“The Son of Santra Hill” is a novel on the backdrop of the Rabha tribes of Assam. “The Son of Santra Hill” is the first English novel based on the lives of the Rabha tribes | Publisher: Black Eagle Books, Dublin, USA (2026)
Paperback (Rs. 330.00)
Otenga, who is from the Rabha community of Assam, has failed to qualify as a graduate. He devotedly works for Santra Hill, where there is a forest under threats from timber mafias and illegal woodcutters. He falls in love with a Rabha girl called Evana, who is identified as a fairy by Hajari Rabha, the guru of their Rabha village, Santra Gaon. But Otenga does not believe she is a fairy. While working for Santra Hill and helping his father, a poor peasant, in crop fields, he keeps searching for Evana, determined to search for her all his life if he fails to find her. He believes a search from the heart never goes to the waste. Will he find her?
“The Son of Santra Hill” is the first Indian English novel on the Rabhas, one of the major tribes in Assam.
The Rabhas in a Nutshell
Sample Chapter
1
‘I’ll make you starve with the entire family. I’ll make you starve.’ Baba threw utensils and kitchen implements from the kitchen, his wide chest heaving with heavy and rapid breathing. ‘I’ll be the first hindrance to your plan to work for the cause of forests. You can never overcome the hindrance.’
Would he be able to forget Baba’s harshness? He, Otenga, thought. He never heard anything so harsh from Baba’s mouth. Was his life going to take a new shape? Would his life be out of his control? A life out of control is a wild horse running to whichever direction its eyes go. Now his life was on the way to become a wild horse. He mustn’t let it go out of his control. He must do something meaningful or fruitful to keep his life in control, to make his life follow the right track. He would’ve felt relaxed if he could forget his failure, which constantly disturbed him and chased him like a bad smell from a garbage dump.
It wasn’t that Baba didn’t love him. Baba loved like Aya loved him. Baba expressed love by tousling his hair—it was Baba’s habit to tousle his hair while getting ready to go to bed; Baba continued tousling his hair until he loudly objected. Baba did so when intoxicated. Baba’s intoxication irritated him.
Eliton Rabha, his friend Mantri’s father, inspired Baba to get drunk when they drank together. Baba considered Eliton Rabha as a younger brother. So, following the hierarchy of their culture of relationship, he called Eliton Rabha Bang-Bang.
Bang-Bang worked at brickworks and went to the workplace every morning, pedalling the old bicycle eight kilometres east of Santra Gaon, to return home in the evening, often intoxicated by fatika or choko, a variety of country liquor made from fermented rice. In the evening, sometimes Bang-Bang sat together with friends, drank fatika or choko, and entertained them with stories and songs. They worked at the same brickworks. A storyteller and folk singer of Santra Gaon, Bang-Bang often told the listeners, who sat around to listen to songs or to stories, that Bang-Bang had seen a fairy dancing in the clouds at the peak of the highest hill just before dusk when Bang-Bang had gone there to hunt porcupine. Whenever Bang-Bang sang a folk song composed on the fairy, Bang-Bang behaved like being possessed, and the vibration of the song reverberated long in the ears of the listeners, who enjoyed the reverberations, shutting their eyes, like falling into a trance.
In Rabha Hasong, he lived with his parents in the northern side of Santra Gaon, named in honour of the memory of Santra Rabha, a medicine man, who had lived in that village many years ago.
In Santra Gaon lived one hundred and sixty five families and all the families except about a dozen were rather rich. The cause for their richness was arable lands, fisheries, cattle, and pigs, and they spent money economically. But, on the contrary, those people who were lazy lavishly spent money on choko, bought unnecessary things for merriment, and got their families to struggle with poverty. He tried hard to change their mind. But it was impossible. They thought the crop yield they had were enough for them. Every year they toiled in their fields with new efforts and energy and gathered new harvest and filled their granaries and lived merrily with friends and relatives, singing songs and dancing choko dances under the influence of choko they preferred to drink with pork or fried fish or chicken, not only on festive occasions or wedding celebrations. He felt tortured in his inside when he saw their poverty from addictions to choko and fatika. His mind wept for them. He wished they’d seen the tears of his mind with their mental eyes. He wished they’d listened to him. He wished they’d thought he wasn’t mad.
Anyway, a boy not to give up, he determined to apply new strategies to bring them to the right path so they were able to see the smile of prosperity.
‘Never forget the stories I tell you, Otenga,’ Bidi (grandmother) had said every time she had told him the stories she’d stored for ninety years in the strongroom of her memory.
A pious woman, who had enriched his mind and memory with those stories, never inclined to share them with Jubili, her lovely granddaughter he called Bibi. Though Bibi was his elder sister, he sometimes behaved to her as though he was her elder brother.
She was married to Indabo Pam, a high school teacher in Udalguri. He addressed Indabo Pam as Amai because Indabo Pam was his elder sister’s husband.
He called his father (Paniram Rabha) Baba and his mother (Mekhela Rabha) Aya.
He was sent to Arya College in Guwahati so he could become an officer or a professor and fulfil his parents’ long-cherished dream. He was a sincere student all around and good at English and that was the main reason why the headmaster of Santra High School he read in encouraged him to study Honours in English. But, unfortunately, success didn’t fall in his court, like a meteor, to inspire him to wallow in its resplendent meteoric particles—he couldn’t even qualify as a graduate—and though he failed to qualify despite his hard labour, he never said luck had conspired against him.
That failure caused Baba’s violent reaction.
Aya, who pacified him with many efforts, later silently shed a lot of tears.
His failure pulverized their dreams they’d cherished since his childhood indicating his bright future.
Instead of censuring them for their reactions, he censured himself for wasting Baba’s money. Baba, a poor peasant, earned that money with sun and rain on his back.
It was difficult for him to forget those things though he wanted to. It was difficult for him to forget the burden of his failure though he tried hard. But he needed to forget them so he could look forward in search of pastures new.
‘I’m a proud peasant, Otenga,’ Baba often said when in a good mood. ‘I’m a proud peasant with fourteen cows including two milk cows and two pairs of bullocks.’
The bullocks were equipped with yokes set with ropes at the base of their humps on their shoulders drew the plough.
Baba hired labourers when unable to work alone. A diligent cultivator, Baba got up early to become the first man in crop fields. Baba’s diligence was an inspiration to Baba’s counterparts, even to those who were critical of Baba’s organic cultivation they misinterpreted as Baba’s stupidity and arrogance to stand unique.
Baba and Aya deposited raw cow dung in a pit so that in course of time the cow dung became well-rotten manure. They also collected raw cow dung from where cows grazed.
Satisfied with customers’ positive response, Baba adamantly avoided chemical manure and pesticides other cultivators used in the hope of bumper crops in small fields.
To help Baba with agricultural knowledge, he read books on agriculture—most of those books were in English.
‘Indian agriculture switched over to conventional system of production on the advent of green revolution in 1970s. Conventional agriculture is practised the world over. It evolved in western nations as a product of their socio-economic environment.’ He looked into Baba’s eyes. ‘Do you understand, Baba?’
Baba nodded.
He knew Baba couldn’t understand though he said in Rabha. Yet he continued for his satisfaction, for showing that he wasn’t as stupid as they thought. ‘The western countries adopted the conventional method of farming. Though it’s self-destructive. It’s self-destructive because of unsustainable uses of pesticides. Pesticides cause damage to environment and indirectly help insects develop resistance. Like pesticides, fertilizers also harm useful organisms in the soil. Excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers damage the nitrogen-fixing bacterium that is common in the soil. When the soil is damaged, wind and water easily erode it. In India millions of people depend on agriculture. For livelihood. Nowadays consumers put much more emphasis on health food than before. They dislike low-quality and unsafe food below hygiene standards. They know chemicals and pesticides cause allergies and chemical sensitivities.’ He pursed his lips.
‘Don’t stop.’ Baba looked interested.
‘Our central and state governments have taken measures to popularize organic farming in our country. It is scientifically proved that organic foods are significantly different in terms of safety and nutrition from inorganic foods. And you’re an organic cultivator.’
‘I’m proud of you, my son. Your knowledge will help me become a famous cultivator in Rabha Hasong.’ Baba lit a biri. ‘It’s my delight that health-conscious people rarely bargain to buy my vegetables at a discount. The people take much care so that my organic vegetables never mix with inorganic vegetables bought at low price. They carry organic vegetables in a separate bag. And they never complain about that they’ve ever been cheated.’
‘You’re right, Baba. Some people stop their cars and get off to buy our vegetables when we set up our shop under a shade tree by the side of SH12.’
They sold their vegetables at Rongsai Bazaar.
Sometimes they went to Dwarka Bazaar; sometimes, to Balijana Bazaar.
He helped Baba in markets too.
While returning from markets past the crop fields, they often discussed elephants, which came down from Garo Hills.
For a month, a herd of elephants had been roaming where there were crop fields. They’d eaten going-to-ripe paddy crops and destroyed them. They had also come in the day time. But most of the time, they had come in the evening or in the night. When they had come in the evening or in the night, people had come out, beating drums and brass utensils, and wielding torches in the air to frighten them. To frighten them, they had also loudly shouted in unison. The elephants had barely cared those things.
‘Will the elephants come to our crop fields too, Baba?’
‘No guarantee that they won’t come. They may come to any field. They may enter the compounds of any homes too.’
‘They’re intelligent.’
‘They’re created like this.’
‘Pedal your bicycle fast. We must reach home before dusk falls.’