Akash was crushed when his long-time girlfriend, Kadambini jilted him. She left him without giving any reason and didn’t bother to tell him in person. Through her email he learnt that she was marrying a NRI and moving with him to the States. Shattered, he thought of ending his life but somehow held back. The example of his parents, whose married life went through daily upheavals, ironically became a source of inspiration. His mother, an ambitious woman, was a top ranking bureaucrat in the government while his father, also a bureaucrat, had stagnated in the service due to his laidback attitude. Anyway, the man didn’t care much for the promotions and had a passion for painting and wanted to pursue it as a vocation but his parents forced him to join the civil services.
Ambition or the lack of it was the cause of marital discord in his parents’ life. Often his mother criticised her husband for showing utter disregard to his career. His father detested her interference in his professional life and when their quarrel reached the boiling point, the man packed up his bags and headed towards a hill station with the canvas, paint and brushes. There, whatever he painted he gave it away to the local folks. Firstly, he was afraid to bring home his paintings and further annoy his wife who didn’t think much of his art. Secondly, he never wanted their marriage to reach the breaking point because of a few paintings. For the sake of his son he carried on in his loveless marriage. Like him, his wife too didn’t dare to break up for the fear of social ostracism.
To the outside world his parents were a perfect couple whose world was filled with joy and prosperity in abundance. Nobody knew the truth. For a long time Akash also thought that they were made for each other and hence worth of emulation. He drew inspiration from them but slowly he learnt the bitter truth of his parent’s married life. It took him many days to get over the shock. A happy marriage existed only in the romance novels, he thus concluded.
Akash’s nature was similar to his father’s and so he felt emotionally closer to him. With mother his relationship lacked genuine warmth and compassion. In father he had a friend who understood him without any parental prejudices and who never preached but listened to him sympathetically. He often shared his deepest fears and disappointments with him.
When Kadambini suddenly dumped him for a NRI, he confided it to his father and wept on his shoulders for a long time. Once he regained his calm, father advised that he should run away and drown his sorrows in the torrential rains of Cherrapunji. The monsoon of Meghalaya would wash his hurt off and give a soothing balm to his tormented soul.
Escaping the turbulent past, he caught the first flight to Guwahati. An hour later he was moving in a taxi to Shillong. As soon as he left the Assam border and entered Meghalaya, the rains greeted him. Surprised, he recalled father’s words about Meghalaya being the abode of clouds and Cherrapunji being the wettest place on earth. In the college days his father had travelled a lot and knew about many such getaways in India.
During the three-hour road journey it rained nonstop. The fog and clouds had enveloped the valleys and hills, though once in a while he got to see some amazing landscape when the tropical sun lit up the area. En route, he stopped by the roadside restaurants for a cup of tea and sat on the boulders to soak his soul in the salubrious surroundings. Calm was returning in his heart. By the time he reached Shillong the dusk fell.
After the night-halt he hired a taxi and moved to Cherrapunji the next day. Half-hour later he entered the Mawkdok Valley whose breath-taking beauty lifted his spirits up. It was drizzling. The rain-bearing clouds sat on the hilltops and swirled in the short, narrow valleys. A small crowd of tourists travelling by the cars, buses and taxis gathered there. People were clicking pictures and revelling in the pleasant climate. The new tourists were the most vociferous in expression of their emotions. The children screamed and exclaimed in delight and ran helter-skelter.
After sometime the adults sat down in the makeshift shops for a cup of hot tea and samosas. Some children collected the rain droplets in their hands and then rubbed them on their little faces, some tried to catch the mist in their fists, and some blew smoke out of their mouths while others played in the drizzle and the cold wind. The worried mothers yelled time and again, urging their children to come under the shade but the kids seemed in no mood to obey them. However, the mothers’ anguish and the children’s joy ended up soon when the drivers asked them to get inside the vehicles. Akash felt sorry that the children’s mirth was curtailed.
A few minutes later he also moved out.
The breath-taking Mawkdok Valley and the expansive moors made him forget everything. He felt as if he were moving in Scotland, a place he had seen only in the movies and photographs. For miles there were no cities except a few huts perched atop the gentle slopes or tucked in the valleys. The driver negotiated the winding road with consummate ease. The fresh, moist mountain wind was invigorating and the loneliness of the landscape thought-provoking.
He chose to ignore whatever the driver spoke about Cherrapunji. Instead, he enjoyed the gusts of wet-wind lash at his face at regular intervals. Having watched the children play in the rain a while ago, the child in him had surfaced up. It was the time to relive his childhood. His play with the rain and wind went on and on.
An hour later he caught the glimpse of a few huts on the hillock. The front huts were visible while the rest of the town was covered in thick layers of black and blue mists. When the driver told him that it was Cherrapunji, he almost jumped in delight. As they drove closer, more huts showed up but a stubborn fog had covered major portion of the town. He thought he would be lucky to get its full view in the monsoon.
The drizzle suddenly turned into a downpour as he stepped inside the hotel lobby. After a brief talk with the receptionist he dropped the plan to see any places that day. If weather cleared up before the evening he would take a walk in the nearby forest. For lunch he had the local delicacies and ate to his heart’s content. Thereafter, he sat in the wicker chair in the veranda. The rain with its fury smothered every noise in that place. If it went on like that for a few more hours, Akash feared that the road to Shillong might get washed away and he would be stranded there for days. He had never seen such an ear-splitting downpour that threatened to take everything away with it. A sense of helplessness gripped him. The fear followed soon after. How weak a man was before the wrath of God? He pondered.
The waiter, a local Khasi boy, interrupted his thoughts. His room was ready. With a smile he thanked him and gazed outside. The boy told him that even by Cherrapunji standards the rain in the last twenty-four hours had been rather incessant. The sound of the footsteps receded in the corridor. Akash stood up and went to his room.
In the afternoon the rain stopped. He picked up the windcheater and slipped out of the room. He needed the time and solitude to put Kadambini’s thoughts and memories behind and move on in life. An hour’s walk took him deep inside the forest where a quiet, benign cold lay settled. The bitter, all-pervading smell of the rotting barks and fresh resin filled the air. A thin layer of mist had draped the thorny shrubs. The wind scraped the damp coverlet of fallen leaves. The dewdrops, sewn on the forest floor by the night, dazzled like pearls. The fog, hung all over the place, was thinning and thickening.
His wet shoes squelched at every step. The dampness delayed the sound of his footsteps reaching his ears. Nervous, he looked back a couple of times but when he was sure that nobody followed him, he shrugged. Mating calls of the woodpeckers and the sound of his footsteps disrupted the ubiquitous silence. The frigid wind was gathering speed. He lifted up his collar and moved on.
After a while a strange figure appeared in the fog. He froze in terror. Thought of a wild animal sent shivers down his spine and the sweat trickled down his temples. With no place to escape to he thought it safe to hide behind a pine. Next moment a sigh escaped his parched lips when the figure turned into the silhouette of a human. His eyes popped out in disbelief as the shadow took the shape of a girl. She carried a broken twig and kicked the loose stones as she walked towards him. Her voice had a low, melodious note, suggestive of a typical Khasi romance folklore. When she came within a few metres of him, he peeped out from behind the tree. He wanted her voice to descend inside his melancholic heart. She stopped humming when she spotted him.
“Who are you?” she asked angrily.
“It’s me, I mean I’m Akash,” he fumbled.
“What are you doing here?” she asked in a voice filled with half surprise and half displeasure.
“I’m a tourist. I came here for a walk,” he hesitated.
“I’m Sohra,” she said. Her voice had become friendlier.
“Shora,” he repeated.
“Forget it. Call me Cherra. It’s easier to pronounce. Even the British when they landed in this place failed to pronounce it correctly,” she said putting him at ease.
Akash was thoroughly confused but was sure of one thing that he had got the name of the girl wrong. However, he couldn’t comprehend a bit of what she said about the British getting it wrong. To clarify his mind, he asked, “Could you tell me the mystery of Shora?”
She gave him a smile and fell in thought. For the first time he had a close look at her. Her incredible beauty combined tribal innocence with the magic of a pastoral poem and jungle lore in right blend. He was spellbound by her earthy charm.
“Let’s go to some place where we can talk comfortably,” she pulled him out of his trance.
A bit embarrassed, he mumbled, “Yes.”
They walked to an abandoned hut, not far from there. It was a broken, stone structure. The cobwebs hung all over the place. The roof had failed to withstand the onslaught of many rainstorms. The owner had given up on its repairs long ago. They stood in the veranda, separated by a few meters.
“You were saying something about the British?” he turned to her and asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “This place is called S-O-H-R-A and not like what you pronounced. The British also couldn’t pronounce it correctly.”
“What’s the tale?” he asked, waiting for an interesting story.
She began, “It happened about hundred seventy years ago when Shillong didn’t exist. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it but it’s true. Even if Shillong existed then, it would have been a nondescript village of few huts. The Khasi tribes of this region often attacked the British troops stationed in East Bengal. Fed up with the attacks, the British troops decided to put an end to all this and marched into the hills of Meghalaya from south. The troops first reached the village of Sohra. Since they found it hard to pronounce the name, they named it Cherra and the village of Sohra since then came to be known as Cherrapunji. Punji is the word for a village in Khasi. Later the British found it a rainy place and shifted their garrison from Cherrapunji to present day Shillong. With passage of time Cherrapunji lost its importance and Shillong from an unknown village became the region’s bustling capital. It remained so for a long time even after independence till Assam’s capital was shifted to Dispur. However, Cherrapunji’s name in history was assured when the world discovered that it was the wettest place on the planet. Isn’t it baffling that this village gets more rainfall than any other place on earth, even the Amazon Valley?”
“What a fairy tale! It’s hard to believe that I’m walking around a well-known place,” his eyes glinted in admiration. “How do you know all this?”
“I was a child when the British landed here,” she gave him a mysterious grin.
“How old you are?” he asked, getting confused.
“I’m not good at math. You can calculate,” she knitted her eyebrows.
“You want me to believe it,” he smiled, thinking she was pulling his leg. “You couldn’t be a human being then. Only the ghosts can live that long.”
“Who knows I could be one,” she said in a serious tone.
“Are you trying to scare me?” he laughed.
“No,” she shrugged her shoulders. “You should have faith in yourself.”
“Yeah, I do,” he gave her an intent look.
Both fell silent for a while. Then he shared with her about himself, his parents, his job, his courtship with Kadambini and how she left him a week ago for a rich NRI. She listened to him in rapt attention, without any intervention. When he finished, she remarked, “I’m not a philosopher but I believe in one thing that the life must go on irrespective of upsets and upheavals. We can learn a lot from nature. For example, look at the hills of Cherrapunji. Do you find any change in their behaviour? They are what they were when born and they would remain same for all times to come. Till recently Cherrapunji received the highest rainfall and suddenly Mawsynram usurped its unique status and became the wettest place on earth. Do you feel that this village or the surrounding hills lamenting the loss of their status? Certainly not. This place is as vibrant as it was before. That’s what life is all about. Nature teaches us a lot.”
Her simple explanation of a complex human philosophy amazed him. If her beauty extra-ordinaire had stirred his heart, her intelligence had touched his soul. He wished she filled the vacuum in his life. Will she agree to his proposal, he doubted. But there was no harm in trying, otherwise how would he know what’s in her mind.
Mustering up the courage, he inched closer towards her and whispered, “Cherra, will you fill the loneliness in my heart and be my soulmate?”
“You want to marry a ghost. Do you?” she laughed aloud.
“If there is somebody else in your life, I’ll step back,” he said. “But if you are single then I beseech you to consider my proposal in right earnest.”
In anticipation he held his breath. Her lips quivered but the words failed to come out of her mouth. Perhaps she needed time. He understood her predicament. After all, it was an all-important decision of her life and she didn’t want to take it in haste. And so he waited.
But the fickle weather of Cherrapunji didn’t wait. The rain lost its intensity but the fog thickened and gained momentum and within minutes filled up the forest, valley and hut. It rushed inside the veranda. The day turned into a night. Nothing was visible. Akash panicked and thought he would lose her. She would disappear in the fog as she had emerged out of it. With extended hands he searched her in the dark but couldn’t find her. He ran around the hut and tripped a couple of times but she wasn’t there.
In desperation he shouted, “Sohra….Sohra….Sohra. Where are you? Don’t leave me alone. I can’t live without you.”
Tired, he clutched his head and slumped on the ground, thinking he had lost her forever. Then to his utter dismay the fog started drifting away from the hut and his gaze fell on her. In a daze she stood under a pine. Tears of joy streamed down his eyes.
She came closer, lifted him up and whispered, “Had it not been for the fog I wouldn’t have known how much you love me.”
“So, I take it that you’ll marry me,” he was ecstatic.
“Meet me in Shillong tomorrow at 10 a.m. in the restaurant at the Police Point. I’ll let you know my answer then.”
“You can come along with me in the taxi,” he suggested.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be there on time. I’ve wings, I can fly,” she rolled her eyes in mischief.
He hesitated for a while and said, “What if I don’t find you in Shillong?”
“If you believe me, you will,” she said and left. The drifting fog took her far away from his sight. For several moments he stood frozen in time. Then a gust of cold wind stirred him out of his trance.
“If she……….,” he dreaded to think otherwise as he walked back to the hotel room.
