The Times of India, May 28, 2019
The story of Nongriat, a small rural village on the outskirts of Meghalaya, continues in dramatic fashion. The village, once known for its rice terraces and betel farms, has suffered repeated years of crop failure, but more interesting is the steady stream of disappearances that have become almost monthly occurrences in the past year.
The local river has become the hotspot for these disappearances, most recently involving a seventeen-year-old Bhabrih, who hasn’t been seen in 1 month after venturing on a rebellious stroll next to the river.
Comments and Reddit subgroups circulating online have concluded that the area is cursed and haunted. Several tourists have uploaded footage showing movement within the abandoned sacred grove north of the village. Authorities have dismissed the clips as clear fabrications.
“This is what happens when desperate times mix with stubborn old superstition,” a district official stated during the interview after the case of Bhabrih was first reported. “We are doing our best to find the girl, and we are working even harder to find ways to stop these accidents from happening in our little, quaint town.”
Many younger residents agree.
“All my condolences to all the victims' families, but come on, there are no spirits,” said one villager interviewed outside the local church. “People here just want something to blame.”
Over the last 50 years, Khasi rituals and practices in Nongriat and the entire state of Meghalaya have practically disappeared due to widespread religious conversion and attempted urbanization. The village’s sacred grove, once strictly protected from logging and development, now sits partially cleared beside an unfinished road project abandoned in 2018. Older residents point out that the timeline of the sacred grove destruction matches perfectly with when the accidents began, and they refuse to believe it is a mere coincidence.
The government is now gathering resources for a possible relief plan, but given the extreme isolation from major cities and the scale of other political issues, these plans have been delayed.
My father quietly folded the newspaper and chucked it onto the couch. Conflict brewed within his tired eyes. I was terrified to see his gaunt frame barely holding up his blue-collar shirt.
The town seemed to be in a tug-of-war with itself, wrestling with modernization and innovation while remaining so reliant on nature.
The town feels empty, all life drained from the half-dirt, half-graphite roads, all remnants of my home stripped to its barest, most sterile form. I haven’t made up my mind about these sudden shifts, but ever since the beginning of this year, my heart has been slowly drifting away, lost.
The church bells still rang every Sunday morning, but the sacred grove sat abandoned, treated like a stigma, unapproachable. Children climbed its branches on drunken dares. Empty beer bottles gathered beside the roots, creating a chilling and poetic installation.
These days, I was always up the earliest in our house; I always seemed to be jolted awake, restless. I would rise from my bed right as the sun peeked over the horizon. One morning, as I stretched and yawned my way to the kitchen, I spotted a hunched figure sticking out from the field. I realized with a startle that it was my grandmother. I watched, frozen and dumbfounded, as she bent down with effort in her old age and weathered state, row after row, column after column, immersed in an endless field of grey, green, and yellow.
For a few weeks now, I have quietly watched my grandmother from inside the house, as she strolled through the rice fields every morning at an excruciatingly slow pace, a small whisper carrying across the open landscape. I watched in admiration tinged with an overwhelming sense of guilt. I should stop her. Why can’t I make myself stop her?
As the weeks went by, I thought I began to see the field become ever so slightly greener, though it could just be a figure of my imagination.
1 month after the Times article hit the papers, my grandmother passed away. I sobbed endless streams of tears in my bedroom. It was my fault; I could have stopped her, I should have… Her determination had entranced me, made me forget my duties as a grandson. I saw the green of the fields drained away, but every other color was also peeled away from my world, leaving a grey, dark void.
My father stopped looking out the window at the failing fields. I saw him push down his feelings and bury himself in other work, despite the rasping coughs that rattled his chest and my heart. One morning, he collapsed in my arms.
There was no worse smell than that of a hospital, sterile yet filled with an indescribable stench. The doctors identified crippling malnutrition, and at the same time, I diagnosed myself with self-pity and utter uselessness.
As if the house could feel emptier and colder after my grandmother's death, even the warmth that I carried in with me dissipated in one swift poof.
I don’t know what drove me to walk into my grandmother's old room, but the next thing I know, a familiar scent wafted towards me, and I felt a single tear slide down my cheek at the familiar combination of smoke, cinnamon, and wet soil.
I reached for the picture still propped on the bedside table, a thin layer of dust caking untouched remnants.
I couldn’t bear to look into her wrinkled auburn eyes. Small pieces of parchment behind the picture caught my eye. My hands trembled as I reached over and unfolded them.
The pages were covered in my grandmother’s uneven handwriting, old Khasi phrases woven between instructions for planting and harvest cycles.
One phrase appeared over and over again in the margins beside sketches of rice stalks,
Suddenly, I remembered her soft voice drifting through the fields at dawn.
So all those mornings, she had whispered to every single little sampling in the field, urging it to bloom, to thrive.
I laughed bitterly at myself then.
Was I really about to waste my time on the age-old traditions?
But desperation stripped away all sense of rationality and humor.
Before dawn the next morning, I gingerly carried the manuscripts into the fields; they felt as if they would crumble into dust within my shaking hands
Fog clung low against the terraces. The village still slept around me, silent except for reverberating birdsong. For a small moment, the village was at peace.
I crouched beside the brittle rice stalks.
For a moment, the words clogged my throat. Then I was jolted back to my father keeling over in my arms, as my teachers dripped gently onto his aging face.
And quietly, awkwardly, I repeated the words my grandmother had written.
Somewhere behind me, bamboo creaked.
I ignored it and continued, strolling in the same deliberate yet slow pace manner, my voice increasing in desperation as well as conviction with each passing repetition.
Somewhere in the middle of my recitation, my voice had steadied itself, and I became carried away even as the town woke up around me.
Finally, I stopped, out of breath.
The hills were perfectly still.
Yet that creaking sound returned: slow, rhythmic groaning from the direction of the sacred grove.
I shook with anticipation
Nothing happened,
My throat tightened.
I crumple to the ground on my knees
“I don’t know if anyone can hear this, ” I whispered. “But my father is sick. We are hungry. Please…”
The words dispersed like breath into the cold morning air.
Then, I noticed movement spreading across the terraces.
Tiny insects.
Dozens of them.
Beetles, dragonflies, pale moths clinging to stalks that had stood empty for months.
Life.
Returning.