Introduction

Shillong – Tales from Moolem Poonjee

[Sesquicentennial (1866-2016)]

 

Shillong was born in the twilight of 28 April 1866 and therefore, 28 April 2016 is the Sesquicentennial (150 years) of its formation by the British. This is not a historical account, rather it is my humble tribute to the hill station where I was born on 28 February 1968, by the side of the Umshirpi, in the humble Red Cross Hospital.
 

It has often intrigued me that, even though I spent my entire childhood in Shillong, yet I knew so little about it. The school history books were all about the history of the mainland - there was no local history, or world history for that matter. I have been away from Shillong since 1986, and after living in the mainland and then overseas, it has given me an awareness of identity, or the lack of it – basic questions like who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going? What will I tell my children? This is my attempt at self-discovery as well as opening a window to my children, which otherwise they will never know. 

Growing up in Shillong I was programmed to think that the outside world opened out from the frontdoor so to speak - through the gateway of Guwahati to the north. But delving into the past, I have discovered that for a long time, access to Shillong was in fact from the south (through the backdoor) – through Cherra and Sylhet. There the Surma river system led to the Ganges river system and on to Calcutta, the capital of British India. 

In 1880, Ethel S. Clair Grimwood, the wife of a British civil servant (Political Agent of Manipur at the time)[1], said the following about Shillong. These words are as true now as it must have been then:

“Things have changed there now, that is, as far as the comings and goings of men change, but the hills remain the same, and the face of Nature will not alter. Her streams will whisper to the rocks and flowers of all that has been and that is to be. So runs the world. Where others lived and loved, sorrowed and died, two hundred years ago, we are living now, and when our day is over and done there will be others to take our place, until a time comes when there shall be no more change, neither sorrow nor death, and the former things shall have passed away forever”. 

I fear that time has already come when former things have passed away forever. To those who love Shillong, it had fallen into decrepitude a long time ago, and now it is a mere shadow of its former self. Quaint ‘Assam Type’ houses, the soul of this hill station, have given way to concrete monstrosities. Town planning and heritage conservation had long acquiesced to rapacity and greed. Sadly it has gone the way of all other hill stations in India. The following is my inadequate attempt to recreate the past.

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[1]My Three Years in Manipur and Escape from the Recent Mutiny (1891), Ethel Grimwood. University of Michigan. http://www.archive.org/details/mythreeyearsinm00grimgoog.