Under A Cloud

By SONIA FALEIRO
Here’s someone with imagination, resilience, and a singular proclivity for extreme moisture and brittle cold. A man who chased a story about the monsoons (apologies to Alexander Frater); who can brandish an umbrella as well as he can wield a pen; who not only stayed in a town where it rains without respite for three months, but proceeded a soggy step ahead, and visited the nearby village of Mawsynram which gets even more inundated by this glorious phenomenon.

Binoo K John’s exploration follows the now obsolete memoirs of missionaries and British officials, and of Nigel Jenkins’ 1995 narrative of travel among the Khasis, which is well due an update. After a classic Rajdhani ride from Delhi to Guwahati, John encounters the people whose anarchic behaviour no longer enthuse even newspaper editors. A protest march by Prafulla Kumar Mahanta in Guwahati; Independence Day in Shillong — chill with a military presence rightly anticipating an anti-national attack — and the hopeless- ness exuded by a community unable to fulfil its destiny of being the best it can, appears to set a tone for the tale. Despair, confusion, wonder. Hand quivering, heart thudding anticipation. All the ingredients of a good thrilling ride.

(Once John actually reaches Cherapunji, however, this theme changes. A certain sense of sameness absorbs the narrative. There are repetitive descriptions of women of ‘‘heart stopping beauty’’ and of natural attractions, which inject an unfortunate government guidebook/boyish fantasy tone to his account.)

But John began his journey determined to find intriguing strands for his story, and in his descriptions of Denis Rayen — whose ambition is to sustain a luxury resort in Cherra — and of Pintoo, a peon who earns Rs 120 a month to measure the highest rainfall in the world, he does succeed. Such tales are the reason armchair travellers lunge for the latest in the travel section, but in this work they are simply too few and far between.

(courtesy: The Sunday Express)

(Binu K. John is a New Delhi journalist from Kerala. 'Under a Cloud' is published by Penguin India. You can find this book at Amazon)