The Midnight Scream
There are certain places that do not merely exist on maps—they continue living inside the bloodstream long after one has left them behind. Ghilamara is one such place for me.
I often wonder where one should begin when speaking of the past. Perhaps with those old men seated on verandahs, examining the movements of human civilization with the seriousness of philosophers and the enthusiasm of spies. Or perhaps with those neighborhood aunties who could predict, with terrifying mathematical accuracy, which girl would elope with which boy before destiny itself had finalized the matter. But no, I never possessed that much leisure.
Though I admit, now and then, it feels good to lower a bucket into the well of memory and hear the rope creak softly against forgotten years. At the far edge of remembrance, faces emerge through the fog like boats on the Brahmaputra at dawn. Some flicker briefly and vanish, while others remain etched stubbornly upon the hard disk of memory, refusing extinction. This story belongs to such people—to those impossible characters who tried to disappear with time, yet failed magnificently.
Though my birthplace was nearby Bordoloni, our permanent home came to be in Ghilamara because of my father’s job. To the west flowed the Champara river; toward the east, near Gopalpur, the Kumotiya and Kora rivers met like two exhausted civilizations embracing before surrendering themselves to the plains. According to inscriptions discovered in Phukan Gaon, human settlements existed here as early as the thirteenth century. Even now, in Dewdubi, two ancient ponds from Ahom times survive—ponds where weapons were once washed after battle.
The people of this region were mostly farmers, with a scattering of government employees and traders. And yet, despite the modern world reinventing itself every decade, Ghilamara remained strangely untouched by time. Time passed over the town like rain over stone—touching it, perhaps, but never truly altering its roads, its ponds, or its evenings that dissolved into mist and harmonium music.
Yet culturally, ours was no insignificant place.
Once, the largest Public Works Department division in Assam stood in Ghilamara. Music and education flowed through the veins of the region with almost religious intensity. The Ghilamara Music College, founded in the seventies, became the lone sanctuary of musical education for the surrounding areas of Dhemaji, Machkhowa, Bordoloni, Gogamukh, and Dhakuakhana. Masters taught there like guardians of an ancient civilization: Mallik Mahashoy in vocal music, Monu Bhuyan in tabla, Pankaj Bora in Kathak, and Shridhar Baruah in Sattriya.
Under the supervision of the revered Shridhar Baruah, the first Krishna Rasleela was staged at Ghilamara Kristi Bhawan. Later, students like Putul Baruah, Ganga Prasad Hazarika, Pranjal Hazarika, Hiranya Hazarika, Shantanu Saikia, Kavita Hazarika, and others carried music into neighboring regions like wandering torchbearers. In those days, parents considered it almost mandatory: if you had a son, he must learn the tabla; if you had a daughter, she must learn Kathak or vocal music.
There were exceptions, of course. Brajen—whom we called Kolia—committed the unthinkable by choosing Kathak instead of the tabla. Watching him dance “ta-thei-thei-ta” among the girls filled us with the kind of fascination only village boys are capable of producing.
We were hopelessly obsessed with cultural programs. Back then, a “cultural evening” meant harmoniums, tablas, congos, guitars, accordions, and singers from All India Radio—the celebrities of our universe. Crowds gathered in impossible numbers. The sound systems were weak and the microphones crackled, yet the artists sang with such grace that audiences sat mesmerized beneath dim bulbs and mosquito-infested skies. Compared to those evenings, many modern performances feel like industrial disasters wrapped in LED lights.
And as for travelling theatre? Ah, that was not mere entertainment. That was revelation.
The theatre field stood close to our house. Whenever the sound of bamboo poles and wooden planks crashing onto the ground echoed at dawn, sleep abandoned us instantly. We would rush there straight from school after swallowing hurried mouthfuls of rice. Our mission was sacred: to discover how human beings erected such gigantic pandals within a single day. We were mesmerized by the colored lights, the enormous lighting boards filled with mysterious switches, the stage structures, and the painted scenery panels. All of it seemed miraculous to us.
And the theatre people! To us, they were the luckiest humans alive. Once, a young actress performed so beautifully that one of our elder brothers became emotionally devastated and wrote her a letter, introducing himself only as: “The boy who rides a Hero Honda near Itit.” The romance, however, died before launch due to swift intervention from the heroine’s brother.
But our fascination with theatre was not merely admiration; behind all that wonder lurked a fierce ambition. We wanted our own theatre—a miniature travelling troupe built entirely by ourselves. Before examinations, I had a standing agreement with my mother: if I ranked first, she had to donate old eri chadors for constructing our theatre tent. Babua Bihari, Putou, Mun, Sanjay, Provat, and Khusbuddin were all members of our glorious company.
Of course, ours was not the only theatre group in Ghilamara. Nearby, Ramen ran another troupe named Pupil Theatre, with Jogananda and Dulumoni as its principal stars. On market days, Jogananda even performed dance shows wearing banana-leaf costumes for twenty-five paisa tickets. He danced beautifully. Time, however, is a merciless editor, and the Jogananda of those days disappeared somewhere into the machinery of life. Even now, remembering him hurts.
As we moved into high school, theatre slowly surrendered ground to cricket. Under the leadership of Jilu, our Niharika Club emerged. We graduated from bamboo-root balls and makeshift bats to leather cricket balls, pads, and actual sporting ambition. Meanwhile, although Bhaonas continued in nearby villages, proper theatre had vanished from the region for years.
And perhaps because culture refuses to tolerate emptiness for too long, destiny quietly selected someone among us to revive it. That person was Sanjay, or “Gandhi,” as we called him. One day, without warning, the theatre bug bit him, and once bitten, the infection spread through all of us like wildfire.
“Yes! We must stage a play!” we declared.
By then it was perhaps 1996. Sanjay and Rubul travelled to North Lakhimpur and returned triumphantly, carrying a script from the renowned playwright Haren Saikia. The chosen play was Arun Sharma’s Urukha Ponja.
Rehearsals began at Kristi Bhawan beneath the gaslight, night after night. Yet, those sessions were not merely rehearsals for a play; they were rehearsals for dreams themselves. We were rehearsing dreams of moonlight seen through broken roofs, dreams of youth, and dreams of becoming something larger than ourselves. For nearly a month, rehearsals continued relentlessly until the performance date approached like a festival marching toward us with drums.
Everyone threw themselves into the preparation. Even boys who had never touched machetes in their lives—including us—began cutting bamboo and wood with heroic seriousness. It no longer felt like theatre preparation; it felt like preparing for a wedding. Being painfully shy, acting was unimaginable for me, so Sanjay assigned me the responsibility of lights. Not the main switchboard below, mind you. I was elevated to the upper bamboo platform—the hidden kingdom of spotlight operators. I was to be a silent creature behind the curtains, a mysterious dispenser of illumination.
The responsibility thrilled me beyond measure. Straight from the cricket field to “light boy”—what a promotion! We memorized every scene while watching rehearsals, because unless we knew precisely whose face required illumination, how could we possibly throw the light correctly? Platforms were erected, curtains were tied, and the stage was prepared.
Then came the countdown. With four days left, the stage was decorated like a bride. Drop-scenes were designed to rise upward just like in the travelling theatres, and sets arrived floating through floodwater on banana rafts.
And then, disaster struck.
Two days before the show, the embankment broke. Floodwaters swallowed nearby villages whole, and relief camps were arranged inside Kristi Bhawan itself. Our carefully prepared stage now stood at risk of destruction beneath muddy feet and refugee shelters. Even while volunteering for flood relief, our theatre-struck hearts continued aching secretly for the play. Would all this effort disappear? Would the dream drown before reaching the shore?
At last, after nearly a month, the waters receded. The relief camp shifted, and finally, on September 5th, Urukha Ponja was staged.
But two hours before showtime, the projector failed. Panic spread everywhere. If the audience could not see the opening title-casting on screen after all our effort, what tragedy could surpass this? Like warriors departing for battle, Sanjay and Ramen sped toward Dhakuakhana in search of another projector. Time passed, and the audience grew restless. Announcements kept repeating through the Hem Mic: “Please wait. The play will begin shortly…”
At last, Sanjay returned, carrying the projector like a victorious soldier bringing medicine to a dying kingdom.
The performance began. The orchestra played, and the dance-drama unfolded. A few glorious mistimings occurred, and someone nearly fell from the set, yet the play succeeded magnificently. The hall filled completely, tickets sold out, and the collection reached seventeen thousand five hundred rupees. For us, it felt no less than conquering the world.
But success is a dangerous thing; it breeds ambition. Soon, Uttam and Dhontu from Kalita village decided they too would stage a play. The chosen script was Mahendra Barthakur’s Maj Nishar Siyor—The Cry at Midnight. And thus began another glorious catastrophe.
Kalita village was deeply familiar to me, not through blood relations, but through affection. The people there loved us with that rare sincerity which often surpasses kinship itself. Preparations began immediately. Pandals were erected, rehearsals were conducted in school buildings during the evenings, and actors practiced tirelessly.
Meanwhile, I received yet another promotion, graduating from light boy to “technical person.” In those days, showing animated projections during the title-casting—clouds floating across screens, flowers blooming—was nearly unimaginable for village theatre. Naturally, I accepted the challenge with suicidal enthusiasm. Sanjay and I also designed an ambitious accident scene involving headlights, explosions, crashing sounds, and projected blood effects. We were convinced the audience would faint from astonishment.
The performance night arrived. The crowd overflowed, volunteers arranged chairs, announcements echoed through the microphones, and guests arrived from neighboring villages. The atmosphere trembled with excitement.
At the crucial accident scene, everything unfolded perfectly at first. Headlights moved across the stage, the music intensified, and the audience murmured in amazement. Then came the catastrophe. The bomb effect failed to explode. Thinking quickly, Sanjay improvised the collision manually against a tree prop. But at that exact moment, fate decided comedy was preferable to professionalism.
The delayed bomb finally exploded. Rajiv, who was holding kerosene in his mouth for the fire-breathing effect, panicked and blew the flames upward. With a sudden whoosh, the fire kissed Sanjay directly across the face.
Inside, backstage chaos erupted. Outside, the audience remained blissfully unaware. Meanwhile, I was immediately “promoted” again—from technical projection to full backstage management—because Sanjay had become temporarily unavailable after catching fire. Three promotions in such little time! Yet, strangely, I did not feel successful.
The remainder of the play proceeded through sheer panic, improvisation, and youthful stubbornness. At one point, Hemanta and I had to physically hold the scenery panels upright from behind because the bamboo supports disappeared midway through the performance.
Still, the play succeeded.
Sanjay recovered gradually under the affectionate care of everyone involved. Later, he himself joked that if accidents brought such attention and affection, perhaps they were not entirely unfortunate. And thus, the cry that escaped Sanjay’s mouth that night—though unheard by the audience beneath the music—continued echoing in backstage memory for years afterward. A true midnight cry.
Years passed. The little sapling of theatre we planted eventually grew into Ingit, nurtured by people like Haren Saikia, Sanjay, Naba, Jayanta, Mary Borgohain, and many others, spreading its fragrance across Assam like a banyan tree rooted in memory itself.
Today, life has scattered us in different directions. I myself now live away from Ghilamara. Yet whenever I return, we still gather at Sanjay’s shop beside the old “Hiuen Tsang” restaurant, staring at the ageing Kristi Bhawan where our youth once burned so brightly.
We speak of old days, old rehearsals, old foolishness, and old dreams. And sometimes we wonder: when our generation disappears, who will carry this culture forward? Who will inherit the stage lights, the bamboo platforms, the midnight rehearsals, and the impossible dreams?
That question still sits silently every evening inside Sanjay’s shop, staring across the road at the younger generation gathering before wine shops beneath electric lights. And somewhere within the darkness of memory, the cry at midnight still echoes.