Love Letter to Shillong

Shillong....a place that I cannot begin to describe and if I dare venture describing, then I cannot imagine ending that description, for it is a place that has given me countless memories, innumerable life lessons, lifelong friends, excellent education, precious teachers and a million reasons to keep going back to it every time I feel a burden in my heart and weakness in my knees!

I first came across the idea of writing love letters to cities when I used the hashtag #loveletterstoacity on Instagram and discovered that what I hoped was my innovation has already been an established practice on the web! I guess, that's the demerit of being born in our day and age - no idea remains unexplored!

As per Google, I am a Gen Z kid, but I'd argue that there are traces of a millennial in me and whether or not that is true, I leave it for you to decide. But as I begin exploring the 'Add Page' option in Blogger, I cannot help but try my hand at writing love letters to the cities I've been to, and the places I've seen. This list of places that I hope will remain inexhaustive over the years, has to begin with the first city I called 'home' after I left home. My first love letter has to be to the Scotland of the East, the land where clouds kiss the sky on any given day, where pines and cherry blossoms fill the air, where steaming momos satiate one's evening appetite and Jadoh quenches one's hunger, the land I fell in love with...SHILLONG.

Since I've initiated the debate of me being a Gen Z with millennial traits, it's only fair that my love letter to Shillong is filled not only with anecdotes of my time there but also a lot of pictures taken there. A modern-day digital love letter is incomplete without images, so here begins my excavation through my hard disk in hopes of reigniting emotions felt during the three years of graduation from 2017-2020. It's already been three years since I left the city and naturally, life has gotten hectic and complicated thereon - it's not every day that I can go back in time and relive my cherished days at Shillong, so bear with me, dear reader, this love letter will be written in parts, perhaps never to be complete, perhaps with hopes of never having to end it or say goodbye! Khublei Shibun for embarking on this journey with me! Happy reading!

I. When left alone...

Twelfth board results were declared just a day or two ago, it was decided that the family won't be able to afford education in Delhi at this point. I was asked whether Guwahati and Cotton would be to my liking. Grades weren't a problem, my heart and the picture of college life I had on my mind was. My answer was a big no (although now that seems like a good option that I might as well have considered). Nothing else remained, Shillong was the best bait. Just close enough to home that an overnight journey could take me there and just far enough so that it would at least take 3-8 hours to get home or anywhere near it. 

In the eighteen years of life that preceded this day, not many places were seen, definitely not a hilly region. The hills and clear skies of Meghalaya, on the Guwahati-Shillong highway mesmerized me from the moment we left Khanapara. The three-hours spent on the road gave me many merry thoughts and images of different probabilities flashed before my eyes. The feeling associated with being a primary character was slowly beginning to take on me and I was loving every bit of it.

The entrance day was beautiful because I had my father, childhood bestfriend and her father, and a cousin of her's for company. All three of us sat for the entrance at Edmund's and fortunately, all of us made it! Spontaneous and futuristic that he is, my father befriended a decent-looking lady from the admin office who happened to own a girls' PG close to the college, and just like that, my admission and accomodation were both settled.

Within a week's time, classes were to begin. A quick trip home was made to fetch my belongings. Having left home for the first time in 18 years, I packed almost everything I owned, assuming that I won't be coming home as often and that I'll end up creating a mini-home in the new city - Shillong.

13 June, 2017 was the day when me and my father set out to Shillong from Guwahati, early in the morning. I had atleast 7-8 bags, including a mattress and other essentials. We reserved three seats in a Swift Desire and undertook the journey. The city was then experiencing its usual rainy summer season, hence a sharp breeze adorned the entire city. People wearing light jackets and carrying an umbrella became a marker of the season I was to anticipate in this rather cold and serene part of the country. 

It was decided that my father would drop me at the hostel and leave for Guwahati by 3-4 in the afternoon. This meant that we had to get all the essentials like buckets, mugs, an almirah and other minor things between 11-3. It was a rather packed day which neither left me enough time to mourn my separation with my family or admire the pristine beauty of the city I was to call home for the next three years. The rains didn't help much in speeding up the settling process either. But my father is a rather efficient man and he did his duties quite well. By 4, we had said our goodbyes. I cried a little and I could tell that he too was affected by the fact that the troublemaker won't be around to sing loudly or annoy everyone all the time.

The first few hours without parental supervision, and the realisation that no familiar face was around left me a little silent, fearful and anxious. But slowly I began owning up to the role of taking care of myself, and being accountable for my actions. From managing social conduct to the bank account...these weren't necessarily skills that I was explicitly trained in but I rose to the occasion and endeavoured to make the most of my time there. Although I was assigned a roommate, she was someone quite my opposite, in the sense that she would frequently go home, was terribly dependent on others for the slightest of inconveniences and under-confident to undertake any adventure beyond going and coming from college. A look at my IG feed will tell you that I'm the exact opposite - a free spirit, bold enough to conquer whatever challenge life throws my way. We were good friends but never close....my first night at the hostel was spent alone because she was yet to reach.

The next day was the first day of classes. I remember wearing a greyish denim jeans, a black undershirt, a checked shirt, and sneakers to class. I owned a bright orange and navy blue backpack back then and a purplish black umbrella...with these two for company, I set down the Motinagar hill to college at perhaps 9-9:30 in the morning. A shocker that I got in the morning was that rice was the breakfast at the hostel- there would be no lunch, and dinner would be served directly at 8 pm. So basically, someone used to a 5-course lunch for 18 years was suddenly brought down to a no-fixed lunch routine and I remember being rather perplexed about it. Several other technical problems came along the way, like water scarcity at the hostel, an unclean common washroom, incompatible roommate and so on but gradually, I learned to find solutions to all of these. Today, if you see me getting furious at someone who leaves the tap running while brushing then know that it's a reaction to the trauma from my days at Shillong where every drop of water was precious and preserved with great effort to be scantily used in emergencies!

I'd like to talk more about my transition from an unsure and naive school kid to a mature and responsible college kid but that's the journey every individual undertakes in life. My love letter is dedicated to Shillong and here, I cannot not mention how the city embraced me and gave me both moments of solitude and sweet company, how it was cool but never cold, biased but never unwelcoming, underdeveloped but not without opportunities and just....flawlessly mesmerising!

I. Of lanes revisited...

I left Shillong during the lockdown, on 18 March 2020, to be precise. I had a close inner circle there comprising four girls and we called ourselves SAGA - the letters representing each of our intials. And as you'd have guessed, I'm the G in SAGA. So, SAGA never got a chance to officially bid farewell to one another back in 2020. Fortunately, three of us are originally from the same town and our fourth precious leg, though a resident of Guwahati, manages to keep well-connected with the group virtually. Thus, graduation wasn't really the end of this friendship. Some bonds are meant to last a lifetime and I earnestly believe that this is one such bond that I'll continue to cherish and maintain till I'm old and gray.

Over the last four years of navigating adulthood and our personal struggles, SAGA has silently harboured a wish to reunite in the place that brought us together in the first place - Shillong. We did have a brief reunion in 2023 during my sister's wedding but that barely did justice to the mammoth of memories we had to reminisce from the three best years of our lives spent in each other's blissful company. A reunion was long due and our sincere wish to revisit the old lanes of sweet Shillong turned real in the last weekend of April 2024. 

Once again, the four of us started early in the morning from Guwahati to Shillong and the 2-hour morning drive was just right to send us all back to nostalgia land. There was laughing and trolling, singing and dancing, exploring and eating, crying and drinking, and just everything else in between. While I fondly cherish my time with my girls and do so quite a lot in isolation, my reconnection with the city deserves a special ode. So, my beloved Shillong, this is a letter addressed to you:

I remember feeling profound grief in the initial months of the lockdown when I had to suddenly adjust to the fact that I'd never be 20 again or walk energetically through the hills of Shillong again. In recollection, the life of penury and eyes full of dreams from 6-7 years ago somehow feel soul-satisfying. Struggles have always felt sweet and smooth in recollection. Nostalgia is often about revisiting the select memories the mind subconsciously yet mindfully decides to keep in agreement with the heart's fondness for them. I too, only have a memory of my poetic and happy times in the city, barely any memories of the struggles that defined my life here.

We were to stay at the PWD Assam Rest House at Barik Point which was incidentally also my place of stay during my first-ever visit to Shillong for the St. Edmund's College English Entrance test back in 2017. Over the 3 years that I stayed in the city, I never really got a chance to revisit this guesthouse and entering it again this Saturday morning in 2024 brought back all the memories....of how I had come here with my father, with dreams of becoming more knowledgeable, of making my parents proud, of learning to live alone, of struggling alone. Seven years later, almost everything dreamt of back then is a reality, the only longing now is to go back in time and tell the younger unsure self to calm down and trust the process.

Like I always say, my connection with Shillong is like those we have with our first boyfriends or girlfriends. It shows you've grown, and it always helps you go back in time and enjoy the fleeting moments of childhood. Shillong is my first love in terms of cities. I could revisit the Cathedral, Laitumkhrah market, Don Bosco Square, Jeeves', and Lady Hydari Park. During this brief weekend trip, I got a chance to recall and treasure all those times when I had walked on these streets. A lot keeps happening in life every day and my memory isn't that efficient in long-term storage. A lot of the overwhelming emotions that make Shillong the love of my life have faded in colour (in my mind's memory album) over the last 4 years, but the blurred images are there still.

While I felt grateful for the privilege of returning to the old lanes, I also felt a strong disconnect with the city this time. And I think that could happen to any place over time. A city feels different when you live there and when you just visit there. No matter how many times I go to Shillong now, it'll never be the same again. And somewhere I feel that the awareness that I don't have a room to my name there makes a lot of the difference. But I guess it's also wrong to expect that one can hold on to the memories forever. We gotta let things go when it's their time to go, how else will the next big thing get a chance to enter our lives, right!?

So, to sum up, revisiting old lanes with old friends felt divine. I look forward to more such trips and hope that life brings me an opportunity to fulfill my dream of living and working in Shillong!

[This is a work in progress]