MEGHALAYA: ‘ABODE OF THE CLOUDS’

‘Scotland of the East’-I

Raana Haider

An apt appellation it is — for in Sanskrit — ‘megh’ are the clouds and ‘alaya’ is the abode. In ‘cloud’s own country’ Meghalaya are endless cloud formations: curls of clouds, wisps of clouds, ribbons of suspended clouds, looming clouds, billowing clouds, swirling mists, floating mists, disappearing acts…all in the backdrop of a varying skyline – pale blue, azure blue, grey blue, twilight blue… Astonishingly, this fast-moving scenario unfolds a ‘hop, skip and jump’ away from Sylhet town. A short drive from Sylhet is the Tamabil outpost at the Bangladesh/India border. A walk across ‘No Man’s Land’ and one is at Dawki, India. Nowhere is the geographical demarcation blunter than at this point. The hills abruptly erupt from the Sylhet plains at almost sea level to 4500 feet within a distance of 2 to 5 kms. In a dramatic ascent, one has left the plains of Bangladesh for the Khasi and Jaintia hills of India. One has left — in no time - the vast fertile flatland of Bangladesh with its extensive riverine network for the gentle rolling hills of Meghalaya, one of the ‘Seven Sisters’ states of North-east India. The others being Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura.
   A beeline of Tata trucks topped with coal inch their way along the black marred road leading from Dawki across the border to Bangladesh. At this crossing, this is the major traffic of commodities from India to Bangladesh. As we start the climb, forested hills and slender, soaring betel nut trees abound. Further midland, are groves of coffee plants. Then emerge fields of wild grass amongst carpeted hills — a palette of shades of green grandeur. Continuing our ascent through undulating contours and distant horizons of mountain plateau, I can imagine why the British named this region the ‘Scotland of the East.’ For in the heavy monsoon rains of June and July, for the British living in the heat and dust of the plains below — this misty and wet climatic zone, this land where clouds embrace the hills — offered nostalgic memories of locales back ‘Home.’
   Cherrapunjee: ‘The wettest
   place on earth’
   We had reached Cherrapunjee locally known as Sohra and known globally as the region that is ‘The Wettest Place on Earth.’ This is the destination for ‘climate tourism.’ The highest rainfall in the world has been recorded here. In 1974, it rained 24,555.3 mm. that is the highest recorded rainfall in any one place in any one year in the entire world. The elevation of Cherrapunjee is 4500 feet from the Bay of Bengal. In a record of relativity, while Sylhet is the wettest area in Bangladesh it still only gets some one-third of Cherrapunjee’s rainfall. This is the incessant summer monsoon rainfall. We, however, were at Cherrapunjee in the dry winter month of December. The dry dramatic terrain nevertheless reveals gorges nestled between endless vista of rolling hills — some barren and some carpeted green. The Nohkalikai Falls is a thick stream of water gushing down the gash in the façade of the mountain rock – a harmless trickle in the dry season. During the rainfall peak period, a Niagara-like thundering rush of water comes cascading down the mountain plunge. Above us, a light blue sky and billowing clouds floating above the table-top mountain met distant criss-crosses of mountain ranges. Veils of mist occasionally create shadows of shade and light across distant horizons. This is the true ‘Abode of Clouds.’
   A gory legend is synonymous with the Nohkalikai Falls. Likai was a widow with a daughter who remarried. Disliking his step-daughter, the man murdered the child and cooked a curry with her remains. A finger was forgetfully left in the betel nut basket. After partaking of the curry upon her return from work, she settled down to finish off her meal with a betel nut. Horrified to find a dismembered finger within the betel nut basket, she flung herself off the plunging cliffs. The mother’s tears are the Nohkalikai Falls.
   It was the botanist Sir Joseph Hooker who took the orchid Blue Vanda to propagate in London’s Kew Gardens. Lady’s Slipper and other rare orchid varieties are specialties of the Jaintia Hills. Mehgalaya is also the ‘abode of orchids’ – in season. Our visit was timed off-season for the sighting of any floral abundance.
   A wayside halt for roadside lunch was on the cards – our order was plain rice, daal, mixed vegetable and chicken curry. Sparkling springs lead to rivulets of running water. Rock crevices lead to deep-set ravines. Suddenly, small slopes feature some slender and other giant rock monoliths – an ancient form for ancestral worship. Elsewhere, perched on a high vantage point are cemeteries and churches momentarily clouded in mist. Along the roadside, Khasi villagers carry firewood in classic conical cane baskets on their back — supported by straps strung across the forehead. Women wear brightly coloured ‘jainsems’ (traditional Khasi outfit) — a toga-like long wrap around the body. And everywhere we saw men, women and children standing, sitting or sleeping — with their backs posted sunny-side — warming to the wintry sun. At a tea-halt, we bought a jar of Cherapunjee’s renowned orange-honey.
   The entire Mehgalaya hills are noticeable in the winter season for its partially exposed rock surface. All around us were chips, pebbles, boulders, rocks and mountains — of every shape and size. Cherrapunjee in the dry season is the ‘land of rocks’ as well. Mountainsides have been dynamited and its limestone rock debris carted off to parts of the country rock-short for road-building and construction. Human intervention into Nature’s bounty appears garishly intrusive. By late afternoon, dense rolling fog had set in. Utter void was momentary, as a curtain of clouds had set in. Deep-drop gorges off-side fall into nothingness. And then a curve on the road, the sloping contour of a hillside emerges and across the endless horizon — the rose-pink and soft blue colouring of a setting sun. In the fading light, once again the hills come alive. The changing skyline brought to mind the evocative lines composed by Alfred K. Reymborg in Old Manuscript: ‘The sky is that beautiful old parchment in which the sun and the moon keep their diary.’
   Somewhat fatigued, we opt not to enter the Mawsmai Caves. What catches our eye are the innumerable signposts: ‘Warning’: No loitering, urinating, excretion, littering, immoral activities… inside the cave. Those caught will be punished by village law.’ The caves of Meghalaya rank as one of the wish-list in ‘India’s Wonderland: 50 places we’d like to see on the World Heritage List’ posted by Outlook Traveller in its October 2007 issue. It notes: “In Meghalaya, that hill state wrapped permanently in clouds, the rain works its magic in many ways. The incessant precipitation has bored eerie, snaking labyrinths into the soft limestone ranges, creating the most spectacular cave system in India.” Of the innumerable caves, only a few have been surveyed. Amongst those, are five of the longest caves in the South Asian Sub-Continent.
   The Hungarian writer, Rozsa Hajnoczy travelled to Cherrapunjee and following are excerpts from her writings in Fire in Bengal: “When I consider that on the plains eighteen inches of rain is enough to cause a flood, I can image the torrents that descend on the heads of people here…The road made a gradual ascent until, on the crest of the mountain, the forest was left behind, and we were in thick mist, which enveloped us in its cool damps, so that we were reduced to walking pace. To our left gaped a sheer drop of two thousand three hundred feet. If the driver made an error of only two feet, we would be hurled to our death…Then suddenly, as if the gods had taken pity on us, there was the merest break in the clouds, and a streak of light, like a celestial beam, illuminated the whole panorama. The lush turf, with the green of perpetual moisture, lay like a carpet, mingled with brilliant flowers, among the trees. As the last shreds of mist dispersed, everything emerged into view.”
   Rosa Hajnoczy spent time at Shantiniketan and travelled widely in India whilst accompanying her husband Gyula Germanus, an eminent scholar of Islam whom Rabindranath Tagore invited to Shantiniketan from 1929 to 1932. Written in Hungarian, it remains a classic in Hungarian literature. She passed away in 1942. Eva Wimmer and David Grant translated her book into English. Binoo K. John has written a more recent account, Under a Cloud: Life in Cherrapunji, the Wettest Place on Earth (2004). Binoo John has termed Cherrapunjee “a curtain raiser.”
   The British arrived in the Cherrapunjee hills in the 1820s. In 1832, it was declared the capital of Assam province. Lured by the wet weather, it however proved to be excessive and the capital was shifted to Shillong in 1864. According to Nigel Hank in Hanklyn-Janklin (2003), “Cherrapunji was used as a sanatorium for British troops, but the abnormal number of suicides caused it to be abandoned.” A masterfully delightful book, it is a ‘stranger’s rumble-tumble guide to some words, customs and guiddities Indian and Indo-British.” As a provincial headquarter, Shillong is conveniently located between the Brahmaputra River and the Surma Valley. It remained the summer capital of the Khasi and Jaintia hills; of East Bengal and Assam. Shillong remained the province’s capital till Partition in 1947. Assam in a new configuration remained in India and the Sylhet portion joined East Pakistan. In India, Shillong remained capital of undivided Assam until the creation of the state of Meghalaya in 1972. Dispur became the capital of the ‘new’ state of Assam and Shillong remained the capital of the ‘new’ state of Meghalaya.
   (To be continued)

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Anglo-American poet Sylvia Plath

Alice A. Islam

In this life it is not difficult to die, it is more difficult to live.
   —Vladimir Maykousky
   
   SYLVIA PLATH committed suicide at the age of 30. She put her head in the oven and came to a “sticky end” in the kitchen of her London flat on February 11, 1963.
   Early in the morning she went to her children’s room, put some bread and butter on a plate and two mugs of milk for them in case they feel hungry when they wake up before the maid arrived. Then she went to the kitchen shut the door and window with towels, opened the oven, put her head into it and switched on the gas!
   Can anything be more horrible than this? It can be said that she was suicidal by nature, for twice before she got married to eminent British poet Ted Hughes, she attempted to kill herself.
   When she died she was separated from her husband who had left her for another woman. This also may be one of the reasons why she did away with her life. She was so psychologically perturbed that she did not even think of her little children and how they would grow up without a mother.
   Her husband, Ted Hughes, was one of the best poets of his generation and it was he who collected her poems and edited them. Some critics say that she was an affectionate and caring mother because she had left some bread and butter and two mugs of milk for them incase they feel hungry before the maid comes. This may be time but she definitely was a mental patient due to other reasons besides separation for husband. Her father died when she was only ten years old and while he was alive she was always under the impression that he did not love or care for her.
   Paternal neglect
   She loved her father but stood in awe of him because he always kept himself distant from her. She was too young to understand the real reason for this distance. He was a sick man but refused to seek the advice of a doctor. He thought that he was suffering from some contagious and incurable disease and so he hesitated to show any love for his children. Later his leg was amputated and it was found that he was suffering from diabetes mellitus, which might have been cured if detected in time.
   Her poem, Daddy, is one of her best I have gone through. Her father was a Prussian and mother half Jewish. So in the poem she compares her father to Adolf Hitler and herself as a Jew being persecuted by him.
   
   At twenty I tried to die
   And get back to you
   I thought even the bones would do.
   
   But they pulled me out of the sack,
   And they stuck me together with glue.
   And then I knew what to do.
   I made a model of you,
   A man in black with a
    Mein Kemf .........…… look.
   There’s a stake in your fat black heart
   And villagers never liked you.
   They are dancing and stamping at you.
   They always knew it was you.
   Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
   
   Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932. In the year 1936, her parents moved to Boston close to the sea which proved to be very important to her. Mrs Plath says that she was “a healthy and merry child,” but thoroughly independent from the Plath family. Throughout at school she was an A student, pointed, drew and wrote poems. She went to Smith College, a female institution where by her excellence she won a scholarship. The letters to her mother express depression and a talk of suicide.
   In 1955 she graduated from Smith College with a Fullbright scholarship to spend two years at Newham College, Cambridge. Her mother says that these were the most wonderful years of her life. Then she met Ted Hughes at a Cambridge party and she realised that she had at last met her life partner. She married him in June 1956. She helped him with his poems and his writerly discipline were always a great support to her. She wrote, “He is s better than any teacher, even fills somehow that huge, sad hole I felt in having no father.”
   Twice before she had put her life to an end, she had attempted suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. She said she was going out and did not return home. Her brother searched all round and after two days found her alive sleeping under a tree.
   
   In one of her poems she says:
   “I am only alive by accident.”
   
   In another poem, “Among the Narcissi,” it is possible that in ‘Percy’, Sylvia Plath presents a picture of an idealised father, a father she might have liked to have.
   Writing on the death of beloved persons (all those Dead Dears), she was greatly affected by the death of her maternal grandmother’s illness with cancer and here I quote what she had written: -
   “I love that woman. I can’t believe that she would go out of the world and me not there. I can’t believe that home would be without her. It sickens me afar off (in England). I think of her and cry. Those presents, those people loved and gone into the dark. I raid and rage against the taking of my father whom ‘1 have never known’.
   There’s much to write about Sylvia Plath, which 1 would like to write about. Her death at such an early age saddens me and to think that her children are still alive and missing her and her popularity. As Osia Madelstam has said: “Life is a gift that nobody should renounce.”
   Let me also quote a few lines from John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale.”
   Darkling, I listen and for many a time
   I have been half in love with easeful Death
   Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
   To take into air my quiet breath.
   Now more than ever seems it rich to die.

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