The Barak’s sand islands: how Bangladesh’s biggest river shapes Silchar’s world

The Barak river, which rises in Manipur and drains to the Bay of Bengal, throws up great sandbars in its lower course — islands that appear with the dry season and vanish with the rains.

The char dwellers of Karimganj have made an art of the rhythm, planting fast-maturing crops on the sand and moving before the flood.

The life is precarious, but it is also a living archive of how the region’s people have always accommodated the river.