TURA, Dec 22: If the tidings brought by the stars had their way, Tura was witness to it. Bright lights, frenzied crowds, and long queues, whether at the ATMs or at the stalls, lit up the Christmas fervour in this otherwise sleepy town to beat the winter chill.
After months of lockdown and a plethora of restrictions due to a pandemic that cut short many lives and instilled apprehensions among one and all for close to an entire year, it’s finally beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
Christmas bells are ringing, the holly has been put out on the front door, toys on the store and chock-a-block with shoppers in the markets of Tura.
The surge is most prominent in the Tura supermarket zone — home to several hundred stalls whose owners are putting out the best of their produce to lure eager customers.
From sweaters and jackets to shoes- it’s all there for the taking.
“Since the last two days, crowds have been swelling because many have received their salaries only now. We are hoping to make up for some of the lost revenue of the past few months,” says an optimistic store owner from the super market dealing in garments.
The footfall is on the rise with each passing day and the biggest number is expected to be on Wednesday and Thursday as eager traders await the arrival of their GHADC customers, who will be receiving their two months’ salaries.
However, despite the big number of shoppers, there is also a dampener to the trade. “Due to the COVID pandemic, production has been hit hard. We have not been able to receive sufficient new stock of clothes and other material from the wholesale dealers in Guwahati. This will surely cause a drop in sales,” laments another trader from the market.
Leaving aside the booming shopping sphere taking place in Tura, where people from as far as Williamnagar and Baghmara have arrived to take back something for their loved ones, elsewhere the spirit of Christmas has been spreading fast.
The youth of the town have been on a pre-Christmas picnic spree hopping from one riverside to another to celebrate the biggest festival of the year. The sound of drumbeats and lyrics of Christmas songs in Garo reverberate with the picnickers returning from their river jaunt every evening for the past two weeks.
While the COVID restrictions have been put in place by the district administration, people, out in the villages across Garo Hills, have been putting up traditional ‘Basa’ or pandals in open fields where the traditional Christmas song and dance will take place.
In Tura, the famous nightlife during Christmas when thousands of revellers head to various decorated grounds for the Christmas dance will be dearly missed this year, all thanks to the pandemic.
Every December 24 night, Tura wakes up at midnight with roads getting packed with vehicles and thousands of people walk over from one dance point to another to break a leg at dancing way into the early morning hours.
This Thursday night, the dancing shoes will remain hung up in one corner of the house. Much will rest on the coming year, the vaccine and the hope that such a situation never returns to test the resilience of mankind.