By Janet Moore Hujon
Hills
God turned all hardness into hills/
Man with harder heart entered and began blasting them.
Atreya Sarma:
Muse India. Issue 42 2012
A few years ago I wrote to my friend Deepa Majumdar and told her how “At the London Book Fair I met Mandira Sen (publisher of Stree) – a more humble, soulful person I could not have had the greater pleasure to encounter. I felt and was touched by her gentle soul. Her husband had grown up in Shillong and she says he is still heavily biased in favour of Shillong – all places are wonderful if they reflect Shillong in some way!” Later I was to learn that her husband had had a career as a diplomat, so his viewpoint vis-à-vis Shillong was high praise indeed.
The prime reason why I visited London – which I tend to avoid – was to listen to Mamang Dai, my teacher, Mrs Temsula Ao, and Kynpham Singh Nongkynrih. I was so proud to see these names from the hills on the programme – North-East India was on the global literary map! Hearing what Mandira Sen had to say was the added bonus, deepening the warm sensation with which I left London that evening. Yet today those same words only emphasise the sense of loss I have when I think about my city today. I can no longer kid myself that the pride I felt in the Shillong that was, can in any way be sustained. It is only because I am a Khasi who grew up in the hills that the city still tugs at my heart-strings.
Why and how did we allow Shillong to be dragged to this state? It is totally misleading and verging upon falsehood, to describe Shillong as “a pollution free city where you can breathe clean and fresh air”. (http://meghalayatourism.org/spots.htm) How can a city choking on its own traffic fumes be pollution free? And those stinking mounds of garbage are certainly not figments of anyone’s imagination. As for the majestic Wah Umkhrah now reduced to an effluent – albeit not without the power to wreak powerful revenge. Is this what “halfway to heaven” (again courtesy Meghalaya Tourism) looks like?
And isn’t it an outrage to advertise our caves as a tourist selling point when they are being dynamited out of existence? No wonder Brian Kharpran Daly whose knowledge of these caves was spurred by love and intellectual curiosity, should feel so betrayed by our government. Read his article (Mining Policy? A Lost Cause) with that sense of truth that is deep in all our hearts and listen…listen carefully and you might just hear a heart break. How perceptive and far-seeing was our Soso Tham when he wrote “Jingshai ngi wad sawdong pyrthei/Jingshai ka Ri ngim kheiñ eiei”… (We seek the light from far-off lands/ Despise the light within our land).
To the detriment of our state and our people we in Meghalaya, for whatever destructive reason, persist in ignoring local expertise. And by expertise I not only mean scientific and practical knowledge, but the love that keeps that knowledge alive. This you can see in the reflections of people like Brian Daly and HH Mohrmen. It is people like these two gentlemen who should be at the forefront of any government endeavour to preserve and promote Meghalaya. Here are two individuals who know what they are talking about because they are in touch not only with the environment and the people they write about, but also with their own conscience. I am in no doubt that there are many others like them whose voices have been made mute by a sense of utter hopelessness. Besides giving us the Khasi equivalent of the word conscience, Holando Lyngdoh’s English Khasi Dictionary provides the nuanced explanation. Conscience is an inner knowing which either damns (pynrem) or strengthens/elevates (pynksan) any other shared and more overt knowledge (ka jingiatiplem). To know therefore is to love, and to love is to discard that which taints the purity of the emotion and of knowledge.
Unlike our ‘leaders’ these men do not just make the appropriate ecological noises to suit a certain gathering, but tirelessly and generously give of their time and commitment, drawing our attention to the imperilled state of our nurturing environment. In his article Nongtalang – another Sohra in the making Mohrmen clearly shows how the menace of rampant limestone mining and deforestation will destroy the unique life of an idyllic self-sustaining village. Pan leaf cultivation is under threat, says Mohrmen, because water resources are being systematically despoiled. Does this not ring alarm bells in the heads of all those who trumpet endlessly about our tribal identity and culture, while doing their best to squander the natural resources connected to that same culture? Isn’t it time we all realised that a community which destroys its environment is also slowly destroying itself?
The foundations of our tribal identity is grounded in our relationship with Nature. Our earliest mentors have been our hills and our rivers, our forests, our plants, our seasons, our birds and our animals. By observing them our ancestors framed the rules by which they lived their lives. But in the technological world we live today we ignore the writing on the land and doing so we court disaster. If unchecked, the speed with which ‘development’ is taking place can only lead to one end – we will no longer have a living, vibrant, distinctive culture but one that is only visible in museum reproductions and artefacts. And when the awful implications of selfish government and corporate policies become a reality, will we then ask experts from Israel to bail us out, ignoring the fact that “…the War Jaintia…are experts in irrigation”?
There is no denying the fact that Israel today is a modern miracle fulfilling the biblical prophecy contained in Isaiah 35 “…The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom; ..Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams run in the desert”… These stirring, inspiring words which gave succour to persecuted Jews looking for a homeland have indeed been made to come true. But at what cost? Every year the River Jordan is shrinking because its waters have been diverted to quench the thirsty soils of Israel and her neighbours. This is how a steady supply of produce is ensured to feed not only Israel but all other parts of the world with a similar buying power.
This frightening trend to control and not work with natural resources is similar to what is happening in parts of the Peruvian highlands where glaciers are receding and the soil is now impoverished simply because intensive asparagus cultivation requires copious amounts of water. Packaged in attractive, indestructible plastic, the asparagus then makes its way to dining-tables thousands of miles away in Britain. At such points I wonder at the selfish and reckless use of so-called knowledge. Like the villagers in the limestone rich areas of Meghalaya who have always wisely used their natural resources, the mountain people of Peru, through no fault of their own, will soon be left with nothing. The fact that they have always worked in harmony with their surroundings and not been driven by greed, will be forgotten in this mad phenomenon called globalisation. Like the avaricious mining companies in Meghalaya, supermarket giants here in the west are the new colonisers who ensure that those who already have too much can always feel they can have what they want, whenever they want. And like the colonisers of old, the new colonisers will leave with little or no thought for the emotional, cultural and economic cost of that blithe philandering and tampering with Nature.
But amid all this gloom I am beginning to feel some hope. The graphic images of filth and plunder which are appearing with more regularity in the Shillong Times, along with their accompanying write-ups are, strangely enough, encouraging. The articles may provide depressing reading and the photographs still make my heart sink, but underlying the reportage and documentation, there is a sense that we are no longer denying the presence of Rot in the state. Acknowledging evil is after all the first step towards ridding ourselves and our environment of this pollutant. It is also heartening to hear the voices of the younger generation who – to slightly amend Toki Blah’s words – are less “..enchanted with our unwritten past, and are no longer willing to ignore the future they are expected to script”. And script it we must if we are to regain our self-respect and forge anew our identity as responsible citizens of Meghalaya and of this world. So it is the ballot box that will proclaim whether we have the courage of our convictions, whether we can show ourselves and maybe the rest of India that our politicians are in office to promote Meghalaya and not themselves, that they are one of us – people who share our joys, our sorrows, our hopes and our fears, who will work for us and not against us. (The writer is from Shillong but currently lives and works in Cambridge, UK)