By HH Mohrmen
This is not about the two newly reorganized districts in Jaintia Hills- the East and West Jaintia hills districts. This is in fact about the emerging new Jaintia and, sadly, the one gradually fading into oblivion. This is the story of the Jaintia that we still see in many villages in the Khasi Jaintia hills where mining has not affected the lives of the people. Yet another is a different Jaintia, a Jaintia which has been affected by mining and urbanization. The following are two stories about the two different Jaintias that I personally encountered during the fag end of 2012 – and to be precise; the last month of the year.
I was accompanying a journalist friend from Shillong to certain locations in the suburb of Jowai town to follow one end of the thread of his story. We took a cab and headed towards the destination. After travelling about 30-45 minutes I realized I had lost my mobile phone. I tried to recall where I could have left it and it dawned on me that I had dropped my cell phone in the taxi that we had used. I immediately asked my friend to call my number, but lo and behold the phone was switched off. I was aghast at what had happened. It was only then that I realized that my mobile phone was not only a tool for communication but an extension of my being. I was at a loss; in fact both of us were at a loss, I felt like I had lost my limbs. We were supposed to call the Daloi of Elaka Jowai and confirm our next appointment with him, but all the numbers were in my mobile phone. Then I began to think of the day and time ahead and how I would live without a cell phone? What would my wife and my near and dear ones think when they call my number and find that it is switched off? They would be worried. What about people who want to contact me? We tried several times to call my cell phone but there was no luck. I was at my wits end.
I then I remembered my conversation with the owner of the workshop where I had my car repaired. The garage owner also owned a taxi. He told me that he had instructed his driver that whenever he finds that a passenger has left a mobile phone in his car, he should immediately remove the sim card toss it outside the car window and keep the phone set. I then realized that my cell phone must have met with the same fate. In spite of that I still hoped that good sense would prevail on the person who found my phone and hoped against hope that he would take the call and return it to me. I asked almost all the friends I met after I lost my phone to call my number and instructed them to tell whoever picks the phone to return it to me its rightful owner and I promised that I would reward him double the cost of the set (after all I was using a cheap set and not a smart phone anyway). But as my luck would have it, my cell phone was gone forever. The next step was to report to the police. I went to the Jowai Police Station and it was a pleasant surprise for me. The policemen were very courteous and the staff immediately issued a certificate after I had filed my FIR. I had only waited for 8 minutes or so and came out of the Jowai PS with the much needed certificate for the service provider to issue me a new SIM card. I hope our police are as efficient and considerate with everyone else as they were with me.
Weeks after I had lost my mobile phone and few days before Christmas, a youth group in Jowai, namely the Society for Urban and Rural Empowerment Jaintia Hills (SURE Jaintia Hills) hosted a group of young people from Jharkhand under the Youth Club Exchange Program of the Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan. It was organized in a manner that part of the program included trekking to the living root-bridge in Padu. Padu is situated in the Amlarem Sub Division and it is only about 10 Km from Amlarem and about 38 Kms from Jowai the district headquarter of West Jaintia Hills. We trekked from Padu to the three living-root bridges in the area and walked from one bridge to another through the clean pristine waters of the river Amdep. In addition to the three root bridges the trek also included walking past two beautiful waterfalls in the area.
The walk down the steep was easy but it was the climb on return from the bridges and the waterfalls that was challenging. The trekkers gradually creeped up the precipitous hill and stopped several times to rest and regain strength. Walking up we were tired and thirsty and on the way we saw a few oranges just beside the path. How I wished they were purposely left for us so that we could quench our thirst, but I was wrong. We walked past the oranges with our mouths watering but no one even touched the oranges. Sweat flowed from my head and caked behind my ears. We walked a little distance further and found another basket full of oranges, I said to myself this is indeed like hell. We were all tired and hungry and the baskets full of oranges tempted us. I even had money to buy a few oranges but the owner of the fruits was nowhere to be seen. He was probably still busy plucking oranges in his orchard some distance from us. Farmers came and went but no one touched or even looked at the oranges which did not belong to them. “This is how we live in the villages,” said my friend Ohiwot Mukhim who guided us to the bridges and the waterfalls. “Even if you keep the oranges for days together nobody will ever touch them,” he added.
The incident reminded me of my childhood when as a young boy I accompanied my grandmother to our ancestral village in Nongtalang. My grandmother was a fish trader; she bought fish from Dawki and Muktapur to sell in the market in Jowai. Unlike the fish from Andhra Pradesh that we get now and which takes at least ten days to arrive here, the fishes then were fresh and at times were even still alive. Jowai then was a small town and the people who bought fish from us were mostly Bengali babus working in the various government departments and banks in the town then. On the way to Dawki my grandmother would drop stuff on the roadside near Nongtalang and some of our near and dear ones would collect the same. On her return from Dawki in the evening; sometimes stuff would be placed on the same roadside by people she knew, for her to collect to bring back to Jowai. No one ever touched the commodities. The bags or gunny bags remained as they were since my grandmother left them, until our relatives collected them. People would not even look at something which did not belong to them. Now that has changed, at least in Nongtalang.
As our villages grow and develop they also lose some of the very valuable aspects of our society, like the practice of not touching something which does not belong to us. Is this the kind of change that we want to see in our villages? We have reason to be happy that at least in some villages like Padu, the true tribal values of not touching what is not yours without permission is still alive. But the question is for how long? How long will our villagers be able to keep this tradition? Or why can’t we towns folks not revive the same tribal spirit of respecting other people’s belongings? Why can’t we return that which does not belong to us to their respective owners? Why can’t we just leave something which is not ours where it is, or where it belongs? Why can’t we relive our old tribal traditions? Or is this the price we have to pay for ‘the so called progress and civilisation?’