A Sonnet for Shillong

So when a mate asked, “When is the next issue of your blog coming up? We are waiting for it eagerly!” I confess it made me feel like a bestselling novelist; and ego all puffed up, I replied in grand staccato, “Experiencing writer’s block! Dearth of inspiration!” “Why don’t you write about the North East?” she said matter-of-factly, rather immune to my delusions of grandeur. “Bingo!” I thought as the so called ‘block’ vanished in a jiffy. Thanks Swasti.

India’s North East was the perfect subject for me. Having lived there for eight long years of my life (though of course in fits and starts) I love the North East and am of the firm opinion that it’s the most beautiful part of our country. North East is a vast land and it would be foolhardy to try to talk about it in a single post. Today, I’ll just confine myself to a city in the North East where I had had the good fortune of living (though I think a more apt description would be ‘holidaying’ not simply ‘living’) for three long years. So this one’s a sonnet to Shillong, that beautiful, beautiful capital of Meghalaya……!

The local call their state Megh-Laya. But that’s not the correct name, at least not what Tagore meant when he named it ‘Megh- Alay’, Home of the Clouds. But then, what’s in a name. The clouds of Shillong will always live there, whether you call it Megh-Laya or Megha-Alay. They will continue to take birth like they have done for millions of years, there somewhere high up on Shillong Peak, converge on to the city’s bosom and then pine away as rain, while nitpicking grammar nerds like me blunder about in the blogger-world!

For the last few minutes I’ve been staring at the screen, at the cursor blinking impatiently for me to start typing. But I cannot decide from where to begin. It’s like when you are in love and someone asks you to describe your object of adoration. The emotions are all there inside and you can feel them fluttering around, but they are jumbled up, difficult to seize and sort into neat little words. And so you are at a loss, not knowing where to begin, what to say……! But now because this blog has to be written, I know I have to make a start somewhere. So I think I’ll start with the clouds, since they have already found a mention.

The clouds dominate Shillong. Be it winter, monsoons or spring (the only three seasons the city sees), there are always clouds in the Shillong sky and always the smell of rain in the air. In winter, dawn breaks fresh and sunny; yet if you look up towards Shillong Peak, you can see wisps of cotton-wool clouds already beginning their rendezvous, there just behind the silhouette of the Peak. As the day progresses, though it continues to remain nice and bright, the clouds grow bigger and bigger, starting to look like giant swirls of vanilla ice-cream. Then as afternoon fades into dusk, the clouds slowly gain ground, blacking out the sun and shrouding the Peak in a misty veil. The nip in the air becomes more pronounced and people start bundling themselves up in colourful jackets, scarves and caps. Soon the entire valley is covered with a thin, wispy mantle of clouds. And that is the sign to retreat indoors into the comfort of your homes, light the fireplace and make yourself some hot tea..! The funny thing is that it rarely rains in winter and all that gathering of clouds seems to be more of a show of strength; for overnight the clouds simply vanish. And if you happen to venture out at midnight, you are greeted by a large silver moon and myriads of winking stars in a clear sky, startlingly bereft of even the whisper of a cloud….!

But during the Monsoons, the clouds are kings. It rains incessantly, great drenching downpours that turn everything to liquid mush. But the pleasant part about the rains of Shillong is that for some reason, either because of the unique topography of this hill town or because of a cleverly built drainage system (a colonial legacy), there generally is no water logging. But it rains and rains and rains and carrying an umbrella become second nature. And sometimes, the clouds themselves descend from Shillong Peak and flood the city. They enter unabashedly, right inside your home, in faint wispy trails, and then depart as suddenly as they came, leaving footprints of dewdrops on your window panes and dressing table mirror. But even after they have left and the dew drops have long evaporated, a faint cold misty cloud-smell remains, reminding you that the clouds had come to visit ….!

It was in Shillong that I learnt to recognize and appreciate the different types of pines (gymnosperms, to be botanically accurate) that grow in our country, for Shillong is full of them. There is the local Khasia Pine which looks to me like a cross between the pine and the flat topped acacias of Kenya. This tree rises tall and straight like any other pine; but after it reaches a certain height, due to some unknown quirk of its tree-brain, zigzags out in perfect imitation of the tops of the flat-topped acacias that I had seen in the MasaiMara. I was told that this pine is a shameless encroacher for it readily encroaches upon the territory of other trees and soon replaces them.

Then of course we have the Cedars of Shillong. With wide girthed solid trunks that reach up to the sky and lovely royal green needles that fluoresce when sunlight falls on them, they look like dignified heads of state attending a UN meeting. Up on that winding road that curves its way on to Shillong Peak, there is a little lane that leads away from the highway to a horticultural nursery run by the Govt of Meghalaya. Because it’s a little off the road, you have to pass through a grassy path before you reach the picket fence of the nursery. As you move barely fifty metres away from the highway, you suddenly find yourself in a small clearing ringed by a host of tall cedars trees. Its shadowy there, for sunlight is filtered by the canopy of cedar leaves high above and silent too as the thick cedar trunks filter out the noise of the highway traffic. If you look up, you can see bits of brilliant blue sky through the green of the cedar leaves. And amidst that shadow and that silence, you feel as if you are in some ancient place of worship, at some time from the dawn of history , in the presence of some ancient but beneficent Power….!

And as for the Deodars, I had always mistaken them for Cypresses becsuse of Christie's novel 'Sad Cypress'! The deodars, like any other pine are tall and stately; but because their dull green needles droop on their branches, it looks as if they are weighed down by some irredeemable sorrow, hence the error in identification. In fact they look so sad that you have to resist the impulse to run up and put your arms around their large rough trunk in a bear hug……!

Come spring and Shillong bursts into a riot of colours as flowers blossom in every nook and cranny of the city, in gardens, on balconies, in the forests and the meadows… azaleas, orchids, fuschias, agapanthus, lilies, irises, daffodils and even tulips……! The azaleas deserve a special mention. The whole of Shillong is dotted with azalea bushes and all through the monsoons and winter, they stand dull green and nondescript and one doesn’t give these awkward looking bushes a second glance. Then Spring steps daintily into the city and the waiting azaleas burst into life, blossoming in a delirious riot of pink, magenta and white that cover every inch of the shrubs, like thick cake icing.

Though I like the azaleas, my special favourites are not them but the fuschias. I had first seen a fuschia about a decade back on my first visit to Shillong and I had become completely enamoured of this delicate flower, formed like a perfectly crafted jhumki and fluttering daintily in the monsoon breeze. The fuschias I think are perennials though they seem to blossom in greater profusion in the Monsoons. The bell shaped flower is made up of two tiers of petals in contrasting colours and you will find them in varied combinations of pinks, whites, purples and reds, each one prettier than the next. And again, one really has to reign in one’s impulse to pluck the fuschia and wear it in one’s ears like pink jhumkis….!

I have heard and read of the Cherry Blossom Festival of Japan where in the months of March and April, locals and tourists alike descend upon the public gardens of Kyoto to see the cherry blossoms bloom, drink sake and write haikus. Well, you don’t have to go that far and that expensive to see something similar. Every March, Shillong celebrates its own Cherry Blossom festival, only difference being that the blossoms are not of cherry trees but of wild almonds. But in no measure are they inferior in any way to the Japanese cherries. They are powder pink with dark pink accents and they paint the entire city in this lovely pale pink hue. I remember spending hours under a tree heavy with blossoms, trying in vain to capture that beauty in its entirety on my little digital camera. And the best snaps I got were the ones I had taken with the pink flowers silhouetted against a brilliant blue sky….!

But it’s not the azaleas nor the fuschias nor the almond blossoms that define Shillong, rather it’s her orchids. Perhaps in no other city of this country are there such varieties of orchids, both wild and cultivated. In fact every year there are exhibitions and contests organized by the Shillong Botanical Society and other similar bodies that work for the popularizing of orchids. The cultivated orchids are exquisite no doubt, but I love the wild ones more. Of course, these wild orchids do not have the finesse of the cultivated varieties but they have a unique charm of their own that is difficult to explain. I must make a mention of three of these wild varieties, the Blue Vanda, the pink Dendrobium and the pale Pleonie….!      .

The Blue Vanda is, I am told special to Shillong and during the orchid season, whenever we drove past that pink cottage by the side of the highway leading south towards Silchar, we’d make it a point to wait for a glimpse of a Blue Vanda vine that had made its home on an almond tree in the cottage’s courtyard. In season it flowered in such a profusion of blue that I suspect it was competing with the blue of the Shillong sky. But come to think of it, the Blue Vanda is more purple than blue with a delicate network of navy blue veins than crisscross each petal; and like all orchids, it is delicate and beautiful, one of Nature’s many exquisite creations….!

The pink dendrobium in contrast, is wild and common and easily takes root, at least in Shillong. It is not unique to Shillong for I have seen dendrobiums in Arunachal, in Assam and also in Himachal. But because the dendrobiums are the first orchids that I had ever seen, I am rather attached to them. And it was a dendrobium that inspired me to attempt my first (and last) haiku…!

“Against a Cloud-Cast Shillong Sky
Petite Orchids Paint
A Pink Welcome…..”

And if you manage to visit the curious Sacred Grove at Mawphlang during the orchid season, you could spot Pleonies growing on the trunks of the huge temperate forest trees of the Grove. The flower is quite large, probably around two inches in diameter and at any point of time, each plant seems to have only a single flower. And as you stand beneath the tree, looking up and gazing at the flower, you feel quite like a teen school boy gawking at a poster of Priyanka Chopra..!

Another charm of Shillong is the fact that the entire city and its suburbs are picnic spots (well almost)! On a misty Sunday morning all you have to do is bundle yourselves into something to protect you from the chill and the rain, pack a hamper with spicy Maggi, hot adrak chai and maybe some home-made cakes and simply drive out from your home. It doesn’t matter whether you go East, West, North or South, each way is beautiful, each point picturesque and I guarantee that you will find myriads of places to stop the car and enjoy a perfect, cosy picnic.

In fact, one of my favourite drives was up to Shillong Peak, over that curvy road that I had mentioned before, to that highest point of the city, towering at around 6000 feet. On rainy days, the clouds would come to roost on the road and the visibility would come down to a few hundred meters. But it would feel lovely, walking there amongst the clouds, their vapour touching your cheeks, nose and ears with tingly , chilly fingers. Shillong Peak is like a vast table-top once you reach its peak and the locals use this flat and fertile land to grow vegetables. And there on the side of the road, they set up make-shift shelters of tarpaulin and sell vegetable fresh off the ground. You have tiny brilliantly colored carrots, green beans, their immense flexibility a sign of their freshness, bright green cabbages, ruby red chillies, tiny pumpkins and of course potatoes. I never thought one could get lyrical about potatoes, but Shillong changed my opinion. The potatoes from Shillong Peak like the other vegetables there, are fresh off the ground. They are sorted into plastic packets by their size and sold at thirty or forty rupees a packet, each packet probably weighing about 1.5-2 kilos. Since they are new potatoes, their jacket is thin and waxy and they are a dream to cook and of course to eat. So each time we went to Shillong Peak, we would load the rear seat of our car with these veggies and that evening dinner would invariably feature them.  I would simply wash the potatoes, drizzle a little vegetable oil in the pan, throw the potatoes in with a little salt and pepper and may be if I was in a good mood, some oregano, set the flame on low and then forget about them for the next quarter of an hour or so while I sat mesmerised by that very presentable alien Dr Who, playing on BBC Entertainment. The potatoes always came out soft and incredibly smooth while their jacket seared by the low heat, turned crispy and perfectly chewy. I would team them up with the tiny carrots that I had cooked and then glazed with a bit of honey and of course, some oven roasted chicken. If I sound like those judges from Master Chef Australia, so be it. But I must say, even at the peril of being labelled a brag, the dinner that I have just described would be excellent and of course the credit for that went almost entirely to those vegetables from Shillong Peak.

And so seduced by the clouds, the rain, the pines, the flowers, vegetables and the potatoes, we decided to buy a house in Shillong. We were contacted by this very ebullient and chatty couple who took us to see a house which had been put up for sale. It was lovely, that property, high up on the hills, nestling amongst the Khasia pines, comprising of two storeys with a small garden patch in the front and the rear. It had two bedrooms on the first floor, a large living room with a cosy kitchen on the ground and even place for a pet kennel. It was, in one word perfect. But the ‘perfect’ things in my life always seem to come with riders attached. As it turned out, the whole thing was a scam and though thankfully we managed to escape being majorly fleeced by that fast talking, glib tongued duo, I was heart-broken!!

I am of the opinion that when you covet something deeply, something you know you can never have, your mind though continuing to crave it, reaches a kind of truce with itself. So though you still desire that thing, you no longer feel pained at not being able to possess it. I have reached that kind of truce with my desire for that house in Shillong.

And of course there is always one’s ability to fantasize. And the best part of fantasy is that there are no limits, no boundaries and no rules; you can be anything you want to be: rich, beautiful, desirable and daring; go anywhere you want to go, from Hawaii to Hokkaido in a blink of the dreaming eye, do anything you want to do and of course own everything you’ve ever wanted! And being blessed with an overload of imagination, its fantasy that I have resorted to, and conjured for my very own a house, just like that house on the hill in Shillong……!

So this house of mine, the one dreamt up from the limitless Ocean of Fantasy is a two storied beauty, built against the slopes of a small hill covered with Khasia pines. While its ground floor is concrete, the first floor is wooden, its burnished teak panels shining faintly in the orange glow from the fireplace that I light every winter evening. The curtains, a cheery orange, flutter daintily in the cool  hill breeze. There is a long balcony that overhangs the garden and flowers in earthen pots spill over the railing in a profusion of colours; yellow nasturtiums, dark pink fuschias, light pink cyclamens, golden lilies, yellow primulas….! And in the little garden below, stand two tall pines, one the ever sorrowful cypress and the other a regal cedar. There are azalea bushes too, pink and white and also a solitary camellia. On a winter dusk, I stand at the balcony and look out over the pine clad hill slope, sipping coffee, savouring its bitter sweet flavor as the clouds descend and cloak the valley below…..!

PS:       Ok, that’s enough. WAKE UP!

But seriously, if you are planning a holiday in the hills, do go to Shillong. Unlike other hill holiday destinations in our country, this city and its surroundings are yet unspoiled and perfect at any time of the year.  Do go and if you like it, do write a nice comment on this post of mine!!!