It’s Monday morning I dragged myself hesitantly out of bed, as I heard the loud noises of my grandmother thumping around the house. I looked at my table clock, half past five, too early but I have to get out of bed before my grandmother, Meiduh, that’s what we all call her, decides to use her own version of an alarm clock, her voice! The smell of burning wood fills the house: that means she’s woken up the maid and has got the fireplace started. My mother still grumbles as my grandmother still refuses to use only gas for cooking. Like all Khasi old women, my grandmother believes that food tastes better only when it’s cooked over a wood fire.
A quick wash and the family---Meiduh, Papa, Mei (Mummy), my two brothers Larry and Barry and my sister Ruth---huddle in the kitchen around the low dinning table placed right next to the hearth. (We do not eat in the dining room----that’s only for the very important guests.)
The fireplace is, as usual, crackling with yellow and red flames from the old, dried and seasoned logs, the hissing water from a half-blackened kettle, and the gentle bubbling of the boiling rice in the pot synchronizing in perfect harmony. Meiduh always cooks rice early in the morning. It's tradition that there should always be cooked rice in the house.
A short prayer and we are treated to hot cups of red tea and biscuits. As we munched and drank we gossiped too. We gossiped about everything- politics, business, cricket scores and what’s happening with the neighbours.
As the clock chimes seven, Mei briefs the maid on the tasks for the day as my siblings and I move to do our part of the housework. Almost every home has a maid in Shillong. It is a source of employment for the villagers on the outskirts. They do the cooking, washing, laundry and even taking care of the young children in very busy families. I know my mother can never do without one even though dad has bought her a washing machine. Clothes not washed by hand can never be clean, she says.
Having completed my chores, I sit down to watch the Breakfast News on the television. There was nothing exciting. I went back to my room to rummage through my lessons on Japanese. Each character opened up mental pictures; I was told, by friends who took up Japanese as a course of study. For me it was a maze of incomprehensible symbols. Thankfully I dropped the degree course in the language and took up Political Science instead. I just wanted to learn Japanese not get a degree in it. That would have been a little too much work.
Finding the task monotonous and unexciting I decided to join my brothers in a stroll through the St. Edmund’s school grounds. That was the school in which I completed twelve years of my education. The school is just a stone’s throw from where we live. The lawns and the football fields were our favourite haunt from childhood. We had explored each inch of the fields as children. Daddy was always with us. Mummy joined us at times when she was relieved from her supervision of the house work and doing her own part of it. Today, as I walk down the familiar trail, I am again drawn to the knotted and gnarled sycamore tree. I just wondered then how old the tree would be. It looked the same even today after so many years. I remembered how we (my brothers, sister and I) swung backwards and forth from its branches as Daddy sat down under its shade to watch us lest we fell.
The three of us sat as down at the same place. I skimmed through the Telegraph, a newspaper I just bought from the old woman who does the rounds of the locality at this time in the morning. There was nothing much. Leaving my brothers to daydream a bit more, I marched off briskly home. The car needed to be washed.
It took me fifteen minutes, with Larry and Barry’s, help (they had joined me five minutes later) to make the car look nice and clean. Dad and Mei will never want to sit in a messy car and cars do get messy in Shillong because of the rain. The heavens open up at any time in Shillong, be it spring, summer or fall. That’s what expected of living in a place that has the heaviest rainfall in the world.
Half past eight. I am with the family again in the living room. Mei read the Psalms today (we take turns to read verses from the Holy Book) and Dad led us in prayer.
Nine o’clock…Lunch? No, rather it's brunch. Its back to the kitchen where once again I sit around the low table with my family, to plates of rice, boiled beef with carrots, potatoes and "Tungtap" (dried fermented fish, grounded with onions, red chilies and wild green pepper). Brunch is completed with the eating of Kwai, Tympew and Shun (beetle nut, beetle leaf with a dash of lime).
The three components are iconic of Khasi culture. No festival is complete without them. No matrimonial or funeral rite can be performed without a serving of Kwai, Tympew and Shun. The maternal uncles of the bride and the groom serve each other and the well wishers beetle nuts before their entry into the church (a combination of the Christian and the indigenous religions). The relatives of the dead serve their friends and relatives kwai and tympew before their loved is finally put to rest. Kwai and tympew are even put inside the coffin so the departed soul can partake of it in the next world. When we talk of Granddad we remember him as ‘Bam Kwai ha duwar u Blei’, (eating beetle nut in the house of God). So eating Kwai identifies me as Khasi.
Dad’s a custom officer and mom’s a professor in English, and every weekday at half past nine I am behind the wheel of the car to drop dad to his office and mum to the University. It’s the same everyday. Traffic Jams! Cars lining the narrow two lane road, incessant honking, blaring sirens of VIP cars, (why don’t our politicians do something about widening the roads? A rhetorical question that plagues my mind each day). As I inched my way slowly down the serpentine queue, I made mental plans of what I was going to do.
An hour later, I am back home. A shower and a shave and I am on my way to join my friends at the studio. Two other friends and I had started a small production house called Burning Oil Productions. Together we do all kinds of audio and video productions mostly locally based. We were fortunate however this time to get a contract by UNDCP (United Nations Drugs and Crime Prevention), South East Asia to make music videos on creating awareness towards drug abuse. The videos are due for release in two weeks time. It is our biggest project so far, that will not only fetch a tidy sum but also the necessary publicity we needed so badly as a small organisation. We’ve been working on the project for about a month, involving tasks like finding actors, filming and editing.
A
round four hours later, the three of take a break and walk to our favourite joint,‘Jadoh Stall’, a small road side restaurant to join my brothers, Larry and Barry who as always find their way here at this same time everyday. It’s always been the same menu we treat ourselves to, putharo and tungrymbai or dohjem (putharo-rice pancakes, tungrymbai-fermented soya beans fried with onions and pork and dohjem-pork entrails cooked in blood…famous Khasi delicacies). All of this followed by a refreshing cup of red tea and of course kwai, tympew and shun. We always pass an hour or more here talking about almost everything. Today was on plans to try to get another contract, namely to cover the band 'Michael Learns to Rock' in a tour of Shillong.
Our topic today was about how within the last few years a lot of international bands had found their way to Shillong, some famous ones like Firehouse and Petra. Well, they don’t call Shillong ‘India’s little rock and roll town’ for nothing! A BBC journalist coined that term. Shillong has been renowned for having seasoned musicians in various genres of music. How dedicated Shillong people are to music is evident from the fact that it is one of the only places in India that hosts the Bob Dylan Concert on the 24th of May every year to commemorate Dylan’s birthday!
Mum rang me as we were conversing. She tells me that Mama John (Mama- Uncle) passed away at the hospital a few hours ago. I knew what was expected of me. It is a must that I should go and help. It’s a social obligation. I assured her I would try and pick her up from work early. I have to do away with my share of the studio work today. Uncle John is not my real uncle; we just call every elderly person Mama in our society, a sign of respect. He was my dad’s close friend and stayed in the same locality, Lummawrie, which is the locality I stay in.
I left my brothers and my mates and went home to pick up the car. I still had an hour and a half before picking up mom so I joined my grandmother today as she watched her favourite soap on TV, "The Bold and the Beautiful." This soap is a favourite in Shillong; it has been going on for almost seven years!
Leaving Grandma to get back to her cooking I went to pick mum and dad from work. I stopped at my sister’s piano tutor on the way back to pick her up. Ruth loves to play the piano. She takes the annual Trinity School of Music Examination for her grades. Mum wanted to stop by the local nursery to buy fresh flowers for the funeral service and dad had the chance to get a few orchids. Shillong is widely renowned for its orchids that come in different varieties. They need a lot of care and some flowers bloom just once every two years. Dad has mastered that act, as have many ardent gardening enthusiasts in town.
I get home, my brothers arrive and after a quick wash we all sit down again in the low dining table in the warmth of the kitchen for the third time waiting for grandma to serve us dinner. Dinner is as early as half past six or seven. This time it’s rice and pork cooked with bamboo shoots. It’s my favourite, so I ate to my satisfaction. A course of kwai and tympew and it’s in the television room to watch the daily local news at half past eight.
Half past nine and I am at uncle John’s house busy carrying kettle after kettle of steaming red tea, served to all those who have come to share the grief of the bereaved family. People usually come to pay their respects at night, a time many are free from their day’s work. There were ladies cutting beetle nuts, ladies shaping the beetle leaves into neat designs. There were others making wreaths of all shapes and sizes with real flowers and paper ones too. There were men talking politics, discussing religion and business. There were young boys playing carom and chess. The young girls carried beetle nuts in plates, passing them around for all to munch. A death for the Khasis is a get-together of friends and families, a time of knowing and meeting each other.
I went with my brothers and a few other friends in the locality to the community hall for a meeting planning out the next day’s routine. This involved digging a grave for Uncle John within the churchyard, making the coffin, and plans towards the annual cleaning drive in the locality. The young men of the locality are entrusted with this task. The local headman has a tool shed for residents within the locality and tools bought off the common fund are kept here for these particular jobs. The meeting ends and we all finish one final task for that evening. It is tradition on the incident of a death that the local headman rounds up a few young people and walks around the locality making a proclamation out into the lanes and streets. It is an appeal to everyone to be with the bereaved family to offer help and to contribute towards the funeral fund. The funeral fund is a contribution made by all residents no matter whether the family is rich or poor. The beating of the traditional drums and shouts of “Hoi Kiw!” (A phrase to attract attention only, having no real meaning) accompany this proclamation.
Eleven o’clock, I am back at Uncle John’s place to pick up mum. I dread tomorrow and the day after, for I will have to complete my social obligations again. Uncle John will keep for another two days. The Khasi keeps the dead for at least three days in full honour inside the house, that is, only if the dead did not die in an accident. If one died in an accident, the body is kept outside the house in a specially made tent house, a belief to prevent the evil spirits from entering the home. For three days we are to keep watch, the windows and doors open, for we believe that the dead still roam the house. Food is served to the dead along with kwai and tympew for all the three days. Prayers are said accompanied by certain rites in order to cleanse those alive from “Ka Tyrut ”, the Evil One. Though a majority of us the Khasis have been converted to Christianity yet these traditions still survive and are practiced every time.
I go back home at around a quarter to midnight and clamber straight into bed. It has started raining and the sound of raindrops on the tin roof act as a soft lullaby that nursed me to a sound sleep. Once again ends a day in Shillong - a place exotic and beautiful, deep rooted in tradition - a heaven on Earth for me, a place home to my heart.
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