Exploring the moral landscape of the cultured traveller

A acclaimed Assamese poet, writer, winner of the Sahitya Akademi award among many other distinctions, former Director General of Police, Assam government, Harekrishna Deka's Yatra: An Unfinished Novel is a complex self-reflexive narrative, breaking free from the traditional linear mode of storytelling, essentially comprising a fictitious plot and imaginary characters.

- SANJUKTA DASGUPTA

Deka's Assamese novel Yatra, first published in 2013, may be described as a collage of impressions that meaningfully fuses fact and fantasy and is narrated in a semi-autobiographical format. Deka's Yatra, the ethnic signifier of journey, is not about departures and arrivals and records of mishaps and pleasant experiences of individuals. Instead, the novel's central purpose is to foreground the systemic marginalisation of the tribal people of India, whose genealogical origins can be traced back to the Stone Age.

The narrative blends local geography, anthropology, ancient belief systems of tribal origin, the intimate and interactive cohesion between the environment, the non-human world of flora and fauna and the evolving human nature, from the neolithic age, when the first village communities were set up, when agriculture and animal husbandry were at their rudimentary stage, to the modern age of the 20th century and the ongoing 21st century, the era of globalisation.

The narrative unfolds as the author receives a letter from an unidentified white man, a traveller, often also described as "the tourist". It is this persuasive letter that triggers the author's interest towards the neglected, forgotten tribes, the indigenous people of the northeastern part of India, who inhabit remote forest areas which are usually inaccessible to casual sight-seers.