Editor,
I was looking out of my window today, staring at a crow eating a cigarette butt, and marvelling at the age we’re living in. It’s a time of great “progress” I am told. By the way, “Progress” is a word I despise with all of my heart, because what it really means is that “things are getting worse, but faster”.
We have all been bullied into believing that we can save the world by declaring war on plastic, because plastic is very durable and holds a grudge. So, the first one on the cancel list was the straw. What did we do with them? We replaced them with paper, and I must confess, there is nothing quite like the sensation of saving the planet by drinking iced latte through a tube of dissolving wet cardboard. It feels righteous…..and damp…..and mucky…..and bloody annoying.
The hypocrisy doesn’t end with the straw, it follows you to the checkout (after you’ve bought stuff) where you are politely asked to either produce or buy your “Bag for Life”( since plastics bags are no longer available). Honestly, if you ask me, this sounds threatening. It implies that if you lose the bag, your life is over. I must confess, I have thirty-seven “Bags for Life” under my sink. Theoretically, this makes me immortal, yet I still feel anxious. I wonder why that is?
Once you have loaded your immortal bags, you have to transport them, and that is where you see the REAL hypocrisy. We are made to feel terribly guilty because we are using petrol cars, because petrol is made of hydrocarbon, and burning hydrocarbon will make the sky angry. Instead, we must drive a better alternative, the silent cars that run on batteries, which is what “Going Green” is all about. Have any of us ever questioned how the batteries are made? I will tell you..we have to dig up half the earth to find lithium, using big diggers that run on…….PETROL. Yep!
So, while we are panic-sorting our rubbish, trying to remember which bin the cardboard straw goes in, and driving our green cars, a world war is going on (probably our last and final one).
It makes you wonder sometimes about the dude at the top of the chain who decides who gets to save the world and who gets to destroy it. Do we have a say, because it seems unfair that I am strictly forbidden from using a cotton bud with a plastic stick because it might hurt a seahorse, yet the Masters of War are allowed to fire missiles at everyone else?
Missiles are technically single-use metal, if you think about it. They are the ultimate throwaway culture. You don’t see soldiers running back onto the battlefield after a war to recycle the casings into park benches, do you? But we let them do it because they are dropping bombs for “peace.” That is a very confusing strategy if you ask me, but what do I know about military tactics, I am only an English teacher.
We, the little people are trying hard to save the environment so that we can live in a future where we don’t have an environment because we blew it up.
So, my advice to you people, is to keep separating your recycling, it is very very important work. Because while we panic about the planet warming up by one degree, the men in charge are getting ready to warm it up by four thousand. Honestly, at that temperature, it won’t really matter which bin you threw the cardboard in.
Inspired by: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVYGitQEjeB/?igsh=MTFjbnJoZGhhaHo2ag%3D%3D
Yours etc.,
Ellerine Diengdoh,
Via email
Respectable Men with Disreputable Secrets
Editor,
There is something almost theatrical about respectability in our times. It dresses well, speaks Scripture fluently, salutes the flag, upholds the law, and then—when the lights dim—participates in acts it publicly condemns with rehearsed indignation.
The Epstein Files have ripped a hole through this global masquerade of virtue, revealing not merely individual depravity but a recurring pattern: power misbehaving while respectability rushes in to provide cover. This is not a scandal confined to foreign shores. As Joseph M. Kharkongor argues in the article “The Naked Truth” published in The Shillong Times a few months back, rot does not respect geography. It thrives wherever silence is cultivated and reputations are treated as sacred.
What makes this moment especially corrosive is not the existence of moral failure. Human beings have always failed; history is an archive of such collapses. What is intolerable is hypocrisy institutionalised—the conversion of moral authority into a convenient disguise.
Consider the figures society is trained to trust without hesitation: pastors, policemen, judicial magistrates. These roles are not merely professional appointments; they are moral symbols. They derive legitimacy from trust, from the presumption of ethical restraint. When such figures secretly engage in acts they publicly condemn as sinful, illegal, or obscene, the betrayal is not private—it is collective.
In Meghalaya, a state that proudly identifies itself as Christian, this contradiction cuts particularly deep. Churches thunder about righteousness while some shepherds, cloaked in piety, allegedly wander far from the pastures they preach about. Law enforcers sermonise on order while selectively averting their gaze. Courts speak the language of justice while procedure, delay, and discretion quietly cushion the influential.
This is not about isolated sinners. It is about systems that discipline the powerless and protect the respectable.
Kharkongor’s essay strips away the comforting illusion that moral authority naturally accompanies institutional power. Instead, it exposes how power learns to camouflage itself in virtue. The clerical collar, the uniform, the bench—these become not safeguards against corruption but costumes that allow it to move unnoticed.
Adding to this unease is what lies beyond officially acknowledged revelations. A perusal of two WordPress blogs maintained by the hacker Roy Marbaniang (roymarbaniang.wordpress.com and megleaks.wordpress.com ) suggests that what has surfaced so far may be only a fraction of a much larger trove—that there remains, still concealed, a mountain of material waiting to be exposed. The implication is disturbing: that the public has been permitted to see only what is manageable, while the truly destabilising truths remain buried beneath layers of discretion and delay.
And society, it must be said, is not innocent. We participate in this hypocrisy by choosing comfort over clarity. We convince ourselves that preserving the image of the church, the police force, or the judiciary is somehow more important than confronting wrongdoing within them. We call this “protecting the institution,” as though institutions were more sacred than truth itself.
But Christianity—if taken seriously—offers no such escape route.
Scripture does not advise believers to preserve reputations at the cost of justice. It does not instruct the faithful to lock away uncomfortable truths for the sake of social harmony. On the contrary, it insists, almost inconveniently, that what is hidden will be brought to light. Light, in the Biblical sense, is not polite. It interrogates. It exposes. It refuses to compromise.
The real obscenity, then, is not transgression alone. It is moral duplicity: the sermon by day, the secrecy by night; the arrest of the poor, the insulation of the powerful; the prayer meeting above, the silence below. When institutions meant to restrain wrongdoing instead learn to manage it discreetly, society does not become stable—it becomes dishonest.
The Epstein Files disturb us not simply because they reveal depravity, but because they confirm a more unsettling truth: that respectability can be staged, that holiness can be performed, and that corruption often wears the uniform of authority.
If Meghalaya truly wishes to call itself a Christian society, it must choose revelation over reputation, truth over tidiness. Otherwise, faith becomes theatre, law becomes selective, and justice becomes a performance delivered without conviction. And history—patient, unsentimental, and allergic to secrecy—will eventually remove the masks.
Because secrets do not disappear. They wait.
Yours etc,
Dr. Jason Lyngdoh, (General Physician)
Guwahati
