Pouring rains and duckbacks ( 21)

           It's a cliche to say it doesn't rain but  pours. But it is  literally true here. Not for one or two days  or weeks but for a steady 3 months. You can get used to anything. We wear duckbacks , a confusion of the brandname with the product. It is just a rubber backed raincoat. Where others wear gum boots we make do with our rubber hawai chappals. Appa's irrefutable logic ,  when there is no standing water to walk through why go for those uncomfortable things. We carry our regular black or canvas shoes as the day requires and wear them at school. Yes no standing water , every  drop has drained away to the valleys.

                  If truth be told there is a bus service of sorts. It starts at the Umpling market about half a km on the way. The bus goes through the Nongthymmai market again about half a km from school. We can never be sure when the bus will start, whether it would stop for us  to get down at Nongthymmai or continue on its way to Happy Valley. All for covering just half the distance. And there are the pigs. Yes pigs under the seats. Not for the faint hearted. Unless it is a dire  dire necessity we avoid  the bus.Sometimes we are very lucky. We get to ride in Appa's official jeep .

                  Like every Indian household  we too collect the rain water that runs down our roof. An irony in this place of plenty.  Blame it on the erratic water supply. Not to worry though , we have the Umpling river  running below our garden.

                    With the end of the monsoon in Oct. the colony houses start getting electricity connections. We wait for a month or so and nothing is done for our house. The house owner thinks it is an extravagance. We shift houses two doors  further down. Ah electricity  at home at last . The world seems brighter. We need not go to bed once the sun sets. Occasionally we open our doors to let the clouds play inside our home. Yes it does merit the name Meghalaya that it gets later on. 

                 We visit the lakes inside and outside the city , the usual tourist spots like the Shillong peak, golf grounds,  waterfalls, like sweet falls and elephant falls , we drink in all this  beauty. For shopping  there are the  police and bara bazaar. At bara Bazaar Amma wants to buy bananas. She points at a bunch and gives a rupee to the Khasi lady shopkeeper. We explain the best we can that we want her to cut  a row of about a dozen. Back and forth  the stilted conversation goes on and on  .Then it dawns on us , she means the  whole bunch of  about 6 to 8 dozens costs rupee one. We are often happily surprised like this.

                       It is chilly and it does rain once in a while  and we do have to enter the house from the backyard to avoid dampening the floors, but washings can be hung out sometimes . Better curds and dosa batter fermentations are now possible.  Appa has assembled a hot case. A wooden box with sacks filled with straw. 

                       I proudly talk about this box in class and end up inviting a Punjabi classmate to have dosa at my house on the coming Sunday. How am I to explain this to my parents.

Credit for preserving these go to Amma. Green Lushai dress.