Shillong, yesterday

 

In these wet, summer Saturdays

With nowhere much to go,

The rain flows back to the yesterdays,

Rich, misty, slow

 

To the wettest lands we’d ever see,

To the Garo, Khasi hills,

A younger world, when young were we -

Rain-washed, emerald stills

 

A little boy, in rubbery shoes,

A rain coat always close,

For the clouds were not for us to choose,

And thus, to school he goes

 

Labaan bazaar is left behind,

(Is that toy-shop there today?)

Up and down the tracks, they wind

While the boy sprints on his way

 

He stops always, on a bridge of wood,

Always, that is the rule,

The stream beneath, in an angry mood,

While not far is his school

 

Tiny wee, in gold sunlight,

It stands beneath the vale,

Boy, brook and a sky un-bright

Just like a Ruskin tale

 

In little eyes, the world was new

And there was much to know,

Of nimbus, hail and morning dew,

And how the seasons flow

 

Back at home, plums weigh the boughs,

Wild strawberries on the ground,

Large ears of corn afront the house,

While morning glories ‘bound

 

Green hills to walk in misty haze,

As cascades splash and pour,

And Cherrapunji on those special days,

Where the sisters seven roar

 

Held in the memory box of time,

Ah! These gems of yesterday,

On days like these, in rainy clime,

They add colour to the grey

 

The little boy knew not back then,

The songs that he would hum,

Would fill his clouds in hues of zen

For many days to come

 

The splashing rains then seem to ask,

When will you ‘ver go back?

A lightning strikes, in ochre dusk

The day turns brooding black

 

For it knows the answer inside me,

There’s only newness to return

While the city’s aged, and so have we

Let’s keep the memories young

 

That, yesterday’s like a drop of rain,

That only downward came,

There will be more clouds that will bloom,

But no two drops will be same…

 

12^th February, 2022

 

Another rainy Saturday in these hills of faraway, and the drip-drip drizzle that has continued for two weeks now reminds me of the wettest place on Earth, where I happened to spend a few years of my childhood – Shillong, the misty ‘Scotland of the East’ in the aptly named Indian state of Meghalaya or Land of the Clouds. Nearly always wet, rattled by hailstones, torn apart by racial conflicts, Shillong decades back was as rattled by human strife as it was with earthquakes – but beyond this drape of disturbia, nature was bountiful – as she always is, especially where the skies are generous as well. Thriving in that bounty, Shillong had developed a spirit of soulfulness that chimed with the symphony of brooks, cascades, drizzles and the pitter-patter on the rooftops. Curfews were rife – but to a dreamy schoolboy, it meant another day in the large front-yard gazing out at the city’s thoroughfares, playing underneath plum trees, excavating for tinsel riches hidden in years of autumn leaves and mulch, and listening to ABBA songs piping from the house next door. Afternoons meant reading Tinkle and Tintin, drawing, making teepees and evenings were listening to golden oldies cranked out of an old cassette player by mum, unknowingly making Rafi, Lata and Mukesh comforting friends for life.

Today, far far away, as I walk in the rainy Shire here, the neatly stacked houses bedecked with red sloping roofs, well- manicured gardens and that quaint English countryside charm draped in brooding rains remind me of Shillong. As I sip my cup of tea, the same sweet milky brew that dad would make even in Shillong, I seem to wonder how much would have changed today – the city must have become more gentrified and be-calmed, thankfully the gains of economy would have to some extent bribed the conflicts of ethnicity to stay under control but at what cost? I ask myself if the Lanes of Laitumkhrah where I had walked once are overrun today with new glitzy high rises, if the jade green cliffs of Kench’s trace are today deprived of its soaring pines, and if the sparkling frothy whites of Bishop’s falls are filled with microplastics… I don’t know, I hope it is not, but who knows how things would have changes in three decades.

The bigger truth is that, even I have changed – I am no longer the school child who had innocence in his eyes, and who would look at a chameleon change colours with incredulity or who would wake up very early in the morning to see the fresh morning glories in the garden. As Heraclitus had written, No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.  

Perhaps its best then, that one doesn’t go back to seek those answers. The city might have changed, for better or for worse, but it cannot stay the same. Just like we cannot or even our social network cannot. We all move on, while memories linger forever. Perhaps then, let the memories that have sedimented in the river stay the same - undisturbed, untouched and unadulterated.

With a small particle floating about only when there’s rain…