Shillong - as I knew it

My memories of Shillong are so strong that sometimes I can recall the scent of pine in the autumn air. I can remember slip sliding uncontrollably down beds of dry pine needles covering sun-drenched hillsides in the pre-winter afternoon chill. I can remember the distinct taste of Chinese noodles, Shillong-style. Sitting on the grassy hillock at Ward’s Lake and reading Maxim Gorky’s Mother or even some JT Edson or Zane Gray western novel. Dr. Bezbaruah’s clinic at Don Bosco Square. His dhoti-clad ‘compounder’.

Photo: Tridwip Das

Ever so often, getting the snot kicked out of me by kids from Don Bosco, for no reason other than the fact that I was an Edmundian. (And exacting sweet, slightly bloody revenge later!)

When older, hanging out with my buddies, all from Edmunds, around the water tank at Lachaumiere, shooting the breeze, playing the guitar, and hatching plans for snagging this girl or the other. Plans, I might add, that came to naught more often than not. But the dreams were nice while they lasted. Which was till about the point when one withering look from the Loreto girl in question dried up all the saliva that was supposed to lubricate a silken but manly, commanding yet engaging greeting. What came out instead was a dry, unintelligible croak that elicited derisive laughter from the maiden and her friends, rather than making her swoon into my arms. Slinking back to the water tank for more planning, but not before some barefaced lying so as not to lose face in the gang.

I remember being woken up late one foggy winter night by the sound of someone singing Leo Sayer’s I Am Sailing outside my window; I peeped through the curtains to see a ghostly figure leaning against the street lamp across the road from our front gate, guitar slung around him, singing mournfully into the night. Or was that a dream?

Kissing a girl for the first time by a darkened gateway in Nongrim Hills. She was only 12, and I, 14. Taking her to see the rabbits at Lady Hydri Park and catching hell from her mother later.

And memories from even further back. My family was well established in the Assamese crowd in Bishnupur. My grandfather was instrumental in establishing the Shankar Dev College. He also built the Deva Kumar Memorial Hall within the complex (named after my uncle, who died young). Besides the college and hall, the complex included a naam ghor that stood on the top of the hillock. Some of my earliest memories are of Assamese women, including my mother, grandmother and assorted aunts, in crisp white mekhela sadors, walking across in fluttering groups to the naam ghor on Sunday mornings, as the kongs and mamas drove to church in their souped up jeeps, all in their Sunday best; Khasi and Nepalese kids with perpetually runny noses and cheeks reddened by the wind and their strenuous games; us, a tiny bit wary of their boisterous ways; fog clearing the tops of the pines in the weak sunlight breaking through the branches; the priests in the temple; the smell of dhoop and fresh cut fruit mingling with the smoke from the oil lamps; the kongs selling sharp, tangy little berries from their woven bamboo baskets; the comforting smell of kwai and wood smoke baked into the warm tartan shawls the kongs used to strap me onto their backs when I was much younger…

I bring all this up because of a photo of me taken in 1966 that my younger son cajoled my parents into giving him during a recent trip he made to Assam (a trip I couldn't make with him). In the picture, I am four years old. I am in my Loreto uniform (yes, in those days, the nuns took in boys till Class 2), sitting on a little chair set on the front lawn of Sumeru, our family home in Kench’s Trace, holding my baby sister on my lap. That photo too, now slightly yellowed with age, triggered many memories.

My last visit to Shillong was in 1988 (I’m from the 1977 ICSE batch). I was newly married. Sad to say, I was very taken aback at the manner in which the town was developing. Worse, Sumeru had burnt down to the ground a few years earlier in an electrical accident. I guess a part of my deep connection with Shillong died in that fire. The family decided to let go of the land and was in the process of selling it. The fruit trees grandfather had planted and lovingly raised in his hillside orchard were dying. All around, the pine trees were gone; cheap houses were sprouting on the hillsides like flimsy matchboxes on stilts. Barren earth showed everywhere, crisscrossed with open sewers. Deva Kumar Hall was in disrepair. My uncle’s life-size portrait hung askew on the wall by the stage, moth-eaten, discoloured and dusty. Saddest of all to see was the state of the piano, which stood forlorn in the green room, tilted over to one side on a broken leg, keys fallen out like so many teeth from an old kwai-chewing crone’s mouth. Traffic jams; chaotic, uncontrolled growth showcased by tasteless architecture and garishly decaled cars; people obsessed with money; corruption; and a simmering, barely disguised disdain for dkhars (outsiders).

All my friends had moved away. Just like me.

And the school itself had changed. Already there were the overbearing concrete structures surrounding the stately old Tudor building. I met Brother Dineen during that trip. He showed me very proudly around the campus. He was so old and enthusiastic – still a great bear of a man, bent over slightly and shuffling around with the aid of a walking stick – that I didn’t have the heart to tell him what I really felt about all the concrete. Amazingly, he remembered my name. He passed away the following year, I believe it was, and another link between Shillong and me was broken.

I never went back, preferring to preserve my memories of Shillong the way they were.

But I will not deny it… I am again curious to know how Shillong is today. The old school. The old neighbourhoods. I yearn to be left free to roam the town and school grounds again, if only for a few hours.