By Toki Blah
My grandson had been pestering the whole family to take him to the zoo . The Dussehra holidays came as a blessing. One fine morning found the family motoring its way to Guwahati for a visit to the zoo there. The Guwahati zoo or any zoo for that matter is an interesting place for both young and old and as such all of us enjoyed ourselves as well as the kids who had tagged along with us. We visited the crocodile enclosure and there three or four of the loathsome reptiles sunning themselves, some with their jaws wide open displaying those rows of gruesome looking teeth. I tried to look for the proverbial crocodile tears but they were not to be seen. Perhaps because it was not feeding time but to be honest, and please don’t get me wrong or impute any disparaging ideas and notions that I am trying to compare these creatures with any known person, but between you, me and the four walls of the room you are reading this article in, those creatures did make my skin crawl when I compare them with some people I happen to know. I am told that these are carnivorous creatures are not averse to eating one another if the opportunity arose and if their hunger so demanded. They remind me of a certain class of individuals we see creeping out of the woodwork every five years when there is a general election.
In a recent event when a group of agitating teachers were teargassed, every single politician in the state even colleagues and party members of the wretched Home and Education Minister, smelled blood. They were hungry for power so they shed crocodile tears for the gassed educators while screaming for the miserable guy’s head. But he seems to be made of sterner stuff and refused to budge. Either that or he as discovered a constituency adhesive that binds him firmly to his chair. Perhaps it’s a research fallout from the much-vaunted Jack Fruit Mission – a natural adhesive applied to your chair that enables it to stick to your behind irrespective of political pressures from all sides. If that is the case then our Jack fruit has tremendous export potentials. Perhaps a nervous Putin, a worried Liz Truss, anxiety ridden Xi Zinping, a mumbling , bumbling Biden, a desperate Bolsonaro and a whole lot of other tinpot leaders under threat of being unseated would be placing urgent demands for the product. Our humble Jackfruit it seems has hit the Jackpot!
The bunch of us then trudged on to the next enclosure which housed the primates. Our guide who seemed to know each and every animal in that pen pointed out to two hoolock gibbons who he claimed had been recently brought from the Garo Hills and who had miraculously taken over the control of the whole tribe of penned monkeys. He claimed they had huge insatiable pouches which can swallow everything and also quick sticky fingers. Whatever food was thrown into the cages was pounced upon by these two and only scarps were left for the others. Of late the interest of the duo has shifted to rolling the dice, betting and gambling. God only knows why. Of interest also was a short stout well-built silver backed gorilla whom the guide said was interested only in the setting up of shopping malls, building hazardous dangerous roads and brittle collapsible bridges. Strange interests these apes have!
The guide also told us that the monkey season for choosing partners was near at hand. Individuals were forming groups of their liking; some not able to make up their minds as yet, sat moping in stressful contemplation which group to join, while there were some who had been refused membership to the groups they had applied for. They were the most pathetic of the lot as they frantically tried to show off their maturity (guess all of us know how monkeys do this) for acceptance. There were a few individuals who were walking, no strutting about would be a better word, with all the confidence in the world that they would next be the chosen leaders of their troop. The guide sneeringly commented that it was not unusual that such peacocks usually came last. We came away from that enclosure with the thought that Good Ole Charles Darwin must have really been a close observer of primates to come to the conclusions he had on evolution.
Time was passing and so we quickly moved on to the next enclosure that housed all types and varieties of snakes and reptiles. They slithered and slided with that repulsive movement that only a snake can come up with. Makes one’s skin crawl. Our guide was and proved to be a well educated and knowledgeable person and we were spell bound by his descriptions of the different characteristics of different types of vipers. He narrated Aesop’s story of the snake that bites the very hand that feeds it. Now that sounded quite familiar especially in career options that some people choose and run after. He also dwelt adequately on the qualities of snakes that gave them the infamous phrase of “Being a snake in the grass” which he explains is an English idiom describing a person whom one just can’t trust. Damn this guide, he was simply getting closer and closer to home turf that it was getting rather uncomfortable! He then suddenly came up with the one that hit us where it really hurts, below the belt that is. He then told us, “You are Khasis, so you must be experts on snake worship and very familiar with your Thlen, that monstrous fabricated folklore snake that eats and drinks only Tribal blood?” Let me tell you this was just too much to swallow. We couldn’t bear it any longer. Here was a non-tribal making fun of our beliefs and traditions. Calling them fabricated. Fabricated Indeed ! I gave him a piece of my mind. “Look here”, I said “these are not superstitious beliefs, made up stories or fabricated yarns. They exist and we still worship the Thlen, but we are modern Khasis and so do it in a more modern constitutional manner. Once every five years we elect our own thlens, OK ? When the thlens call, all of us come out of our homes and hearth, cheering, singing and dancing like brainless idiots. We attend all the meetings they arrange and become hysterical in our support for our favorite thlen. We lose our senses when they start throwing money at us. We swallow every hollow promise they make. On public occasions we offer them the best seats. We address them as ‘Honourable or Badonburom’’ though in our hearts we all know it’s our blood and that of our children they suck to survive. Our own future and that of our children is doomed because of these scoundrels, but what to do?”. The poor chap simply gaped at my outburst. He just couldn’t make head or tail of it but to tell the truth, neither could I, let me confess!
Time passes by very quickly when one is on an outing and that day at the zoo the same happened. Within no time we had to return home and so we headed back to where the cars were parked. Dusk was falling and the whole zoo was filled with the shrill chirping of mynas and harsh cawing of the crows. There was all around this high-pitched, strident and piercing cacophony of bird calls that simply produced nothing but sound. I don’t know why but my mind simply switched back to what was happening back home and the similarity of the discordant mixture of the sound at the Guwahati zoo that day.
Back in Meghalaya too we have the multitude of groups, pressure groups, youth associations, seng-bhalang, lympung ki seng kynthei, lympung ki seng samla, lympung ki nongsynsynshar shnong, Joint action committees, synjuk ki rangbah shnongs and what have you. Everyone has something to say; everyone has an opinion to express; everybody has a view he thinks is worth listening to (I include myself in this group); various groups with different beliefs; every one with an idea – everyone one speaking at the same time ; calling for attention ; seeking an audience. Everyone is speaking. No one is listening. Everyone one means well but it has simply resulted in a disharmony of senseless noise. No tangible substantial action has ever come of it. And that is the Meghalaya I live in 50 years after it was created. It has yet to find its voice; yet to realize its potential; yet to visualize where it is going not as individuals but as a state and most important yet to learn how to elect a leader without voting instead for a thlen.
(The author is President, ICARE)