Shillong, Oct 11: The Sindhi community in Shillong may not be large but it is close-knit and ready to extend a helping hand to any community member in distress. The members are also equally aware of their culture and tradition and a section of them are dedicating their time and effort to preserve the language.
Uma Jatiani, the sole member from Shillong nominated by the National Council for Promotion of Sindhi Language (NCPSL), was at the stall set up for the first time at the Shillong Book Fair when Meghalaya Monitor met her.
“We are an ancient community but we suffered a lot in the past. With the Partition of 1947, our community got separated. Our land, Singh, went to Pakistan but most of us decided to stay back in India. We became refugees in our land. This history is unknown to many. The shop is an effort to make people aware of this and also preserve the language,” said Jatiani.
Shillong has about 40 Sindhi families, of which seven settled here in 1926. All of them are into business.
The bookstall has about 150 titles, including academic. There are books for UPSC aspirants too. “If an aspirant chooses Sindhi as a language in the UPSC exam, then these books are helpful. It is a scoring subject because questions are based only on these books,” informed Jatiani.
The stall has 14 books for master’s degree and three for diploma, certificate and advanced courses.
The Sindhis have two scripts, Devanagari and Arabic, and the stall has books in both scripts. However, Devanagari is popularly used for reading and writing.
“I have had curious visitors to the stall asking me about my community and the books displayed in the stall,” Jatiani said.
A former Meghalaya government official and YouTube influencer Aloysius Papang visited the stall recently and made a vlog.
Talking about the language, 73-year-old Jatiani, who specialises in linguistics, said Sindhi has similarities with languages such as Gujarati, Rajasthani and Marathi. “It is interesting to observe how the intermingling of languages happened. We have several books on history that have been translated from Sindhi to English and Hindi,” she added.
Mobile bookstore to travel to Ri Bhoi, WKH, EGH
The mobile bookstore and library, launched on 2 October 2024, will continue to travel around Meghalaya. The vehicle will reach Ri Bhoi on October 15 and stay there till October 20. From October 21-23, the vehicle will travel within West Khasi Hills. On October 24, the mobile store will reach East Garo Hills and after travelling in the district till October 26, it will head to Goalpara, Assam. The vehicle’s destinations in Assam are Goalpara (till October 31), Bongaigaon (November 1-3) and Dhubri (November 4-8).
The mobile bookstore and library will start its journey to New Delhi on November 9.
