diary diary

A Bleary-eyed Look into the Past

ated in Laitumkhrah, almost directly opposite the post office, Rajdoot, Yezdi and Bullet and scooters were Lambretta or Ba-
where one could nurse a three-inch glass of ‘jeera pani’, cost- jaj. The booking period for these relics was so long, that those
ing the princely sum of 25 paise, and listen to ‘Smoke on the well-heeled enough to own one had long since graduated and
Water’, ‘Look at Yourself’, ‘Paranoid’ and ‘Foot Stomping moved on when their numbers came up. Cars on the road con-
St. Edmund’s was the his girlfriend. There Music’ till the management got tired and asked one to either sisted of Ambassadors and Fiats that one could book, choosing
college of my choice, were evenings spent leave or buy another ‘jeera pani’. ‘Solomon’s Mine’ was an- any colour, as long as it was black or white. Traffic jams did
mid-1972, in which in that place, in ’72, other such place, popular with the college-going crowd. not happen here because there wasn’t enough traffic to cause
to acquire that ever so when the image of hell Things were a far cry from the entertainment on tap today. a jam. Girlfriends went either to Lady Keane or St. Mary’s,
necessary college de- did not seem as bad as Little did we think then, that we would eventually get to ex- which was then considered the personal fiefdom of Mother
gree. It made as much made out to be. After perience live acts such as Paul D’Ano with AK 47, Scorpions, Anne, who kept the place locked up tighter than Fort Knox.
sense then as it does the initial stage of ‘rag- Sepultura and Eric Martin right here in Shillong. Our live mu- The music we longed ever so much to own then, is available
now – have degree, ging’, however, we set- sic consisted of Blood & Thunder or The Living Dead – ‘Live now, better formatted on CDs and referred to as classic- or
will go places. Intend- tled into the business at at Lady Hydari Park’- belting out covers of Grand Funk Rail- retro-rock, making it sound like something out of the ark.
ing to pursue a B.Com. hand, attending classes, road, The Rolling Stones and so on. That was a blast! Audio cassettes, mostly bootlegged versions, had begun
- something exotic (as often as necessary The movie ‘Woodstock’ was a watershed event for us. It making an appearance but cost an arm and a leg. Short wave
at the time – I called to keep Bro.Vieyra at opened us up to a whole new rad- radio, VOA and the BBC, was
on St. Anthony’s and bay), hanging-out in ical world, in many respects. The the best way to stay in touch with
found the necessary ‘Limo’ (Laitumkhrah), experience of getting to see Jimi the latest releases being market-
opening but without and taking in the bet- Hendrix perform ‘Purple Haze’ ed in the West and the less said
accommodation on ter movies that made and ‘The Star Spangled Ban- about telecommunications the
campus. This was in- an appearance now ner’ and Ten Years After grind better! Calling Guwahati from
convenient, to say the and again at the Kelvin out ‘I’m Going Home’ was so Shillong was a ‘trunk call’ that
One of the older shops in Shillong mind-numbing, we talked about involved contacting an operator
least. St. Edmund’s of- cinema, that went up
fered accommodation, in flames many years little else for months. We grew at the Shillong exchange, book-
at the B.T. Hostel (first choice of nerds) and the New Hostel later. our hair longer, our bell-bottoms ing a call to the required number,
(there was little ‘new’ about it, even in those days) and a ‘shat- Shillong rocks now, but believe me, it rocked then too, got wider and every second guy waiting for any number of hours
tering’ array of courses, B.A. - tick one from: English, History, although the tempo was a little different. was going to Katmandu or Goa and then possibly being told that
to turn-on. Need I add that none A typical picnic at the Barapani Lake then the line was ‘down’ or the person
Economics, Political Science- and B.Sc. - tick one from: Phys- This was the age of flower-power, hippies, long hair, bell-
ics, Chemistry, Botany, Mathematics. That was it! Geography bottoms and hard rock. Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, I knew did. was unavailable – and that did
was too esoteric and computers belonged in the realm of Sci- Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep, Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, Pink We take so much for granted now. There is music, 24x7, not cost 25p, let me hasten to add. Another method of com-
ence Fiction. Caught between a rock and a hard place, I aban- Floyd, and Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention were on World Space, satellite and cable channels viewed on LCD munication used to be the ‘telegram’, a short-as-possible-mes-
doned the idea of a B.Com and chose the New Hostel with the flavours of the time. Yes, we were first generation ‘head- television sets, digital music systems from tiny iPods to sage, to keep the cost down, sent to one’s parents, let’s say,
B.A. (Economics) – accommodation: check; degree: locked bangers’, and every second guy, with three and a half chords house-demolishing high wattage stereos which enhance lis- telling them to pick one up at the home station on one’s arrival
in. I was on my way to big bucks in the ‘company’ of Milton, and some cheesy riff, was a Hendrix, Clapton or Page wan- tening pleasure and mobile phones or e-mail for instant con- from college. These telegrams often arrived at their destina-
Keynes and Galbraith! nabe. nections to anybody, anywhere, with whom you might feel the tions, but very often on the day one was due to leave for col-
St. Edmund’s consisted of mostly Assam-styled, single- A favourite haunt then, was the house of a friend opposite sudden urge to communicate. It is common now for students lege after having spent ten days at home. Yes, mobile phones
floored buildings and the fields were unfenced. NEHU was in Ward’s Lake, where we’d hang out, for hours on end, listening to go to classes on bikes, dressed in anything from denim to and e-mails were figments of an active imagination.
its infancy and we were the ‘guinea pigs’. The trees, thank- to imported ‘LPs’ (those one-foot-in-diameter, grooved, circu- leather and, possibly, have their girlfriends/boyfriends present It was a good time to be in Shillong – laid back and re-
fully, are still there, older but just as lovely. The canteen, run lar thingies) on a turntable wired up to a monophonic Ahuja on campus. laxed. Oh, we got on with the jobs that needed doing but not
by old Jumuna, has been replaced with a sturdier construction. amplifier of dubious quality and a questionable assortment of We walked to wherever we had to get and wore terry- at the hectic pace that seems so characteristic now. That, I sup-
I cannot recall the number of times we were thrown out of speakers, all of which together, produced a barrage of sound cot. Jeans were an imported luxury and the ones we saw were pose, is what progress is all about – getting more done in less
there and back into class by Br. Vieyra and his dog, Lassie. that tickled us no end, but would mortify the music aficionado those on celebrity behinds in movies or on those lucky mates time. However, as Jethro Tull puts it: “Life’s a long song” so
What goes on in class now, I’m sure, went on then so I will not of today, who probably has a 3000+ watt Sony ensemble com- who had relatives abroad. Leather jackets were items worn “Let’s go living in the past” but only, occasionally.
dwell on this, but I do recall being rounded up one day, with plete with DVD, surround sound and what-else-have-you! strictly by cows and their ilk. Bikes came in the form of the Errol A. Morehead
other ‘freshers’, and told, that we must enroll in the N.C.C. Get this. HMV and Polydor were record companies that
This, we were informed, was entirely voluntary, but anybody ruled the roost in those days and their idea of a good time
not doing so would have his name removed from the college was listening to the likes of James Last! If you haven’t heard
roll. Yes, this was a democracy, even then. of him, you have missed nothing. The Modern Book Depot, For comfortable and affordable stay at Shillong
The New Hostel consisted of two wings: the right wing then situated opposite the spot where the fountain now spouts
Contact:

Hotel Koshi Niwas

and the wrong wing. The weird people resided in the right in Police Bazaar, was a place frequented much because we
wing; other people occupied the wrong wing. I shared a right had a connection that allowed us free access to the books,
wing room, in which one couldn’t swing a cat without doing magazines and the music available there. Here we discovered,
it major damage, with two others, both of whom had been in among other gems, Zappa’s ‘200 Motels’, released by an ex- * Room Tariff from Rs. 275 to Rs. 575
school with me. This was a great help, in those early days as a ecutive, probably high on ‘pot’ at the time, from one of the Hira Market
* All Rooms connected with cable TV
hosteller, when we ‘freshers’ were considered fair game for ev- aforementioned record labels. Thana Road * 24 hours running hot and cold water
ery ‘senior’ with an inflated ego and, perhaps, a problem with ‘City Service’ in the mid-seventies’, was a hang-out, situ-
Shillong – 793 001 * Complimentary News Papers and
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August 08 Bed tea 3