The natural vegetation of Shillong is a treat to watch, a beauty to imbibe and an experience to relive every time you step into the green outdoors. It has been less than a month and I have already been to a lot of trips enjoying the clear blue skies, lush green lands, mountains and valleys, cloud covered lanes and the crystal clear waterfalls. But this one trip to the sacred forests of Mawphlang organized by our own faculty at IIM Shillong was expected to be something completely different. I hadn’t heard of this place before until our professors told us that it has a sacred power associated with it, a power which hurts anybody who tries to hurt it. There have been stories that people who have disturbed the ecology of these forests have suffered from illness thereafter and some have even died! Though the stories didn’t captivate me much but I was quite excited to undertake this trip as it would be a ‘date with nature’ as described by our professors. And what made it even more interesting were the ground rules set by them, which said that we weren’t supposed to carry any packaged food, no cell phones, no ipods and most importantly we weren’t supposed to utter a single word while inside the forests. That looked like quite a difficult task but as I could see the sole motive was to make each one of us experience and appreciate God’s biggest gift to humanity – The nature.
We started at 5 a.m. in the morning and reached Mawphlang by 6 a.m. When we got down from our buses all we could see were unending green grasslands covered with fog as far as our sight could go. I was wondering, weren’t we supposed to go to a forest. After walking for a few kilometers on the green carpet, we finally reached the coveted place. It was like a big porous green wall which we were about to break into. Standing on the fog covered grasslands on one side and looking at the entrance of the dense green forest on the other, it reminded me of some fantasy world like Narnia. Curious and excited, without further thoughts, I stepped into it with my friends. And mesmerizing would be too small a word and too short of an emotion for what I experienced thereafter.
Few of the local Khasi people accompanied us in our journey, to brief us about the forest and its history but more so to guide us with the path, since without them we sure would have got lost in the greens. The first time we stepped into the forest, we couldn’t stop praising this scintillating piece of natural beauty. The floor was covered with a thick layer of dried leaves which helped us walk through the turns and slopes in the forest. The trees acted as our ceiling protecting us from the light drizzle and allowed only small streaks of sunlight to reach us. When we looked up, it felt as if a source of light was trying to enlighten us in this divine place and it rightly managed to do so. The freezing streaks of water were playing music which we had never heard before and the tall green trees were bending over to talk to us, it was literally a date with nature full of romance and intimacy. The chirping of birds further added to the perfect desirable ambience. It was one of those moments when you want time to stop. I wondered how life has evolved, something which was a part of our routine few generations back has become a vacation now. I wished I could go back to that generation and continue to live this vacation forever, if only that could happen.
Our journey was refreshing and by no means easy. People slipped but got up, were tired but walked on, cribbed but continued to laugh. It was as if we were willingly trapped in a green maze and the fact that we will somehow manage to come out was the only motivation as well as the only deterrent. When it all got over and we were back on the grasslands, it was a moment of achievement for all of us, an achievement to have finally been able to understand nature. Our trip was named immersing into the greens and it was literally so. And though the time has passed and its memories continue to linger, something which will remain with us forever is the sense of responsibility for preserving this nature in where so ever we are and by what so ever we can. I wasn’t sure if it was the end of a beginning or the beginning of an end for me.
