Briton renews Assam connection
- Anthropologist Audrey Cantile to visit village on which she wrote a book
ANUPAM BORDOLOI Audrey Cantile Guwahati, Feb. 6: A British
anthropologist who calls herself a daughter of Assam and has authored a
treatise on the land, its people and customs, is returning to her roots decades
after she bade goodbye.
Audrey Cantile is especially keen to visit Panbari village of Golaghat
district, which formed the backdrop of The Assamese. The 322-page tome was
published in 1984 and is acknowledged as a comprehensive piece of research.
Born in Shillong then in Assam to a civil service officer, Audrey is now
85 and a part-time teacher at the School of Oriental and African Studies in
London. But neither age nor distance has dimmed her longing for the land of her
birth.
I spent my first six years in Jorhat, where my father was the deputy
commissioner. So, in some ways, I consider myself a daughter of Assam, Audrey
told The Telegraph in an email.
The anthropologists son and daughter will accompany her to Panbari on
February 13. She will attend an interactive session at Cotton College in
Guwahati the same day before returning to London.
Audreys return to Assam is being facilitated by London-based Rini Kakoti,
legal and social counsellor for ethnic minority Asian communities in the
department of social services.
I met Audrey first in 1998 and invited her to Sankardevs 550th birth
anniversary celebrations in London, organised by the Assamese community. The
knowledge she has on the saint-reformer is mind-boggling. Since then, we have
been inviting her to visit Assam, Kakoti, who is in Guwahati, said today.
Audreys father Sir Keith Cantile received knighthood after spending his
whole working life in the province (as it was then) of Assam until his
retirement in 1947. He spent many years as deputy commissioner of the Khasi
and Jaintia Hills and wrote a short monograph on Khasi law. He was also a keen
collector of butterflies and published a book on the butterflies of eastern
India.
The anthropologists Assam connection was extended when she married Thomas
Hayley. The couple stayed on after 1947 and Hayley became the first deputy
commissioner of Sibsagar (now Sivasagar) district after Independence. They left
in 1950, though Audrey did return a couple of decades later for her research.
My father spoke with great affection of old Assam, a land of outstanding
beauty...where there was ample grazing for cattle and villagers ate
two-year-old rice because it tasted sweeter. Those days have gone. But what
remains is a far greater asset, the character and disposition of its people,
Audrey wrote.
Kakoti said her return to the state would give her a chance to look at and
feel a new Assam, quite unlike what she had left behind so many years ago.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080207/jsp/guwahati/story_8872154.jsp
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