By Janet Moore Hujon
I grew up in a Shillong that was small and knowable and for many years now I have lived on a street that is known for its community spirit. Perhaps the way my life has panned out is not a coincidence, perhaps subconsciously I will always search for the old world in the new. I can still recall that strong invisible network radiating from our home reaching out to include school, university and then the work place, connecting each one of us to someone else.
It was also a time when people walked everywhere. So at certain times every day we were bound to meet the same people who also had to get somewhere at exactly the same time as we did. Soon certain faces became familiar and I tuned in to the reason for that well known Khasi expression “nga ithuh khmat” (I know that face). It was then not uncommon to first smile at ‘that face’, and in time we then talked to that face and before long we also came to ‘know’ the person behind that face. A shared wait at the bus stop or a walk to school had far-reaching social consequences. Our circle of acquaintances widened naturally and what was a casual everyday occurrence actually turned out to have other benefits. As the human world around us became increasingly familiar we also felt safe. Fear and threat are after all, more often than not, associated with the unknown.
I do not know if this happens as easily now. The popularity of the car as a mode of travel and the way time seems to have speeded up are now interconnected contributing to the breakdown in communication. The last time I saw my uncle Ivan Simon by then an invalid confined to his bed, he recalled with smiling pride how he walked to work. Guess where work was ? The Union Christian College, Khwan. Meanwhile my grandfather pedal-biked his way to Gauhati to sit his Bachelor of Law examinations. Admittedly the road linking Shillong to Gauhati was then a pleasant one. No polluting trucks. No traffic jams. No pilot cars bent on brushing you aside so you do not forget how unimportant and downtrodden you are, while our less-than-humble ministers whiz their way down to the airports in time for their flight. No arrogant drivers swearing and cursing, consigning everyone to the dark world into which they have to stagger every blighted day of their lives. We are all constantly trying to get places and to do that in the limited time at our disposal we get into the car and leave the rest of the world outside.
Walking, cycling and driving down to the plains was once an altogether pleasant experience – the only obstruction to our progress were the herds of confused cattle making their way to meat markets in the hills. Travelling along that green corridor called the Gauhati-Shillong road with the mandatory stop at Nongpoh to shop for local produce, only deepened the love my forebears and I had for our green and pleasant homeland. But ‘Things have Changed’, and changed rapidly. And is this the change we want and what, I wonder, is the reason for this alarming development in the life of our city and our hills?
More than ever before and sooner rather than later, in this mad rush we call living, it behoves each one of us to learn how to stop and think. The riots in the UK have been a source of untold anguish to families who have lost their loved ones and to businesses struggling to keep afloat in these tough economic times. Holidaying parliamentarians have been caught on the wrong foot and police resources have been stretched beyond capacity. And, as has happened before, this chaos on our streets has made people stop and ask why? Despite the great distances between us, the upheaval and helpless questioning going on here in Britain, has an ominous echo in Meghalaya.
I also heard this echo in Shishir Joshi’s article ‘Where have our basic niceties gone?’ Joshi’s wry humour seems to be the only defence against this depressing downward spiral into a self-promoting, self-obsessed world. Is it not a gloomy analysis of what life has become if we now have to be reminded of the evident need for that genuine smile, friendly greeting or a word of thanks. Surely these are basic family/human values that have contributed to the strength of a community and this contribution should and once did happen naturally. Yet over the years I too have learnt that what I once took for granted is now listed as a ‘social skill’ necessary for the smooth working of a department. I have also experienced intense frustration when a lack of these basic niceties turns the workplace into a cauldron of smouldering resentment that is vicious, ugly and non-productive.
“When is [sic] the last time you smiled, genuinely and were naturally nice to someone?”… Joshi asks. ‘Genuinely’ and ‘naturally’ are for me the most important words in that question simply because the meaning carried by these words underpins the notion of trust upon which a strong community is based.
Among the different meanings listed for the verb ‘commune’ is the following explanation – ‘to converse together with sympathy and confidence’. Once we lose the capacity to feel for one another, once we stop conversing together, but most of all once we start questioning the other’s intentions we have forfeited the right to call ourselves a community. Joshi’s article also made me confront the dangerous ease with which these external gestures of inner goodwill could degenerate into mere superficiality if they are misused and that can then only deepen mistrust instead of clearing it. Anyone can fake warmth and goodwill. Yes, as the hapless Hamlet finds out “…That one may smile and smile and be a villain”… A canny voter in Shillong made a similar assessment as he watched the receding back of a politician touting for support: “Mynta te ki kular ban ai ia ngi ka bneng, hynrei lashai pat tang ka pyrthei ruh ngim ioh.”. “Today they promise us heaven but tomorrow we will not even be given the earth.”
Given what has happened in England, it would be prudent for those who seek election in Meghalaya to not forget that old cautionary piece of advice that you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. Beware there is now a welcome stirring amongst the citizens of Meghalaya who are no longer at ease in the old dispensation. The off-putting stench of hypocrisy which enables those in power to enjoy life in a hedonist paradise while blithely consigning the less ‘fortunate’ to a hell of uncertainty, is becoming increasingly unbearable. The young especially are vocalising their impatience showing a keenly felt sense of right and wrong. Fortunately for us all the protest is still largely civilised and expressed through legitimate channels.
(The writer lives and works in Cambridge, UK)