SHILLONG: The Shillong connection etched on Norwegian lady Anne Lise Fossland’s mind was reflected in her description of the sights in the hill city.
Anne was born in Assam’s Santipara in 1943 to Norwegian Missionaries and came to Shillong in 1950 where she stayed for seven years and went back to Norway at the age of 14 years old.
Speaking on her visit to the hill city after 60 years, she said, “The feelings are mixed but it is very nice to be back and to get to come in contact with my background and to see what is still there from my childhood.”
She and her husband, Per Midteide, interacted with a group of media persons at Arunachal Bhavan, which was known as Brown House Norwegian Boarding School, Cleve Colony, during the pre-Independence days and she attended Brown School.
“This house that we are here now is the hostel for the school. I recognise the place very well and even the school building at my time was very simple. But it is still there and we have been able to see it,” she said.
The teachers were Norwegian and followed the Norwegian School system and stayed at the boarding school far away from parents. “We missed our parents a lot but it was a good place to stay,” she recalled.
Anne remembered that the children would walk down the hills at a time when there were no houses and get to the church on foot.
She recalled life was hard for her as she stayed away from her parents and getting back together with them during the holidays was a “lovely experience”.
“We went home for Christmas during winter,” she said.
Asked, she said all the students were Norwegian. “Some travelled all the way from Bombay, Santal Parganas, Bihar, came to Kolkata and by train upto the School in Shillong,” she said.
Shillong then and now
Asked on the changes that she saw in Shillong, she said the differences are unbelievable and indescribable.
She said, “All the houses, people, cars, buildings…. all over. In this area where the school is, what we call Brown House, at that time, there were big villas and one or two small houses, otherwise there were no buildings at all. And we played far down in the small stream, there were no buildings but forests.”
Pushed by some friends to come to Shillong, she said she and her husband decided to come after both of them retired.
“I have always wanted to go back and see the place and link up with my childhood. I have very good memories and also tough memories. It has been a wonderful experience to come back to India and also a challenging experience,” Anne said.
She maintained that the couple’s only tourist-like behaviour was visiting Taj Mahal, which she said was “indescribable”.
Her parents’ calling
Anne recollected her parents’ work while in India and founded the home and hospital in Santipara outside Bongaigaon and she said, “That was my home in India. That place has been very much changed and a lot of it has fallen down but it is still there and I was allowed to go in the house where I was born with the help of a Swedish midwife who came to deliver me. That was also a strong experience.”
She informed the parents were very young, they felt a calling to go out and preach the Gospel by assisting those who are estranged from the community.
“It was also decided that leprosy colony should be established. The leprosy patients were stigmatised, shut out from community, not allowed to stay with their families,” she said.
“The idea of my father was to build a church where the leprosy patients and the non-leprosy patients could be in the same room. The church was like a Cross, in one arm of the cross, the leprous males were, the other arm, the leprous females, the third arm, the non-patients gathered. I sat as a small child at the back. The fourth arm of the Church was the altar,” she explained.
“The leprous patients were allowed to receive the Holy Communion at the altar, the non-patients had a partition where they could come. So it was beautiful to see that the lepers could come and be allowed to take the Holy Communion.”
“The Church itself is very much run down. It might be rebuilt, we don’t know. But it feels good to be there even if it is different,” Anne said.
The pair travelled to Africa, Sudan, Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya etc.
Places and memories
Anne not only visited the school that she studied in but went to Welsh Mission Church (Presbyterian Church at Khyndai Lad) on Sunday where the 13-14-year-old children would attend the Sunday service in the afternoon.
Properly pronouncing Laitumkhrah, she said the couple will visit her parents’ home where they stayed during holidays here.
They will visit the Welsh Mission Hospital (Dr. H. Gordon Roberts Hospital) which she recalled is the Hospital they received their injections and a doctor would look after them when they are ill.
Taking reporters to some of the rooms and premises of Arunachal Bhavan, she showed the place where they slept, a huge mirror where the girls would get dressed, the school, the place where they played.
Another strong memory is of one of the boys who died suddenly and visited his burial place on Monday.
Walking around the ground to remember her childhood and get the connection to show to her husband as well so that they “can share the memories after wards.” They had also visited Assam and visited the places where the children of the parents worked and lived for many years.
