And We Will Kill Winter

Its June in Shillong and I still am a nondescript poet, some Nabanita Kanungo living in a place that is truly and anomalously called 159 Relief and Rehabilitation Colony at times and 159 Rynjah Refugee Colony, at others. The feeling is close to when you came from school as a child, drenched in rain and wanted to get rid of your wet clothes as soon as possible and sit by the mellow heat of the chawlah, but you could not because the coal had selectively run out of stock on that particular day and there was no one to get it from the market.Then you thought dearly of the heater to realise that there was no electricity. I failed to get through to JNU the year before. They said that it is the best place to study social sciences, before I left for Delhi. I came back to find the same people telling me that JNU was not worth it; it has its own 'agenda'. I started working as a peon in one of the projects in the North-Eastern Hill University for a temporary period of two months. It gave me an illusive picture of being employed. I then appeared for the entrance test for the Ph.D programme there and was thankful that they had passed me. It felt like a favour then. An MA gold medalist of a charitable institution, strangely it felt good and bad that it felt good.I remember vividly that someone who told me with a cluck of his tongue that there was no other way but to take me in, since I was 'their' gold medalist. I also remember having gone with my son (he is a friend, the only)to Heritage, a palace turned luxury hotel, for some brandy. We needed to celebrate.That was last year.This year, I got a job as a lecturer in the college that I had studied in. Sooner than I had got in,i was asked to leave because the state government objected to the appointment of a non-native.Nothing has changed in Shillong. So what does one do? One blogs bad blogs. perhaps because there is a simple assurance that here its you selling your secrets and not your acquaintances. The divide between me and many of my erstwhile friends and teachers seems indissoluble for now. I still cannot stop loving Shillong, that old lady who sells oranges, her kwai-disfigured mouth, the daisies in her hair. But I have my son, a native who listens to me when I blabber endlessly. He asks me questions like,"How do you feel now? I mean... deep inside your heart?" and that is all I need.