A village gets connected to the world

Its just another Sunday morning, things are easy and slow; a bit laid-back, a bit purposeful and a bit hungry. So, I got my bike out, eat a heavy breakfast, ride up to the lab I work in (almost never on Sunday, but there were things to accomplish!) and since its a Sunday with a slow start, I open Facebook. And something that I have been noticing for a while seemed more real.

During my field days in Upper Siang Arunachal, where I spent the best part of the year for four years consecutively, we never had phone network and only sometimes had electricity. There was a satellite phone in Bomdo village, which as expected, never worked too. In the initial years of my phd, 2010 - 2012 the BSNL tower could be accessed for sending messages or a rare phone call at certain angles. The signal from the tower bounced off at least a couple mountains, took a dip into the valleys between, perhaps even took a swim and reached Bomdo, very reluctantly. I remember speaking to my girlfriend while my friend Army held the phone for me on the speaker mode (that's the only mode that worked!), and everything we spoke got out a nice reaction from Army and there would be huge laughter at the end of the conversation from all three of us! There were even other times I climbed up a raintree near the helipad and reached out my hand to dial my mom's number and it would ring twenty times and she wouldn't pick since she didn't hear it. That is worse since she cannot call me back and there is no guarantee that I would be able to connect to her again.

Then, another time, I had a lux meter with me that looks very similar to a mobile satellite phone. My field assistant asked me what it was and I told him that I will demonstrate to him what it was. I dialed a number on the lux meter and held the light sensor up and pretended to speak to my mom for a minute. And then I told mom to speak to Agar bhai and passed the phone to him. He was so happy that we had network and took the light sensor from me and said 'Hello, Maa!'. This was funny due to two reasons: 1. Agarbhai himself is about ten years elder to me, so him calling my mom 'Maa' was really funny and then of course, he started roaring into a laughter too once he realised, 2. It wasn't a phone.

Once every two weeks, I would ride up to the nearest town Yingkiong, 50 km and 2 hours away to speak to my family and friends. Sometimes, that was tough too, due to heavy rain and landslides or the bridge over the Siang river from the right to left bank was being repaired. And then again, sometimes the network was down in Yinkgiong! Desperate times! Well, but that was back then.

These days Upper Siang is a different story. There are two networks available in the village I worked in and my friends from there even 'video' call me! I even get sent pictures when Solung and Aran, their festivals, are celebrated. Its really good to be in touch with them. I even completed some of my interviews speaking to folks there to complete my article. Besides, having a phone, half the village is also now on Facebook! So this Sunday, when I turned up my laptop am looking at some of the posts from them, mostly selfies and wondering if it would have been nice if I had network in those days, I quite swiftly concluded, 'definitely not'! Its amazing that things are changing so quickly over a duration of a PhD. Wonder what else is up in that landscape, I would like to remember that landscape in the way I've posted photos and stories from there. I'm glad I wrote up my experiences on this blog!

Notes from the Aran festival

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At 3 am I woke up once hearing the sound of pounding pestles; the Bomdian women were making 'Ittings', rice cakes for the 'Aran' festival. The men were perhaps still sound asleep, for their work begins much later. At 7 am, the men are now busy, gathering palm leaves, bamboo poles and tree boles, each one in charge of slaughtering mithun, pig or chicken. Today is the 'Aran' festival, although it is a hunting festival, it marks the beginning of the farming season. Overall, 15 chickens, 8 pigs and 1 mithun will be slaughtered in four households of the Bomdo village today. The meat though will eventually trickle down to every family in the village either from the clan or the clan-in-law portion. For instance, the Medo clan would divide all the meat among the 10 Medo households with the biggest portion for the household that owned the animal. These ten households will further distribute their portions to their in-laws. This year, although only two clans; the Medo and Duggong households slaughtered animals, the meat will be distributed among the seven clans in the village.

The Aran festival itself has had a herculean effort preceding it. The Bomdian men have been making fortnightly visits to their hunting camps, a day's walk (at least 15 km up and down the hills! link) from the village since last November. All the meat is smoke-dried in their camps and brought back to the village just before the Aran festival. On the day of Aran, the sisters would make rice cakes and offer it to their brothers who in turn would offer them dried meat; this could be of wild pig, serow, barking deer or even, rarely, the takin.

On this particular day, everything went on like clock work. It began with the pigs in the two Medo households followed by the massive millet beer brews. The smoked squirrels on the sides of the Phrynium leaves are supposedly put to bring balance to the brewing filter. And then I went to Kangong Duggong's home, where a huge Mithun was due for sacrifice. This one needed tugging by at least 20 folks and the Mithun actually broke two of the bamboo steps made for strangling it.

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Then, there was an unexpected sad news. Bamut Medo, my field assistant's mother had passed on. This was particularly melancholic since I had sat beside her in the morning and someone had checked her pulse, she was alive when I was there. Now, an hour later shes gone. And gone with her are the experiences she has had in this landscape over a century, yes she was over a century old. She had been to Tibet thrice in her younger days, when salt was still bartered with the Tibetans in exchange for rice, rice beer, rice wine beads and cane artefacts from the Bomdo village. This is no mundane experience since the Tibet border is at least ten hills away, some of them snow-peaked. She used to bask in the sun every morning in Bamut's house and on my way and back from field she'd tell me she can't see me but can clearly hear me. With the broken Adi that I know I used to ask her if she had eaten, and she kept telling me it doesn't matter since she will be gone someday soon.

Half hour later I sat for a while with her body, while a tear unchecked made its way down my cheek, I saw her daughters and sons gathered for their final goodbyes. An old man was talking to her like she was alive, maybe she did hear him still. Couple hours later, some meat trickled to the place I stay in too and the day ended with some major notes and one major minor note.

Headhunters’ ball – Reyee Gaye

The ‘Aran’ puja was on this time when I reached Ramsing village. Reyee Gaye dance was the feature that interested me; I reached the place outside the Naamghar (a large hall in the village where all group activities take place) in the evening where the young as well as old experienced men would do the war-dance, a practice continuing for hundreds of years. Bit of background…Adis were headhunters even just a century back, intense conflicts amongst sub-tribes of Adis existed although they are all at peace now. The headhunters would all gather in the Naamghar with their sheaths and knives and leave for the war

As good rock shows and concerts, folks did come out late and the light was low, but I got few pictures; because of the low light it seems like the men are shaking vigorously but they really are on a slow four-by-four beat with “huh huh huh huh” while heavily thumping the ground. You really have to be there to know that this indeed is ‘war’ dance; the air is full of dominance and a display of strength. Notice the camouflage with leaves and bamboo, the knife carried is called Yoxa and the sheath is called Tamkum, though it looks a bit weak, it’s made of bamboo and reinforced with cane knittings and a knife cannot make through it with one stroke. The Yoxa that one of the men carried while dancing was the actual one used many decades back for head-hunting. Now, of course the dance is a cultural event every year and the practice of headhunting has phased out.