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BETWEEN INDIA AND BANGLADESH
written and photographed by PINAKI CHAKRAVARTY
We are looking at Miaow being manhandled by
the baby on the bare floor, surrounded by walls
plastered with newspaper cuttings instead of paint,
and a framed print of the countryside that says,
‘In the mountains we forget to count the days�
MAWLYNNONG
The cleanest village in India
Tucked away in the Khasi hills of India’s northeastern Meghalaya state, the village of Mawlynnong is like nothing else on the subcontinent. Drive out of Shillong, the regional capital, off the road to Cherapunjee, the wettest place on earth, and out past ancient
dolmens that are so neglected no one knows exactly what they are, how many of them are spread over the hills or who put them there and when.
Hours later, at the end of a road that snakes through forests of bamboo, lies Mawlynnong, and your first impression is that of a tourist resort: a concrete walkway through the village, a picture-
perfect church near the football field, independent bungalows done in wood and painted in pastel colours, huge boulders on the side of the path, flowering plants along the walkway. It’s as if a landscape artist had run amok through the forest, creating a self-contained ecosystem where everything is perfect: people make houses out of wood and bamboo, wash naked in the river, fish mahseer from the streams, cook over wood fires, serve food in the dried leaves of the betel nut tree.
Wedged in an almost unknown patch and shrouded in foliage, the village is high enough to escape the floods that periodically kill millions in neighbouring Bangladesh, and it is so remote it seems to have little to do with India, a country crippled by unimaginable poverty even as it produces rocket science, nuclear weapons and wealth concentrated among industrialists and movie stars. But Mawlynnong is different.
EPIPHANY
Secrets of rural upliftment
Something seems amiss. Cleanliness isn’t something you associate with much of the country, but it’s deeply ingrained here. “Our
forefathers started this tradition,�says Lumlang Khongthohrem, the village priest, administrator of the school and secretary of the Epiphany Society for Rural Upliftment. “Our grandfathers taught us how to keep things clean. We’ve tried spreading the word, but the people of the neighbouring villages say they don’t have the time.�br>
But Mawlynnong’s 78 houses, filled with 421 people, are spick and span, and the most you will see is a wrapper or two lying in the bamboo waste baskets kept at intervals �even the containers are so aesthetic they could have been drawn by an interior designer. Imagine a village of houses on stilts, children playing hopscotch
outside the school, dogs lying on patios, clothes hanging to dry, thatched roofs, bamboo fencing, a forest all around and the ever-present roar of the river below. Such is the promise of Mawlynnong.
The villagers aren’t too averse to a bit of marketing and money either. The Epiphany Society decided to sell their traditional way
of life, building a large and quite gorgeous bamboo house on stilts over the banks of a river raging towards Bangladesh. The floor is of bamboo and you will see the slopes of the mountain falling away through the slats the further you venture in. Beyond the two
bedrooms and from the open dining area, a bamboo footbridge takes off through the trees, leading to one platform and then the other, all propped up by trees underneath, and an undercarriage of bamboo and bamboo twine. It is unimaginably romantic.
TRAGIC SIGNATURES
The little concrete triangle
Romantic until you scratch into the wet earth, that is. Beyond treetops, where the mountain ends and the endless landscape of paddy
starts, is Bangladesh, a land so mired in poverty and flooding rivers it rivals the tragic signature of India. It is from here that the raiders come, entering easily through the porous border of rice, tree trunks and
bamboo groves. Villages like Mawlynnong and its neighbours post armed sentries in the plantations, and it is not uncommon for shots to ring out through the night.
The border itself is about an hour’s trek down the mountain, through the forest over excruciatingly slippery moss-covered stone steps. Almost rainforest-like, the jungle will swallow you up, and you will emerge at the last anonymous village dripping with perspiration, perhaps five metres from the little concrete triangle that marks the international border, with a couple of Indian soldiers loafing around staring across at the endless boredom of the plains, rifles laid down on the bamboo patio. Bangladeshi villagers pass by, herding their cattle through the grass, and all it would take is a few steps to walk over and say hello. Somewhere in the shade of the post, a radio crackles with instructions: half-hearted instructions to search us.
SHEDWELL
The poorest man in the village
There are other sides to Mawlynnong, too. Shedwell’s family has always been poor, through all the generations he can remember. They have never owned land, passing on the legacy of working on other people’s plantations from father to son. “We are so poor,�he says, as the sun dips below the mountain overlooking Bangladesh. They just never went beyond subsistence, never got to the point where they could save enough money to buy their own property, never got out of Mawlynnong.
But Shedwell has almost cracked it, scraping enough together among the bamboo groves, under the betel nut, across the tracts of
tejpatta �and has actually managed to send three sons to Shillong, the regional capital. They have spent three years trying to get a job with the government; instead, they now clean other people’s houses, earning 30 rupees (that translates into around 300bz in Oman) a day. “When I think of them I feel sorry. Perhaps it is better if they come home. But I really want them to do well. I want them to be wise.�br>
Shedwell has ached for wisdom his whole life. He wakes up every day at half past four, and starts reading Khasi-language books before getting down to housework and heading to the fields crammed in between jungle. He’s back in the evening, settling down on the wooden planks of the patio from where he can wave out to passers-by, watch his son study, watch his baby play with the cat called Miaow.
We are looking at Miaow being manhandled by the baby on the bare floor, surrounded by walls plastered with newspaper cuttings instead of paint, and a framed print of the countryside that says, ‘In the mountains we forget to count the days.�Instead, we sit down under the bare bulb, to black tea and a little bowl of a few lumps of rice soaked in thin, green curry, bits of elastic chicken and a few pieces of hard potato. |
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