Some of the most beautiful sights in Meghalaya are to be seen in the Sohra region of the East Khasi Hills. The road between Shillong and the town of Sohra (aka Cherrapunji) skirts wonderful valleys and passes tall waterfalls tumbling over the limestone cliffs. There are times when you feel you could just sit there on one of the high meadows, among the wildflowers, and watch the play of light through the clouds. I sat on just such a meadow and recalled the descriptions of the forests of Sohra from the early 19th century. Now there are no trees. They were the first things to go. The hills are next.
I think that I shall never see
Ogden Nash
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall,
I’ll never see a tree at all.
The evening before we left for Sohra we’d got a little lost in Shillong. We wandered into some roads which turned out to belong to one of the more famous schools. As we tried to find our way, we ran into one of the senior teachers. When he found that we were from Mumbai, he invited us home for a tea and reminiscences of his days in Mumbai. He was a Telugu married to a Khasi. Eventually the conversation turned to Sohra. He seemed to speak with anger about the state of Sohra: how it was being destroyed by people who should have taken care of it. His wife was quiet, but jogged his memory with an occasional word. It seemed to me that they were in agreement, and perhaps some of his vehemence came from their shared experience. I learnt from him how the very hills which make up Meghalaya are disappearing.
The next two days gave us more and more evidence of this despoliation. We passed a place where two streams merged (photo on top). One had clear water, the other was white with the residue of crushed limestone. Near the merger of the streams another hill was being quarried, and trucks were carrying away the limestone. We saw hills being cut away, the residue looking like a half eaten apple (photo above). The limestone is crushed right there before being transported. There are also larger industrial units devoted to making cement using the limestone. It is a matter of time before the hills themselves go the way of the trees which once covered them.
I don’t know enough about Meghalaya to figure out how all this happened. I have no stake in Meghalaya, I was just a visitor. But it would be good to understand how land which is held by the tribe can be treated like this. Is it the tragedy of the commons, or a >subversion of tribal democracy?
Don't hold your breath 