On a Truck Alone, to McMahon

I wasn’t trying to discover new places. I wasn’t going to break or create a record. I was going only on an impulse, entirely my own, just out of the natural curiosity that life brings, the delight of living. Was this not a valid enough reason? With curiosity in her heart and a prayer on her lips, Nabaneeta hauled herself on to a truck and set off on a journey to fill her unfilled bag of stories. Sacks, paper cartons, steel cupboards, wicker furniture, baskets of angry, clucking chickens, and a sharp smell surrounded her. How many days in this stench? How many hours? How many endless moments? This is a travelogue of Nabaneeta’s journey from Jorhat in Assam all the way to the McMahon line at the Indo-Tibetan border, a trip undertaken on an impulse, detailing her encounters with countless ordinary individuals, their reactions to a middle-aged woman’s solo road trip in India in 1977, and the extraordinary events that unfold along the way. Reflective and humorous, the narrative presents travel as an avenue of liberation.