Songs of Rain

The first sound that stays with me from Meghalaya is the rain. Not the violent kind that lashes down and leaves you scrambling for cover, but a soft, rhythmic drumming that becomes a kind of music. It began the moment my taxi pulled out of Guwahati and started climbing into the misty hills. The driver, a gentle Khasi man with a smile as steady as the road bends, told me, “Here, rain is not weather. It is life.” I nodded, half-distracted by the fog curling across the highway, not realising then that in a few days I would begin to understand what he meant.

Shillong was my first stop, a city I had long imagined from stories and photographs. Known as the “Scotland of the East,” it was more alive than the postcard image I carried in my head. In the busy Police Bazaar, I found myself swept into a crowd surrounding a band belting out an enthusiastic cover of Bryan Adams. A shopkeeper standing beside me said with obvious pride, “Shillong is our rock capital. Here, everyone has a guitar.” Later that evening, over a plate of jadoh—red rice with pork spiced just enough to bring tears to my eyes—I realised the city had its own rhythm. Shillong moved easily between old colonial traces and a restless, youthful energy that came alive in music, football debates, and the easy laughter of its people.

Leaving Shillong behind, the road pulled me deeper into the East Khasi Hills. The forests grew thicker, the sky narrower, and every now and then a neat village appeared, with flower pots outside wooden homes and children playing football in small clearings. At a roadside shack, I stopped for tea. An elderly woman served me a plate of rice cakes along with the strongest black tea I had ever tasted. She spoke no Hindi and only fragments of English, but we traded gestures and smiles, and in that simple moment I felt less like a stranger and more like a guest.

The highlight of my journey, however, was the trek to the living root bridges. Every traveller to Meghalaya has heard of them, but nothing prepares you for the sense of wonder when you actually step onto one. From the village of Tyrna, I began the descent to Nongriat, home to the double-decker root bridge. Descent is a polite word. In truth, it is a punishing 3,000 steps down a stone staircase carved into the hillside. Within the first half hour, I was out of breath, my knees beginning to ache, and I wondered if this had been a foolish decision. Then, out of nowhere, a boy of no more than eight appeared, skipping down with a basket bigger than himself. Seeing my flushed face, he laughed and said in English, “Aunty, only two thousand more steps!” His mischief gave me the energy to keep moving.

When I finally stood before the bridge, it was like walking into a fable. The thick roots of an ancient rubber fig tree had been coaxed and guided by generations of villagers to stretch across a stream, intertwined into a living, breathing structure. I placed one hesitant foot on it, felt it sway gently, alive under me, and then another. The bridge seemed to whisper with each step, as if reminding me that it was no dead monument but a growing, enduring thing. Children played in the pools below, women walked across with baskets of vegetables, and I sat on the mossy stones in silence, humbled. Later that night, at a small homestay in Nongriat, the electricity flickered and my phone had no signal, but I was given a meal of rice, dal, and fish cooked in bamboo. Around a small fire, the host family told me how these bridges are not for tourists but for life. They take decades to grow strong, and their children will continue to weave the roots just as they had done. It struck me then that these bridges were not just paths across streams but philosophies of patience and continuity.

The next morning, my aching legs carried me further to Rainbow Falls, where sunlight struck the water just right to cast a prism across the spray. On the way back, stumbling on the rocky path, I was steadied by a teenager who walked beside me. “First time?” he asked with a grin. When I nodded, he shrugged and said, “For us, it is the way to school.” His words, delivered so casually, lingered with me long after. What was an adventure for me was daily life for them.

From Nongriat, I made my way to Cherrapunji, long famous as one of the wettest places on earth. Here, the rain was constant, though never cruel. It fell like a curtain, softening the hills, blurring the edges of waterfalls, even calming the noise in my own mind. At Nohkalikai Falls, I leaned against the railing and stared at the cascade thundering into a turquoise pool far below. A guide told me the legend of Likai, the woman whose tragedy gave the falls its name. As the mist soaked my clothes, I thought about how every waterfall in these hills seemed to carry not just water but memory, myth, and grief.

A short journey took me to Dawki, where the Umngot River flowed like a liquid mirror at the edge of the Bangladesh border. The water was so clear that boats looked like they were floating on air. When I leaned over, I could see fish darting like silver flashes beneath us. “They see you too,” the boatman said with a smile. For a while, the world above and below the water seemed to blur, and I wondered if this was what it felt like to step into another dimension.

Back in Shillong for my final days, I wandered through the Lewduh market, where Khasi women sold everything from vegetables to smoked fish to betel nuts. I tried tungrymbai, a fermented soybean dish whose sharp flavour startled me but left me craving more. Nearby, a group of young men argued fiercely—not about politics or cinema, but about football teams. When I said I was from Kolkata, they laughed and teased me about Mohun Bagan and East Bengal, and in that moment, football felt like the common language of India.

One evening, an acquaintance invited me to a small music gathering. The room was strung with fairy lights, and young musicians sang a mix of traditional Khasi songs and English classics. When they asked me to sing, I hesitated, but finally joined in with an old Hindi number. The applause was loud, affectionate, and undeserved, but for a moment, I was not an outsider. I was just another voice adding to the chorus of a night that felt infinite.

On my last morning, the rain returned as if to bid me farewell. I sat on the balcony of my homestay, listening to its steady rhythm on the tin roof. I thought of the bridges that take decades to grow, of the waterfalls that carry legends, of the rivers clear enough to reveal their secrets, and of the strangers whose kindness had turned into memories I would carry home. Meghalaya had not just been a destination. It had been a lesson in patience, resilience, and belonging.

As the taxi wound back toward Guwahati, the driver asked, “So, did you like our land?” I looked at the mist rising from the hills and said, “It’s not just your land anymore. A little piece of it will always be mine, too.”