Shillong-ing
Pintu is talking even before I’ve closed the door.
The endless highway lies ahead of me as soon as I exit the airport. The stretch looks spotless. He tells me the Japanese are supposed to come, and so the roads have been scrubbed clean. But there is a problem, and the visit may not take place. During the cleaning drive, somewhere in Guwahati, they removed a mural of Zubeen Garg. The city still mourns him deeply, and the people did not take it well.
I try to keep my eyes open. I have been awake since dawn, running on an hour of sleep, maybe less. It is past four now, and we are still three hours from Shillong. Pintu continues with the certainty of a man who is sure of himself, that the Japanese PM may not even come now, with all this unrest.
I am barely holding on. Every travel day feels like a mistake until I reach the place and it settles around me, slow, like the ache leaving the body. Here I am, a mountain-living, mountain-breathing person who hates being cooped up inside a car, just hoping I don’t throw up.
The road begins to cut upward. The hills have been sliced open to let us through. Pineapples and jackfruits everywhere. To my left, people work with the triangular cane baskets, the kind women carry in Himachal too, the same shape following me across the country.
We cruise through the mountain roads. Everyone drives with ease and patience. I point at a hill rising in the distance and tell Pintu it is so tall. He says we are going to go even higher than that.
My friend N, who lives in Guwahati, sends me a list of where to go. It took me eleven years to come to her city, and she is somewhere else. We will meet again, she says.
The road turns serpentine. Pintu says there will be no straight roads from here on.
We climb toward Shillong, and the strange names begin. Sardarji Hotel. Sardarji tea. Sardarji dhaba. The houses get older. We pass through bright green forests, the leaves carrying the post-rain glow. Moving, moving.
We are closing in now. We have entered Shillong. The taxis are neon yellow, unlike the mustard yellow of Kolkata. Tata Sumos and Maruti 800s, old forgotten relics which are part of the everyday here. I reach the hotel and soon find myself walking around the Barabazar. I move with the crowd. I absorb every sound into my memory.
I look for the Rapido captain in the busy square. He takes me back to the hotel. The cold monsoon wind sways me, and we descend through the pine forests. Evening falls, the city turning its lights on.
There is a Sahyadri in Shillong, and there is a Shillong in Sahyadri. I drift in and out of sleep and tell myself this. The pine forests pass. The wind is cold. I keep moving.
