By Ankur Das
Reading a write-up by NBA basketball player Alex Owumi on the BBC website the other day where he spoke about how he went to Libya and, without knowing about it, played for Muammar Gaddafi’s team, and how he got caught in the deadly crossfire between Libyan rebels and troops during the Libyan revolution where the Colonel was eventually killed brought back memories of a summer way back in 2001, when Shillong (and Meghalaya) was in the midst of a bloody insurgent struggle being waged by the outlawed HNLC. Though by no means similar to the Libyan account, that scary night left a very deep impression on my six year old mind, and to an extent, brought about changes in the way we lived our lives, changes which stayed on till very recently.
For the uninitiated, the Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) is an insurgent militant outfit based in Meghalaya. Though dormant and largely relegated to the plains of Bangladesh now, the HNLC at that point of time had quite a large cache of arms and with logistical assistance from the Nagaland based NSCN managed to create chaos in Meghalaya for the greater part of 2001, gunning down labourers, blowing up police stations, et al. Though sovereignty for the Khasi state was its main demand, the HNLC found support for its anti-influx stand from the all powerful Khasi Students’ Union. Bandh, agitations and curfews were the way of life!
As usual, the HNLC had called for a total boycott of the Independence Day celebration that year, something that it still does on Independence Day and Republic Day. That evening, my uncle, who lived close by came to our house for a cup of tea and all the elders were sitting and probably talking about how futile their demand for sovereignty was. Large scale movement of armed cadres had been detected near the city, and though there was no curfew, not a single soul was there on the road and CRPF jawans, armed to the teeth were patrolling the street near our house. I remember dad tuning into the 7 pm local TV slot on Doordarshan and watching the Chief Minister address an almost empty Polo Ground during the official function earlier that day.
At around 8, we suddenly heard gunshots – at first intermittent and them continuous firing. I remember maa having a really tough time convincing me that they were real gunshots, as intermittent gunfire sounded exactly like the crackers I burst on Diwali. Within minutes, the PA system blared out orders asking us to close our windows and switch off our lights. We were also asked to switch off our televisions. This was like nothing I had ever experienced before!
The windows of our kitchen and bathroom overlook the hills of Mawprem, and between our house and that fairly densely populated hillside lay a valley, where the main CRPF base was located. My father went to the kitchen, with all of us in tow. He thought that there were militants on the hill, firing at the camp and hoped to catch some of the action, live! He was right! We saw specks of light on the hillside, somewhat like many cameras flashing continuously, except that here, the flashes were yellowish in colour. The gunfire soon gave way to what looked like streaks of light coming from both sides, which I, after watching many movies later, think were rocket propelled grenades. There were loud noises everywhere – explosions, police sirens, chatter on wireless sets. It was total pandemonium.
When the firing subsided for sometime my uncle decided to take the risk and head towards home, because no one knew when this episode of ‘Hell’ would end. As he stepped out of our house and turned round the corner of the road, he saw two masked men going down the stairs which led to the valley, firing in the air. He froze in his tracks, but having been through the 1971 war as a child, where they lived right next to an airbase and saw it being shelled, mustered enough courage to make the 100 metre walk to his house. Shoot-at-sight orders were in force. He could have been shot dead had security personnel seen him. A militant could have killed him as well.
The next morning, we got to know that indefinite curfew has been imposed. My friends and I got very excited at the prospect of a long holiday. Endless games of cricket, running-catching and hide and seek kept us busy, and evenings were spent playing snakes and ladders with cousins. However, we were soon running out of fresh rations, and I remember accompanying dad to the market during the hour long curfew relaxation at 4 every evening, seeing people scrambling to get their hands on anything they could find. The milkman couldn’t come on his daily rounds, and that however made me very happy. There was nothing more I hated than milk!
When day curfew was finally lifted the next week and we went to school again, the streets looked very different. There were many grey vehicles with small little windows on the road and dad told me they were bullet proof vehicles. Masked commandos dressed in all black fatigues with fancy guns patrolled the roads – we called them the Black Cats. Games of chor-police in school had us covering our faces with our handkerchiefs, mimicking them and we learnt new words like AK-47 and carbines. This, and many other such incidents of that period are to blame for Shillong not having a decent nightlife scene till very recently and shops downing their shutters by 8. But for the six year old me, the night curfew from 7 pm meant that dad would get home early and I’d have longer hours of table tennis with two notebooks and a ping-pong ball on the dining table.
(Ankur Das is currently studying in New Delhi. An alumnus of the St. Edmund’s School and the Army Public School, he is now preparing for the Civil Services Examination in Delhi).