The men of Nohotia hustled along the top of a twenty-foot earthen embankment and peered across a darkening floodplain of cabbages, eggplants, and mustard flowers at the gigantic shapes emerging from the line of trees that marked the edge of the Brahmaputra River. Bleary-eyed men with hand axes sat beside small fires, splintering tree trunks into the night’s fuel. A flaming tire hung from a tree, roaring and sputtering. In the village, women in bamboo houses simmered fish curries to feed the men on the battlements. Two weak spotlights swept the fields. The embankment had been built to hold…