Incidentally, don’t be surprised if you find so many places named “Um” (Umroi, Umsning, Umdihar) and “Maw” (Mawphlang, Mawsynram, Mawlai) as you drive around the Khasi Hills. “Um” means water and “Maw” stone or rock. My favourite spot on the drive, and that of anybody who often does the 150 km journey from Guwahati to Shillong, however, is the highway stop of Nongpoh, where earnest young Khasi women still serve round the clock jingbam (snacks) and meals through the day. These shops are still decorated with hanging, locally grown, pineapples, papayas and bananas, and the prices are still from another, innocent era. A meal of rice, pork, fish, chicken and lai-patta, the delectable, local mustard leaf, for four, for a total of 86 rupees, and the offer of a tip is blushingly declined.

Some other things haven’t changed. On the three-hour Kingfisher flight direct from Mumbai to Guwahati, I chat with Sharon Pariat, a brilliant entrepreneur with a criminal psychology degree from NIMHANS in Bangalore, with experience of having worked with the UN in Bosnia and Eritrea and now building on an already flourishing business in Muga silk (unique to Assam, a gloriously golden thread) weaves and Meghalaya turmeric which, she tells me, has three-four times more of the magical medicinal ingredient, curcumin, than turmeric grown elsewhere in the country. And she is all of 33. Born to an Assamese tea planter father and a Jaintia mother, she obviously carries the mother’s second name, as is the local custom. Her business card says her home is called “Trillian House”. What is Trillian, I ask. It’s her grandmother’s name, she tells me, and asks, don’t you remember Shillong names? Million, Billion, Trillion?

... contd.