DB Centre for Indigenous Cultures
If inaccessible topography has stopped you from discovering the treasures of Northeast India, a visit to the seven-storey DBCIC, Mawlai, will more than make up for it. Beyond the doorway, fashioned like a traditional Naga house, lies gallery upon gallery showcasing its culture and history. A result of more than a century’s research by the Salesians of Don Bosco, a Catholic religious order, on the many tribes of the region, every floor has a mind-boggling array of artefacts. Manned by polite but firm staff in blazers, each hall is lit up with sensor-driven lights that turn on when you step in, and fade out as you walk past the glass cabinets. Inaugurated by then Congress president Sonia Gandhi in 2010, the museum located amid pretty cottages with potted geraniums and lace-curtained windows sees nearly a lakh visitors a year. Start at the basement with an introduction to India’s neighbours and climb the spiral stairs that take you past agricultural implements, fishing tools and storage baskets in intricately woven cane, houses built on stilts, hillsides and treetops, plaster heads defining tribal features, clothing, weapons, jewellery and, languages and an impressive hall with world religions and Christianity in the Northeast, portrayed through murals. When you reach the top, be rewarded with a view of Shillong basking in the sun.
Rhino Heritage Museum
Nearly two decades after he was killed in Kargil leading his Kashmiri troops into battle, the bust of Capt Keishing Clifford Nongrum, MVC, at the Rhino Heritage Museum, surveys the Rilbong crossroads in the town where he grew up. The bust of Maj David Manlun, KC, who was educated in Shillong and killed in combat last year in Nagaland, was recently unveiled, and the two join the statue of Field Marshal SHFJ Manekshaw, who spearheaded India’s victory in the Indo-Pak War of 1971. The squat building with a vaulted dome was constructed in 1928 and used as an arms store. In 1944, it housed Japanese prisoners of war and came to be known as Dungeon Lines. For a brief while after the Second World War ended, Gurkha troops used it as an ammunition store. After Independence, it fell into disuse till it was resurrected at the turn of the century. The pink building with the formidable sculpture of a rhino has photographs and war memorabilia that celebrates the history of the Indian Army’s 101 Area, the first of its formations to reach Dhaka during the 1971 war. It also has a room chock-a-block with information on the heritage, courage and compassion of the Assam Rifles, India’s oldest paramilitary force, headquartered in Shillong. Outside the museum is a Vijayanta tank standing at the crossroads.
Air Force Museum
On the long road shaded by gently swaying pine trees en route to Elephant Falls is the Air Force Museum. Part of the Indian Air Force’s Eastern Command Headquarters, the museum’s location is signalled by a Gnat aircraft stationed opposite its gates. Nicknamed the ‘Sabre Slayer’ for its combat kills in 1971, the Gnat is joined by other aircraft such as the MI-4 helicopter and Iskra trainer plane, exhibited on the lawns outside, giving visitors a chance to clamber up and take a closer look at the cockpit. Inside the museum, mannequins don uniforms worn by Air Force personnel over the years; overalls and peak caps, combat suits and dress uniforms with cummerbunds vie for space. Suspended from the ceiling and mounted on walls are models of every aircraft flown by the Force. Framed on baize mounts are replicas of gallantry awards; among them the Ashok Chakra awarded to India’s only man in space, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma (retd.) and the Param Vir Chakra awarded posthumously to Flying Officer Nirmal Jit Singh Sekhon, the only Air Force officer to have been given the nation’s highest wartime gallantry award. Take a picture with Augustine’s flight suit and don’t forget to gawk at the preserved skin of a python that swallowed a deer near the Hashimara air field.
