When the question arises that who gets to write the story of the city Guwahati, the answer for a long period of time has been outsiders, basically planners sitting in distant offices, experts who fly in for a few days, consultants with data but little sense of what it feels like to have the ‘Tekeli Pitha’ from roadside shops with a cup of ‘Lal Saah’ (Black Tea) during a morning walk by the river Brahmaputra. This document is intended to change that very idea.

There's a need for a document that reflects the lived realities of the citizens of Guwahati in a manner that can connect everyone to the very core of the city. The people who actually live in Guwahati are the ones best qualified to tell its story. They have walked its streets through quiet mornings and chaotic evenings. They have seen the city shift from a sleepy river town to a bustling gateway with more and more tourists every other day. They understand its contradictions, the deep sense of belonging that survives traffic jams and construction dust, the warmth that lingers in tea-stall addas and in the theatre performances of Rabindra Bhawan. They carry the lived experience, the quiet frustrations, the small joys, and the grounded dreams that no objective survey or satellite image can ever capture.

Every place holds itself together through some invisible thread. In Guwahati it is the easy community that forms without invitation, the natural flow of conversations at local parks, the shared pride of the city when it declared the Xihu (Gangetic River Dolphin) as the official city animal in 2016, the way people are voicing together in order to protect Deepor Beel, which is a Ramsar site and freshwater lake in Guwahati, from ecological danger due rapid urban encroachment, massive garbage dumping at Boragaon, and pollution from industrial waste. That sense of trust and belonging was already here long before this document. What this document intends is to simply give it voice and serve as a reminder that the heart of the city has always come from its own people.