Dear Reader,My recent trip to Meghalaya yielded a series of surprises. First, there was Shillong, which, in my novel-fuelled imagination, has always been a wee hill town with picturesque bungalows, lonely bends, creeping mists, and constant rain. What I saw instead was a traffic-choked, tourist-stifled, high-rise-defaced metropolis that is expanding rapidly, eating up what is left of the hills in whose folds it is lodged. It was hot and humid—the daytime temperature had a real feel of 40 degrees Celsius.Second, there was Cherrapunji, the erstwhile wettest place on earth. During our trip, the sun blazed fiercely there. The dry weather was broken by short bursts of showers, which left it steaming. Maybe what we are experiencing is the El Niño effect, which will eventually wane, I told myself. But the fear that the change is long-term, that global warming is altering the very character of places, would not go away.Unlike these two, the third surprise was pleasant. It involved the realisation that women are more visible than men in this State. Most of the shopkeepers, homestay owners, porters, and waiters were women, working tirelessly but also chatting and laughing with one another during breaks. The result: the constant feeling of being watched that dogs women wherever they go in any Indian city, especially in the North, vanished in a trice. It was a liberating experience. In my touristy enthusiasm, I concluded that the women of Meghalaya—the majority of them belonging to the matrilineal Khasi tribe—are more empowered than those in the rest of India. I was wrong, of course.Writer and political commentator Patricia Mukhim, who is also the editor of The Shillong Times, opened my eyes to the reality. She said in an email: “One of the biggest misconceptions outsiders have is that in a matrilineal system women get to decide their own lives and those of others in the society around them. This is a myth. The only positive is that women, if they choose, can get into small businesses—the markets of Meghalaya are indeed women-dominated. But, in most cases, what matriliny translates into is that women are holding their families together as single mothers. That is why I have always said that in Khasi society, matriliny is a social system with a very strong patriarchal worldview.”In matriliny, lineage is derived from the maternal side, which means that children carry the clan name of their mother. The youngest daughter inherits the ancestral property, and parents reside with her until their death. Mukhim said: “Parents having more than one property usually share it with their other children too—both boys and girls. In a society that is increasingly getting poorer, families with properties are dwindling. It would be fair to say that the youngest daughter often inherits liabilities left behind by her parents.“Matriliny is often misunderstood as matriarchy, where decisions in a family are taken by women. In the Khasi matrilineal society, divorce and abandonment are common. Cohabitation (when a couple choose to live together) is accepted by society and children born out of that union are considered legitimate. The problem arises when the man decides to leave the woman. Because of matriliny, the custodianship of the children remains with the mother, not the father. Most men don’t look back once they have left their former wife/partner, and the children become the sole responsibility of the mother. This is a common feature that has resulted in several single-parent (mother) households, adding to the existing poverty.”Mukhim explained how access to power, in Meghalaya and elsewhere, is determined by privilege. “While women who are well placed and come from stable families are able to make their own life choices—such as career choices or the choice of partners—others who are not so fortunate are pushed into taking many decisions that are shaped by their pecuniary circumstances.“In terms of educational opportunities, parents have never discriminated against daughters. They give sons and daughters equal opportunities. But in rural Meghalaya, there is a high drop-out rate—again, a result of poverty. Young boys aged 10-12 are seen herding cows and sheep in order to add to the family income. Hence, matriliny works differently for different families depending on their ranking in terms of wealth.”***The last stop on our trip was Nongjrong, a quiet, remote village in the East Khasi Hills pervaded by the smell of rain and woodsmoke. As I walked down the chilly, cloud-filled hill roads, I suddenly had the eerie feeling that this was a village of abandoned children. From toddlers to adolescents, children were everywhere—some in school uniform, some barely clad, with dirty faces and straggly hair, roaming quite freely, without parents in sight. Our homestay owner, a young woman, said that they are 12 siblings. Some of her sisters already have multiple children.“Our life is simple but tough. There is no running water in the village. We buy water for tourists. For domestic use, we mostly take water from the river below. Every Saturday and Wednesday, we trek to Umngot River [7-8 kilometres from the homestay] to collect water and wash our clothes,” she said, balancing her sister’s infant daughter on her hips.My head reeled thinking of the women’s tough lives: constant childbirth and relentless hard work. I asked Mukhim whether family planning is not an option in rural areas.She said: “Family planning and reproductive health are topics that are not discussed in Khasi families. Churches preach that children come from God and must be accepted at all costs. Abortion is considered sinful and so too the use of contraceptives. Since rural women are mostly uneducated or half-educated, they continue to produce children, sometimes at great cost to their lives.“About 56 per cent of Meghalaya’s women are anaemic, and child malnutrition is a common feature. Malnutrition has long-term effects, including stunting, and slow or poor development of cognitive functions, leading to impaired learning skills. All these add up to children dropping out of school, swelling the number of young people with no vocational or other skills needed for gainful employment.”Nongjrong has an elected headman, who is consulted on important matters. Most villages have heads, and they are invariably male. Has there been no headwoman ever, I asked. Mukhim said: “Tradition has ostensibly given men the right to become heads. Even the term for a headman, rangbah shnong, is gender specific—it means a man who heads a village. Every time women in Shillong raise the issue that women too can become village leaders and need not be confined to the domestic sphere, they are put in their place by men, who hold that women are supposed to look after domestic matters only and not ‘interfere’ with politics or political affairs. Women who speak up and assert their rights are called ‘Hens that crow’. A hen, as we know, does not crow, and Khasis believe that when a hen begins to crow (meaning, when a woman starts asking questions—seen as dabbling in political matters), the end of the world is near.”Those interested in learning more about the Khasi way of life should pick up Mukhim’s book, Waiting for an Equal World: Gender in India’s North East. According to Mukhim, one has to live for a while in Meghalaya to really understand the matrilineal system. In another life, I am a researcher in Nongjrong, chatting in Khasi with the women in their soot-blackened kitchens, chewing supari, preparing sha (tea), and listening to the rain battering the asbestos roofs.***Nohkalikai Falls of Cherrapunji, one of India’s tallest plunge waterfalls, has a gruesome legend associated with it. It is named after Likai of Rangjyrteh village, a wife and mother, who chose to remarry after her husband’s death. The new husband was jealous of Likai’s young daughter: he killed her, cooked her flesh, and fed it to Likai. When Likai discovered the deed, she ran like one possessed down the village road and jumped to her death, becoming the falls.If Likai had killed her murderous husband instead, would she have been immortalised as a waterfall? Is it only when a woman acts within the boundaries of expected feminine behaviour—like Likai sacrificing her life instead of seeking revenge or justice—that she earns a revered place in legends?***In Gulabiya, the first English translation of a novel written in the Angika tongue (an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken in Bihar and Jharkhand) by Abha Purbey, the eponymous heroine is a spirited young woman who is determined to spend her life with the man of her choice. When forced to marry someone else, she devises the stratagem of going through the motions of conjugal life, even bearing her husband’s child, and then running away from it all when they are not watching, to reunite with her lover. A woman like Likai would have been shocked by Gulabiya’s unmotherly behaviour. But Gulabiya scripts her own life, breaking the template of femininity. Fiction might be wish fulfilment, but going against the grain is not impossible either. Read Rohini Mokashi-Punekar’s thoughtful review of the novel in the latest issue of Frontline.I will stop here—the Meghalaya days are constantly replaying in my head and calling me back. Let me plunge into daydreams of times past. See you in a fortnight’s time.Till then,Anusua MukherjeeDeputy Editor, FrontlineCONTRIBUTE YOUR COMMENTS