1. Stranded on a silent intersection of the street, as the hand slogs along the weight of the iron, as the industrial steam evaporates to touch the forehead… as beads of perspiration collect, as the creases on the fabric smoothen, a drop of sweat trickles down the resolute face... | 2. An “orbicular" corner in the middle of the road, pivoting whom reckless taxis and busy citizens rush against time; yet time gets arrested as the taste salivates the tongue, a “corner” in the middle of the nowhere where narratives evolve every mundane hour. | 3. Curled up on the side of the street a story gets retold every day, an "untitled" story that was born about 3 decades ago- a blue tent, a rising steam, a simmering aroma, a smiling face….hot momos on a cold dusk. | 4. The sewing machine running its rhythm, since last 15 years, what all must it have been witness to? Changing times, the changing city or is it about displaced memories which need to be "hem" once more in the name off hidden histories? | 5. Perched on a lush green hill, a house rendered in ruins, a warm nest of toiling bodies thriving in communion, speaking the language of their common displacement and dispersion.|6. A corner where meets four roads. At the confluence of the four roads emerges a small shop where stories live within multi-layered bubbles; a story that breaks past the notion of “grand narrative”, a story that lives on through the scorching heat and thundering rainfall.|7. Built in the 70s, growing very organically with the time and space. More than physical architecture it is also a space where "pluralism" been explored in various manner in Post-Nehruvian Indian socio-political context. its presence in a space that holds a vast diaspora of migrant labouring bodies only attests to the larger perceptivity.|8. The performative language in urban everydayness. From the outer sphere, it looked like a process of washing and cleansing; but the parallel reality it is more performative than that, here cleaning is a metaphor of urban way of looking at sanitation in terms of "class and conflict". The white clothes drying against the lush green of the hills. It is live and never-ending performance between class and caste orders.|9. Is it simply an over-bridge or a corridor to multiple ecosystems of sustenance or livelihood? On the one side life flows by through the humdrum of the flowing water, dotted with the mundaneness of washing and cleaning; on the other side, time becomes timeless in the stillness of the dense bower, like many dewdrops caught within the green taro leaves.|10. Unplugged for 15 years, an old barber shop sprouted suddenly amidst a rapidly winding staircase. It is even further important where we are constantly provoking our opinions about "ways of seeing", in the context of "design" and "popularism". The idea of 'gallery' is not always about a certain way of designing a cube, sometimes it can pop-up from our close-door life in a very fluid attitude, this small room is a quality example to re-establish the idea of a gallery with mundane expressionism.|11. A filthy yard with irregular memories and thoughts from urban high rising societies, a yard which is not made for dump but to archive the industrial city's unnamed waste, or can we see it as a neo-conceptual space for the future “cyborg generation”? |12. To witness the constantly meandering water that will merge into a bigger river, to witness the various people collecting there, each unlocking a different story in that time-space- this small staircase facing the undulating hills is a witness to the changing city-scape, to time itself.|13. A center of interactive exchange, it is majorly known as 'The Library' but sometimes it is the only worm hole where time is de-centered through the presence of decades-old chapters, the generations of readers that have come and gone, the memories inundating it…
A 1925 Guide Map of Shillong; Source: Raiot
Historical Mapping
An idyllic town nestling in its canopy of floating clouds, afternoon torrents and undulating hills; This is indeed an exotic view concocted through its “remoteness”, predicated upon a distant “centre” and commoditised by a burgeoning tourism industry- yet look closer, and you see unfolding a rich traffic of myriad histories. So is Shillong a wearied metropolitan’s remote “North-Eastern” wet-dream, a frontier on the periphery? Or a dynamic “gateway to South-East Asia” 1? Lying at the crossroads of various trade routes and waterways, rendered porous through its very geographical nature, it has been enriched by waves of migrations- from the Burmese and the greater South-East Asian landscape that forms this region’s major inhabitants- the Khasis, Jaintias and Garos 2. They developed democratic administration and a prolific oral tradition while extensively trading with the neighbouring Ahom Kings and Sylhet, 3 then, under the Mughals of Bengal 4. The Colonial Period only enhanced its importance, building roads that connected Shillong-Dawki-Sylhet 5, binding them in an arterial flow of economic and cultural exchanges that culminated in Shillong’s rise to status as the Capital of erstwhile Assam 6. It grew into a cosmopolis further with the pouring in of many more communities, each to serve the needs of the Colonial Administration 7. Post-Independence, in 1972, as Meghalaya came of age into its achieved Statehood, Shillong stood unaltered as the Capital… It continues to be in a flux, its historical cosmopolitanism prevailing through a changing politico-economy, where the street-food brought in by migrant Bihari labourers forms as intimate a cultural phenomenon of Shillong as its dynamic and plurally rich music; where the noise of Capitalism, of rapidly growing industries, of towering malls, sprawling food chains, felling trees dwell with the thriving folklore nurtured from the bosom of familial memories. An “abode of clouds”, an abode of multiplicities, of tensions, of harmony- It is the restlessness of a sudden rainfall; it is the serenity of an ancient hill.
1.Patricia Mukhim:“Where is this North-East?”, Indian International Centre Quarterly; Vol. 32, No.2/3, Where the Sun Rises When Shadows Fall: The North-East (Monsoon-Winter 2005), pp.179;“Locating a region by placing oneself at a point central to oneself is a patently arrogant stance.” | 2.Sutapa Datta, PhD Thesis, “Socio-Economic Structure of Urban Khasi Population in Meghalaya with Special Reference to Shillong Urban Agglomeration; A Geographical Analysis”; Chapter IV “Historical Background of the Region”, Pg-82.|3.They would mainly trade oranges, limestone, salt, betel-nuts, etc as finds mention in the Ahom Chronicles of “Buranji”; Manorama Sharma “Sources and Construction of History: The Histories of the Khasi-Jaintia and Garo”, Pg. 1.| 4.Records suggest that the scribes and accountants of the Khasi Syiems could maintain records in Bengali, Assamese, Persian or Arabic, owing to the trade relations that existed!|5.Dawki was an important trading centre especially for the Jainta War tradesmen; L.S.Gassah, “Trade routes and trade relations between Jaintia Hills and Sylhet District in the Pre-independence Period”. | 6.The British Headquarters were initially at Sohra.| 7. The different localities had their specific composition of communities, settled according to their economic profession. Sutapa D., PhD Thesis, Pg.95-96.