Etilda the Dance

A short story I wrote nearly two decades ago, Anna, I Miss You, was based on a real person named Etilda. Etilda was an elderly Khasi lady who taught at St Joseph’s School, Shillong. When I met her first in the monsoon of 1986, she was in her late 40s or early 50s. I had just joined St Joseph’s as a young teacher. St Jo, as they called it affectionately, was a culture shock for me. I was a total alien there initially with everyone else being a Khasi with the exception of one Punjabi Muslim lady and a Garo young man.

“Bam kwai,” Etilda approached me with a neatly folded betel leaf. “Have kwai” is the meaning of what she said in Khasi language. Kwai is betel leaf with a little lime smeared on it plus a chip of arecanut. It plays a dominant role in Khasi culture. By the way, Khasis are the major tribe in Shillong. Their language is Khasi too. Etilda made sure that I learnt a Khasi word or two almost every day. She also taught me to chew kwai.

When a Khasi dies, they say that the dead person has gone to eat kwai with God. “You can’t be a Khasi without eating kwai,” Etilda chided me mockingly when I refused her offering at first. She had a way of integrating aliens into her fold. I took such a quick liking to her that I learnt the Khasi words she taught me and learnt to chew kwai too. And learnt quite a bit more from Etilda. About life as the story cited above shows.

Khasis love music. For that matter, most of the tribal people of the Northeast have music in their blood. At least a guitar would be found in every house in the Northeast. Music came to them naturally. Looking back at it now, I think that it was a sign of the natural goodness that their cultures carried. I failed to understand that in those days. In spite of Etilda.

Etilda was a dance. She could dance anywhere. She could celebrate anything with a spontaneous dance. She didn’t hesitate to drag me into a dance with her. “Like this,” she would say showing me some movements of the hands and legs. I was like a statue being dragged around by a personification of spontaneity.

I was brought up in a culture that erected formidable barriers between genders. Men were not supposed to touch women, not even one’s sisters or daughters. Etilda taught me that pollination belongs to plants and that humans have a lot of other options in relationships.

“I’m your Shillong mommy,” she said to me. She did treat me like her son though her own sons were younger than me. But our friendship didn’t last long. Such is destiny.

“Shaphang, shaphang…” The school’s young singers were practising a song one day in the staffroom. It was a Khasi song. I sat mesmerised by the mellifluousness of the song. I didn’t understand a word of what they were singing. But I loved to listen to it. Khasi songs in general are really very sweet to listen to even if you don’t understand any line of it. The music is an ecstasy.

“Aage, aage…” Etilda began to translate the lines for me. She didn’t realise that my knowledge of Hindi wasn’t any better than my knowledge of Khasi. I suggested her to translate it into English. “No,” she said, “not possible. The rhythm won’t match. Toward, toward… See, there’s no music in it.”

Etilda was music.

When some good news arrived the school one day, Etilda celebrated it in her usual way. She got up from her seat in the staffroom during the lunchbreak, pulled out a few other teachers too from their seats, and started dancing. “Shaphang, shaphang…”

The dance ended as if the world came to a standstill. Everyone rushed. It took me a while to realise that Etilda had collapsed during the dance.

Etilda never got up after that. Something had snapped in her backbone. Some orthopaedic disorder had been afflicting her and she had ignored it. When I met her next at her home, she was totally bedridden, paralysed from waist down.

“Mr Banerji is not here to give you tea,” she said with her usual smile. I wished I could smile in return. The dancer who could set my heart aflame with an exotic cadence wouldn’t get up on her own feet anymore. 

Mr Banerji was her husband. She always referred to him that way: Mister Banerji. He was of Bangladeshi origin. Shillong had an unfair share of Bangladeshi refugees/migrants and their descendants in those days.

“I miss beef,” Etilda told me as she spread lime on a betel leaf for me. She had not given up the habit of chewing kwai. A spittoon stood by her bed. Mr Banerji wouldn’t cook beef. “Why don’t you bring me some cooked beef next time?” Beef was a staple food of the Khasis.

I agreed though I wasn’t sure whether she would be able to eat the spicy beef of Kerala cuisine. I was already too familiar with the bland Khasi cuisine since I ate my lunch from a Khasi restaurant every day. “I can eat spicy food,” she said reading my mind.

But there was no next time. Etilda didn’t wait for my next visit. She went to eat kwai with her God. One of the nagging regrets of my life was this particular negligence of mine. I should have fulfilled her wish the same day or the next at the most. Some errors can never be rectified.

Dear Reader, this is not a story. Etilda was as real as I was in late 1980s. I will tell you more about those days and Shillong of the time in the coming posts. 

Etilda is second from left in sitting row
I'm second from left in the back row

PS. I'm participating in #BlogchatterA2Z 

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