The last time I visited Shillong was as an infant, way back in 1957, headed there with my mother and 2 older sisters, off to join my father who was in those days posted in the North-East. As my mother tells it, on her own at 30 with 3 small children, by train from Ujjain to Nagda by metre gauge, Delhi to Barauni by broad gauge, change to metre gauge again for Guwahati which in those days also included a crossing at some point by steamer, and then since my father had moved suddenly to Nagaland and onwards and there was nobody to receive her, she found some helpful “local” people at the railway station who organised everything including a “known to them” taxi for her to Shillong where again with some help from more local people she met at Paltan Bazaar, she hired accommodation with an Andhra-Khasi couple and settled in to wait for my father to return from “somewhere in the North-East” which we later on learnt was probably outside the Indian border.

The operative part of this part of the blog is the way people known and unknown stepped in all over India to help a young women and her 3 small children in 1957. We are talking about 10 years after Independence, and the realities then, especially with communications.

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Fast forward to 2016. My mother lies unwell in her bed in Delhi, and moving in and out of memories of the past, tells me how much Shillong was a part of my early formative years. Of the hugely friendly people she met and made friends with. Of how her own brother met a fine young lady thereabouts and got married to her giving our post-Partition refugee family one of the earliest members by marriage from another part of New India. And how much she wishes I should go there with my children and grandchildren. She gives me some names and addresses and one day, just like that, the stars fall in place and we head for Shillong.

Our flight from Delhi to Guwahati takes off early morning, full of happy people, chattering away in a vast melange of languages. If you take a port side seat, then that may well be the high point of the journey as the Himalayan ranges especially Mount Everest come into view about half an hour before Guwahati, above the clouds.

My wife and I along with our daughter, son-in-law, son and 2 year old grandson arrive at Guwahati’s Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport from different parts of the world. I have travelled all over the country and seen many airports therein, let’s just say that most have been better, and leave it at that. The approaches to Guwahati from our aircraft porthole are very pretty and Assam looks so inviting.

Outside the airport there appear to be three lanes of through passage which appear to be set aside for VVIPs, VIPs and sundry others, as I am informed later on by the Airport Manager. She almost makes me feel guilty for not being a VIP and therefore being a drain on AAI resources. Crossing each lane, with security type and other vehicles pelting past apparently trying to run over pedestrians, is the first hurdle we face. After the smelly toilets, that is, and the smell of bad maintenance everywhere including the deathlike rattle from the baggage carousel.

Once we reach the parking lot, we find it close to impossible to negotiate the gravel and broken stones with recalcitrant baggage trolleys so we ask our helpful Khasi driver to bring the car nearer, at a point in the parking lot which has some proper surface. He does so, and as soon as he stops the car, a man in an Assam Home Guards uniform plunks a filthy portable hand-written NO PARKING sign in front of the car, gives us a general leer, his friends under a nearby tree leer some more at the women, and then clamps the front wheel of our car.

Our driver protests, we start loading the car, my grandson and the others are tired after long early morning flights from Dubai, Mumbai and Delhi, all the joys of seeing the beautiful Himalayas are forgotten as the AHG gent demands Rs 100 in cash to remove the clamp. Something in me snaps, and I refuse to bow to this daylight robbery in an AAI parking lot, so off I go to the Airports Authority of India duty manager’s office.

At the AAI office a stubborn and unhelpful looking lady makes an appearance after about half an hour of making me wait outside in the sun. She refuses to listen, so I say, OK, this sounds like extortion of the worst nature because there are women and an infant boiling away in the car, so cut a receipt and give me the complaint book. She cuts a receipt for Rs 500 and literally throws it in my face and then refuses to give me the complaint book. The Assam Home Guard gent, meanwhile, in an aside to others which I catch as I can understand since I have also grown up in East and North-East India, speaks darkly about how tourists to Meghalaya are taking away business from Assam. He then changes his tone to me and says in Hindi that if people like me don’t pay a simple Rs 100 to him then how will they survive, their salary is only a few thousand, and continues to wheedle me for a tip for being helpful in getting the clamp removed.

We get back to the parking lot, get the clamp removed, but Guwahati Airport scams are not done as yet. Another set of fine gentlemen at the exit gate sporting an advertisement for KFC demand a toll fees of Rs 50 from us. Is this a toll, I ask the driver, no, he tells me, the only toll is on the Highway between Guwahati and Shillong, this is just a demand from tourists. The toll fee gentlemen swear retribution, and sure enough, a few metres away, another group of men sporting advertisements for a local builder it seems, tell me that either I pay a parking fee with a receipt from AAI of Rs 85 or I pay the private toll of Rs 50.

I give the exit gate gent who is sporting an advertisement for Kentucky Fried Chicken on his temporary office a Rs 100 note and get back a receipt for Rs 60 and Rs 15. What about the rest, I ask him, and he says “service tax”. Behind me, the infant grandson is getting restless, other cars are beginning to honk, and so I tell my driver, let’s go, let’s get out of this scam ridden airport, let’s get to Meghalaya.

It only gets better. Much better. Once we enter Meghalaya, that is.