Life of Chidaogre tribe

Far away from the hustle and bustle of a modern city f Shillong, Chidaogre village in West Garo Hills district of Meghalaya, located about 25 km from Tura is one such destination. The people of this tribal village have their own legends to tell, which will mesmerise any visitors to this ancient and rare location.

This small hamlet is located at the foothills of Rangira peak, home to exotic variety of flora and fauna. It has a population of 47 households.

Food is life. The Garo delicacies are hot. The mouth watering foods comprises of meat with lots of chillies. The main dish is called the Kappa, mainly made out of chicken, beef, fishes and pork. The Garo cuisine is varied, but chillies though remain the main item in most cuisines.

Fishes cooked in fire inside Bamboo called Brenga taste delicious. This dish can make your taste bud crazy about the item. Definitely, you would like to learn how it is being prepared. It is mostly prepared from local fishes found in the nearby streams and rivers of Garo Hills.

Nakam or the dry fishes is part of their diet. It is served with the food at lunch or dinner. Without Nakam, the food table in Garo village is incomplete.

The tribal in north east are known for their perfection in brew preparation. This is used as a refreshing drink and is intricated with their colourful life and culture. You can taste all this food and sit for a relaxed evening with Garo music and engage in dance after getting high on Bittchi and Dikka. These are made out of rice and fruits.

If you would like to go deep down into their culture, make a Garo friend, and go along with him to the village. The villagers has their own legend to tell about their customs and traditions. Where do you get this first hand information from? Most of the traditional are in its oral form.

With modernisation and advent of christianity, almost 95 per cent of the Garo tribes are now converted. It has therefore become rare to find the unconverted Garos or the Songsareks. Chidoagre is one such village, where we find these humble, hospitable and colourful people.

These people have their own form of religion, culture and tradition. However, the unique tradition of the Songsareks is fast diminishing. The villagers of here are yet to be converted.

Marson Momin and Zingon Momin are two such people, who are aware of the fact that their culture and traditional beliefs is disappearing and in a few decades from now, their rich cultural tradition will only be read in books.

Scholars and researchers are engaged in preserving the tradition of the Songsareks, Chidaogre is an example of their initiative. Zingon Momin says "People (Sahib’s) very often visit our village and spend the whole day with us engaging themselves in enjoying dikka (rice beer) and merry making."

It is an exemplary village in Garo Hills, where the Songsareks life style is evident. The people live in Songsarek architect bamboo houses. The bachelor’s house ’Nokpante’, the ceremonial structure ’Amua’, the statue build in memory of the departed one ’Kima’ and what more do we need to know about these people.

All are evident. Anyone who visits this village will be thrilled to learn and experience their stories and at the end of the visit will say, "We’ll come again soon."

Source: MERINEWS

Foreign NGO in Mizoram

Several charitable institutions, moved by the distress of Mizo villagers in the aftermath of the crop loss, will mobilise food relief for them.

The flowering of the bamboo plants in Mizoram is a queer ecological phenomenon that takes place every 48 years. The drove of rats, which feed on the fruits of the bamboo plants during this season, attain a sudden increase in their power of libido. As a result, they tend to give birth to more litters of their progeny, which rampage in the agriculture pastures, thus giving rise to crop failures.

Already two such overseas relief agencies are in Mizoram to render food supply to the villagers, who are now reeling under the famine. .

According to official reports from Aizawl, the Salvation Army, an evangelical body, has decided to set up 10 fair-deal centres in the remote areas of the state. The members of a Canadian NGO, Canada Norlyn Audio Vision Service, are already in the state scouting for the ravaged habitats there to distribute packaged food among the famine victims.

Stuart Roger Spani, a director of this NGO, who has arrived with four other volunteers, said their food relief articles, would be brought from Montreal and Ottawa.

Mike Cafful, a field operation specialist from the London headquarters of the Salvation Army, is already in the state to oversee the charity drive. He said the relief food materials would be distributed at half the price of their prevailing market rates.

Food and civil supplies minister Sangthuma said such foreign and national relief NGOs are welcome in his state in times of crisis. Mizoram Governor M.M. Lakhera also expressed his concern at the food crisis looming large in the state in the wake of the mautam.

He said the Centre had reduced the rice quota of the FCI from its earlier monthly level of 6,810 tonnes to 5,000 tonnes at present, even as 90 per cent of the state’s rice harvest was lost last year because of this rat rampage.

He said the state government has decided to release Rs 12.93 crore from the state’s calamity relief fund. The Mizoram government has also taken the decision to hike the weekly ration quota of rice from 2kg to 3kg in view of the crop loss.

Chief secretary Haukum Hauzel said the Mizo National Front government has also decided to distribute rice among the distressed families on credit, which would later be realised through manual labour in the government-sponsored infrastructure projects under the national employment assurance schemes.

Source: TELEGRAPH

North East, Is it Indian or some other countries?

The endearing name Ghaspani (grass and water) was given by the by the British to a foothills village in Naga Hills which connects railhead at Dimapur with the administrative centre at Kohima in the Angami Naga tract.

The British masters, the Assamese, Bengali and Naga guides and their ponies rested at Ghaspani, collected fodder, water and rations before starting the arduous climb along the Zubza valley to Bara Basti Kohima.

A garrison qasba, Ghaspani still gives one a nostalgic feeling of the march of an alien civilisation to the heartland of the Naga people. You may like to spend a night at Dimapur, look up the relics of Hidimbapura and take a car to Ghaspani before entering the gates of Kohima.

I can accompany you to the lovely town, though there are chances that you would be stopped at a couple of places by army pickets and pickets manned by uniformed and armed soldiers of the NSCN (I-M), in spite of the uneasy ceasefire. I do not intend to take you on an arduous tour of the misty Naga Hills, but would recommend climbing the snow laden Japfu peak in winters.

The famous Valley of Flower of the East “Dzukou Valley” is no less attractive than the Himalayan Valley of Flower in Uttarakhand. The added charm is over 142 varieties of orchids in the state that can rival imported orchids from Thailand, if properly exploited and marketed. Naga orchids have not been exploited the way Sikkim has done it. At Dzukou, you shouldn’t miss the multi-coloured largest Indian Rhododendrons. I have not seen such a lush growth of Rhododendrons anywhere else in the Himalayan heights.

Please accompany me to the rural areas to witness the Hornbill Dance and enchanting Naga dances like Serkrayi, Tulani, Tokhu Emong etc, which are as vigorous and enchanting as mainland Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi and Kathak are. The villagers do not dance to order. You have to please and often tease the belles and lads to don their colourful gear and dance like vibrant animals prancing at the Intaki sanctuary on Myanmar border or at the Fakim sanctuary.

But though most of them are enchantingly beautiful, I would not advocate making advances to any Naga belle. The urban women are globally oriented, and the rural beauties are as mysterious as the mountain mists around them.

Here, I must confess a hidden dream. Had I not been married to my most beautiful wife and not been expecting my second son, by the time we reached Nagaland, I would have preferred a scintillating Chakesang beauty as my life partner. But some dreams better remain in the realm of fantasy.

With no offence to other tribal belles, I noticed a mysterious Pacific touch in the Chakesang people. You have to believe me or accompany me to Pfutsero or nearby Chizami and Cheswezumi. I have often wondered where the belles borrowed the natural rouge hue on their cheeks!

Since Nagaland is itself a vibrant paradise I would not stress on visiting any particular tribal area- the Angami, Chakesang, Ao, Sema etc territories. However, you must accompany me to Sampure on the Myanmar border along the course of Dhansiri River, and witness the mysteries of the snowclad Saramati Hills. Bang on Myanmar border, the beautiful peak invites many climbers. However, you would require special permission to visit the border areas as there are chances of your getting caught in crossfire-of the NSCN factions and Indian army.

Your visit to the Naga Hills would remain incomplete if you did not step into the interiors of a traditional village home. Away from the concrete jungles of Kohima and Mokokchung, I would like to lead you to Wakching village in Mon Naga territory.

Don’t be afraid, there is a motorable road from Nagainimara in Asom to the dirt road-head leading to the hill-top village. A peculiar high profile frontage may greet you, adorned with bleached Mithun horns and human skulls. The Mons and Konyaks were little late in abandoning the headhunting practice. Some gaonburas (village elders) still take pride in showing their forefather’s collection of human skulls from neighbouring tribal villages.

The central fireplace (wood fired) keeps the entire house warm. You are welcome to the first chamber only, where you are cordially seated and served madhu and ruhi. The inner chambers are reserved for family use. One advice; never finish your glass. Your hostess would keep on pouring slightly smelly intoxicants into it, just like the Japanese Geisha does as soon her guest finishes sipping his tea.

Sip slowly and enjoy the smoked dried meat and cocktail of vegetables and pork boiled in wild ginger. The innocent grin on rural Naga faces would transcend you beyond the contorted stone buildings at Kohima and the inscrutable eyes of its people.

Do not be carried away by the sneering Indian remark that the Nagas eat everything that move in the air and on the earth. I have had the pleasure of tasting roasted or fried bee-larva, raw grasshopper, lizards and of course cat, dog, monkey (no offence to Lord Hanuman worshippers) and other animal meat.

Do not shriek. You might have seen such fried and roasted winged and crawling animals hawked in the roadside vends in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and other countries in South East Asia. After all, meat is meat, whether it is crab or cobra meat (with apology to vegetarians).

Oh, yes. If you are an honoured guest, the villagers might even slaughter a Mithun (Yak-Bull family) for you. Mithun was, once upon a time, like the Aryan Cow, a symbol of prosperity and authority.

I would not request you examine the diarchic rule headed by the elected government and grassroots level administration controlled by the machineries of the NSCN Isak-Muivah and Khaplang factions.

These are complicated issues that fox even the seasoned mandarins in Delhi and state politicians and officers, who pay taxes both to the state exchequer and the coffers of Isak, Muivah and Khaplang.

Your enchanting journey is fraught with certain palpable dangers. The Khaplang and Isak-Muivah factions of the NSCN rule the countryside from their fortified and deadly armed camps. The ceasefire agreement does not stop additional arms flow through Bangladesh and the expansion of NSCN territorial influence in neighbouring Manipur, Assam and other tribal pockets in Nagaland.

The Naga tract is conveniently divided between the Indian Army, Underground armed insurgents and some semblance of state administration. Delhi suffers from perpetual amnesia and occasionally wakes up to resume peace talks and declares a ceasefire. What else can you do with a part of “outer India?”

Constitutionally, geophysically and geopolitically these are parts of India. But our minds have not met; our cultures and mutual feelings have not been exchanged. We live like isolated islands in a sea of undefined and vague constitutional oneness. This illusion is both real and unreal.

The dominant Isak-Muivah faction, like the ULFA of Asom, is the father figure of all insurgent groups in the North East, numbering about 114, including nearly a dozen Muslim rebel outfits. The NSCN firepower is increasing by the day and their influence has started taking a Pan-Naga character. The dream of Nagalim- a greater Nagaland comprising Assam, Manipur Naga inhabited areas is considered as a fait accompli.

Behind the veil of the misty hills, a severe fission is in progress. Deft political handling with strict army vigil and corruption free administration are the keys to cooling down the fission process. But a corruption free India is as illusory as the gates to heaven or hell, whichever you prefer to enter.

It is the mainland Indians who must take initiative in drawing these “remote peoples” nearer to their homes and hearts. The North East of India is not only in the northeast of India’s geophysical and geopolitical map. It is, in fact, in the remotest corner of East by North East of our national consciousness. Most us take it for granted that it exists, because the printed map says so.

In reality, it does not exist in our map of mind.

Source: SULEKHA