Monsoon Blues

As 13 of us from St. Philos were dancing under the storming rain in the Khasi hills of Cherrapunji highest rainfall with the precipitation 26411mm in a single year simultaneously back home likewise as every other year our hills is again capsized on the roller coaster of monsoon disaster ridiculed this time of enclave hazards as of bombarding the incised jhoras and drains on which stately hotels have been constructed. What a capture of the rarest kind on the cover page of the National Geography would have been of cylinders people erupting out of the plastic concrete volcano through the buildings, thank god by dint of luck we were saved or else four or five buildings would be washed away. Fortunately, we are still remotely distant from the civilization or else we would be all zipped in the Museum or entertainment parks to entertain the homo sapiens.

My thoughts wandered as I crossed the gigantic living root bridges naturally self-renewing and self-sustaining of the Khasi hills bearing the weight of million tourist, furious foams of waterfalls cascading through the hard crop of granitic rocks almost swallowing us harmlessly. The storm thundered roared as we ventured forth through the exotic sacred forest we had to be a part of rain God and Goddesses the natives narrated and if we dared to pluck or touch any flora or fauna the wrath of God would be on us. It’s not less than going through our forest the only difference we don’t find woodcutters, poachers, looters nor the hierarchy of bureaucrats, it’s the village community that manages. At the end of the trekking, we entered a small shack where the women served two or three spoonfuls of rice and one chokta sungur ko masu and jhol which would be our chakney only tester an economy where once the monsoon is over Cherrapunji becomes a desert.

God of small things, 4ft 9 inch average height smiling people cut off from the rest of the world , two-room house like our own washrooms,surviving in the harsh climatic monsoon and winter desert on the stony rocks of the Eastern Himalayas have contributed in the preservation conservation and sustainable development of the Natural Biodiversity in India where tourist flock to seethe pristine Nature untainted. Thank heaven their tribal status and elite ignorance with innate environmental culture have saved them from the fiends. Be it the cleanest village in Asia, or the crystal clear blue waters of dwaki or the immaculate 7 sisters waterfalls, cradled in the warmth of the communion of their identity, ownership to the soil of their belongingness.

That draws me back home, in fact, we’re more endowed with Nature’s Gift subtropical and temperate climate for any crops, floriculture, tea gardens, tourism, hub of education with the view of Kanchenjunga anywhere and everywhere, no doubt political cliché erosion is evident but what about our social righteousness of belongings to our place, environmental preservation conservation and protection. National geography declared Mawlynnong as the cleanest village in Asia and we’ve been rated as the dirtiest city. Every time we pass the Teesta NHPC is cursed, but at its inception how many of us were aware of the( Environmental Assessment Impact ). I remember arguing with my retired professor from N.B.U was then the president of West Bengal Environment Manch and reminding him of having more than 9 or 10 faultlines across the River Teesta to Coronation Bridge and that the Dam would be a time bombshell for the hills.