A security guard doubled as a guide. He was an Ahom, perhaps a descendant of this forgotten kingdom, and he was a writer, poet, and musician by vocation. A profile by Soumya – exclusively for Different Truths.

We explored a lesser-known part of our country, Upper Assam, and tried to understand a little-known aspect of our history. This Ahom dynasty defeated the mighty moguls, which somehow has been ignored by our academics, and the classical Vaishnava subculture, unique to the region and relatively unknown outside.

But more of that later.

This story is about our accidental interaction with an unusual guide to an Ahom Palace near Shivsagar.

We declined the services of the guide kindly provided by the local administration to explore at our own pace. We avoided the usual throng of half-informed rapacious guides as they are usually a nuisance but later regretted that what we saw didn’t match with what we had read up.

It was then that suddenly a security guard loomed up, toting an AK47, and asked in broken Hindi that he could explain.

He proceeded to give us an erudite lyrical, and passionate presentation on the Palace and its history leading up to the current times of the ULFA using the place as a tactical HQ, the army flushing them out and sealing the underground passages, and the earlier rapacious degradation by the English searching for hidden treasures, the later neglect by the powers that be, and subsequent takeover by ASI, when only the shell remained.

He explained the intricate defences, optical illusions to detect infiltration, and the thrilling history, of bringing the ruins to life.

My wife joked that I’d better pay him whatever he wanted, as he carried a gun. Still, he was very reluctant to accept a tip as he said it was his passion, as he was an Ahom, perhaps a descendant of this forgotten kingdom, and he was a writer, poet, and musician by vocation. As his passion did not pay for his sustainability, he worked as a security guard and followed his heart, writing poetry, history and fiction, and self-publishing.

He had spent almost three decades with the BSF, fighting terrorists and our neighbouring enemies in Kashmir, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Punjab, and the Northeast. He had to keep his passion for the arts a secret and, on retirement, had become a security guard to give himself time for his first love, poetry, music, literature, and history.

He continued to regale us with his music and lyrics and refused monetary compensation, saying he wanted an interested audience.

He returned to his duties, leaving us all the richer for the unusual interaction with the poet gatekeeper.

Photo by the author

Soumya Mukherjee

Soumya Mukherjee is an alumnus of St Stephens College and Delhi School of Economics. He earns his daily bread by working for a PSU Insurance company, and lectures for peanuts. His other passions, family, friends, films, travel, food, trekking, wildlife, music, theater, and occasionally, writing. He has been published in many national newspapers of repute. He has published his first novel, Memories, a novella, hopefully, the first of his many books. He blogs as well.

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