Gastronomic Adventures in Shillong

Debanjali Banerjee

Shillong, home of the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo tribes, is a marriage of dissimilar cultures living in harmony since ages. Nestled in the eastern Khasi hills, Shillong is blessed with a temperate climate, which attracts tourists by the herd, every season. And like all other towns spread across every nook and corner of India, the Meghalaya capital too has its own gastronomic identity, or the lack of it.

Pork curry is a delicacy in the North East

I landed in Shillong for the first time in 2006. The cab ride to the town from Paltan Bazaar in Guwahati took over four hours. The chaotic Paltan Bazaar, will remind you of Kolkata’s very own Koley Market in Sealdah, complete with a railway station, auto-rickshaw stand and transport to other parts of the town and beyond. Furtive glances greet you, courtesy your looks, clothes, luggage and the lost expression that has ‘tourist’ written all over it. Paltan Bazaar is also the biggest wholesale market in the whole of North East where you get fresh fruits and vegetables. The oranges and apples tasted different. They were bigger and sweeter than the ones you get in Kolkata. They were pure mountainous fruits with no artificial chemical or colour.

We stopped midway for lunch at what remotely resembled an eating joint. There were no better options available. The vegetable thali was the only menu and consisted of rice, daal, aloo bhaja, mixed vegetable and papad. The rice was as coarse as it could be, reminding you of the stuff eaten by the subjects of torturous zamindars in Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay novels. It was also a grim pointer to the depravity which is so common in the whole of North East. The aloo bhaja, cut in cubes, was dripping with oil and was a health freak’s worst nightmare. The daal was seasoned with sugar instead of salt. The mixed vegetable was the only decent item on the platter. But you can’t identify its ingredients because they were all grown locally. They couldn’t afford to bring the familiar ones from Paltan Bazaar because of the expenses involved. Food preferences of Bengalis, who also formed the bulk of tourists to Shillong as anywhere in India, were not much important to the locals. Anadi Ghosh, our cab driver, promised of ‘familiar’ (read better) food once we reached Shillong.

And he was right. You do get Bengali food in Shillong which is much better than the ones you get in other hill stations like Darjeeling, Kalimpong and others. I, for one, wanted to taste local cuisine and Ghosh took us to places that served the Indian (or Kolkata) version of Chinese. I was disappointed with the unavailability of cheap momos that you get in other nearby hill stations.

The next day, on my way to Cherrapunji, Ghosh appraised me of all that he knew about the eating habits in Shillong. The rich and affluent, who own hotels or land, live in bungalows on the outskirts of the city. They buy most of the fresh products that comes from Paltan Bazaar. Pork and crab are their favourites. The middle class owns small shops and cabs (the black and yellow Maruti 800). Beef stew and rice, the equivalent of the Bengali machher jhol and bhaat, is their staple. The poor, and you find them in overwhelming majority in the whole of North East, have the most interesting eating habits. Their everyday meal consists of rice with tea. Not the tea that we know of but more of a watery liquid which looks like green tea.  They season it with both salt and sugar and add honey if they can afford. Fresh honey, for the record, is available at the Cherrapunji Ramakrishna Mission. It’s not refined but is definitely delicious. On special occasions like weddings, they cook liver, intestines, bones and fat of the humble pig that elites won’t even buy for free.

Mawsynram, 65km from Shillong and reportedly the wettest place on earth, is one of the most gastronomically deprived places in India. Even a cup of tea is a luxury here and there’s only one tea shop near the Shiva temple. It tasted much like green tea and had a distinct honey flavour. It was refreshing nonetheless.