By Toki Blah
Its past four in the afternoon. That bright, warm, life giving morning sun of late December has, as usual, fallen asleep on his job. Surly, sullen clouds now darken the late afternoon sky. A cold breeze springs up, trying to make up its mind whether to continue as a breeze or should it turn itself into something worse. From the look of things it’ll be cold and drizzling tonight; the heavens mourning the death of yet another winter day. It’s a typical winter evening in the Khasi Hills and Shillong in particular. Tonight there will be bumper to bumper traffic snarls all over the city. It’ll be cold; it’ll be wet; it’ll be freezing outside in the rain. Wise folks will stay indoors bracing themselves with amber liquids before glowing coal lit fires; for others it’ll perhaps be catching up with the day’s gossip over charcoal heated chulhas.
Only those who have experienced Shillong winter evenings can really appreciate what I mean. The streets and sidewalks are full of people all in a tearing hurry. Horns beep; engines flare; hawkers flout their wares while gawking children cling desperately to jainsems of harassed looking mothers. Blue exhaust fumes from uncaring city-buses sting your nostrils as you window shop your way through PB. Stores are already decked with red holly and false festive tassels while Boney M’s “Feliz Navidad” and “Mary’s boy Child” assail your senses round every street corner you take. Discount banners for all sorts of attractive items catch your eye with a “buy one, get three” offer proving too tempting to resist. Something good’s going to happen. You feel it in the air. It’s in your bones, It’s just round the corner! It’s a feeling, just begging for description, you know what it is but you can’t describe it. It’s that Feeling of Christmas.
At this time of the year Shillong is once again personally yours. Seldom is one ever given a chance to relive one’s childhood. In Shillong, it’s done regularly, every December. Exams by then are over, results declared, and whatever fate befell youthful scholars, the greater joy and excitement of being a ‘Nong Shillong’ at Christmas time supersedes all other superficial academic considerations. These grubby sidewalks, these busy sidewalks, they are made just for you to walk on and Glory Be, its simply too good to be alive and kicking. It’s the time of the year to be free once again! Whatever your age, thirty or seventy, it doesn’t matter, the festive atmosphere of the city transports you back to your school days; those happy –go –lucky days of yesteryears; carefree, blithe, untroubled winter-hols of yore. Listen to the Beatles singing ‘Yesterday, all my troubles seem so fa-a-ar away’, and the words tug at the heartstrings whatever your age, wherever you are. Then as you watch the festive world pass you by, an overwhelming sadness shrouds the mind. This is Shillong, it will always be so, yet the Shillong you knew, in a manner of speaking, is a Shillong your grandchildren will never see, never ever know.
A few years past, not so long ago, the bright sunny mornings and early afternoons of December were the days both parents and children looked forward to. The stress and problems of the year were about to be over and done with, it was the ideal time to look forward to a day of leisure by the Umiam lake. It was pure bliss just to dream of a pine scented breeze fanning your face while you lazed on the banks of a blue watered lake, and beyond that, the green pine covered slopes of Lum Sohpet-bneng. Family picnics of jadoh and dohkhleh with rod and reel and packs of Asia 72 were then the order of the day. It was something worth living for. Alas this former balm for stressed out souls no longer exists. We, all of us together, collectively destroyed Paradise! A thoroughly callous citizenry managed to transform this natural paradise into Asia’s most foul and stinking cess pool. That’s what Umiam has been turned to. Unplanned development aided by emotion based traditional nonsense has changed a beautiful Hill Station and its scenic surroundings into an ugly tainted upland slum.
The good citizens of Shillong; honourable ministers and not so honourable politicians, the faceless and voiceless bureaucrats; revered Bible thumping elders of the Church and their respective flocks, the ‘know it all’ Rangbah Shnongs and those ‘holier than thou’ NGO’s, you, me, all of us together, are the only known species on earth capable of turning God’s dream into a Devil’s nightmare. What a dubious Distinction! If a city could shed tears it would be Shillong grieving over its dead rivers; if Shillong could cry for help it would be against the daily abuse on its curvaceous and beautiful body; if Shillong could wish, what better wish could it have than to regain its pine scented air; its once fresh drinking water; its forgotten sweet smelling rain drenched soil. If Shillong were to cry for justice, it would be against the neglect and insults its own children have heaped upon it.
In the late sixties, Shillong boasted (and Thank God, it still does) some very pretty girls. One in particular was the talk of the town. She possessed not only a pretty face but also had the grace; the charm and the beauty that defined innocence in its purest form. The author chanced upon the same lady recently and his senses simply failed to acknowledge that this was once Miss Shillong of the 60’s. A paragon of grace and beauty had degenerated into a billowy, fatigued and haggard old woman; shuffling along the footpath on her way to God knows where. Come to think of it a perfect analogy of the Shillong of yesteryears and the Shillong of today.
All of us love this city but for God’s sake whatever became of those gracious, spacious and picturesque bungalows that use to dot the hilly landscape? Those heavenly timbered structures with white lime-washed walls, corrugated red tin roofs, forget-me-not hedges and creaky wooden gates? Those buildings in which most of us grew up in. Those homogenous close knit localities where your business is everybody’s business! Where have they disappeared? Which idiotic deity replaced them with soulless steel and concrete structures within high cemented walls? This inexplicable obsession of this generation of Khasis for shapeless grey concrete can easily warrant a PHD thesis or two. We mourn the death of innocence and childlike charm of the past. Values too have certainly not been spared. The decency of traditional egalitarian social justice exchanged for vulgar display of individual wealth. Change has certainly eaten away the very fabric of our indigenous souls and sadly we have no compunctions in brazenly flaunting it .
But then again nothing has really changed. Shillong will always remain Shillong. Walking down the narrow bye lanes of the numerous ‘dongs’ of the city, one is still captured and memories once again held hostage by sights and sounds that never grow old; that never die! The soft strumming of a melancholy unseen guitar somewhere in the gathering dusk; two lovers holding hands oblivious to everything but their own make believe world; enthusiastic trains of carol singers puffing steamy hot breaths into the cold night air; and somewhere in the dark an anxious mother calls to her child against the backdrop of distant church bells – softly pealing, calling, coaxing the faithful to evening prayers. These are the sights and sounds that make Shillong, and they always remain the same forever.
This write up is a nostalgic recollection of Shillong; the city that I love; that quaint, old-world, tin roofed town that I grew up in; the town that made me what I am. A town that holds so many memories; memories that turn to heartaches every time they are remembered. To wake up at break of day; to play football, bare footed, on dew drenched grass at Students Field. To grow up with lots of friends and being tribal or non tribal never deterred friendship. Shillong, a seat of learning but also a fun place to live in. For conservative old fashioned guys like me, Shillong has always symbolised peace; remembered for its genteel society; for people who loved and took pride in their city. Things may have changed but Shillong still remains a city that demands love not hate. That perhaps is the eternal enduring charm of this habitat that enables it to call out, at the end of every tremulous year’s trials and tribulations, call out every Christmas to all its sons and daughters “Oh come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant”.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!
Author is President of ICARE