Photo Story: ‘In the rural rhythms of Assam, care reveals itself in invisible labors—the hands that keep a home running, the feet that move through flooded fields, the time lost between one obligation and another.’

- Anamika Tamuli

Sometimes, leaving isn’t about escape. It’s about listening to what the body can no longer hold. Cities can offer so much: momentum, possibility, even anonymity when it’s needed. But they can also stretch you thin, blur time, turn stillness into noise.

And so, there is a return. Not triumphant, not even certain—but necessary.

The photographs in this series were taken during such a return. They emerge from the silence that follows a long period of dissonance.

Home speaks in quietness, the rustle of grass under delicate footsteps, the ripples of pond water, the embrace of golden fields cradling all that feels fractured, the soft presence of animals who never stopped waiting. Coming back is like being gently gathered in the arms of an old friend.

This rural life in Assam reminds me that I still belong.

But, to belong is not always to feel at ease. Sometimes it is to wrestle with care, what it demands, what it gives, what it takes. In the rural rhythms of Assam, care reveals itself in invisible labors: the hands that keep a home running, the feet that move through flooded fields, the time lost between one obligation and another.

The landscapes too are not untouched idylls; they are living spaces shaped by labour, memory, and histories of care. The swans in the waterlogged rice fields move through land that has known both abundance and uncertainty. The bamboo hanger (ডাঁৰ/ Dãr), where clothes dry under the sun, is not just a household fixture but a quiet testament to traditional practices that endure despite shifting economies and modern intrusions.

There is also the question of identity: of who one becomes in the space of return. Does coming home really save you? Perhaps not always. Perhaps it demands more than it gives at first. You look at your hands, dry from the dish soap. You hold your mother’s hands, tired too, and your father’s, drier still. The “I” splinters into pieces; some of it in the kitchen, some at the study table, some in the silent, aching role of becoming a mother to an unbirthed child. In these in-between spaces, the self negotiates: What does it mean to contribute, to serve, to pause ambition? And at what cost? These tensions do not resolve, but they settle into the photographs, quietly, like dusk.

At the dinner table the conversation moves in circles like a scene from Pinter. Half-jokes, little blames passed around like side dishes. The food is familiar, even grown close to home, yet it doesn’t quite offer comfort. There’s talk about the rice not tasting right, someone blames the way it was cooked, or the grain itself. We’re too used to the gleam of factory-polished grains, easy to swallow, stripped of anything that resists. It’s easier, perhaps, to find fault with what’s on the plate than name what’s heavy in the room. One of us eats in silence, never asking for anything, as if long ago the habit of asking was unlearned. Swallowing becomes difficult, not from the food, but from the thoughts that gather behind the eyes. So, we go outside, peel fruit in the fading light, the kind that doesn’t ask questions.

In the fields, there is a view of the sky so open it startles. Cats curl beside feet. Ducks float on rainwater collected in the folds of the land. Some evenings, I sit here and feel the weight of it all. The land is being turned over, the soil taken away load by load. What once held me feels thinner each day. I watch the city creep closer, not through maps, but through absence: fewer trees, fewer birds, quieter nights. And still, lives must go on. People must eat. Stomachs must be filled. “No one dies of hunger,” they say. The fields give what they can. And somewhere in that giving, something quietly disappears.

These vignettes move between the deeply personal and the quietly political: they reflect a reconnection with the land and with oneself, while also hinting at changing ecologies, inherited practices, and the precariousness of rural life today. They are an ode to the spaces that hold us when we falter, but they also ask: What happens when these spaces shift? When water dries up, when fields are lost, when silence is no longer gentle but hollow?

This work is not an answer. It is a witnessing. Of change, of care, of what it means to begin again— slowly, quietly, in a place that is both familiar and newly seen.

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Anamika Tamuli is a literature enthusiast from Jorhat, Assam, with a postgraduate degree in English Literature from Tezpur University. She has a background in technology, having worked as a Prompt Engineer for NVIDIA and is currently exploring research opportunities. Anamika’s literary passions include Absurd literature, the grotesque and corporeality. She is also a dedicated music buff. You can find her on Instagram: @anamikatamuli24.

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