Posts Tagged Meghalaya

My dear friend and co-traveller Babitha has written a beautiful piece on our Meghalayan trip. There’s a toggle key on the right corner which will zoom the slides. I guess this requires flash player.

Traveling in the Garo region of Meghalaya in 2007. Kids from Bangladesh immigrant families just gathered around to see what I’m doing with the camera! The pink Barbie girl started posing with her orange chicks, suddenly when her friend felt that’s not fair she getting all the attention. He soon appeared with his rabbit ready to pose, all serious!

Locally known as Simsang, the river starts from the nokrek peak in Meghalaya and falls in to Bangladesh. On the banks of Simsang near the village Siju where we spent an evening chasing stars.

Sengchi and I searched for almost an hour to find this place in Shillong where Teer (Archery) game takes place daily. Since we missed the first daily event at 4.15pm, we decided to catch the second event at 5.15 pm. We ran across some slum areas to reach there atleast 10 minutes in advance, finally reached the venue just in time when the archers almost began aiming. I couldn’t judge the place or event with my fainted breath!  In 5 minutes everything was over and the result was published in another 5 minutes.

“Teer is a game, played with passion, in Meghalaya. It is a betting game and comprises archers on the one hand, and, on the other, persons who place their bets on the results, much like in horse-racing.A group of archers take aim at a target, called a skum, made of bamboo slats tied into a bundle and approximately four feet in height. Within 180 seconds the archers shoot their allotted quota of arrows at the target placed at a distance of approximately a hundred and fifty feet. If, out of a total of a thousand arrows, eight hundred and fifty implant themselves into the skum, the designated number for the shoot for the day is fifty. In other words, only the last two digits are taken into account.

One can bet against any number from double zero to 99. For instance, in this example, for the number 50, if one places rupees one thousand; in return one receives two thousand, that is double the stakes. Both as a pastime and as a sport, teer has become a part of the ethno-social identity of the Khasis.”

The faces may not strike much sense to us except that they are all from Meghalaya. They represent 4 major tribes from Meghalaya Garo, Khasi, Jaintia and Dravidians. They have their origins from the Tibets, East asian khmers and South asian dravidians respectively. Thay all speak different languages and dress differently.

Some of these pictures are published here.