Living with Teesta
A home built not to escape the river, but to belong to it.
Introduction
There are journeys that begin with questions, and there are journeys that slowly become a way of life. Porobas was born from years of walking through the Teesta, listening to its people, and learning that a river cannot be understood from its banks alone. It was built inside the river, beside the homes of buffalo herders, not as a research station, but as a place to live, observe, and belong.
How Parobas Began
For many years I wandered through the Teesta without a destination. I walked across sandbars, travelled by country boats, and spent long hours observing the river and the people whose lives depended on it. During one of those journeys I arrived at Premganj Char, where I met the buffalo herders who would eventually change the direction of my work.
Among them were Amir Hossain and Monglu Da. What began as conversations slowly turned into trust. I spent more time with them, shared meals, listened to stories, and eventually stayed overnight in their homes. As the relationship deepened, one evening Amir Da proposed something that completely transformed my understanding of field research.
“Why don’t you build your own house here?”
I accepted without hesitation.
Bulding Parobas
The house was built beside Amir Da’s home on Thakur’s Char. Bamboo was brought from the mainland. The structure was woven with hogla reeds, covered with jute sacks and plastic sheets, and raised on a foundation made from the soil of the Teesta itself.
Monglu Da and Amir Da built the house with their own hands. Their wives worked beside them throughout the process. Every bamboo pole, every knot, every handful of mud carried the care of the people who believed this small house should exist.
I named it Parobas.
The word means “living in another’s land.” The river was never mine. I was only a temporary resident inside its vast landscape. The buffalo herders often called those who worked deep inside the river Parobashi. The name felt natural. It belonged to the Teesta long before it belonged to me.
Living Inside the River
Parobas soon became much more than a shelter.
Inside the small room I kept everything I needed for everyday life: clothes, bedding, books, cooking utensils, notebooks, a mirror, and even a small bamboo bed. There was a clay stove where I sometimes cooked. Most evenings, however, food arrived from Amir Da’s or Monglu Da’s home.
Fresh fish from the Teesta, warm buffalo milk, vegetables grown on the char, and countless conversations around evening fires became part of everyday life. Whenever I found time away from school, I returned to Parobas. Slowly, the boundaries between researcher and community disappeared.
I never turned it into a gathering place. Very few people even knew about it. I wanted the intimacy of that relationship with the river to remain undisturbed.
A Shared Shelter
As time passed, Parobas slowly became useful to others as well.
Women who entered the river to collect floating wood, cut grass, gather firewood, or graze cattle often had nowhere to take shelter during storms. I left the key with the local families so they could use the house whenever they needed it.
They stored their tools, clothes, and daily belongings there. Whenever I returned, everything would quietly be arranged again, as if the house had simply been waiting.
Losing Parobas
Nearly three years later the Teesta began changing its course.
The river slowly approached Thakur’s Char. The sandbar disappeared piece by piece, carrying fields, homes, and memories away with it. I received a phone call one night.
“Dada, the river has reached Porobas. Shall we save your belongings?”
I answered with only one request.
“No. Let the river take everything.”
I wanted Parobas to complete its own journey. The house, the bed, the stove, and every ordinary object that had once made it a home belonged to the Teesta as much as they had belonged to me.
That night the river carried Porobas away.
What Remains
Today, Amir Da and Sania Da are no longer with us. Monglu Da now lives on the mainland after the Teesta reclaimed the char where we once lived together. The house has disappeared, but its meaning remains. Most of Teesta Bathan was written inside Parobas. More importantly, Parobas taught me that rivers are understood not by measuring their width or recording their flow, but by living with the people who call them home. One day, perhaps, another Parobas will stand somewhere inside the Teesta again. Until then, it continues to exist in memory.
The river took the house, but it could not take the life that was lived inside it.
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