In October last week, I rode an rattly old Yamaha RX100 bike from Pasighat to Jenging to Ramsing (~225 km) with a large rugsack stacked behind me, a laptop bag in the front and a camera bag to the right. Most people on the way were wondering as to what I was selling! It was perhaps a big mistake but well I took the risk and enjoyed it too. The bike had just been repaired and I was not to travel faster than 40 km per hour speed; so it took me about 13 hours in total. A slow peaceful ride with the bike giving me trouble only five times middle of literally nowhere in the valleys below forested peaks along the Siang river. Just when I would wonder what would happen next, the bike would start and I continue precariously. Well anyways I reached Ramsing camp by 430 pm, met the DFO, Mouling national park and slept a well-earned sleep. Not many days go by like this! Next morning I got to Bomdo village.
This time around at the village, things were a bit different from the last time; I had no person to cook and share a meal with and no firewood to cook food too, so a meal was a painful ordeal. I had bought an electric heating-spring stove from Itanagar, so now I cook using that but it takes a long time; an hour in the least to cook just rice! So I requested my friendly neighbourhood in the village to cook me breakfast and pack-lunch which I can carry to field so it will save me a lot of trouble and I could pay them for the meals. It worked very well for me; they cook me two meals and then I come back from field in the evening and cook my long and slow evening meal.
Yesterday was different though; as I finished cooking my meal one of the villagers called me over to his place and asked me to get there immediately. I told him politely that I still need to eat my evening meal and then do some chores too. Anyways I obliged since it is extremely rude to turn down offers to come home in villages here. When I reached, he offered me rice wine which too I pleasantly obliged and after a mug or two, it dawned on me that he had me over for dinner! So he also set out sumptuous dinner for me; fish from the Siang river and rice. I ate very happily, drank another mug of rice wine and reached back my inspection bungalow where I stay. Then, watched a Chaplin movie just for some humour and then realised I should not waste my cooked meal and grabbed some to eat. When I took my first bite I realised it wasn’t cooked well at all! I felt really glad that I did eat some at another place. It was just luck that I was invited over for a meal before I even knew that my meal was not done well!
The day before we had a birthday party of a kid; the first year birthday. Funnily, when I walked into the home I was advised to cache my slippers in a place I can recover since its common here that people with old torn slippers walk out with new better ones, never to be retrieved! The old women sang together many songs and one of them is a really beautiful song called “Tayer gamcha”. The theme of the song is about a man being old enough to get married twice! Here, in the Adi landscape, it is a common practice to get married more than once; if you can afford it. The ex-Chief Minister (CM) of Arunachal Pradesh state, Gegong Apang from a nearby village Karko has married five times and has been the CM for 22 years.
Anyways, today is the day after and I had a good field time for the last four days and I had my dinner in one of the village homes too; rice and beans with a little meat.
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