Micro stories 1

The following was written during my stay in the Bomdo village in Arunachal Pradesh in May 2015. I drift a lot between stories but try and return each time. You may notice the influence of Brian Doyle's book Mink river here. Given that there was no electricity, phone network or internet, I wrote quite a bit! So I post it in parts. The first part is here.

21st May 2015
1130 hours

Of a big meal and curry leaves, pressure cooker and a Bose speaker!

The big meal

The story could start anywhere because the story is made of smaller stories, all linked, linked by the fabric of continuity and relevance. Like, for instance, after a few days of having small meals of Ragi huri hittu, I decided to prepare a big meal this noon. The people here call it 'Baara baaji khana', the 12 O'clock meal, perhaps the most important one of the day for them, since they work hard in the fields. 

The inspection 'bungalow' I stayed in, in Bomdo village, Upper Siang.

I make a fire, that's the start of every meal here. I cut strips of the discarded cartons someone left here, thin strips. I scrape few strips of bamboo, and over these I will later put thin pieces of wood and lastly big ones. Over the years of staying here, I've learnt to light a fire as well as I light a candle, and nine out of ten times, I make a fire with one matchstick. I light one. The matchstick flame lights the carton strips light the bamboo strips which in a few seconds transfer the fire to the small sticks, which in a while light the big ones.

The curry leaves

I decided to cook dal (lentils), I wash the dal, cut onions tomatoes, chillies and then remembered the curry leaf tree (Murraya koenigii) at my friend Kubbo's home. I had brought the seedling all the way from Bangalore. A small bag of mud, three small seedlings with only two leaves each. The seedlings were on a train first, then a bus, then a Sumo (four-wheeler), then a bike ride followed by a short walk, it was a long journey; seven days! When I sipped water from the bottle, I also watered them during the journey, but only one survived. Now, four years later it is a small tree, already flowering. I took the short walk to Kubbo's place and brought back a few leaves for my dal. After the dal is boiled in the pressure cooker, I will season it with onions and curry leaves. I've asked Padi (Uncle in Adi) who is presently working in the field adjoining my camp to join me in the meal, for the 'Baara baaji khana'. He has been weeding his field for a couple hours but now its raining, pouring even. So he sits by the fire drying himself.

Padi, uncle, weeding his field.

The pressure cooker

The pressure cooker just whistled; it used to be a new sound for the village even few years back. When Kubbo my field assistant bought a pressure cooker and it whistled with pressure, his mom almost fell back and broke some wind too and we all laughed. Now, most homes have pressure cookers and it is a familiar sound, of the cooker whistle.

Our kitchen had two small 2.5 litre cookers; one for rice and the other for dal/meat/sambar/curry. By now, we know the characters of these two cookers. Usha was an old style one, faithful and loyal and after about 15 minutes on the fire would usually whistle. Hawkins had a lot of attitude, it was of a newer generation, she just sits there on the fire with no reaction, giving no indication of an upcoming meal while we stare hungry. Then, suddenly it would spew out steam. Sometimes the Hawkins had so much attitude that it wouldn't whistle over a small fire. But we soon figured the trick; adding bamboo strips after fifteen minutes. Bamboo fire is short but has much more heat and then the Hawkins would whistle. Several days when we don't have bamboo, cooking with the Hawkins was a pain.

Papad roasted on fire tastes better!

Just now we finished eating our 12 O'clock meal; dal, rice, fire-roasted papad and Gongura pickle my mom sent from Bangalore. Mom always thoughtfully packs things that last; pickles and powders. I always carry mom-made Sambar powder and Roy and Agar bhai would say 'Dalo dalo Maa ka pyar' (put some motherly love). Once after a peg or two of rum, Agar bhai said 'Dalo maa ka doodh' by mistake and we all roared into a laughter. That joke will live forever!

Which brings me to another funny instance. Agar bhai and I were doing field work one day and in my field bag I was carrying a lux meter, to be used for measuring light intensity. It almost looks like a phone contraption, complete with a light sensor connected with coiled up wire like a phone receiver. I started the joke. I pretended that I was speaking to my mom using the digital device reaching far out with the light sensor for better signal connectivity. After about two minutes of pretending to speak I gave the lux meter to him to speak. Agar bhai was suddenly all shy and the word he said first was 'Maaaa', a bit stretched version of 'Ma' (mother). This is funny because of two things; the village has never had any phone network and perhaps will never even have and Agar bhai is ten years older than me and my prank had transformed him into a child calling out 'Maa'. Unable to control myself any longer, I broke into a loud laughter and he joined me soon!

Padi and I finished all this dal with rice in one meal!

The Bose speaker

The other day another friend Tabu bhaiyya was about to cut my expensive Bose audio speaker into two with his knife, very brave. This is why. I had bought a wireless bluetooth Bose speaker to field to listen to music. I can play music or sound from my phone even 10 m away. The IB, inspection bungalow, I stay in has four rooms. Two rooms are mostly dark and seem haunted almost! The Adi never go alone near the IB in the night since it is built over a graveyard. But I need not worry they said, they are Adi ghosts that haunt Adi people, besides there is the language issue, fair enough, I said. And after a year of getting used to sleeping alone here, they reaffirmed to me that anyways only kids who passed on were buried here, not adults, and I really had nothing to fear!

From the game called 'Angry Birds', I had downloaded sounds of pigs grunting and laughing. The sound is quite scary in a place like the IB and the Adi are anyway trigger-scary of ghosts. I could play the sound from my phone in the pocket and pretend I had nothing to do with it. I set it up. In the night over spirited conversations, I told Tabu bhaiyya about the sound from the dark room and that it scares me. Then, I played the sound. While initially we was surprised, he soon ran towards the sound with a Dao (machete), I then had to shine my torch and declare to him that it was just a harmless speaker. We burst out laughing!

Another day when I played this even in the daytime, a teenager kid Kebo, who was talking to me casually, having heard the sound suddenly started sprinting away from the IB. Feeling guilty, I ran behind him with the speaker to tell him that the Bose speaker was responsible for the sound, he ran away even faster! When he came back I explained it all to him and he was still shivering in fear! He said nearby the dogs were running too and he was convinced they had seen or heard something scary too.

More micro-stories to follow. Watch this space.

Tobacco trails/trials

I still remember the time the salt-and-pepper-bearded always-smiling old man asked me to get tobacco back to Bomdo. He said, "just get this here, and we will be glad you ever came around"!

Two visits in two years I had forgotten, but this time I really gave it a thought and when I was back in Bangalore, I made some contacts regarding this. I told a friend of mine, I need to get back tobacco in a place far from here, somewhere they had planted it long back and it's now gone locally extinct! My friend was working with a reputable Tobacco company, studying hybrids of tobacco to produce the best variety, which had fields close to where I worked. He thought for a split second and said why don't you come along with me and take the seeds back with you, let's harvest them together; I was excited, the salt-and-peppered bearded old man smiling wider in my thoughts. Some remote village in Arunachal Pradesh getting the finest tobacco grown in some fields in Bangalore was awesome! So I went with my friend and collected, each time content with the number of seeds, but my friend kept insisting, "your situation is different, take more!", I think I collected millions, the seeds are really small like very tiny mustard seeds.

Back to Bomdo. One of the things I did was meet the old man and give him his precious seeds. He was happy, "kusér" he said, these are called kusér and old men and women used to smoke the dried leaves of this plant up and the plants were grown around the house. The plants needed excess care but was worth the effort. But I could not figure out if kusher was always present or was planted by the Adis here. The situation even just fifty years back in the Bomdo village was quite different; even salt was bought from Tibet through a barter system. The walk to and fro Tibet, called Mimmet by the Adis, took more than two weeks. So I doubt kusér was the same variety of tobacco.

So, the old man planted the seeds. I also gave around the seeds to several families in the village, I had millions of seeds and word spreads around faster than fire in the village. Some folks even came to the place I stay and collected the seeds. In the place I lived, Roy and I planted them and they grew about a centimetre a day during the rains and in a few months were 3 metres tall! It looked like the plants were really having a good time in Bomdo, we may have produced a new cultivar! And then the rest of the story came together.

The tobacco plant, it flowered in just three months!

In Bomdo, people like spit tobacco not smoking tobacco, although they enjoy that too. They buy the dried tobacco leaves, called 'Bihari saada' from the shop and mix it with lime bought from the shop or lime prepared by some of the old men from snail-shells smoked over fire. Beedis are too expensive to buy, particularly since match-boxes have to be bought with the beedis (which for some reason are too expensive these days). And this prime tobacco that I brought from Bangalore was 'smoke' tobacco, it smoked awesome, we tried some in a bamboo pipe my friend Gekut had made. But this tobacco did not work as spit-tobacco. The spit tobacco had a different end-process to it (which I guess Biharis had mastered) that gave it the taste that lasted long. And then the complaints began!

"Tigbo (that's what they call me in the village), the tobacco you brought is great for smoking and for leeches (one can make a paste of the leaves and apply, it works pretty well), but is not great for spit tobacco, can you fix that". I, obviously, had no answer to that. Now there are several plants of this great tobacco growing near homes and in vegetable gardens in Bomdo but people don't know how to use them! Some day I hope to figure this out and tell them too. Well, going by the way Adis are, they will figure out another complaint to that too! I hope to post that story in the coming years!

Bonus photo: A close-up of the flower

...and friending the fern

This post follows from the previous post 'gilding the lily'.

The Adis from Bomdo village seldom clear an interesting plant from their shifting cultivation fields since it is believed that the plant retains moisture in the fields. Locally called Asi Gebinyé (the one that brings water), Helminthostachys zeylanica has been reported as a medicinal plant from other sites. The fronds are reported to cure acute back pain caused by sciatica, and are also used as a laxative, intoxicant and painkiller whereas the rhizomes are used in treating dysentry, sciatica and malaria. However, the Adis retain the plant as they believe it helps their agricultural production by retaining soil moisture in the site and are pleasantly unaware of the medicinal uses of the plant!

Sketch of the species from this book

This year, the rains in Upper Siang district were relatively poor and the Bomdo villagers were concerned about their crop harvest. Then, about five weeks ago, a group of villagers went deep into the forest and cut a particular plant, locally called 'Alu layan' which is believed to cause rain. For almost a month after that it rained continuously!

To me this worldview of a remote farming community within which different plants are used based on the community's knowledge or belief systems tailored to the local needs is very interesting and I hope to document many more such adaptations. There is also the Aconitum ferrox plant, locally called 'Omo' traditionally used as poison for their arrows used for hunting, there is the tree, the bark of which is used as fish poison, a palm as well as a tree fern, the pith of which was traditionally consumed during times of food scarcity, lots more to write about and you will soon find information about these here in the blog.

Gilding the lily

To a first time visitor, like it was to me four years back when I came here, the landscape around the village may seem like a random hotch-potch of currently cultivated and regenerating shifting cultivation fields, palm, citrus and bamboo plantations and wet rice cultivation fields. A closer inspection however reveals a well-defined landscape with almost every patch, in fact, every tree and even a stream owned by a particular individual or a family or a clan in the village. Such is the intricacy of the landscape around an Adi village in the Upper Siang district in Arunachal Pradesh in north-east India.

The heterogenous landscape around Bomdo village

One may even wonder, how a patch is demarcated in such a heterogenous landscape that seems to seep in from one landuse to another like in a painting made with coarse brush strokes. Thats where the lilies come in.

Riksu sodok, the boundary lily

The Bomdo village is located close to the Siang river, the river flows around the village owing to the terrain. In late April every year in the Bomdo village in Upper Siang, eight species of cuckoos constantly call, often two or three of the calls overlapping, like cuckoo clocks that need no rewinding. This time of the year, the shifting cultivation landscape around the village features tiny spots of lilies flowering at the boundaries of individually owned patches. Flowering of this lily is also a trigger for the Adi community here to sow rice in their fields. The importance of this lily however goes beyond ornating the farming landscape or providing an indication to the farmers to sow their rice.

Crinum amoenum is a plant that is used by the Adis here to demarcate individual plots within a larger shifting cultivation mosaic. The plant is fire-hardy, is slow-growing and propogates through tubers. The plant, locally called Riksu sodok (literally translated as a boundary ground orchid) is used to resolve boundary issues between shifting cultivators. The size of the tuber of the individual plant provides information regarding when it was planted and therefore how old the patch is, or who it belongs to. In the past, the local institution Kebang in the Bomdo village has resolved patch ownership issues based on the location and the age of the Crinum plant in the fields.

A newly cleared field with the Riku sodok flowering (photograph by Anirban Datta-Roy)

There is much more detail to the way the Adis manage their shifting cultivation landscape. I just learnt last month that there is a fern that they retain in their fields since it leads to water retention. They clear all the trees and shrubs in a secondary shifting cultivation site but do not cut this fern. More about this and others soon!

Notes from the Aran festival

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!) from the village since last November. While all the organs are consumed during the hunting visits, since they cannot be preserve, 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.

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 a few times 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 mountains 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.

An ode to Bomdo

This was written on an evening before I left Bomdo. There had been no electricity in the village for almost a week, and I was preparing to leave the village after a seven month stint. The only thing I could do more than mentally bid a bye to Bomdo was write about what I felt, so here goes...

"The evening sun creeps behind the green hills and darkness spreads, ever slowly,

there is no moon yet and I can't turn on any lights, there are none to be.

But I feel sublime, for, there is a glistening spark inside me

a glint of my spirit that ignites the embers within.

For a while, there will be no humming water springs, no more gush of the river below,

no more flowers that paint an entire hill, no orchids that rouge a tree,

no more humbling mountains, no more tall trees to gaze upon

and no more rain that forms cascades ever anew.

No more butterflies that paint the day, no more fireflies to flicker the night,

no more birds to add sounds to a silence

and no more clouds that move as fast as the river in might.

Yet this journey has now hardly come to an end.

After few days in the place I belong,

where the skies oft turn black from smoke, where refuse oft fills the lakes and soil,

where time will be spent racing with time itself, and days are not as long,

here I shall return where nature is unbound and where still stands time."

Incidentally, the day I left Bomdo was the biggest festival of the Adis, the Solung puja. The significant activity during this festival is that of sacrificing Mithuns. Five Mithuns were hung in the morning and I meticulously videotaped two of them. Millet beer was served for everyone and a dish made of fried Mithun stomach. After a stomach full of stomach, I packed up and left on my bike and was contemplating the day and the field season while I was slithering down the winding road from Bomdo to Yingkiong. Somewhere in the back of my mind I realised why Mithuns are so important for the Adis, not only are they a major protein source, they are also an essential part of all the rituals and festivals that go on throughout the year. My mind kept ringing 'The queen is dead. Long live the queen.'

An eight year old Mithun, she gave birth to many  successors

The meat being distributed to the seven families who bought the Mithun

Atypical Bomdo evening

The day was bright, unlike all the other days in this year. Its already April and four months into the year, we only just today had the sunniest day of the year. Its not like any other years too, March and April often pack in enough sunlight to make you miss the chill of the winter. But here at Bomdo, we had rains, lots of it, out of place perhaps, surely out of time. Sunny days come here rare; so I do the chores, wash up all my clothes, socks especially and the unmentionables. The day is spent mostly reading Murakami's 'Kafka on the shore' and for only the second time ever I am hungover with a book. The previous time I had read 'East of Eden' by Steinbeck and felt a pang. I was alone too, in a secluded Inspection Bungalow in Boleng town in West Siang but thats another story. Kafka on the shore left me with a feeling much deeper and intense and I decided to take the day off to meditate over the book and to do chores.

Evening comes by and just an hour before the sun dips into the hills, I head to the local shop that opens duly at 4 pm. Its closed. So instead I play cricket with the local boys, am not a big fan of the game but what the hell, any excercise in sport here can only do me good. Thats where the atypical day begins, not just because it was the sunniest day of the year but because of the events that follow up. I am not too good at cricket too, but today was different, I am usually a better bowler than batsman. I batted for an entire twenty minutes, the local boys trying their off-spins, leg spins and the occasional fast ball, but in vain they can't get me out. There are bowlers too who before bowling proudly announce, three off spin balls and three leg spin ones are coming at you. Whats subtle is that the actual spin of the ball is decided by which tiny stone on the pitch the ball is going to hit! I take a pause to see what the other local boys are doing, they are immersed into a game of housie, how did this game ever get here. This is what I wonder even in towns like Jenging and Yingkiong. These are places which have only in the last few years recieved cell phone network, but these towns have had snooker parlours for longer! And so in my village that has no network, people play housie, the scene doesn't definitely fit in, but I take it in, smiling at how a typical Bomdo evening can be, full of surprises and new thoughts and realisations. Just as I think this an old man walks casually close to the field with a boar on his back. It reminded me of Asterix & co. He had hunted boar from the forest that adjoins the village, and was walking with it strung to his back as though he had bought some ham from the local meat shop. However I understand he had put in a lot of effort into this, he went to a place called Dicheng which is at least an eight hour trek from the village for me.

Army, my field assistant sends a leg cutter meanwhile, and I drive, an on-drive, its a four by the looks of the shot. While the ball is collected, I look at the local children, all of them immersed too in the game of housie in which a wheel is spinning. Nyelik's three year old daughter spins me a look and a smile and I take a moment to see how beautiful she is and also wonder about the resemblance between Nyelik and his daughter, hang on, the next ball is here, oops I get the outer edge and a catch and finally get out, to my relief too. Minutes later, I am bowling, and take a wicket or two I can't remember.

After the game, I head to Bonggar's house, he was cross with me that I hadn't visited him since November, unintentionally of course, I was immersed in my field work and the other days in thoughts damp with the torrential rain. I was tired too, but it looked like more tired were my field boots and pants. The expensive field gum boots I picked up from Bangalore had a hole in them, so water would seep in and dampen the socks, much to the delight of the leeches whose season begins just about now. My field pants too tore yesterday, indicating and implying to me that field season is over, lets go home. But unfortunately for my field gear, I need to spend another two months in the village before I get a break. Anyways, back in Bonggars place, I stepped in for tea but had to settle for rum. And with the rum, dried venison which tastes awful, but the protein is good, so i dunk it in. Bonggars folks are immersed in a Television soap played courtesy of Tata Sky. I was thinking what a contradiction it is that we don't have phone network in the village but television plays like theres been no yesterday. Anyways, drink done, snack done, I head back to the Inspection Bungalow (IB) where I sleep. A tastier meal awaits me there.

When I reach, theres a bunch of boys working for the Electrical Department making merry and singing songs. Theres twelve of them and I call them the Inglorious Basterds. They get along very well with each other though almost every one of them hails from a different place. And they have a beautiful lingo going between them, someones calling the other a dog to be called pig by the other in turn. Phonetically it makes the IB a lively place, for me thats a welcome change, since the other months I have spent here, evenings have been full of sounds of either wind or the rain or things from trees bouncing off the tin roof that the IB has. The other good thing is they cook for twelve people anyway so I join them happily and eating with a bunch of people is something I miss here in the IB too.

After the meal, I zip into my sleeping bag and write this. What a typical Bomdo evening!

Medo Karthik

I have been visiting Bomdo village for a long time now, since February 2008. But never have I felt a part of the village as much as in the last few weeks. There are eight clans in the village; Nyodo, Duggong, Yalik, Panga, Lanchong, Dungmik and Medo. The Medo clan has now unofficially included me in their clan; I explain here how.

Burning one (fire) down!

The customs of the Adis are quite interesting. Among the clans, whenever any members hunts a wild animal, he gives a piece of the meat to closest relatives of his clan. Some meat is also distributed to close relatives among other clans; for instance, to the in-laws. It is quite surprising that there is no fine if somebody doesn't do this, but this tradition is now going on for several centuries. Nevertheless, distributing meat among clan members ensures supply of meat throughout the hunting season at least. So, the last time a barking deer was hunted by the Medo clan, I was called to my friend, Bamut Medo's home for dinner. He casually remarked that I was one of the Medos now, I didn't believe him then, but protein is not in an abundant supply in the village, so I happily obliged.

Today (6th Feb), a Mithun was slaughtered in the village. In this case too, the meat is distributed among all the Medos. I was not only invited for dinner, which was mainly Mithun stomach boiled and rice, to three houses, I was also given a small chunk of the meat! Now, I do believe I am one of them! 

The pestle that brings lovely flavour to my food,
made of Jackfruit tree wood

On another note, I have fortified the camp I stay in the village (the Inspection Bungalow) with all the essentials. I now have a Chang (a smoking place above the cooking fire), a small almirah to keep all the stuff needed for cooking, a pestle, an aluminium mug, a small backup cylinder, a backup electric stove, a solar charged light, a radio, the works, take a look. Just now, I also made sure the fire goes on for a few hours so the Mithun meat gets smoked. That way it can stay for several days without getting spoilt. The way the Adis smoke it, the meat apparently lasts for several years!

My kitchen, its all there!

And finally here is the mug that I picked up from the market; its uses are several, heres a list of things that I have made in it; fried eggs, fried papads, tea, coffee, boiled water, soup, dal, drink tea/coffee, chatni with the pestle, measure rice to cook with it and the list goes on. In fact, I call it the invincible mug because we had taken this mug on a trip to Mouling National Park and it was the only vessel we carried besides one large vessel to cook dal and rice. So in the five day trip, we used this mug to measure rice to be cooked, to make tea, to smash boiled potatoes, to serve dal and again the list goes on. I call it invincible because when we camped by the Sidi river in the Eggong camp, a Mithun had stepped on it to make it quite oval in shape. In the middle of the night, someone screamed saying my mug was gone. Calmly, I woke up in the morning and brought it back to shape by hitting it gently with a rock and the mug is back in use! Well, this is the one thing I rate as most useful ever in field.

The invincible mug!

So, I sleep today convinced that I am not only a researcher in the village, but perhaps also one of them now.

New kid on the blog

I arrived to the Bomdo village this time end of November last year. I had several expectations and was quite excited  and nervous since my field work was soon to begin. I was also excited that I would meet the village folk after six months. But I had an even more pleasant surprise in store for me. At about 1 pm when I arrived to the village and visited my man fFiday Gekut's home he wasn't there. He and his wife had gone to the field, for it was the rice harvesting season. So I waited till early evening and then I saw Gekut rushing to the Inspection Bungalow where I stay. He said he had a third kid! In a hurry to catch a glimpse, I ran to his house.

The Poyup or the farm house where Kayit was born, in Loging

Gekut and his wife had gone to Loging, their currently cultivated shifting cultivation field, and minutes after they reached Nyomen, Gekut's wife announced that she was in labour and having no other woman to help him with this, he just waited aside her helplessly and helped with the delivery. I was bewildered by the fact that the same day she gave birth she also went out to the fields, an hour's walk away for some hard work. However, here in the village there are several such instances. Perhaps due to their physical endurance during agriculture and related activities, even giving birth to a kid is not as big a deal as is often in towns. The whole village apparently suggests names for new born kids till finally a name is chosen. I suggested 'Siben' which is the local name for a takin (Budorcas taxicolor), making him a very special person, being named after the rarest animal in the region. The boy was finally named Kayit and I see him almost everyday and still call him Siben! Gekut says someday Kayit will become the Deputy Commissioner of the Yingkiong circle and I said that I will help fund his education.

Gekut and Junior

Now…that’s something to blog about

I met an old lady in the village Bomdo this time who has walked to Tibet, which is only 50 km beeline distance but takes more than a week to reach on foot! 

She along with fifteen others walked for 12 days to reach what they call ‘Mimet’ around the year 1950. The walk was mainly for bringing back salt although various other barters would take place, I have listed here a few based on the information from her. Rice and rice beer were exchanged for wheat powder or salt. The exchange rate was pretty simple; 1 cup rice beer fetches a fistful of wheat powder or a cup of salt. Various other things that were exchanged were bamboo combs and other artefacts and ginger for Dao (a knife), wool and certain fruits. The old lady, who is actually my field guide Gekut's mother very enthusiastically brought a spin that is at least 60 years old and posed for the picture to depict how they extract thread to weave clothes.

Other interesting facts were that people with heavy bags were invited to rich homes whereas people with lighter bags were invited to poor homes. Naturally, people carried a lot of weight and she told me people would carry 50–60 kg of goods! The other strange thing about the trip is that people who pass away on the way are not brought back owing to the logistics. She also mentioned that throughout the journey the group is happily singing and walking.

So, basically people from Bomdo village were walking at least a distance of 150 km, including up and downhill, through tough terrain full of forests and snow near the Indo-Tibet border to bring back salt and knives. I already knew that Adi people are physically tough but now I just think they are incredible! I have also learnt from this to savour basic amenities such as salt, spices, knives, and other such items that I usually take for granted.

The village by the river – Bomdo

Today is the day I will start writing in detail about the village Bomdo in Upper Siang District, Arunachal, by the river Siang, called Tsangpo in Tibet. What inspires me to write I am unsure but seeing the Google Earth image of my PhD research site was an initial trigger.

Circled above are two important places in the village, the one on the left is my home for a big part of the next six months and in the coming years; the Inspection Bungalow of the Forest Department, built over a graveyard! To the right is the Naamghar or Bango, the community hall for local meetings and feasts. In the next few posts I will write stories from this village, since I will be spending a considerable amount of time here. You may see earlier articles in which Bomdo is mentioned too, but here I start documenting anecdotes from the village. Interesting things happen all the time; someone brings a hunted barking deer one day, another day a wild pig, the local booze parties in which the rice beer flows like the Siang, and well the lazy evening firewood-gossip and chat! I hope you enjoy reading them, because I am certainly going to enjoy writing them!