Morboi
There was something about Keshav that drew me to trust him. As he dropped me off at the Shillong marketplace, I stood in the busy one-way street and took a split second decision. “Give me your number!” I yelled in Hindi, over the noise of the traffic. “Tomorrow I want to go to Mawsynram!”.
Keshav’s taxi was called “Death-Race”; the name boldly printed on the top of the windscreen, The car was a black, rickety old Maruti 800cc, covered in decals of dragons and smoke. The insides of the car were all decorated too, complete with stickers and a bass-boosted sound system blasting Tupac and Eminem with Keshav faithfully rapping along.
I was waiting on the road at the meeting point 5 minutes before he had agreed to come and pick me up. After all these years of solo travelling something inside me kept saying I shouldn’t be trusting a stranger with my safety, but I had heard Meghalaya was safe for women, so I waited, and the Death-Race arrived, with a cheerful and smiling Keshav at its helm. I promptly got in,riding shotgun. “Where do you want to go today?”, he asked, almost as excited as I was to be discovering things in Meghalaya. I pulled out my phone and showed him a picture. It was a photo of a rusted, old sign that said “ Wettest Place On Earth”.
Keshav stared at me blankly. His guess was as good as mine, and yet, we both set off towards Mawsynram, hoping we could find the board. Lucky for me Keshav was a polyglot and he’d stop ever so often to ask for directions. He’d show the local the picture, have a linguistic exchange, then the local would look at me, look back at Keshav, gesture towards me, and ask “ Morboi?” and Keshav would respond with “ Morboi.” before driving off. We’d drive in the wrong direction before this would happen again. A police officer. A tribal. A vegetable seller. A construction worker. A passerby.
“Morboi?”
“Morboi.”
It took us around 4 hours of driving aimlessly before a government official pointed us in the right direction. The Public Works Department of Mawsynram. That’s where we would find the board he said, in crystal clear English. “Keep straight and follow the road, and 1 km on the left”, he said to Keshav, then looked at me, then back to Keshav, as he gently gestured with his head towards me and asked “Morboi?”
Keshav nodded and responded, “Morboi”, as he drove off.
I was feeling a little unsettled and was about to say something but as I opened my mouth I saw, shrouded in the clouds and mist, the very thing we had been searching for all day; the board. I couldn’t contain my excitement. I got out of the Death-Race and ran to the board, a measly, rusted thing in the middle of nowhere and asked Keshav to click a hundred pictures of me in front of the board. He was excited too; posing in front of the board, asking me to take pictures. By the time we were done I’d forgotten all that we had gone through to get there.
The day was done, and Keshav was dropping me back to my accommodation. I was content with my discovery, my agenda complete. As I got out of the car I asked Keshav if he’d come back the next day to take me to another place to do a trek. He gladly agreed. I bid him goodbye, and then I suddenly remembered. I yelled out to a Keshav who had almost driven off; he braked and turned, puzzled.
“What does Morboi mean?”
He smiled knowingly.
“Morboi?It means ‘alone’ in Khasi. They were asking me if you’re travelling alone”, and almost sensing my discomfort said “ Don’t worry, here in Meghalaya, we respect women greatly. It is very, very safe for you to travel alone. Nobody messes with our nature, animals, or our women! Bye bye, see you tomorrow!”, and with those words, he drove off.
As I stood there in the middle of the road, I looked around and the sun had set, not a human being in sight. I was morboi.
