Dreamer & builder Manju Barua

Last month, we lost Achintya Barua, founder of Wild Grass, the first private resort to be established in the Kaziranga area. He passed away suddenly, after complaining of feeling unwell, as he was being taken to the government hospital at Bokakhat, a small town a short distance from his beloved space.

His son, Maan, who teaches at Cambridge University, responded succinctly to my words of consolation and shared grief: “…he signed off in his style, no fuss.” To people like me and my brother, who were closely related to him, and countless others, he was simply Manju, a cousin — actually, given the complex inter-relationships that define large families in Assam and possibly elsewhere, he was my grandmother’s nephew and technically our father’s cousin. But in age, he and his elder brother Raj or Boijayanta were closer to us and my father was their local guardian in Shillong when they were at boarding in St Edmund’s, at the time the premier public school in the region.

Post-school, Manju went off to St Stephen’s in Delhi, the natural next stop for many Edmundians, where he became friends with a group that edged closer to the radical politics of the 1970s before disappearing overnight, as Ranjit Choudhury, his classmate from school and college, recalled. Ranjit had an interest in films though he was studying English Literature. As he opened his hostel room, he found a chit. Signed by Manju, it said in part: “Remember us when you make your films.”

Before he slipped away, Manju used to be part of a small Wednesday group that used to meet in a fellow hosteller’s room to discuss politics and other weighty matters. One day, they invited three titans of academia: Amartya Sen, Ranajit Guha and Amalendu Guha.

In his own words, “And that was one occasion that I forever cherish. Three chairs were placed for them while five-six of us sat on the floor. St Stephen’s student residence rooms were large, especially the Rudra South rooms, even then it was not so roomy for 10 people to get together. I remember being huddled in one corner of the room…”

He added, “I don’t remember what was discussed in that high funda intellectual session. Lesser mortals like me were incarnations of the Goan D’Souza in Gouriprasanna Majumdar’s song ‘Coffee houser sei adda ta’ — sung by Manna Dey. We sat as voiceless listeners, but maybe like D’Souza our eyes too were full of unspoken thoughts.”

That was a time when left radicalism had swept across parts of India and captured the minds of many youth. Manju later returned to “normal” life. However, the concepts of equality, the need to lift people out of grinding poverty, build and strengthen communities especially in rural spaces and ensure they had both dignity and livelihoods remained rooted in his mind.

He came upon the idea for a private resort in Kaziranga, supported by a loan from the Assam Industrial Development Corporation. I doubt if a loan given by that organisation has gone longer and been better utilised. One person who was involved with Wild Grass from the very start was the mild-mannered and deeply loyal Kamani Prasad Barua, while entrepreneur Ranjit Barthakur was also associated at an earlier stage.

It was a time when Assam was going through a time of exceptional turmoil, violence and bloodshed with the rise of the insurgent United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and later other armed groups. The Indian State was in direct confrontation with the rebels and the media was filled with news of ambushes and attacks, extortion and raids, surrenders and recruitment to the cause.

At one point, Maan, his son, recalls that as a young boy, he was stunned by the sight of Army soldiers in camouflage surrounding their simple abode and whisking his father away. His mother, Moromi, read to him to assuage his anxiety. When Maan awoke, his father was there. The young Army officer who rode with him realised he was dealing with an uncommon and well-read person. Manju was produced before a senior officer who became apologetic within a few minutes — it turned out they had common friends. He sent Manju back and conveyed a deep apology to his wife.

There were many extraordinary things about Manju. One was the vast scale of his knowledge and the constant effort to learn more from the people who lived in the area and who loved the forests and their denizens, both wildlife and human. Yet, in all this, he remained modest, funny, an incredible host and teller of stories, with a flowing beard that turned from grey to white.

Stars of television and print, writers, authors and essayists as well as academics from across India and the world, beat a path to his door. You could walk through the large doors with their many glass panes into the high-ceilinged dining room, the most iconic building of Wild Grass, where everyone had to come for meals.

No exceptions were made, no matter how well-heeled or powerful — there was no room service, no television and no air-conditioning. The dining room could be packed with hitch-hikers or tourists, friends of Manju and one could find BBC and National Geographic teams or a Mark Shand and Mike Palin in deep conversation.

Twice a year, he fed the trained elephants which ferried travellers tirelessly during the tourist season. And organised a mahout festival to celebrate those who ‘drove’ and cared for the great beasts, since 2014 in the memory of Shand, brother of the British Queen.

The resort’s name itself was evocative: Wild Grass. Because he knew that it was the grasslands — not invasive species of shrubs and trees — that made Kaziranga unique and gave both shelter and succour to its thousands of rhinos, elephants, buffaloes and many species of deer apart from the birds, insect and aquatic life, tigers and other predators. In the early years, he had a sign pointing to the stony path leading to the resort and designed a T-shirt that proclaimed, ‘Come, Get Lost’. He discontinued both of them, adding levels of adventure and exasperation to those seeking the place.

I remember wondering to him in the 1990s about the future of Wild Grass. A few years later, when it had become the go-to place, he turned to me, “Remember what you said — and look at how it’s doing.” I apologised for not believing.

Manju was extraordinarily knowledgeable not just about wildlife, but the depth of Axomiya culture and history. He published a range of Assamese songs, designed the striking architecture of the buildings that are home to guests, including Rang Ghar, built of split brick and timber, deliberately left incomplete where villagers and local organisations were invited to hold events free of charge.

He supervised the carving of doors, tables and chairs with traditional motifs that are slowly getting erased.

It was the village that came out for him when he left — they handled the ceremonies, the cooking, all aspects of arrangements. “The village took over,” said his sister, Padmakshi.

And why not — he provided training and employment with dignity to scores of villagers, worked with banks to help them buy the first open jeeps and launch the jeep safaris for which Kaziranga is famous. He kept his staff on through the disaster of Covid-19 and found a new way to sustain livelihoods by making an arrangement with an oil drilling company in return for space.

Regular income again began to flow although the number of travellers fell. A surge of fancy new hotels and budget homestays now beckon visitors from the highway. Of course, that has impacted Wild Grass and Manju saw it coming.

I think of Manju not just as a pioneer of ecotourism in Assam and the Northeast but a dreamer and a builder — of a classless, cultured, kind, self-reliant and sustaining society in the village of Bochagaon, a society of which he had dreamed as a youth.

— The writer is an independent columnist