Frontiers – Edge to Edge

Frontiers - Edge to Edge is the autobiography of a woman born into a conservative family in Lyallpur in erstwhile Pakistan, who chose a life of adventure and pioneering, which was unheard of in the India of those days. She took a path that brought her face-to-face with an array of incredibly challenging experiences.


Inderjit Kaur Barthakur is a child of the Partition and has lived through its horrors. After the Partition, she joined one of the administrative cadres of the new India. Her destiny and determination took her to one of the remotest and densely forested part of India, then known as NEFA (North Eastern Frontier Agency). It was an area inhabited by tribes of whom the rest of the country had not even heard. It was literally a journey from one frontier to another, from edge to edge, a journey over the dry, vast plains of northern India to the leech-infested mountain rain forests of the eastern Himalayas.


The book is a personal and professional account of her years spent with NEFA and then Delhi - her love, marriage and children included in this telling. It is intimate, intuitive and laced with humour. Her early years in Lyallpur, her rebellious and feminist approach to life, her relationship with her family, particularly her elder brother, her moving to Shllong and then to NEFA, and her subsequent years in Delhi are all told with clarity and detail which are amazing for an eighty-three-year old. The reader also sees her using the difficult experiences of her life in an intelligent pursuit of personal and spiritual growth.


Inderjit Barthakur was in love with the geography of North East India, which she made her home for more than half of her life. She became a mother to its people, solving one problem after another and making life better for them. She became an expert on most matters in the region. Her hard work, integrity, grit and courage earner her many awards including the Padma Shree and the Padma Bhushan. 


Frontiers – Edge to Edge is the journey of a brave woman in a man’s world in the early years of the century—a story told with candour, wonder and remarkable lightness.