Talk of the Town

by Jerry Pinto

  The lives of three major tribal communities—the Khasis, Garos and Jaintias—are bound up with the story of the city. The Khasis are one of the few matrilineal tribes that still exist in the world, where family property passes through the mother’s side of the family. The communities were directly affected by the attempts of the East India Company to establish its base in these areas.

  The modern history of Shillong begins in 1765, the year when the Company took over the lush green district of Sylhet in the northeast of India. At that time, the Khasis would come to the border of Sylhet to trade in silk, cotton goods, iron, wax, honey and ivory in exchange for rice, salt and dried fish with neighbouring tribes and the small towns that lay on the old trading routes.

  In those days, lime from the Khasi Hills was in great demand all over Bengal. (And you must remember, this included present-day Bangladesh as well.) It was an important cement does today, making it an expensive commodity. Naturally, this lucrative trade came to the notice of the British officials of the East India Company. Naturally, they started to exploit the region vigorously. Naturally, they tried to find ways of making themselves comfortable in the area since they had to live there.

  And naturally, the tribal communities who lived in these hills did not quite see it the same way. They were fiercely protective of their environment. A number of battles were fought between local chiefs, kings and Company officials. Finally, on 10 March 1824, the local raja signed a ‘friendship’ treaty and accepted the ‘protection’ of the British. Other Khasi chiefs also allowed the passage of British troops through their territories. At that time, the British were fighting the neighbouring Burmese as well, with their eyes on Burma’s natural wealth.

  After the Anglo-Burmese war of 1824, the victorious British demanded a corridor through the Khasi and Jaintia Hills to connect the valleys of Assam and Burma. Most of the Khasi chiefs agreed. A road was eventually completed but not before suppressing many local revolts led by a revolutionary, U. Tirot Sing, who was understandably upset that the British had forced and tricked the Khasi chiefs into signing this supposedly ‘friendly’ agreement. U. Kiang Nangbah, a young man from a small town called Jowai, led another rebellion. He was known as an ardent and fearless freedom fighter and many saw him as a prophet.

  The British did not find it easy to suppress the rebellions. U. Kiang Nangbah was captured only by treachery. He was tried, found guilty and publicly hanged on 30 December 1862. That day is still a holiday in Meghalaya.

  Before he was hanged, U. Kiang Nangbah made a speech. He told the assembled crowd to watch which way his body faced in death. If his face turned to the east, the people would get their freedom before the passage of a hundred years. However, if his face turned west, they would remain slaves forever. His words were prophetic for his face turned east, and the people of Meghalaya were freed before a century elapsed.

  When they had finally quelled all revolts and got rid of all those who stood in their way, the British took control of the mineral deposits, subjugated the chiefs, and established a local judiciary. Setting up courts and appointing themselves mediators in local conflicts (that were often caused by their presence) was a typical way in which the Company controlled vast regions of the subcontinent.

  Very soon, Company officials had become so comfortable in that lovely countryside, they decided to make it a permanent home. They created a hill station that was, according to one civil servant, ‘as near a chip of England that could be conceived outside the British Isles’. One of the first private houses to be built in the new station belonged to Deputy Commissioner Colonel Henry Stuart Bivar.

  By the late nineteenth century, the city had become well known to British and other European residents, most of who lived in Guwahati, in neighbouring Assam. They were happy to know of this glorious alternative, just about ninety kilometres up in the hills, an ideal place to escape into, away from the extremes of monsoon and heat. The journey from Guwahati to Shillong in those days would take three or four days. The adults rode sturdy hill ponies. The elderly and younger children would be carried on bamboo palanquins, lifted by Khasi hill men.

  These European visitors were amazed by the transformation of the vegetation as they climbed into the hills. First came tropical forests thick with bamboo and sal trees, then came grasslands, and finally they were surrounded by miles and miles of familiar pine trees and an unbelievably cool and dry climate.

  By 1880, Shillong was no longer a place of quiet relaxation; it had started to buzz with activity befitting the capital of the new state of Assam, which had the headquarters of all civil and military administration in the region. During those years, the government was offering land in Shillong on lease at a nominal fee of Rs 99 a year, but mainly to Europeans of course.

  Soon, pretty homes made with brick, stone and local masonry began to emerge. If you walked through the streets of Shillong in those days, you could walk past a cluster of beautiful homes made of bamboo and owned by the traditional communities of the region, and stumble upon a very English country cottage with a name like Hopedale or Avondale. Many Englishmen owned large tea estates all along the hillsides and could afford to build beautiful homes.

  Then on 12 June 1897, tragedy struck. Shillong suffered a massive earthquake. According to some historians, it was such a huge one that it was impossible to even stand. The surface of the ground ‘moved in waves like those of the sea’, and ‘large trees swayed backwards and forwards’ while ‘huge blocks of stone were tossed up and down like peas on a drum’. In the course of a few minutes, the city was reduced to shambles. Shillong became a ghost town for many months as people, mostly Europeans, lived in tents. A number of them lost all their possessions; the heavy rains that followed ruined what they could salvage. The traditional homes of the communities who lived near the city were not as badly affected. After all, those homes were built using local skills that had taken into account the possibility of earthquakes.

  In a few years, however, the city rose again. A wiser government introduced a new building code for construction. The homes were now lighter and made of wooden frames lined with plaster. Many new homes were built following these guidelines. Interestingly, they still managed to look European. Many of them had quaint architectural flourishes, looking like a mix of a Tudor manor and high gabled Gothic Victorian homes. The names did not change though; they were still lovingly called Peachlands, Acacias and Uplands. It was during these years that the Catholic Cathedral, Grotto, and the St. Mary’s Convent were built.

  In 1910, Shillong was upgraded from a hill station to a municipality. By then, it had already developed into a populated city with a mixed population. Besides the natives and the Europeans, there were Bengalis, Nepalese, Assamese, Bihari and Marwari people as well.

  It was the British, however, that left behind a rich legacy of civic administration, distinctive architecture and social life. All of which made for the quaint cosmopolitanism that the city still has—one that inevitably accompanied colonialism. (Colonialism, among other things, transplants lifestyles, ideas and architecture from one part of the world to another.) Some of these were very outlandish, of course. For example, the city has one of the largest golf courses (and the world’s wettest!) in Asia. A group of British Civil Service officers had introduced golf to Shillong in 1898 by constructing a nine-hole course. The present eighteen-hole course was inaugurated in 1924.

  The lifestyles of ‘clubs’ that the élites patronized, the particular culture of army and air-force cantonment life, the rich investment in schools and colleges made by missionaries, the migrant trading population and the special traditions of the tribal communities contributed to a very charming and ethnically diverse city.

  The city’s North Eastern Hill University is a major educational centre that contributed many committed educationists. U. Babu Jeebon Roy was an eminent educationist. He was among the first educated Khasis and a pioneer of higher education in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills. He had started the first high school, after Sh
illong became a provincial capital, in 1874. He also supported the establishment of the Seng Khasi, a premier socio-educational organization, which now has to its credit a few high schools and a college in Shillong. The city built on his tradition and produced many more educational institutions including St. Edmunds, St. Mary’s and the Shillong and Lady Keane colleges. The city’s famous schools include Pine Mount School, Loreto Convent and St. Edmund’s, which were established in the early twentieth century.

  The city’s residents love to trace its history through the personalities who have emerged from this town, either having studied or lived here at some point in their lives. These include poets like Robin S. Ngangom and Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih. The actor Victor Bannerjee is a product of St. Edmund’s College. The popular Bengali and Hindi actor Utpal Dutt was born and brought up in Shillong along with television personality Amita Malik. Anthropologist and tribal expert Verrier Elwin settled in Shillong where he lived until his death.

  Shillong also houses the offices of the Geological, Anthropological and Zoological Surveys of India. It has the headquarters (HQ) of the Eastern Air Command of the Indian Air Force. The HQ of the oldest paramilitary force in India—the Assam Rifles—the Assam Regimental Centre of the Indian Army, the 101 Area of the Indian Army, the Gurkha Training centre of the Gurkha Regiment of the Indian Army are all based here.

  Shillong remained the capital of undivided Assam until the creation of the new state of Meghalaya on 21 January 1972. That was when it became the capital of Meghalaya, while Assam’s capital became Dispur.

  The city is famous for its patronage of certain genres of Western popular music. Elvis Presley and Bob Marley are much loved by its residents with many clubs dedicated to them! Many international performers have played in the city and weekends resonate with budding rock stars and their bands.

  Down the ladder into the coal pits of memory: a hard look at Shillong

  Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih

  Strangely, despite having lived here for the most part of my life, Shillong with all its grandiose sobriquets has inspired in me neither love nor admiration; has given me neither happiness nor a sense of belonging.

  Panegyrics have been sung about this ‘Queen of Hill Stations’, but ungratefully, my only hiraeth—a Welsh word that loosely translated means all kinds of longing—is for Cherrapunjee, for I am a true son of the wettest place on earth, baptised by its wind-driven rain and its impregnating fog.

  Of Shillong, I can only recall the squalor of its wretched tenements; the harsh and ignoble life of a strange and ragged rustic; the mocking of rich girls giggling on the road and of loud boys on bicycles.

  And though I wrote my first poem amidst that squalor, it is only of ugly things—the cold and hard indifference that drives students to the streets and boys to the therapy of the gun; the rottenness that would sell our holy mountain for a car and a few concubines; the blood and the riots; the terror, the fake and genuine encounters—that I write.

  Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih is a highly respected poet and writer. His poems have been translated into Welsh, Swedish and several Indian languages.

  The attitude of a person to a place is moulded by his experiences and the manner of its citizens. It is only after a return from the heat and dust of the flat lands that the cool deciduous breeze whispers a welcome, and I could feel something of a homecoming as I approach through the meandering road of Shillong.

  Thiruvananthapuram/Trivandrum

  A city by the sea

  One thousand years ago, when America still belonged to the Native Americans, Australia still belonged to the Aborigines and Singapore was just an island covered with trees, a truly global city had sprung up on the west coast of India.

  On Thiruvananthapuram’s busy streets you could hear dialects and tongues from places as far-flung as Africa, the Mediterranean countries, Malaysia and China. For merchants will go wherever there is a deal to be made, and here they could buy pepper, sandalwood and ivory; they could sell the goods they had brought from distant lands. The ships in the harbour of this port city might seem primitive today, powered only by the vagaries of the wind and as much human muscle as slave labour could bring to rowing, but the outlook of the people on the streets was modern and cosmopolitan.

  For these people brought their knowledge, their faiths, their beliefs and their world views with them. It is not surprising to note that the city was painted with the many colours of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity for a much longer time than other parts of the country.

  Therefore, oddly enough, the rest of the world did more to shape Thiruvananthapuram than Kerala did. For most of its history, the city was almost entirely independent from the rest of Kerala. This was because it looked towards the sea for its economic sustenance, instead of to the agricultural hinterland.

  The early rulers of the city were the Ays. With their fall in the tenth century, the city was taken over by the rulers of Venad, a neighbouring dynasty. They provided a reasonably stable atmosphere and that helped the city prosper. Traders like stability. They like to know that they will return to the same city and find the same rules, the same tradesmen, the same port authorities and the same custom duties in place.

  During that time, the city comprised a cluster of hamlets around the port. A few places of religious worship belonging to different communities dotted the landscape. Perhaps one of the first to be built would have been a temple dedicated to Anantha, another name for the serpent Shesha on whom Padmanabhan or Vishnu reclines. For the name Thiruvananthapuram means the ‘Sacred Town of Lord Anantha’. The city’s largest buildings—imagine traditional Kerala structures with elegant, tiled, sloping roofs—housed the port offices of the king.

  From the sixteenth century onwards, when Europe began to look beyond its own shores for new markets and new routes to those markets, the European traders began to arrive. They all came in search of spices. In those days a man with a fistful of pepper was a wealthy man. The Dutch and the Portuguese set up shop on a sandy spit of coastal land at Anchuthengu—about 32 kilometres north of the city.

  In the late seventeenth century, when Umayamma Rani ruled, a ship belonging to the British East India Company docked in the port. The Company had by then already set up many establishments all along the eastern and western coasts. They set up a fortified factory in the same place where the Dutch and Portuguese had once stayed.

  The presence of soldiers indicated that they had more than just trade on their minds. Sure enough, the Company began to show an interest in other parts of the region. It was from this factory that the English gradually extended their domain into areas beyond the city—all over Thiruvithamcore (or the state of Travancore).

  By the eighteenth century, Company officials had become a familiar presence to the city’s dwellers. Within a few years, a king called Marthanda Varma inherited the kingdom of Venad, and soon expanded his borders into Travancore. He decided to develop strategic alliances with the East India Company and signed a friendly treaty with them.

  With their help, he destroyed the power of eight feudal landlords (collectively known as Ettuveetil Pillamar), defeated his fiercest rival, Maharaja Rama Varma, and established his supremacy in the region.

  He made Thiruvananthapuram the capital of Travancore in 1745. During successive battles, he defeated kingdoms right up to Cochin, including Attingal, Kollam, Kayamkulam, Kottarkara and Ambalapuzha. In 1741, he succeeded in defeating the Dutch East India Company. On 3 January 1750, Varma dedicated his kingdom to the deity Sri Padmanabha of Trivandrum (the Trippadidaanam) and from then on, the rulers of Travancore ruled the kingdom by referring to themselves Padmanabhadasan or as the servants of Sri Padmanabha. By the time he deposed the Raja of Cochin, and wrested control of Ambalapuzha, Marthanda Varma had crushed all opposition to his rule.

  However, historians refer to him not just as a fierce warrior but an efficient ruler as well. Thiruvananthapuram became the administrative nerve centre of the state, particularly with the establishment of an elabo
rate tax system. Someone had to run this system and so educated communities moved into the city. This in turn shaped the culture of the city. Educated people want interesting ways to spend their leisure time and so the arts began to develop as well. And since there were merchants to sponsor the performances and pay the performers, many of the rich traditions of Kerala’s performing arts emerged in the cities. The urban temple complex in Thiruvananthapuram, with its connections to the administrative arm of the kingdom, became a platform for various arts.

  The city produced many great poets and men of letters. The sixteenth century saw the rise of Ayyipillai Asan. He wrote his famous work Ramakadhapattu, which represents a unique stage in the evolution of the southern dialect of Malayalam. Other poets patronized by the royal family of Travancore include Unnayi Warrier and Kunchan Nambiar. A few decades later, the city inaugurated a special phase in Kerala’s Carnatic music through the works of Maharaja Swathi Thirunal and Irayimman Thampi.

  Of course, all this could happen only if the state was secure, money was flowing in, and people could relax and enjoy their wealth. Raja Marthanda Varma was a shrewd political leader who could provide his cities with such an atmosphere.

  During the war with the Dutch East India Company, Varma had captured its Admiral De Lennoy. However, instead of treating him like a war criminal, he actually appointed him as the Senior Admiral (Valiya Kappithan) of his army. This turned out be a strategic move as Lennoy completely modernized the army by introducing firearms and artillery.