The inspiring life and story of Assam’s forest man will soon be available on celluloid. Kolkata-based filmmaker Tamal Dasgupta has already started capturing works of Jadav Payeng, who had single handedly turned an isolated sandbar of Brahmaputra River into a forest reserve and now taken up efforts to turn another green sandbar on the mighty river.
“We shoot some of the scenes from the life of Payeng, popularly known as Mulai or the ‘Forest Man of Assam’. We are also going to shoot in the Satras (the Vaishnavite monasteries) in Majuli and narrate the story of Payeng, his love for nature and everything related to him,” said a member of the shooting team.
“I first read about Payeng in newspapers and on Internet. Some of the known environmentalist also told me about him. It’s very interesting that a man single handedly created a forest,” Dasgupta said, adding that he was doing a great job, particularly at a time when there were massive destructions of environment and ecology.
“The story of Payeng will be told on the backdrop of Satras and so we have chosen the Majuli Island for shooting. We are also going to the forest — Mulai kathoni (the forest created by Payeng) and his house on it,” Dasgupta said.
“After completion of the film, we are going to send it to television channels -- including the Discovery -- environmentalist groups and to the Assam Government,” he said.
Payeng had single handedly grown an over 1,300 acre forest on an isolated sandbar of Bhramaputra River -- Aruna Chapori for over last 30 years. Payeng started his work on the forest in 1980 when the social forestry division of Golaghat district launched a scheme of tree plantation on 200 hectares at the Chapori situated at a distance of five kms from Kokilamukh in Jorhat district.
Payeng was one of the labourers who worked on the project, which was completed after five years. However, Payeng chose to stay back after the completion of the project as others left.
He not only looked after the plants, but continued to plant more trees on his own effort slowly transforming the area into a big forestland now the forest houses variety of wildlife including tigers, rhinoceros, deers and others besides apes and innumerable varieties of birds. It also has several thousand of trees among which are valcol, arjun, ejar, goldmohur, koroi, moj and simolu and others.