Editor,
I am extremely overburdened by the persistent menace of traffic nuisances in the capital city of Shillong. On the night of August 4, 2025, at around 9:45 PM, I happened to travel from Police Bazar to Nongthymmai.
While commuting from the Gurdwara area towards St. Anthony’s College and further towards Shillong College, I encountered a concerning incident. A motorbike was being driven rashly in a no-entry zone and proceeded to climb up Jacob’s Ladder, blatantly violating traffic rules.
When I reached Don Bosco Square, I encountered another vehicle—this time a car—coming from Hopkinson Road towards Don Bosco Square, again in clear violation of traffic rules.
I am deeply concerned about these repeated incidents, especially during nighttime. Such negligence is leading to an increasing number of accidents, posing serious risks to public safety.
Today, I came to know that on the very same night, an underaged scooty rider rammed into a senior citizen in front of Yalana Hotel tragically killing him on the spot. Is this not enough to raise alarm? Why can’t we have proper night-time traffic vigilance across the city of Shillong? Why are we continuing to break the law so carelessly?
Let us strive to live as responsible and civilized citizens and abide by traffic rules. I sincerely urge the Traffic Department to take immediate steps to curb such reckless behaviour—especially by ensuring that scooters and bikes do not violate traffic laws by riding against the flow, entering through no-entry zones, or flouting one-way rules. Strict enforcement and visible night patrols are the need of the hour to prevent further loss of life.
Yours etc.,
Benjamin.R.L,
Via email
Sex, teenage pregnancies and their aftermath
Editor,
If people remain silent in the face of rising social sickness, then we ourselves are to blame. In this respect, I offer my heartfelt thanks to Toki Blah for his recent article titled “Sex and our teenagers” ( ST, Aug 6, 2025). It holds up a mirror to a troubling reality facing today’s generation, a truth that frightens many, especially the victims, who must bear the weight of lifelong trauma, emotional distress, and even poverty.
When short-lived sexual encounters, even of one-time, among teenagers, for various reasons, become a turning point that derails countless young lives, as the writer has highlighted — forcing them to bid farewell to the brighter side of life — it becomes the duty of each of us to stay vigilant. Tomorrow, the same fate could befall someone close to us.
Let us be logical and reflect on the realities shaping the inner world of our young children, realities that often lead them into harmful indulgences. Their well-being is our well-being. It must remain our top priority. Therefore, we must watch carefully at every step. We need to stay alert to whether our young ones are falling prey to sexual predators, even within schools.
Now let’s look at it from nature’s perspective also. What nature wants from us and why. If we try to dismiss it, then nature dismisses us. Yes, would you hand a fragile glass to a child who is not mature enough to hold it? Even an adult entrusted with such a fragile object must handle it with extreme care. If it falls, it may hurt not only the holder but others nearby. In the same way, why has “nature” endowed human beings with sexual feelings as early as 13 or 14 years? Is it nature’s design to put them in a quagmire of agony? Certainly not. Nature is supremely intelligent. Every aspect of its creation has a purpose. That is why human beings are gifted with intellect — the power to discern good from bad, right from wrong.
But today, that power of discernment is steadily eroding. Wrong influences overpower young minds, especially when smartphones become dearer to children than their own parents. The result? A generation gap vulnerable to exploitation and emotional turmoil.
In addition to intellect, nature has also endowed us with another “faculty” — an inner compass to regulate our wrong appetites and preserve the integrity of our species, especially when carnal impulses threaten to overpower reason. It always guards us in a very subtle way, like the fear of falling guards a child near the edge, and the fear of punishment guards an adult from stealing or committing a crime.
At this moment, I will avoid discussing that regulating faculty. However, I can drop a hint here because my silence will make me guilty of complicity. What if electromagnetic scientists like Michael Faraday, Maxwell, and Nikola Tesla had ignored the need for insulators. We would have our technological advancement short-circuited. Now we would have still been groping in the darkness.
We often seek to transgress the order of nature, forgetting that its laws are not adversaries but guardians of balance and harmony. To defy them is to invite chaos. Perhaps many of our youngsters have outsmarted “nature” by knowingly or unknowingly remaining fixated solely on base content, lacking even a trace of discipline, and feeding their minds with an endless stream of obscene material, and thereafter, catastrophe follows catastrophe. Most importantly, they have rarely paused to understand how nature has designed and programmed the mind and sensory faculties. They are least aware that with every ounce of “dopamine-induced” pleasure while viewing explicit content, the mind becomes weaker and weaker. Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson has aptly warned that easy access to explicit content online is shaping unhealthy attitudes toward sex, weakening their decision-making abilities, and fuelling a rise in teenage pregnancies.
Needless to say, in today’s digital age, you don’t have to hunt for trouble; trouble now streams straight to your screen at lightning speed in various avatars. Even under the care of teachers, our children are not safe.
This July, we were shocked by news that a 38-year-old man from East Khasi Hills district was arrested for repeatedly raping his 15-year-old stepdaughter, resulting in her pregnancy. Earlier this year, a Delhi court convicted a man of the brutal rape of his 17-year-old daughter, forcing her to carry the pregnancy for six months. In Firozabad, a 51-year-old predator received a life sentence for raping his daughter from the age of 12, marrying her off when she became pregnant, and attempting to assault her again. We’ve heard of teenage pregnancies caused by men, but now, we’re confronting the horror of fathers impregnating their own daughters. What could possibly be more horrifying, more beastly than this? Kudos to Toki Blah for raising awareness — especially now, when public intellect and empathy seem to have gone numb to truly feel the pain and pangs of teenage sexual victims.
Yours etc.,
Salil Gewali,
Shillong
India’s judicial independence questionable
Editor,
The editorial “Cool down, your honour” (ST August 6,2025) made interesting reading. It is apparent that in a country with weak checks and balances, judicial independence, often independent but less confrontational with legislators, tends to exceed their briefs.
This exhibits “a weak or undermined separation of powers,” according to the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) as India’s score is 4 similar to that of the United Kingdom and Russia. In the United States, Germany and South Korea the score is 10 which means “full separation of power with mutual checks,” while in France and Japan the score is 7 each indicating a “functioning separation of power with occasional interference.” BTI is a comprehensive global ranking system that evaluates how well countries are managing the transition towards democracy and a socially responsible market economy. The publisher Bertelsmann Stiftung, a German foundation publishes a report every two years covering 137 countries. The purpose is to assess the quality of governance, political transformation and economic transformation in developing and transition countries.
Yours etc;
VK Lyngdoh,
Via email