India Day 2: Meghalaya

I woke up this morning after a good night's sleep at Hotel Jagannath (apparently this hotel is named after a Hindu sun god) and headed to the Calcutta airport to catch the plane for Shillong. We got off around the time listed on the itinerary and had a quick 1.5 hr flight to the airport which is actually 1 hour away from Shillong by car. Meghalaya is a beautiful part of India, in the highlands just north of Bangladesh, and below is a picture I took in front of the airport just after it rained.

It's pretty incredible how God works - I sat next to an elderly nun from Calcutta who was traveling to spend a month of the leave she gets every 3 years with her niece and nephews who live in Shillong. I talked with her on the flight and learned a lot from her about the area, and then helped her with her luggage and disembarking from the plane. She introduced me to her nephew when he arrived and they offered me a lift to Shillong, which I gladly accepted.

Along the way, her nephew John filled me in on some historical and political details of the area. It turns out that he is a local political figure very interested in the intersection of tribal and constitutional policy, and he knows a few of the people that I was hoping to get in touch with in the Khasi and Pnar communities. It was a great discussion and amazing to meet someone so well-connected in just my first hour in Meghalaya. Wow! I'll be getting in touch with him again once I get a SIM card for my phone.

I'm staying with my advisor's sister-in-law's family here in Shillong, and hope to connect with some Pnar speakers in the coming days, then head to Jowai and the Jiantia Hills at the end of the week to make more contacts. Today I also went to one of the local hot-spots, Cafe Shillong, which has great food and atmosphere. I'll be posting more about the town this week. It's been raining quite a bit for the last month, but is cool and peaceful - did I mention the northeast of India is beautiful?

Broken World

Yesterday I heard that a friend died. Aimee was a fellow MK who grew up with my friend Katrina in Taiwan. I go to church in Lancaster with some of her cousins. We met a couple years ago around Christmas time when they were visiting the cousins and we road-tripped up to State College area to visit Katrina and her family - she didn't like driving, so I drove. Over the past couple years we kept in touch and I visited her in Charlotte, NC where she was working as a teacher. We went out to eat on my 26th birthday.

On thursday around 7am a pickup truck crossed the center-line and smashed into her head-on. Both cars were traveling at about 55mph. They still don't know why the driver of the other vehicle crossed the line. Apparently the driver doesn't remember either, and there's no evidence of drugs/alchohol or cellphone use. She was on her way to school. She was 25.

I wrote a song last night, but it doesn't do justice to the injustice of death. When my brother died 13 years ago I couldn't find the right words either. Maybe in a million years I'll be able to. Right now all I can do is strain to produce depth of emotion to express the pain of this broken world. I would despair if I didn't know the Intercessor.