Mother scores over daughter
In a dance competition recently held at the State Central Library Auditorium, Lily Baruah, a dancer emerged winner whereas her daughter Tanya was the runners-up in their respective categories. 60 students participated in the annual dance competition in the junior category and six adults took part in the senior category. Following the many rounds involved, Lily, a teacher of city based Mother’s School and a good dancer besides being a singer too, was rightly conferred the trophy for her immense talent and skill showcased on stage. Her daughter Tanya, a student of class VI, St Mary’s School was runners-up. Tanya is also a good dancer and is invited to every dance performance in the city. The competition amongst the juniors was more intense as the number of contestants was more. It is indeed rare that a mother and daughter would be competing on the same stage, albeit not with each other. In the end both were happy and proud of each other for attaining this unique feat.
Temperamental rainfall
The other day there was a heavy downpour in the Shillong-1 area (IGP, Barik, Khyndailad etc) but by the time people reached Laitumkhrah the rains had reduced to a drizzle. This is the month of June and usually Meghalaya does not experience such heavy winds. The Khasi word for ‘June’ is Jylliew meaning deep. The ‘deep’ here we are told by the elderly obviously refers to deep waters on account of the heavy rains. Is this climate change or simply a peculiar weather phenomenon? A resident of the city came out from his home without his umbrella thinking that there would be no rainfall but after reaching State Central Library he was completely drenched in a heavy downpour. A peculiar habit of the car drivers and local cabbies in the city during rainfall is that they intentionally speed their cars over puddles of water and splash the pedestrians with the slush. Many pedestrians yell at the car drivers who seem to derive sadistic pleasure out of this act but to no avail.
Tourism? Who cares?
While the state government is hard-selling Meghalaya as a tourist destination, local people still treat tourists as aliens. The large majority hardly share the Government’s enthusiasm about tourism. Many visitors are cheated by taxi drivers or rebuked by street vendors. But the same locals are enamoured by “white skin” and treat them differently. It’s a case of the ‘slave mentality’ repeating itself 65 years after independence from foreign rule. A tourist from Karnataka visiting here for the first time wanted to try his hand with a Kwai in Khyndailad. He sampled a packet from a roadside vendor and was trying to educate himself about how to eat the stuff. But the vendor found that a waste of time. She rebuked the tourist and told him to put the packet back. The shocked tourist wondered why she was so rude. He left the scene quite hurt by the treatment. One quality the people of Meghalaya need to learn from Sikkim is the spontaneous hospitality towards all tourists irrespective of the colour of their skin.