The ‘magical’ place is only a 40-km drive from Guwahati, but few youngsters in the capital city of Assam, hooked as they are to the fictional tales of Harry Potter.
Meaning Of Mayong
Mayong – the name is believed to have originated from the word maya (illusion) – is a cluster of villages located on the banks of the Brahmaputra in Morigaon district. It is famed and feared as a land where “sorcerers and magicians” have held sway for centuries. Well, to be precise, the sway of the conjurers ended several decades ago, but the legacy lives on, crying for wider attention but palpably at ease with its anonymity.
“Many of these manuscripts have been stolen over the years; some others have been destroyed by the people of Mayong themselves to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands,” he adds. “There is a need for the Assam government to step in and rescue these historical texts from further damage.”
Mayong is still a predominantly rural outpost and still has a traditional king, who is the 40th in the line of descendants of the Kachari tribe rulers. A passage in Borpujari’s film is devoted to the king, Tarani Kanta Singha, a pale shadow of regality. His wife exhorts him to don the ceremonial attire. “A king should look like a king,” she says. When Singha does get into his royal guise, he only embodies the fading glory of Mayong.
Historically, Assam has had a reputation as a hub of black magic. Even Sir Edward Albert Gait’s A History of Assam, published in 1906 and cited upfront in Mayong: Myth/Reality, refers to the dread the sorcerers of this region aroused in the rest of India. Several Mughal texts, too, talk about the mystics of Assam and their powers, which a general of Emperor Aurangzeb discovered to his consternation when he led an army against the Ahoms in the mid 17th century. He was routed in battle.
The onslaught of time has, however, pushed Mayong off the map. His film, Borpujari hopes, will help, if only in a small way, to bring the magic of the place back into focus.
