By H H Mohrmen
The two stories captivated the entire world in the last fortnight. The first is the FIFA World Cup Football that comes once in four years. The second story that has attracted global attention is also connected to football but it is not a game. It was the news about 12 members of a football team called Wild Boars trapped inside a cave in Thailand along with their 25 year-old coach.
The ordeal that the foot ball team went through inside the cave and how they were successfully rescued, has some connection with Meghalaya. One may ask how or where the connection is. While I was watching the efforts to rescue the team I asked myself, “What if this happened in Meghalaya.” We cannot rule out such an incident here. After all we have more than a thousand caves which the Meghalaya Adventures Association (MAA) have surveyed and mapped throughout the length and breadth of the state and of course there are still many more yet to be surveyed.
There is no guarantee that such incidents will not happen as there are always dare devils around town who would like to be adventurous and try out new things. As a matter of fact Brian Kharpran Daly shared a story he had also published which has a similar story line. Brian along with a very important tourist had encountered a very unhappy incident when he took the person and his team inside a cave. It was a bright sunny day; a good day to go caving but the unpredictable weather as always played spoilt sport. While they were inside the cave, rain started falling and all of a sudden water began to fill the cave. To cut a long story short, its was a God-send that Brian knew the cave like the back of his hand and so he was able to take the tourist to safety.
The truth is not all caves are tourist friendly and even for the so called friendly caves, the guides need experience and proper gears to go inside one. Brian has published a book titled ‘Caves for the uninitiated’ which should be a guide for all those who are interested in the caves. Now that we know that our caves are also treasure houses for information and our caves have made our state famous; this book should in fact be a prescribed text book for certain levels of college going students.
If the Government decides to promote some of the tourist friendly cave for tourism, again Brian had for countless number of times categorically stated that the Government should consult the experts before it executes the idea. There were instances where with all our good intentions to attract tourists we have instead spoiled the cave in the process. Some caves which are long and treacherous should be set aside for only trained professional cavers to enter.
The longest and deepest caves in India are located in Meghalaya hence the pertinent question is; how can Government prevent unfortunate incidents like the one that happened in Thailand from happening here in Meghalaya? And the big question is – does Meghalaya have a standard operating procedure (SOP) in place to deal with such an eventuality?
I had the opportunity to visit the cavers in many of their expeditions. For a layman like me, at a glance seems like the team is there only for the fun of exploring the caves to fulfil their selfish interests and of course with lots of beer to guzzle. But that is far from the truth. In the makeshift camp, apart from the place to sleep and eat, there is a work station with computers and all the gadgets needed to map and survey the cave. What I mean to say is that it is hard and onerous work because after every trip to the new caves that is explored the cavers have to feed all the data and information collected into the systems which are then published in a book.
The team has already published two volumes of the book called ‘The Cave Pearls of Meghalaya.’ In the first volume there is information about caves in the Pala range and Kopili valley including caves found in other parts of Meghalaya. Similarly in volume 2 there is information predominantly about the cave north of Shnongrim ridge and the Liat Prah cave system, and of course there is also information about other caves in the state.
After watching the incident in Thailand unfurling in front of our eyes I read the books again and realized that they were not only a store- house of information about the caves and everything inside them but more importantly the books which have been painstakingly compiled could be the first thing that the search and rescue operation team will need in case of any eventuality. The books have detailed descriptions of all the caves that were surveyed, with maps meticulously drawn by the cavers who explored the caves. This will go a long way in helping the rescue operations.
Now our caves have catapulted Meghalaya to very important position in the world geological map and for this we have to thank the Meghalaya Adventurers’ Association for that journey that it has undertaken which begin in 1992. Since then they have regularly organised caving expeditions called ‘Caving in the abode of the Clouds’ for more than twenty times now. The expeditions not only survey and map the cave passages but they have documented all the aquatic lives and the fauna found inside the caves. The books mentioned have information about the subterranean ecology of Meghalaya, and about new and exotic species of bats and fishes found in the cave, but the startling finding was the fact that the stalagmite from Mawmluh helped geologists decide on the onset of a new Meghalayan age.
Again Brian in one our discussions mentioned this to me a couple of year ago that scientists even use the caves in Meghalaya to study climate change. He lamented that nobody from the local scholars showed interest in studying the caves and the biodiversity inside it. Who would have thought that a cave would make this small state of India very famous so as to name the age of the Earth after Meghalaya. The football team from across the world sweated it out to win the coveted world cup but they can hold the cup for four years only. Here Meghalaya was awarded a different world cup altogether and it will be with us for eternity because no one can take it away from us.
The caves are therefore very important heritage that we have inherited and it is our duty to protect them and hand it over to our children. It would also not be not out of place to recall here that on February 14, 2007 there was news report that the cavers who were camping then at Shnongrim were asked to leave the area by people under the leadership of Sonny Khyriem and Vincent Pala (then Engineer PWD) and the Director General of the Police W.R. Marbaniang had no other option but to advise them to call off their expedition. The point is; Meghalaya is in the limelight now because of the caves and there are also be people who would see limestone or coal and not the caves and the fragile heritage in it. The government therefore must come up with a policy to protect these caves and the biodiversity therein. The government should make it mandatory that our students learn about caves in school and colleges so that they will learn to appreciate these natural heritages that we have inherited.
One of the suggestions was to select certain ridges or ranges which have large concentration of caves and declare them as a protected area, but the experts know best. One clear and definite suggestion was made by Dr Glenn C Kharkongor who said that the Government should start an initiative to declare Mawmluh cave as a UNESCO heritage site and maybe we can add some more area to the list. We were handed over the Cup; We must all learn to cheer it too.!