Teeing off in Shillong's wet golf course

Photograph by Preeti Verma Lal

Imagine a tag like that for a scrap of earth that was a village. Not too far in the far-flung past. Yes, Shillong was still a village sitting smug between the Khasi and the Jaintia hills, complacent about its gurgling waterfalls, unending hills, undulating streets, its juicy pineapples, its crunchy snow white radishes and the mist that hung like buntings from the sky. The men strummed the strings and the women peeled the areca nut that grew abundantly and pickled the bamboo shoots.

If you have the world’s wettest place as a coquettish neighbour, perhaps even a fairway needs to be dapper. Not just dapper; you need the trappings too – a history to skew the conversation, hoary tales to add to the mystic, a few statuesque pine and wanton rhododendrons to add to the grandeur and some funny tales to pep any misty mornings. Well, at 1,496 metres above sea level, you breathe the mist and with an annual mean rainfall of 2,954 mm, you need to wear the wettest course in Asia tag with élan. All this when you are a still prim at 107 years! There has to be something about Mary. But it is not Mary we are raving about. It is the Shillong Golf Course, often called the Gleneagle of the East.   

Imagine a tag like that for a scrap of earth that was a village. Not too far in the far-flung past. Yes, Shillong was still a village sitting smug between the Khasi and the Jaintia hills, complacent about its gurgling waterfalls, unending hills, undulating streets, its juicy pineapples, its crunchy snow white radishes and the mist that hung like buntings from the sky. The men strummed the strings and the women peeled the areca nut that grew abundantly and pickled the bamboo shoots.

Then it all changed. The British soldiers goose-stepped into the village and made Shillong the civil station of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills in 1864. But the village refused to be content with this, ten years later it became the headquarters of the newly formed Assam as the Chief Commissioner’s Province. The nights were soon agog with the hum of the piano and the rustle of the tulle gowns in the ballrooms; the days were laden with the aroma of cakes and biscottis. With each day, the village called Shillong was getting prim and propah like the Britishers who came in hordes.

But then what is a British civil station without a golf course where the soldiers and their martinet marshals could tee off on a leisurely Sunday morning. Perhaps all of Shillong did not then know – neither did they care – whether golf came from the German Kolbe, the French Chob or the Dutch Kolf. For them, it was as Greek as it could get. That did not daunt JC Arbuthnoth and BC Allen, both conscientious ICS officers and intrepid golfers. They picked a spot in Laban in what is now the Garrison Ground and Hydrai Park and built a nine-hole golf course. The game caught on…and the nine holes suddenly seemed insufficient and not challenging enough.

Shillong is so beautiful and cool throughout the air that the Britishers seemed in no hurry to mosey to another land and pitch their tarp there. And nobody corroborated it better than Reverend Owens, the then general secretary of Mother Presbyterian Church of  Wales who said that there are very few places in the world that could match Shillong for the natural air-conditioning. The Britishers sure were not complaining and very soon the nine-hole golf course would seek a better, more beautiful and more natural location for an 18-hole course. The job fell on CK Rhodes and EL Watts to plan and lay the picturesque course. And when it was inaugurated in 1924, the course garnered so many firsts and credits that it must have turned many a putting green envious. Actually, more green with envy – one of the most natural courses in the world; the wettest course in Asia; one of the oldest in the country; Gleneagle of the East…. Alongwith the gilt tags, add the fact that it became the hottest spots for the monied and the mavericks of Bengal and Assam. In walked the luminous dignitaries and the fashionable missus and the dapper men.

Years and decades have neither withered the tags nor the beauty of the course. Now it is not just the luminaries and the nattily dressed men, golfers of all hues and irons trudge miles to play in this course. Nothing bore better testimony to the popularity of the Shillong golf course than this year’s Meghalaya Autumn Festival that also listed a golf tournament on its menu. Shillong was so chock-a-block with golfers from around the country that not even elbow room was spared in hotels for other guests and tourists. One hotel vacated its banquet hall to spread mattresses for golfers. Anywhere your eyes could stretch, you would have found a golfer lugging his irons and all roads seemed to lead to just one destination – the Shillong Golf Course.

D Paul Choudhry, a businessman from Kolkatta, was one of them. He has teed in the best courses in the world, but he could not resist the temptation of swinging an iron in Shillong. “I am so hooked to golf that put me on a beach and I would still tee off, but then this course is a beauty. I am not sure if I can call it the best natural course in the world, but it would surely find a place in the one of the best list.”

However, Kaiman Hiwol, a native of Shillong, needs no alibis to come here. He has  to come here every Saturday religiously. For him, weekend mornings are meant for golf and an annual membership with the Shillong Golf Club makes the habit – and the passion – simpler for him. “What’s a Saturday without a round of golf here,” says Hiwol as he stands in the sand pit and strikes a hurried pose for me. The hole is waiting, the pose can wait; he smiles.

If the men could come, could women be far behind? That Saturday morning, there were not just one or two, there was gaggle – hip young ones in capris and hooded tees walking along the veterans in hennaed hair, chintz blouses and umbrellas large enough to shelter a world. They have their reasons – some networking, some driving the blues away, a few  addicted and some PYTs just making a style statement. Janette Lyngdoh, ‘aunty’ to the brood, has an unusual one – she does not want to be a ‘golf widow’. “The rule of the game is simple, if you cannot beat the enemy, join him. In my case, the enemy is my husband’s love for golf. I could not get him to leave it, so I joined him.” And now the Lyngdohs are one happy couple on the green, whiling away their weekend mornings doing what they love the most – playing golf, what else. With her own marital story told, Janetta sings paeans to the undulating course that sprawls an incredible 5,873 yards; she calls it “beautiful yet challenging”. She so loves her golf mornings that she poses happily between shots. If ‘aunty’ could be such a sport, so could the others and that misty morning, all the women at the course shunned their umbrellas, looked into the sun and merrily struck, what they called, a Chak de pose, even hollering a chak de India slogan that reverberated even after the natty bunch and their caddies had moved on to the other side of the green.

Ask the old timers and they would tell how tournaments have been such a crowdpuller, a trend that began in 1975, a year which veterans mark as Shillong’s entry into the golf map of India. One tournament followed another, with prospects getting better with the establishment of the Shillong Golfers’ Association. On a good morning someone might even regale you with the story of how an avid golfer wagered his house, car and wife’s jewellery for a Rs 50 lakh bet for the perfect shot in the 18th hole. Thankfully, a breeze, or so the story goes, did the trick for the gutsy golfer and he returned to a home – and a happy wife - that he could still call his own. All for a breeze that turned the ball well for him!     

On ordinary weekend mornings when the century-old golf courses buzzes with the chatter of the golfers and their caddies and tiny white balls are lopped over wanton shrubs and silken sand, most golfers not only sing hallelujah to the lord for such a natural course, but also to the two conscientious ICS officers and intrepid golfers who wanted to spend their evenings languorously on the greens and not just in a bar quaffing beer. Thank god, for those lazy evenings and the nine-hole course. What would have Shillong done without this beautiful course? Ah! Leave that thought aside. Go to Shillong. Go tee off!

Published in Golf Style, December 2007

Contact: Preetivermalal@gmail.com