The best news for any eight-year-old boy could be to be told that he does not have to go to school. Such news would undoubtedly be even more exciting if that boy's English teacher was very strict, and never hesitated to use the stick. Indeed, the excitement at the possibility of never having to set foot in a school again is difficult to comprehend, yet that was exactly what happened to me one morning in 1979. No matter how hard I try, I cannot remember whether it was summer or winter, but I do vividly remember hearing the news on the radio. The All Assam Students Union (AASU), which at the time was spearheading the anti-'foreigners' Assam movement, had declared the indefinite closure of schools and colleges, and 'asked' all students to boycott classes, effective immediately.
The six-year-long agitation, from 1979 to 1985, was sparked during the parliamentary by-election in the Lok Sabha constituency of Mangaldoi in 1978, following the death of the local MP at the time, Hiralal Patwari. According to the rumours making the rounds, the electorate had grown massively in recent years, and the AASU was demanding that the elections be postponed until the names of alleged foreign nationals were deleted from the electoral rolls. Thus, the Assam Agitation was born – and school was out.
Until that day in 1979, agitation in Assam had meant the shouting of slogans, occasional class boycotts and a few processions to the office of the sub-divisional officer (SDO). But this was a windfall – no class ever again! I felt like feeding my textbooks to Baba, the family goat, but could not gather the courage to do so. What followed was a year of mixed fun and tedium. The routine consisted of daily marches to the SDO's office, picketing, spending some time there after being arrested, and then coming back at the end of the day. As this was a never-ending process, no one went to the protests every day, except perhaps hardcore activists looking for future political returns, or perhaps those who were simply born romantic about such things. As kids, we had little need for these types of gatherings – many of us were too young even, for instance, to develop a crush on some girl and attend the daily rallies for her sake. So, mostly we focused on how to deal with the endless boredom that had settled upon us.
What helped was cricket – there was cricket everywhere. Asif Iqbal's Pakistan was playing India, and we were glued to the radio. Soon thereafter, the Australian team arrived in India. While we promptly forgot what had been in our textbooks, we knew the names of every cricketer on the Indian team. But that was not enough. Pushing ourselves further, my brother and I decided to write down the name of every Test player on every team. My brother was especially good at this, digging up names of unknown players from obscure magazines. Within six months, we seemed to know everything there was to know about cricket records: which Pakistani player was a Christian, how many of the West Indies players were of Indian origin. During this time, I also started to take up cricket – though my mother rarely let us play with the neighbourhood kids, as she was overprotective to the point of extreme paranoia.