Hills, here and elsewhere

My office window faces north and from here I can see the edge of Calgary's Nose Hill Park. The park is a vast stretch of grassland that has avoided the encroachment of subdivisions and suburbs. A miracle in Calgary. I used to run along the trails on Nose Hill Park when I was a teenager. It is the first place I ran out of my own volition. (Before that I'd only endured the forced marches of Phys-ed class). My hill run began on the pathway behind my house and stretched up through the brown and tan suburbs, underneath busy 14th Street, and up onto the Hill. The pathway ended at a picnic table made ragged by pocket-knife graffiti. Initials added to initials framed in lopsided valentines. The mathematics of teenage lust.

Sometimes, when I was lucky, I saw a young deer at the end of the pathway. I don't know how many times this happened - in retrospect, it couldn't have been often - but I remember it very well. The morning moments with a young deer was the reward for my panting and sweat.

Other things happened on Nose Hill, of course. A parking lot on one edge of the hill, just out of sight from my office window, was called, charmingly, 'Pecker Point'. An archaeology of beer cans and condoms lays beneath the gravel bearing witness to what happened here. There were fires, too, started by careless smoking or illegal fireworks, that often blackened the hill to its edges. Sometimes we could smell the ash in the air from the St. Helena Junior High down the road.

My times on Nose Hill were decidedly more chaste. Just the morning runs and the hope of spotting deer at the picnic table.

I am writing about other hills right now: the Khasi Hills in northeastern India along the border with Bangladesh. The Khasi Hills, of course, have little in common with the dry Calgary park I can see from my window. On the Khasi Hills, moisture from the Bay of Bengal collides into the cliffs and pours down in a rage. These hills endure the world's highest annual rainfall, and Indians come in the dry season to stare over the cliffs and imagine the storms. The rains turn the Khasi Hills into jungle, but Nose Hill is only green in the weeks after a grass fire - a brief transition between the black and brown.

Instead of the white flowers that hang along the Khasi roadside, Nose Hill enjoys a brief blessing of crocus. I remember my kindergarten teacher bringing us onto the hill to see the tiny purple flowers. Mrs. Bloy told us to find a blossom and lay on the grass beside it while she told us the myth behind the Chinook wind. I cannot remember the story, but I remember my puffy winter coat and the feel of the dry grass on my face and the velvet petals of my flower. That day on the Hill remains one of my fondest childhood memories.

I mention it here because I became a father three weeks ago and I'm feeling nostalgic.

After Meghalaya

I’ve just finished my tour of the villages along the Bangladesh border in the Indian province of Meghalaya. This is some stunning landscape: overwhelmingly green with slender betel nut trees, paan vines, rice patties and fruit orchards. Many of the people who live in these areas are known as ‘scheduled tribes,’ India’s official indigenous peoples. Most of the tribes in the area have adopted Christianity with vigour. There are churches everywhere, Bible verses painted on trucks, and statues of Christ along the roadside. Still, some of the old beliefs still persist. Yesterday at the main market in Shillong, a goat was slaughtered and his entrails ‘read’ as an oracle of the year ahead

Traditionally, the official border has meant little to the people who live on the frontier. The villagers here are used to passing freely across the line to sell fruit and betel nut to the Bangladeshis, and the Bangladeshis come north to sell meat, fish and imported kitchenware. Security has tightened in recent years, but India’s Border Security Force soldiers assigned to protect India from ‘infiltration’ are happy enough to let visitors pass through for a small bribe.

But times are changing. India’s entire border with Bangladesh is due to be fenced, and in light of the recent bombings in Gauhati which were blamed on cross-border militants, the government has made fencing a national security priority. Those who live on the borderlands understand this, and are resigned to the coming of the fence, but they disagree with its route.

According to an agreement between India and Bangladesh, no defensive structures can be built within 150 yards of the actual border, or ‘zero line.’ This means that for many villagers, their land will lie on the other side of the fence. For some of them, their homes will be lost. The government promises to build gates to allow access to the fields, and there are rumours of compensation, but no one knows any details. Where will the gates be located? How long will they be opened for and who mans them? Who decides the value of the land that is lost and when is the money paid out?

Also, the villagers worry about the security of their crops. Even now without a fence, villagers assign armed guards to watch over the fields during harvest season to protect against thieves from Bangladesh. Who will protect their crops when the fence is built?

The issue here is the collision of big, national interests with the ‘small’ interests of those who work the land. Big issues like terrorism and infiltration have louder voices than the small landowner who needs to sell his oranges or tend to his rice. I had tea with a village headman whose family home is close to the zero line. He will lose the house if the fence follows the planned route. Even if he is compensated for the house, there is nowhere else to build. He doesn’t know where he will go. “We are not rich people,” he said, “or big landowners. We are labourers. If the fence comes and we lose our land, what are we supposed to do?”

It may be small consolation, but they have plenty of time to consider their options. The newspapers are full of politician bluster about sealing the border quickly, but very little of the fence has been completed. I rode along one border road near Baghmara to see the progress on the fence. In some areas, the posts were up. In other areas the strip of land for the fence was still being flattened. Mostly, though, there was no evidence of fencing at all, and Bangladeshi traders were passing over the line without any problems.

Small black stones on the edges of the rice patties claimed ‘India ends here,’ but only in the quietest of whispers.

The Archers of Shillong

Here are some photos of the daily archery stakes in Shillong. Archers fire arrows across a pitch at a tiny bamboo cylinder while on-lookers lay their bets with bookies around town.






Tomorrow I am on my way to the villages along Meghalaya's border with Bangladesh. It will be a fascinating trip. The fence that India has built along the border is formidable and, according to the Governor of Meghalaya, is important to counter the smuggling of cattle and, especially, the movements of militants across the border.

However, the fence is a hardship for some poor villagers who have always traded with villagers across the line. The fence makes this impossible. I hope to meet with these farmers and write their stories.

A First Look at Meghalaya

In spite of the day’s tragedy, the drive from Guwahati, in the state of Assam, to Shillong, in Meghalaya, was a wonderful one. This is hill country where smart slant-roofed houses line the highway and where the landscape is clean and green. I love the aroma of the forest. It reminded me of the days I spent in a forest monastery in Togo a decade ago. There was that same freshness. The same vegetative sweetness. (Scent memory amazes me). We passed hilltops shrouded by rain-clouds and palm trees reflected in placid lakes. This was my first experience with ‘natural’ beauty on this trip, and after Mumbai and Calcutta, I didn’t realize how much I missed it.

Meghalaya is predominantly Christian, and as we drove into the region the statues of blue Krishna are replaced with white Christ’s, and the tiny roadside stalls selling rice with pig’s blood, a local specialty, outnumber the vegetarian eateries. The people, too, are different. They look more East Asian than Indian. Once we reached Shillong I was impressed with how clean the city was – again, especially coming from Calcutta. And although this is one of the most economically depressed regions of India, there are no beggars on the streets. I wonder why that is.

The nights are cool. Another relief after Calcutta’s and Mumbai’s swelter.