Songs of Rain

From Shillong's music and football to Nongriat's living bridges and Dawki's glassy waters, Meghalaya offers stories woven with rain, kindness, and timeless wonder; write Vinod K & Manjit P

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The first sound that stays with me from Meghalaya is the rain. Not the violent kind that lashes down and leaves you scrambling for cover, but a soft, rhythmic drumming that becomes a kind of music.

It began the moment my taxi pulled out of Guwahati and started climbing into the misty hills. The driver, a gentle Khasi man with a smile as steady as the road bends, told me, “Here, rain is not weather. It is life.” I nodded, half-distracted by the fog curling across the highway, not realising then that in a few days I would begin to understand what he meant.

Shillong was my first stop, a city I had long imagined from stories and photographs. Known as the “Scotland of the East,” it was more alive than the postcard image I carried in my head. In the busy Police Bazaar, I found myself swept into a crowd surrounding a band belting out an enthusiastic cover of Bryan Adams.

A shopkeeper standing beside me said with obvious pride, “Shillong is our rock capital. Here, everyone has a guitar.” Later that evening, over a plate of jadoh—red rice with pork spiced just enough to bring tears to my eyes—I realised the city had its own rhythm. Shillong moved easily between old colonial traces and a restless, youthful energy that came alive in music, football debates, and the easy laughter of its people.

Leaving Shillong behind, the road pulled me deeper into the East Khasi Hills. The forests grew thicker, the sky narrower, and every now and then a neat village appeared, with flower pots outside wooden homes and children playing football in small clearings. At a roadside shack, I stopped for tea.

An elderly woman served me a plate of rice cakes along with the strongest black tea I had ever tasted. She spoke no Hindi and only fragments of English, but we traded gestures and smiles, and in that simple moment I felt less like a stranger and more like a guest.