Jiribam (Manipur), April 7: Intense feelings perhaps emerge from extreme situations. How else does one explain how a soldier can pen verses for his beloved even as danger stares at him in a militant-infested area?

Jayanta Payeng, a member of the army?s 9 Parachute Field Regiment, squeezes time out of his strict daily regime to put his innermost feelings on paper. The result of his efforts is an Assamese novel and two collections of verses.

Hailing from Majuli, Assam?s famous isle of culture and traditions, Payeng is attached to a unit that patrols the rugged Barail range of hills along the Assam-Manipur border. His comrades-in-arms say he can wield the pen with as much ease as he does a gun or the same grace with which he glides through the air on a parachute.

The youth, however, is modest about his achievements and describes his work as a mere expression of the experience of living life on the razor?s edge.

?When death stares at you from every corner, and in a desolate place miles away from home and family, it evokes strange feelings,? he said at his base in Jiribam, a nondescript town bordering Assam.

The difficult terrain of the Barail range of hills, which the 9 Parachute Field Regiment patrols, is one of the hotspots of militancy in the Northeast. Encounters between militants and security forces are an everyday affair in these parts.

Recently, an army colonel narrowly escaped death in the area when militants triggered an explosion on the road as his convoy sped past. Over a dozen militant groups of Assam, Manipur and Nagaland are active in the hill range, which runs along Cachar in Assam and East Imphal in Manipur.

Payeng?s novel, Abhisapta Jiban (the cursed life), is a social melodrama set in the small village of Begenaati in Majuli. His two collections of verses ? Bhal Nepaou Buli Nokoba and Sabdare Prakash ? are manifestations of his intense feelings for his beloved.

?She is actually just a vision. I have never seen her in reality,? he said sheepishly about his central character even as his commandant, Col M.P.S. Mendonca, tried to pull his leg.

?Sir helps me a lot and always encourages me to write,? he said of Col Mendonca. The Assam Institute of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes published Payeng?s books under its financial assistance programme for research.