History in the Clouds: The Summer Palaces of Shillong and Placemaking

Apart from its natural beauty, the landscape of Shillong is typically characterised by the unique style and presence of the Shillong houses as part of its architectural legacy. A city established by the British as the headquarters of Assam province, Shillong has evolved a distinguished character of its own in terms of its physical features and cultural ambience. Being the capital city ofone of the largest provinces in Eastern India, Shillong has been home to several important centres, institutions, government offices and private residences, including the ones belonging to the royal scions and aristocratic families of yesteryears. The summer palaces of the royalties are some of the most significant heritage sites of the city that have given a very distinctive identity and importance to the place. The Mayurbhanj Summer Palace, Tripura Castle, the Sidli House the Bijni House, the Manipur House etc. are some of the major royal properties of Shillong, some of which have remained with the original owners, when somehave changed hands and have gone through several modifications and transformations. Nevertheless, these summer palaces have invariably remained more than mere houses. They have evolved into distinguished sites associated with the history, memory and identity of the place. The paper is an attempt to revisit these summer palaces to explore their association with Shillong and howthese heritage sites contributed towards placemaking. Taking recourse to theorists like Mark Augé, Main and Sandoval, Hanna Arendt, Michael Smith and others, the paper seeks to explore how these palaces have evolved into sites of relationship, history and identity, how they have become parts of translocal placemaking and got integrated with the cityscape as the sites of cross-culturallearning, individual agency and collective memory. The paper also tries to argue that these palaces as the creations of the homo faber, have evolved into active artefacts adding to the cultural mobility and cosmopolitan ethos of Shillong.