Guwahati is very different from Shillong. I am told it is an ancient city and the gateway to Northeast India, but its downtown has a contemporary business feel. The racial makeup is decidedly more mixed than Shillong, with more people from south India and Bangladesh than what I saw in Shillong. Then again, Guwahati has a population of 1.5 million and hosts the capital of the newer state of Assam, which is more industrialized than the state of Meghalaya.
It is also much warmer and more humid.
I visited three Salesian centers today in addition to the provincial house: the Tepesia Tea Gardens that are the site of the new Don Bosco University at Guwahati; Snehalaya (a recovering project and home for street children) with the founder and director Fr Lukose Cheruvalei; Don Bosco Institute, on the banks of the mighty and majesty Brahmaputra River where I met the director Fr V. M. Thomas and my own community companion from Don Rua Rome 1990, Fr Francis Fernandez.
Some of the boys of Snehalaya
Each of these works is radically forward looking and prophetic. I am deeply impressed by the initiative of the Salesians and the spirit among the young people that I met in the various centers… but then that has been my feeling in every place of this province that I have visited.
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