By Mebanda Blah Dkhar
Lockdown shopping from the locality has become a new normal and like everyone else, I am glad that shops are opening though I must admit I miss my Iewduh. My husband and friends just cannot understand how I can have happy childhood memories of the smelliest, rudest and the most congested part of Shillong. But that is only because they never saw Iewduh, or as tourists love to call it Bara Bazaar, from the eyes of a child. This often looked-down-upon iconic part of Shillong is actually its very heart and once upon a time it was one of my favourite outings.
The Iewduh of my childhood was always a cacophony of sounds yet always somewhere in the distance was the gentle strumming of a guitar, flutes playing popular Bollywood songs and for a long time Elton John crooning Sacrifice from some corner of the market.
It was a riot of colours too. The clothes people wore, the wares and vegetables, the bright red checks from so many tapmohkhlieh — everything in Iewduh is always in bold colours. It played with all your faculties, that is for sure, but it also helped in fine-tuning the sixth sense.
The more frequently one goes there, the more one picks up vibes that somewhere nearby a pickpocket was eyeing the contents of your bag. As a child that was my main role, to always be my mother’s extra pair of eyes. Today, I wonder how this social distancing is going to affect the profession of the Artful Dodgers who prowl the market.
Speaking of profession, I also wonder about that old gentleman who supposedly sold dawai or homemade medicines, sitting in some wooden box, looking as indifferent about customers as a refrigerator repairman in Antarctica. For as long as I can remember, that gentleman always sat in that one place shouting out ‘Dawai khniang! Dawai kynbat! Dawai Ksai (whatever that meant)’ and in all these years from childhood to adulthood never have I ever seen anyone even stop to glance his way. Yet on any given day, there he was, filling in the background music of Iewduh with his medical miracles. When I saw Luciano Pavarotti for the first time my mind just went back to the Dawai Man and I wondered maybe once again someone missed the destiny train.
And the fish market? I shudder at the memory of how thick that slime around was. I am sure every conceivable germ lined that path to the fish stall. Buying fish meant walking like you were either wearing roller-skates or stilts. As a child I enjoyed this part of the iew because it always had live eels swimming in some murky waters, turtles with shells as big as shields and angry ducks quacking and trying to snap my little finger, which I offered in attempts of befriending it.
Then there was San Die soh, an old lady with more wrinkles on her face than the waves in the sea. Her blood red teeth were always displayed in the most beautiful of smiles as she would greet me each time I followed my mother to iew. She sold the juiciest oranges, the sweetest bananas and the blackest sohiong. But I liked her for the fact that whenever I came she would take out her little cylindrical bamboo container and offer me water. She always gave a speech of how this tyndong she kept only for me and she washed it religiously everyday in the hope that I would come. Then she would pour water and I would drink it with relish. There was something unique about the taste of the water taken from a bamboo container. It was sweeter, cooler even but it always made me happy, that I remember very well.
There was also the Bah who sold pork. He always made me giggle as he would always remember to pack a few wriggly pig tails for my dogs. Weirdly enough it made the little girl feel happy and important enough to have something in her shopping bag too.
Then we would go to an old family friend, a Bengali gentleman who always made me laugh and always asked me to sing the only Bengali song I knew. He invariably made time out for this no matter how busy he was or how the other customers grumbled. I always felt like a rockstar. While my mother would stock up on the household supplies, I would hurriedly eat the weekly chocolate I got with every visit to this particular shop.
Then we would head for home but not before stopping by mum’s old friends. My favourite was the lady who sold baby clothes and there while mum would sit to eat her kwai and duma, I would play pretend shopkeeper. Daintily I would take out the pretty baby clothes and pretend to sell them to my invisible customers. After a quick round of tea and spicy samosas, we would head for home just in time for a game of ‘Chor-Police’.
Today, as I pass by Iewduh it looks like a tired old woman. The busy throng that once filled her arms is no more, she sits in silence after ever so long. Like a tired hostess after the party, she looks ready to curl and sleep away the loneliness. Perhaps she too remembers a past where she was once beautiful, happy and loved.
(The author is a homemaker)