Shillong bypass
One of the pleasures of driving along any freeway/ highway such as the Pune-Mumbai, the Chennai-Bengaluru or even the Jorabat-Nagaon- Kaziranga one is to stop for a cup of piping hot tea or coffee at a nice, clean dhaba and choose from a host of imaginative food items.
One misses this on the Shillong Bypass. Despite being in use for a good five months there are no eateries worth their name along the highway.
The small tea shops have not transformed into better eating joints.
They serve the same old flavourless tea in cup that are cracked and have turned brown with age.
There is not much choice as far as food is concerned. The Khasis are known to have a healthy, attractive cuisine but with time those who sell such food must also innovate to attract customers.
Perhaps there is need for a crash course in hospitality and catering for those wishing to run these little eateries along the Shillong Bypass.
Farmers within Shillong city
Atune Syiemlieh of Langkyrding locality in Pynthorumkhrah is 69 years old but keeps herself busy in her kitchen garden where she grows all kinds of vegetables from cauliflower, to radish, mustard leaves, squash, and any number of herbs and greens. Atune earns a decent income from her garden and so do many of her neighbours living in the area.
Large parts of Pynthorumkhrah have traditionally been known as rice fields or Pynthor Kba and are very fertile.
Now the rice fields have turned into vegetable plots supplying fresh vegetables to the people of Shillong. The beauty of these vegetables is that they are grown organically. No one uses fertilisers or pesticides. The only manure that the farmers of this area use is cow dung. Langkyrding and its surroundings are the last surviving farming plots within the city.
Lawsohtun area near the Sericulture farm also used to be known as the hub for organically grown vegetables sold at a premium at Iewduh (Bara Bazar).
Need for toilets at picnic spots
This is the picnic season and every available space today is turning into a picnic spot.
The beaches around the Umiam Lake are a favourite haunt of people from Assam and our own Meghalaya too.
Shillong Jottings spotted this person for whom the call of nature was so urgent that it got the better of him. Without a care about who was watching him, this person who was part of a picnic party quietly slipped away to a little distance to release the pressure on his bowels.
Perhaps there is a need for designated picnic spots where civic amenities such as pay toilets can be put up.