was lost. Not being able to speak in his own tongue, not ever being able to hear a word of his native language. There was a time when even animals around him — dogs, cats, pigs, hens and other domestic animals and birds — used to come sprinting, wagging their tails, as soon as they heard someone calling, ‘buwa, buwa’, ‘come, come’. And now, forget animals and birds, even humans had forgotten the language of their forebears. That such a day would ever come was beyond his imagination; even his forefathers could not have imagined such a day when their language would vanish. Was it possible? But then, such a day had not come all of a sudden. It came stealthily, in measured paces that none could have had a clue about.

Indi Phinya’s village Sinchung is situated in a patch of plain between two hills and a rivulet, their main source of water, which merges with river Tenga at a little distance. The river bank has sporadic plain patches ideal for agriculture, but the villagers of Sinchung hardly showed interest in growing crops there. Instead, they preferred the southern hills for jhum cultivation. The fertile and virgin lands give them bumper mix of yields—maize, paddy, corn, including several varieties of colocasia, sweet potato, legumes, and others. There was no dearth of food; what they lacked, if at all, were material goods. Besides farming, his tribe knew no other vocation and depended on the Aka and Sherdukpen tribes in the neighborhood for the stuff needed for their daily use – utensils, clothes, small tools, etc. The Akas and Sherdukpens went down to the plains in Assam at least once a year to trade with the Hundi or Hindu Assamese traders there; while returning, they also procured useful things from the Bodo, Kachari, Rabha and Tiwa farmers – mostly brass and bell metal utensils, yarn, endi cloth lengths, shawls, and so on. From the Akas and Sherdukpen traders, Indi’s tribe, the Buguns, bought some of the stuff.

As for human contacts, besides the Akas and the Sherdukpens, Indi Phinya’s tribe had occasional contact with the Mijis and the Monpas, who were not quite far from them. Further, in the distance, there were Tibetans, and beyond, the Mijis; further up east lived the Nyshis with whom they hardly had any contacts. That was the human radius for the Buguns. They had heard about the Assamese in the plains, including the Kacharis, the Rabhas, and others, although they had never seen them. Apart from the Bugun language, Indi Phinya’s fellow tribe could communicate with the Akas in their Aka language and with the Sherdukpens in Sherdukpen language, but the Akas and the Sherdukpens could not speak a word of Bugun. Thus, Bugun became a language exclusively for the Buguns. The only other beings who could follow the language were the domestic animals and pets in the Bugun villages.

At present, though his grandchildren know a few Bugun words, Indi Phinya is the sole custodian of his language on this earth. Even then, apart from uttering the few basic words like sit, get, come, go, etc., Indi Phinya can no longer frame a full sentence in Bugun since no one can anyway make head or tail of it, including the army of his grand and great grandchildren. So, Indi Phinya has no reason to speak his language, even frame a sentence in it. It is no longer necessary.

The vast land and the empty territory, with hardly any human habitation, began to witness new buildings and roads coming up soon after India got her freedom. And Indi Phinya’s village? His village too saw new roads coming up through which arrived the government officials who would move to Bomdila, the headquarters of Kameng frontier region and further up to the sub-divisional headquarters at Tawang. That was the time when Indi Phinya and his fellow tribe, who hardly saw other human beings before, witnessed so many strangers arriving from unknown places. However, those strangers would be inside vehicles, never stopping to set up even a temporary camp near their villages. He heard that they were called the Government People — people from the plains. Near the Wangdo village of Bomdilla, they dug up the hills to build a settlement for themselves and get their food in bags and packets being dropped by airplanes from the sky. As the war broke out, each day would bring new surprises for them. They had never heard of a place called China from where soldiers came in hordes with guns and mortars to fight against the people from the plains. Gunmen from the plains came up to fight against those coming from China, but they were badly beaten and fled the scene. For reasons unknown, those Chinese soldiers too went back to their land. Then, the plains people returned.

Much later, Indi and his people came to know that those people from the plains were from a country called India and including his village, all the other neighboring tribal villages of the Monpas, Sherdukpens, Akas and others were put inside the boundary of the country called India. Indi Phinya did not even know what country meant. For them the world meant the hills around them as far as they could see and the sparsely populated distant villages in the valleys, where each tribe spoke a different language. In a couple of those villages, a handful of them spoke Bugun, followed similar rites, rituals, and way of life. With them, people from Phinya’s village established relations through marriages. People are known to each other by their villages, not by the name of any country – the village was their identity. When the plains people started crowding their land, they realized that there were places beyond their land. So far, they’d thought that the earth was formed by their hills, mountains, trees and rivers, but they had no clue that there were lands beyond theirs. Those were known as countries with various names like India, China, Japan, America, and so on, and when such countries fight with each other, like China and India did, it was called a war.

Soon after the war, the soldiers with guns began to set up posts in the valleys in between the hills of their Sinchung village. In the beginning, Indi Phinya and his fellow tribesmen were wary of those soldiers and would avoid going near their camps; however, gradually they began to mingle with them. By that time, a school also came up in Indi’s village where his grandchildren were admitted.

Some new nice and good-looking double-storied buildings also came up in the area for the families of the soldiers to stay. Along with them, laborers and traders from the plains began to arrive. Since the outsiders could not purchase and become owners of land, people from Indi’s village were issued business permits, which the Bengali, Bihari, and other traders used to hire on rent. Most of the rented sites were made at a place called Tenga, and the area soon began to grow as a market. By the end of the ‘60s and early ‘70s, there was a substantial growth of migrant population that turned Sinchung into a big town. Amidst the bustle of this new town, Indi Phinya and his people felt lost.

Their traditional dress was replaced by modern outfits like trousers, shirts etc. Earlier, there was hardly any use of footwear, for they would walk barefoot; now, there was hardly anyone without shoes and socks walking on the streets. Changes also came in terms of their food. They no longer needed to toil in the hills, remove big trees and thick forest to clear the terraces and cultivate crops like maize, finger millet, yam, tubers, and so on. Now they depended on the surplus ration of the soldiers, like atta, rice, dal, which they got in exchange of their physical labor at the camps. They could also buy them at a cheap rate from the fare-price shops. Gradually, the Buguns got used to having meals made of rice and dal. And with that another need occurred, to communicate with the migrants. With them they had to speak in another language instead of speaking in their own. As the entire place was swamped by Hindi speaking soldiers, with laborers, contractors, shop keepers coming from outside, this new language called Hindi soon became the sole language to communicate with each other.

But Indi Phinya never cared to learn this new language for which he had to face ridicule from the fellow villagers, for they felt rather proud to have known an additional language besides their own. They got so proud that they even started communicating amongst themselves in Hindi. So much so, they even took it upon themselves to teach this new language to their children instead of letting them learn their mother tongue. When the kids showed a smattering of Hindi, the parents would gloat:

“See how smart my little devil is, can speak in Hindi when he is just a knee-high to a grasshopper!”

“You know, my daughter can’t make a head or tail of our native tongue, she understands only Hindi,” one would swagger trying to outsmart the other.

All this would fade into insignificance if one’s kid could utter a word or two in English. “And look at my son, the other day, the army officer adulated his fluency in English.”

“What’s the point in learning Bugun? None can understand this language outside our village; they ridicule us if we speak in our tongue.”

Indi Phinya was getting old, so sometimes he would protest,

“You are making a big mistake. If we keep using outsider’s language, soon we’ll lose our own, and once our language disappears, we’ll also disappear from this earth. Have you ever thought of it?”

He would find support in some of them, especially the elderly lot. They thought of organizing a meeting to discuss how to save their native tongue. The main organizer of the meeting was Dambing, a primary school teacher who had studied up to class eight in an Assamese medium school at Bomdila. Dambing was the first to address the gathering:

“You all know the purpose of our gathering today.”

“Yes, we do.” Almost everyone uttered in unison.

“Most of our Bugun elders are gradually losing the native tongue, and if it continues for some more time, our new generation, our children and grandchildren, will soon forget the language completely. And as we die, our language will also die with us.”

“You are right. Absolutely true. Once we the elders die, there will be hardly anyone left to speak the language, not even a word will be around to smoke in the hearth and cook if needed,” quipped one in support of Dambing.

“Forget smoking and eating, not even a word will survive to drop as a pinch of spice to prepare a curry.”

“Exactly. So, we are here. We must do something to protect and preserve our native tongue. I am here to hear from you. What should we do? How can we save our language and ensure that our next generation keep using this lovely language of ours? Please suggest.”

“My nephew Dambing said the right thing,” said Indi Phinya. “We are really worried about the future of our language, for we don’t know how long we can keep our language alive. It hurts and makes one so sad to see the condition of our mother tongue. In my opinion, in order to save our language, we must stop speaking in Hindi, and speak in our mother tongue instead.”

“But how can you do it?” someone intervened, not allowing Indi to finish his speech. “How is it possible? We can’t afford to speak without using words in Hindi and English, can we? Do we have native terms for words like telephone, bazar, market, car, shirt, boot, pen, kitab and so on?”

“No, we don’t have any,” stressed a young boy. “Then how can we avoid speaking in Hindi or English? Is it possible at all?”

“Not possible.” Old Indi Phinya said meekly.

The young boy was louder this time, “Then how can we remain away from Hindi and English, can we ever do it?”

“We cannot. In today’s time we cannot afford to be away from Hindi. As soon as one goes to the market, one has to speak in Hindi since the shopkeepers do not understand our Bugun language, nor do they try to speak it. Besides, once we go down to Assam, the villagers speak only in Assamese though Hindi has intruded the towns of Assam too.

“And the words you mentioned, like telephone, bazar, car and so on are not there in our language because those things were never there in our life. In today’s time we cannot avoid those words, can we? However, we have our own words for eggs, cloth, roads, village and so on, so when we speak, why should we say khana de instead of michia chi? Instead of Sinchung thak why should we say Sinchung basti? Instead of using the Hindi terms, why don’t we use those words which are still there in our language?” Dambing argued passionately.

“Language? Can we call this a language at all? Isn’t it a dialect?” Said one of the young school-going boys. “It is written in our books that a language is one which has its grammar; the one without a grammar is not a language, it’s a mere dialect. Therefore, our teacher said that our Bugun language is not a language, it is a dowan, just a dialect.”

“Yes, our teacher also said the same to us,” Dambing added.

Indi Phinya looked at them with confusion. In fact, he could not quite follow what they were saying. If he could refute, he would have replied, “Whatever is written in your book is entirely wrong. They are teaching you all the wrong things.” But he didn’t know how to make such a statement.

Dambing continued, “The other day a professor and a team of research scholars came from Delhi to meet our Gaonburha Indi uncle. They were doing research on endangered languages, and according to them, Bugun is an endangered language. Whenever someone from outside comes, Gaonburha uncle always calls me to explain the things to the visitors. Isn’t it uncle?”

“You are right. Though I am the Gaonburha of the village, besides my native tongue, the only other language I can speak in is Assamese. As for Hindi and English, I hardly know a word from those languages. So, whenever an outsider comes, I can’t manage without my smart nephew.”

Dambing gave a long explanation, “When I told the professor about what we learnt from our teacher, that we didn’t have any language, ours was just a dialect, he disagreed and said it was wrong. The professor even claimed that we were taught a wrong thing in our schools. Even the books were wrong. They wrote wrong things. According to him a language is a medium of expression.

“The language in which people can express their feelings and thoughts can never be inferior to any other language. For example, our Indi uncle does not know any other language other than Assamese, but at home he would explain everything to us in Bugun, without ever mixing it with Hindi or English. Is he not using a language then? The professor from JNU explained the importance and value of our language. His words were a big revelation to us. We both realized that we must do something to save our language from becoming extinct. This is the reason we have decided to convene this meeting today. We want your support and opinion on this to go forward.”

“He is right, the professor from Delhi opened our eyes. We the Buguns are on the verge of forgetting our mother tongue, which is not the case among the other tribes, I believe. It is indeed a matter of shame for us…” Indi Phinya ’s voice choked.

Penze, who was a member of the village panchayat, added, “It is not the case only with us, the Buguns. All other tribes of Arunachal are also worried about the same fate of their languages. Their languages are on the brink of getting lost forever. The English medium schools are just in namesake, they teach everything in Hindi medium. The books are in English, but when they teach, they teach in Hindi and in hostels too, students converse mostly in Hindi.

“Didn’t you notice, when the kids from Ram Krishna Mission, Vivekananda Vidyalayas come home on holidays, how they talk? Don’t they talk to us only in Hindi? The ones who used to speak in their mother tongue while young, they too have switched to Hindi now.”

“Even the Monpa kids of Dirang, Serdukpen kids from Rupa, Aka kids from Jamiri and the Miji kids from Nafra have forgotten their language,” added Soju, who has been always conscious of and disturbed by such developments.

“You are right. Not only in our district, this is the situation all over Arunachal. None of our tribal children can speak the native tongue anymore. In every household in Itanagar, Hindi has become the main language.” Penje endorsed Soju.

“Is it like so? Isn’t it a matter of great worry then? I was not aware that the situation is so alarming that it has affected every language of our land. Has the government done anything to save our languages?” Indi was visibly agitated.

“What can the government do? Since we do not have a common language of our own, even the ministers, MLAs and officers speak mostly in Hindi or English amongst themselves. Earlier, they used to converse in Assamese, now they have switched over to Hindi. So, how can we save our languages from disappearing? One by one, each of the native languages of Arunachal will vanish from the face of earth forever, and soon the Rashtrabhasha Hindi will become the mother tongue of all the tribes of this land.

“Then, we the Arunachalis will become one people with one language. There will no longer be any Adi, Apatani, Nyshi, Monpa or Bugun in Arunachal. No, not anymore. Galo, Khamti, Aka, Serdukpen, Nocte, Wangsu, Tangsa will all be the same. When language disappears, culture too dissipates. The beautiful diversity of various tribal cultures will eventually disappear and become one, the religion too will be the same. We have almost abandoned our native costume, now it is just a matter of time for whatever little is left with us will soon disappear for good, ha, ha, ha…” Suddenly Soju broke into loud laughter. People were clueless whether this was out of sheer amusement or profound grief.

“What is there to be so happy about it?” Indi almost reprimanded him.

“Or what should we do? Ha, ha, ha.” Soju laughed even louder. This time the gathering too laughed with him. Gradually, his laughter turned into a whimper, and then into a hoarse cry.

“Are you mad or what?” Indi admonished him. “First you laugh for no reasons, then you begin to cry even louder, also for no reason.”

“What else can I do? We must cry. For the day our language will die, there will be none around to cry for Bugun. Perhaps, one of us today will be the last speaker of the Bugun language on this earth, and when that last man dies, there would be none to cry for this language. Therefore, I want to cry for my language today itself. Let me cry, please.”

“We are here to find a way out so that we don’t have to cry anymore. I want to make a few proposals. Let us make it a rule that at home, in our villages, we will not speak in any language other than our mother tongue.”

Everybody supported Dambing.

“‘Yes, we all support your proposal. We must stop using English and Hindi at home.”

“While speaking with outsiders, we will speak in English or Hindi, but with fellow villagers we will speak in our native tongue.”

“Yes, we support this.”

“At home, parents will talk to their children in their mother tongue.”

Everybody expressed their support to Dambing with a round of strong applause.

“To this, I want to add another,” quipped Penze.

“What is it?” Gaonburha Indi asked.

“If we want to keep our language alive, we must start teaching the language in our schools. Here they are teaching in English, and Hindi is being taught as the second language. In our Bugun villages, Bugun language should be taught as the third language. We must place our demands in front of the government.”

“You are right, but how can we do it? Do we have any scripts? We don’t, and no books. How can we teach our language in schools?” Dambing said, sounding helpless.

“What for are you there? Why don’t you develop a script for our Bugun language? Write a primer in that language. I will bear all the cost.” Penze, the panchayat member, committed enthusiastically.

“This is a very good proposal from our young brother. If we can do it, we can save our language. You start doing it sir, I shall also donate as much as I can to publish the books.” Soju was equally upbeat.

“Ok, I shall do it but I would require more people with me.”

“Take whomever you want.” Though Indi could not figure out everything, he knew, on this, he must stand by Dambing as a pillar of support.

After the meeting, the villagers eagerly followed all the decisions of the meeting as much as they could. After a few days, the determination began to tail off. Dambing put in a lot of efforts to develop a script for his language. But gradually, the enthusiasm dwindled. Then, all of a sudden, a devastation took place. Dambing died in an unfortunate car accident. Penze and Soju too fell ill, and almost in quick succession, both passed away.

As time progressed, the number of people who could speak their mother tongue began to decline. Indi Phinya, the old Gaonburha, was the only man alive who could speak Bugun.

Dambing’s death was a great shock and deeply painful to Indi Phinya. Even the death of his wives and children were not as painful as Dambing’s. Most of them had died at a ripe old age. After all, once born, one is bound to die. Besides, at the death of a community member, the Buguns have the custom of celebrating it with feasts, songs and dance. But can ever a language die? This is exactly what is going to happen to his language now. The thoughts agonize Indi.

Dambing was the only hope, but fate had taken him away forever and with him, hopes for the language. Old Indi was desperate to rescue his beloved language from the brink of extinction. He thought of various ways and means to save his language. He tried to teach it to his grand and great grandchildren as well as his fellow villagers. He made it a point to speak in Bugun at every opportunity. He knew that both in Assamese and Hindi water is pani. When thirsty, if he asked for pani, they would serve him a glass of water, but he would consciously ask for kho phi, the Bugun word for water-. If anyone greeted him with, “How are you grandpa?” Instead of replying in Hindi, he would say, “Ko gnong,” “I am good.” And if ever he greeted a passerby saying, “kno khen aan?” the man on the other side, being confounded by the question, would gape at him.

Finally, old Phinya was convinced that once he was dead, the waves of Bugun sounds would no longer flow on this earth. When the researchers from Guwahati, Delhi and other places would come to learn about the sound patterns of Bugun language, there would be none to familiarize them with the samples. It might also happen that one day, someone like Dambing, Penze, Sujo, and he would emerge in the village and carry on the struggle to revive the Bugun language.

One day, old Indi Phinya brought out the tape recorder he had got as a gift and began to fiddle with it in order to figure out how to record his voice. Finally, he began his new mission, recording his language on his tape recorder. He used Assamese and familiar Hindi and English words to record his language in order to make some of the Bugun words easy to understand for the listeners. He would close the door of his room and begin his recording sessions joi ek, gnang dui, kno khe aan, soul-man, … woman, how are you?

He was so engrossed in this exercise that he would often lose track of time, forget to eat and to take rest. People began to tittle-tattle that old Indi had gone nuts. The few members who used to look after him at home, left him alone. One day, his grand daughter-in-law went to his room as usual to serve his meal and saw the old man sleeping on the bed holding the tape recorder to his bosom. She went closer to wake him up only to realize that the old man was no more. He had died holding the tape recorder to his heart.

Indi Phinya’s death was not an ordinary death. With him, a language had disappeared forever from the face of the earth. It was the death of a community, a culture, an identity. Though old Indi made arrangements to keep his language alive even after his death, his great grandchildren and the villagers were not aware of this. As per Bugun custom, the deceased Gaonburha Indi Phinya felt lonely, though not for lack of company; on the contrary, he was surrounded by a throng of relatives, perhaps too many for his liking. The families of his children have expanded over time, making him the de facto patriarch of the sprawling family line. With approximately twenty-one children from his three wives, along with a cacophony of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, he often confused the exact numbers. However, despite the bustle, a deep and persistent pain afflicted him. None of his twenty-one sons are alive today, their absence a palpable void. But then this void was filled by the lively presence of his grandchildren, who enveloped him in unwavering love and protective care, ensuring constant company around him, never letting him feel lonely or abandoned. Materially, he was well-appointed with all the essentials of a comfortable life—shelter, sustenance, clothing, and even transportation in the form of a car. Each family member was eager to ensure his happiness, tirelessly seeking to uplift his spirits. Every one of them wanted to be always there by him, and whichever household he chose, it became a hub of activity, attracting a constant stream of visitors from near and distant villages and towns with an assortment of gifts as tokens of their devotion and love for the patriarch. The countless gifts would include almost everything on earth, from exotic delicacies to branded clothes, footwear to an array of modern gadgets— luxury watches, latest mobile phones, radios, tape recorders and sundry other things. But old Indi Phinya neither had time nor the inclination to make use of them. Nevertheless, he made it a point to keep them carefully, at least to make sure none of his overenthusiastic admirers is disappointed. They jealously surrounded him with too much love and care, as if the old man was a precious pre-historic relic. They kept up a flurry of activities – offering food, posing excitedly for photographs, expressing endearments.