Shillong

The Khasi Hills were governed for centuries not by a single kingdom but by a set of states, the syiemships, each with an elected chief and a council, and the area that became Shillong lay within the lands of Mylliem and Khyrim. The hills came to British attention in the 1820s and 1830s, when a road was pushed through from the Brahmaputra valley to Sylhet and conflict followed under the Khasi leader Tirot Sing, who resisted for several years before his capture.

The British valued the plateau for its cool climate. A small station grew from the 1860s, and in 1874, when Assam was made a separate province, Shillong became its capital — a hill town of bungalows, churches, a golf course and government offices that was frequently compared to Scotland. Welsh Presbyterian and later Catholic missionaries were central to its growth, giving the Khasi language a Roman script and building the schools that still dominate education here. On 12 June 1897 a great earthquake destroyed much of the town, after which it was rebuilt largely in timber and corrugated iron, a style still visible on its hillsides.

Shillong remained Assam's capital after Indian independence, and the movement for a separate hill state grew through the 1950s and 1960s. Meghalaya was created as an autonomous state in 1970 and a full state in 1972, with Shillong as its capital; Assam moved its own capital to Dispur, in Guwahati. The decades since have brought rapid growth, pressure on the city's water and roads, and periodic tension over migration and land, alongside the emergence of Shillong as the cultural centre of the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo peoples.

Khasi culture shapes everything here, starting with descent: clan names come from the mother, and the youngest daughter customarily inherits the house and cares for elderly parents, while a maternal uncle holds ritual authority. This matrilineal system is unusual in India and is a source of pride and of local debate. Traditional authority still functions through the syiems and their durbars, the village councils, and the Nongkrem festival at Smit is the clearest public expression of it.

The state is overwhelmingly Christian, and church life is central: choirs, Sunday services, wedding and funeral customs, and the lights and carols of Christmas across the hills. Older Khasi religious practice, Niam Khasi, continues alongside, with its sacred groves and seed and harvest rites, and the dance festivals in spring and autumn draw both communities.

Shillong's other reputation is musical. Missionary choral training, army bands and the radio produced a city unusually devoted to guitar music, and its rock, blues and gospel bands are known across India; a celebrated annual concert marks Bob Dylan's birthday. Cafés with live music, church choirs and open-air festivals in the autumn all belong to the same tradition. Football and archery are followed closely, the latter in the form of the daily arrow-shooting tradition of teer. Betel nut, kwai, is offered as a gesture of welcome, English is widely spoken alongside Khasi, and visitors are expected to ask before photographing people or entering a village.

About 143,000 people lived in the city proper at the 2011 census, and considerably more in the built-up area that spreads across the surrounding hills. Government is the largest employer — Meghalaya's secretariat, directorates and public agencies are here — followed by education, with a long list of colleges, the North Eastern Hill University and boarding schools that take students from across the region. Trade through Iewduh, tourism, small businesses and the informal economy account for much of the rest.

Housing climbs the slopes in tin-roofed terraces, and neighbourhoods are organised around localities with their own headmen and councils. Water supply is a recurring difficulty in a city that sits in one of the rainiest regions on earth, because storage and piping have not kept pace with growth; traffic on narrow hill roads is the other daily complaint, along with landslips in the monsoon and the pressure of coal and limestone economies in the districts beyond.

The rhythm is early. Sunrise comes before five in summer, offices and schools start early, the market is busiest in the morning, and shops close by evening; nightlife is modest, with cafés and live music rather than bars. Weekends belong to church, family and drives out to the waterfalls. Migration into the city from the districts, and the politics of residence and land in a state where most land is held under customary tenure, are constant subjects of public discussion.

Khasi food is meat-heavy, lightly spiced and built on rice. Jadoh, the dish most associated with Shillong, is rice cooked with pork and blood until it takes on a deep colour, sold at small stalls with dohjem, offal sausage, fried fish and a fierce chutney of dried chilli and black sesame. Dohneiiong is pork simmered with ground black sesame; dohkhlieh is a salad of boiled pork and sliced onion with chilli and lime; and doh syiar is chicken cooked in similar ways. Tungrymbai, fermented soybean paste cooked with pork fat and ginger, is the most pungent of the local dishes and the one people miss most when away.

Vegetables and rice fill out the meal: local red rice, boiled greens, pumpkin and bamboo shoot, and putharo and pukhlein, steamed and fried rice cakes eaten with tea. Smoked meat and dried fish hang in the market and go into slow stews. Jaintia and Garo dishes appear in the city too, and the Bengali, Nepali, Bihari and Marwari communities have added their own kitchens, so a street in Police Bazar may offer momos, chow, puri and jadoh within a few doors.

The city has a strong tea and bakery culture inherited from the hill-station years, with sweet milky tea, buns and cakes sold from morning. Kwai — areca nut with betel leaf and lime — is chewed constantly and offered as a courtesy. Local rice beer is part of traditional Khasi ritual and hospitality, and cafés in Laitumkhrah and Police Bazar have brought filter coffee and a young restaurant scene to a city that eats early and well.