By Ananya S Guha
I can’t believe it. It’s the wind, the roving wind in September, in Shillong? This is not the month for it. The wind in Shillong appears normally in February and March, and now this same streaking wind appears in September? Memories are charged. I remember those winds of March, acrid, bitter sweet. But climate change experts should note. For the last day or two the wind in ravishing energy is making its presence felt in our small town of Shillong. The mild, suppressed scream, a whimper, sometimes a whisper, yes sometimes like a whistle, sometimes like a screech… And, then I think of bygones. February, March, the calendar walks across time, the eternal thief. I saunter across it to remember those days: School, college, the sunshine in which we bathed, despite the wind, swathed with hopes, games and reveling in the present. Calm.
Everything was calm, no traffic, let alone pollutants, clear blue skies, and through our small windows of the world a larger expanse of happiness lay. The wind would be at the worst a mild irritant, at the best a calming antidote. But today forty years latter I see the wind in September! A crisis of sorts. Its sunny but the wind sears across, saying that things have changed. In fact it is a bit cold, can winter come? Now? The wind in my place is normally associated with January, February and March. School holidays, and school re opening. Now schools will close in three months.
A premature death wish, the wind is a signifier to change, and the mind blowing process of wading through memories, passed. Yet, in this sudden announcement of climatic change I sense a joy. Traveling through waters of time brings inexorable peace, satiates the mind with pleasures and remembrances. My house in Laitumkhrah lay nestled among the cacaphony of the wind, and pine trees. Now its the cacaphony of change, obstreperous reminder that things have changed. Traffic, congestion, hold ups in the line of a waiting and patient traffic. Only the wind knows it. Oh wind!