It was a fine morning in Rohmoria. Everything seemed calm and quiet. We were walking along the bank of the river Brahmaputra whilst away in the distance, tiny little boats were slowly growing bigger: they were returning home with their morning catch. It is, one would say, the seamless everyday of any river bank in Assam. But this is Rohmoria.
An area in Dibrugarh district of Assam, Rohmoria struggles for its existence against the scourge of river-borne erosion and flooding. Year after year, like an impassioned lover, the hungry tides of the Brahmaputra embrace large swathes of cultivable land, homes, wetland and jungle. It shrouds the monuments of its misdeeds, as if erasing evidence of its guilt: No one, not even the people of that area could show you any sign of the Brahmaputra's sabotage. A deserted police station however, illustrates the dilemmas facing the people of Rohmoria. Abandoned long ago in anticipation of its destruction, the lone structure makes clear the cynicism of a state which is more concerned with its apparatus than its people.