Siat Knam

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Shillong has quite a few betting shops - and the betting is on the result of lots of arrows being fired at a target.
Jay and I made our way to the obscure location on the outskirts of Shillong, and observed the daily shooting. The shoot starts in the late afternoon, and there's "on-course" betting so, as an Australian of course, I felt obliged to place a bet.
Basically hundreds of arrows are fired into a target in a period of 4 minutes and those that stick are counted. The bet is on the last one or two digits of the final count. I bet on 2 -but lost as the result was 1. The whole thing is supervised by government officials and is a revenue raising operation. One of the on-course bookies admitted to me that he was a policeman - I assumed off-duty..but who can tell?
One of my fellow punters who was helpful in explaining it all (and telling me that now it was a "dry" event, but once lots of drinking took place) eventually confided that in fact he was a surrendered Khasi separatist guerilla...so we had a good conversation about social issues. He also confided that he had to be careful with his life because his former comrades weren't too pleased with him!

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