“…Neither a fleeting joy, nor an unbidden laughter remains. In a moment, OIL took it all, stripping me of everything.” This stanza is from a poem written by Papul Gogoi, a resident of Baghjan, Assam, from the point of view of a (fictional) woman who lost everything in the Baghjan blowout, a 2020 industrial disaster that had widespread impacts on people and the environment. The poem, expressing grief and despair about the blowout, is part of a book Our Burden of Grief published in October 2025. On May 27, 2020, there was a leak in Oil India Limited’s (OIL) Well No. 5 in Baghjan Oil Field, Tinsukia, Assam, resulting in the uncontrollable flow of the natural gas (methane gas), crude oil and condensate droplets. People living nearby had to be evacuated. A subsequent blast on June 9, 2020, completely burned down 12 houses and more than 10,000 residents from nearly a dozen villages within a three-kilometre radius of the rig were affected and displaced. The fire engulfed adjacent wetlands, killing endangered birds and animals. The fire lasted for almost six months, and OIL only succeeded in extinguishing it entirely on November 15, 2020. The impact of the incident, one of the worst industrial disasters in modern India, has been captured in the book Our Burden of Grief. The book, co-authored by Sanjay Barbora, who teaches sociology and social anthropology, and Dolly Kikon, who teaches anthropology, both at the University of California, along with Noihrit Gogoi, a PhD student in sociology…This article was originally published on Mongabay
