Another season with the Tangsa

I had planned to spend half a year with the Tangsa this time, in order to get all that I needed to start writing my dissertation. Well... in the end I did stay for six months, and I did collect a lot of material; I also made many new experiences, met many new people, visited many new places -- for what it will all be good for is yet to be seen, but being with them for so long has changed my attitude towards the Tangsa -- I'm not sure any longer that I'm qualified to talk about them. And even if I could persuade myself to do so, I don't know what I should be talking about. I guess it will take a while for me to be able to put everything into perspective -- for now let me just write up the high points and the lows during my time in the field in the last season.


I set off on Diwali evening by train from Guwahati in order to be in Malugaon in good time for the Hakhun Festival scheduled for the 8th November. The festival was a bigger affair than last time, stage-managed almost entirely by the shrewd Gaonbura, Tehon Hakhun, and his band of loyal villagers. And although their star performer, the one and only Phulim Hakhun, was not present, nobody seemed to bother too much and it did not make too much of a difference in the end. What really annoyed me was the attitude of some of the VIP guests, in this case a couple of Assamese AGP politicians, who came from Digboi to attend the festival. Their main reason for coming was of course the forthcoming elections and not any real concern for the Tangsa. But then if they had a hidden agenda, the Gaonbura was also not totally innocent either. I'll tell you why I think so before I end.

From Malugaon I went to spend some time in Chamro basti in Arunachal to talk to the amazing Gaonbura Phanglim Kimching. The grand old man is very impressive, not only because of what he has achieved in his life (and still wants to do), but also because of all that he knows, his wisdom and good sense shining through in every sentence he uttered. It was just great to have had the chance to spend a few days with him and to get him to tell me a little bit of his thoughts and views about different things. I learnt a lot about what it means to be truly brave and to take pride in being a proud Tangsa from him.

My next stop was Mokukchung in Nagaland where I met yet another larger-than-life old man, the Sema Gaonbura of Lumami village, where the campus of Nagaland University is located. This Naga gentleman was also close to a hundred, had suffered unimaginable hardships during his lifetime, but had gone on to become one of the richest people in the area. But none of all that had not touched him, it had only taught him to be generous and modest -- he told me amazing stories of what he had actually witnessed and experienced first hand during the troubled Naga years. And when one day I asked him why he trusted me, why he was telling me so much without bothering to first find out if I was a government spy, he looked straight at me and said 'I haven't grown so old for nothing, you know.' That was that. When I left he made me promise that next time I came to Mokukchung, I would stay at least three days in his house -- that will never be, for he is dead. He died after being taken ill soon after I met him and if eye-witnesses are to be believed, his funeral was the biggest anyone had ever seen in that area.

I also visited Impur where the very serene and beautifully maintained headquarters of the Baptist Mission in Nagaland is located. That was where I learnt how the British administrators (who were keen that the Nagas kept their indigneous culture even while trying to civilise them) came into conflict with the American Baptist missionaries (who wanted the Nagas to give up everything of their old ways of life when they converted to Christianity). The Baptists had started the Tangsa mission in 1972. I was surprised at how openly and easily Reverend Walling admitted that Baptist pastors in the 70s and 80s were responsible for misguiding the people to give up their own culture when they converted -- he also spoke of how the view of the church has changed in recent years and how the church was now actively playing a role in preservation of the indigenous culture of the tribal people.

At the Nagaland University I met many Naga teachers and also a few activists and leaders, and I was most impressed by their knowledge, their commitment to their own people, and also their rationality and pragmatism -- they were not just sitting there building castles in the air or blaming the central government for all that went wrong, they were actually thinking of constructive ways to go forward and of concrete steps to get out of the present impasse between the two NSCN factions. Those few days in Lumami and the week in December in Kohima were enough to assure me that Nagaland was indeed in good hands and that ther Nagas were completely able and competent to take charge of their own affairs. Of course I could sense that the Naga tribes are still pretty much divided and this big hype about Naga unity etc. is still a myth. I also did not get much of a clue about the connection between the Naga and the Tangsa more than what I already knew -- that the closest amongst the Naga tribes related to the Tangsa would be the Konyaks in the continuum via the Noctes, the Wanchos and now also the Tutsas living in the Tirap district of Arunachal Pradesh.

My next trip was to the heart of Tangsaland -- to the village of Phulbari close to the Assam-Arunachal border where I planned to spend Christmas and New Year. It was very nice to be among friends again and it felt like coming home. The Rera Tangsa in Phulbari are almost all Baptists and I tried to participate in the celebrations as much as I could. I thoroughly enjoyed going carol singing with the village youth on the evenings of the 23rd and the 24th December. I also attended the services, which were solemn occasions and longer than usual, with a lot of singing both of hymns during the service and newly-composed ones at the end. The village was nicely decorated with the church as the focal centre for all the activities. A true sense of community and brotherhood could be felt among the village people at that time with community feasts organised both on Christmas day (sponsored by the most politically active Rera in Phulbari, Molu Rera) as well as on New Year's Day with sports and games for everyone thrown in. What was remarkable was the big role played by the village youth and the womenfolk in the organisation. Feasting, praying and singing were what Christmas at Phulbari was mainly about. While there I could also really start the process of getting ready for publication a book of Rera history and stories. Sadly though, Shimo Rera, one of the village leaders who was so supportive of this project, will not be there to see the printed book -- he died suddenly early in April.

Between Christmas and New year I made a quick trip to Kharangkong, my other home in Tangsaland, to be present when Lukam Tonglum's 5th daughter, who had recently eloped with and married a Christian Tangsa youth, came home for the first time with her husband. Lukam Tonglum, the self-styled chief of the Tangsa Nagas in Assam, is perhaps one of the last upholders of the old order. It was almost tragic to see this fiercely proud old man brought to his knees by this act of defiance of his most-loved daughter. He had pinned great hopes on her and had secretly hoped that she would take on the mantle of leadership of the Tangsa at least as far as upholding Tangsa culture went. Her reason for running away was that her father would have never agreed to her marrying a Christian otherwise. He seemed to suffer not only under the hurt that his daughter had inflicted to his pride by running away but also with the worry that some harm may come to his new son-in-law who worked in the army and was posted in strife-torn Kashmir.

After attending the Wihukuh festival once again in Kharangkong I went off on a long and complicated 15 day tour of some remote areas of the Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh -- there I learnt about the old and new forms of the Rangfrah religion, there I visited a house in which the walls of the open sitting area in front was lined with hundreds of skulls of animals of various kinds. Talking to people living in the hills beyond Manmau one could begin to imagine how life for the Tangsa could have been in the days when they still lived in the hills, with no contact with the outside world. This trip opened my eyes to all that I did not know about the Tangsa and made me realise how incomplete my analysis would be if I did not include the Tangsa from Arunachal, and perhaps by the same logic, also those Tangsa who still live across the border in Burma. To have spent three seasons in the field only to find out that one had actually got the address wrong was a feeling that I could have done well without. Anyway, it told me that I had no time to waste. The Tangsa in the more remote areas of Arunachal are more 'tribal' and their lifestyle is still quite a lot different from that of the modernised Tangsa living in the plains of Assam. But what was I was really looking for?

I was supposed to be working on Tangsa festivals -- and to that end I had already attended three different festivals plus Christmas and New Year by that stage. The state-sponsored three-day Dihing Patkai Festival that happened in mid-January was the third and biggest of them all. It was supposed to showcase the culture of all the people living in that area of Assam, and the Tangsa were only one of the several groups represented. But what culture could one hope to find in an event of that scale? Well... everything and nothing, I guess; it all depended on what one thought of as culture. For instance, our Nocte taxi driver came running up to me when he saw a group of Nocte dancers performing on stage, and exclaimed excitedly,'Baidew, look, look, that is our Nocte culture!'

And what of rituals in such a newly-concocted and multi-ethnic festival -- there was a Tipam pooja conducted in the morning of the first day of the festival to propitiate the gods of that area. I tried hard to ask around what Tipam meant, and also to figure out why that particular ritual was selected to get things going for that festival. But as is with many such questions, most of the people who were involved with it did not know very much. All I got were vague and tentative answers with nobody wanting to take responsibility but nobody wanting to appear ignorant either. I thought this reaction was quite typical of many such events that an anthropologist could want to explore in the course of one's work. But when a dreadful storm blew off the huge pandal of the festival area and wrecked havoc on all the stalls later in the day, everyone (and that included many Christian people as well) very happily claimed that there was some fault in the performance of the Tipam pooja in the morning that had angered the gods who had justifiably shown their wrath by destroying everything!

The much-hyped 'authentic' demostration of indigenous culture and way of life at that festival only left me with more questions than answers. Was I missing something? Why did it all seem not to fit? Wanting a break to figure out a few things for myself first I went to attend the NEILS conference at Tezpur, with the hope that talking to others working in the region might help me cope with my own worries better. My paper there as well as in Kohima (at the Indian Folklore Congress) earlier received a lot of response but it didn't help me sort the bigger picture. I understood that research is essentially a lonely journey, be it in mathematics, be it in anthropology. I would have to sort out by myself what to do with my festivals and what they might be good for.

From Tezpur I went on to Itanagar, the capital of Arunchal. Talking to people there I realised that though Itanagar was the capital of the state where most Tangsa lived, the two eastern-most districts of Tirap and Changlang were somewhat neglected despite being the most troubled, infested as they were with NSCN camps spilling over from neighbouring Nagaland. Being so far away from Itanagar and being so numerically weak, the Tangsa as well as the other tribes living in those two districts did not really have much say in the government of that state. But there are a couple of very high-powered Tangsa in place in Itanagar -- the state finance minister is a Kimching gentleman and he is perhaps one of the most dynamic people I met on this trip. The Chairman of the State Women's Commission is also a Tangsa -- a very outspoken and down-to-earth Mossang lady from Jairampur. Both of them cared deeply about the Tangsa and were very keen on preservation and revival of Tangsa language and culture. They were very happy to have our team join that effort and assured me of every possible help. They were also very keen that the Tangsa get better educated (for instance, the facts that there wasn't a single science graduate, nor an IAS officer from amongst the Tanga so far bothered them) and claim their place in the national mainstream.

For me, it was very good to have a chance to see how far the Tangsa have made it on the one hand while also observing how the ones who had made it still retained their strong sense of belonging and responsibility for their own community. I also understood that for the Tangsa there was only one way forward from here -- education, development, progress, modernisation,... -- they had come too far already, soon they would become like the rest of us, their difference lying only in their mostly unrecorded and soon to be forgotten past. Well... a pity maybe in some respects, but then it was their choice, and would have to be respected. After all, haven't we all made the same choice too at some point in our past. Mulling over those thoughts in Itanagar, and also while interacting first with the teachers and students at the Tribal Studies Institute of the Rajiv Gandhi University and later with many well-to-do and educated Tangsa at the residence of the Finance Minister, I realised that my attitude towards the Tangsa had changed -- that within these six months I had somehow stopped thinking of them as objects of study, they had become my friends. That I could no longer just be a neutral observer while talking to them, I had become part of their families, as much as they had become part of my life.

How that will impact on my work and my understanding of the data I have collected so far will have to be seen. But it does not worry me too much, for by that point I had come to an important realisation -- that one must not try to find additional meaning in things simply because one had originally hoped them to be more important than what they turned out to be. If festivals are nothing more than simply occasions to come together, to eat, drink, dance, sing and be merry, then I will have to be happy with that. If culture is just song, dance and dress for the people themselves then I would have to accept that. And if in the end, being honest about what I found in the field implies that my dissertation does not have anything profound to say about the Tangsa or their festivals, then I would have to live with that.

Towards the end of March came the big news that a Development Council had been awarded to the Tangsa, the Singpho and a few other tribal groups. While it was seen by many as just an election stunt by the outgoing government, the tribal groups were jubilant. Lukam Tonglung was elected the Deputy Chairman of the Council while Tehon Hakhun and Molu Rera were inducted as the Tangsa members of the Council. While one could have guessed Lukam Tonglung and Molu Rera to be part of any Tangsa leadership, the fact that Tehon Hakhun was also in showed how well he had played his cards, and what his own personal agenda was in organising those annual festivals in Malugaon.

As such I gave up my plans to go back to Tangsaland (as many of my Tangsa consultants had become totally preoccupied with their plans for the Council) and spent the rest of my time working in libraries, archives and with books, attending conferences, interviewing people, many of them Tangsa, many of them people who had worked on the Tangsa. Most of that time I was in Guwahati but I also used the opportunities to go to Shillong (to attend the Interim Conference of International Society for Folk Narrative Research) and to Delhi (to speak at the newly started Ambedkar University) to get some important interviews.

But it was just after I had finished my presentation at a seminar hosted by the Indian Council for Historical Research in Guwahati that I was put to the hardest test -- when a young man stood up and asked me 'So what is so special about your Tangsa that we need to know about them at all?' If I wasn't so stumped by his brazenness I could have thrown a glass of water at him and replied, 'What is so special about you that I have to bother to reply?' But later when I thought about it I realised that I had no honest answer. Given what I know so far, I do not know if there is anything so very special about the Tangsa that might have convinced the young researcher to lend me his ear. But why do they have to be special -- is it not special enough to be ordinary yet perhaps just a wee bit different?












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My time in Guwahati

This time I was in India for long enough to be able to do a little more than I have been able to in the preceding few years. And since I could plan my time, I could also make sure I was able to attend a few events in Guwahati, even though I was away from Guwahati on work for long stretches at a time.



The first event of that kind was Confluence, the South-east Asian Literary Festival, hosted by the North-east Writers Forum (NEWF) in Guwahati early in December. As I have been a NEWF member from day one, the event was like a huge reunion of old friends for me, besides giving me the chance to meet greats like Mark Tully and Mahesh Dattani. And since I have been away from the Forum for many years now, I got treated like a guest, so much so that I did not have to do any of the organising and could just sit back and enjoy myself. In any case, it was really great to be back in that world again. Pity that I didn't really manage to be present at any of the Forum meetings after that, and in the process missed meeting Mitra baidew, for example, again. But I did meet Mamang again in Itanganar, that too, after she had been awarded the Padma Shri, and was thrilled to find her as unassuming and as friendly as ever.

Even before Confluence was over I had begun to wonder about Upasana's idea of starting a community college in Guwahati. Not knowing how else to go about making it happen I wrote a 'letter to the editor' and sent it to both the Assam Tribune and the Sentinel. You wouldn't believe the response we got to that letter! At least 20 people responded over phone, maybe an equal number over e-mail, and as a result of all of that, Upasana managed to put together a group of like-minded people to get a programme to train domestic workers started already by mid January! And though their group Xahai is a long way from setting up a community college in the form we had originally envisaged, still a beginning has been made. The fact that neither she, nor I, nor Smita, the very enterprising young lady based in the US who has done a lot of work with domestic workers in Assam, actually live in Guwahati is probably part of the problem. But I am hopeful that there will be better things to report on that front in the days to come.

One event that I couldn't attend, despite wanting desperately to do so was the going on-line of the Saurav Kumar Chaliha website on New Year's Day in Guwahati (more about this in a previous blog). I have been associated with that effort right from the very beginning but just could not be in Guwahati on that day as my work and job demanded I be with my Tangsa people. However, there was a sense of real achievement as the website actually took shape and we were all very happy to have been able to put on record our admiration and respect for the great master of the Asamiya short story through this little gesture. I've brought back a few more stories to translate, but translating SKC can be quite a challenge, as you all know.

Between my field trips I was also desperately trying to get ready for publication, two books in English, that were already in the pipe-line and would be good to have released in the next award meeting of the Munin Barkotoki Memorial Trust scheduled for early March. The first was a book of short biographies of some important Assamese men of letters. This book had been more than 10 years in the making and was still not ready. The second was a book of selected short-stories and poems, in translation, written by the Munin Barkotoki Awardees 1995-2004. While I was not directly involved with the production of the first book (except for helping with expediting things wherever I could) I had translated all the prose pieces for the second book and was also responsible for getting it ready for publication. To cut the long story short, both books appeared in time for the Award Meeting; but the first one was so full of mistakes that it will have to be re-done, and due to some misunderstanding with the publisher the second one is still not really published (at the last moment we had to get a few copies printed so as to be able to release it at the meeting) though we are hopeful it will happen soon. But I have learnt one simple lesson from this major exercise which cost me a lot of time, energy and money -- that one cannot really push things beyond a certain point -- things will happen in their own good time; if you push too hard -- things will just fall through.

The award meeting was fixed for 5th March 2011 and we did manage to put up a reasonably good show (read my earlier blog). But I could see that the strain of organising this event was beginning to become a bit too much for Ma. I tried to do what I could to help, however, I am not sure how we will keep this going in the years to come especially with the centenary around the corner in 2015.

There were other jobs like doing tax returns, renovating the two bathrooms in my flat, redoing the furniture and curtains in Ma's living room, and so on which can only happen when one is in Guwahati for long enough. I also took Ma for a medical check-up to Delhi. Of course there were many other things that I did not manage to do despite being there for so long -- visiting Khura, Arindam and Misiki in Nagaon and, Mimli's parents and Shishugram in Guwahati among them. I hope to be forgiven for it was not intentional -- I kept meaning to visit but kept postponing till it was too late. Since I have been away for many years now people have stopped inviting me for weddings, birthdays and the like. And I am not exactly sorry about that. But I was happy that I could attend one very nice Asamiya wedding partially and it was really good to find that the old Assamese traditions still live on.

That wedding also took me to Rangiya and I was pleasantly surprised to find how nicely village life has adapted to modern conveniences without losing its wholesome and thriving character. That feeling was reinforced in my trips to Adabari and Barpeta Road. From Barpeta Road, our friend Monica took us to visit the Satra at Barpeta. And that was perhaps the most beautiful and most impressive of all the places I have been to this time. Of course the fact that women are still not allowed in seems more like an anachronism than anything else to me and I tried not to allow my irritation over that prohibition mar my appreciation of the serene beauty of the place.

Besides all that Stephan and I had a wonderful holiday in Dharamshala in March -- it was nice to see a new part of India and also nice to get away from the daily grind for a bit. It was amazing to discover that Macleodganj near Dharamshala, where the Dalai Lama lives, is so overrun by Tibetan refugees, north-Indian businessmen and foreign tourists that one only rarely sees any Himachalis around. Nature in the Kangra hills and valley is simply breath-taking although the towns and cities are nothing to write home about. Work also took me to Mokukchung, Kohima, Itanagar and Shillong this time and I can say this in all sincerity -- the hills and people of the north-east are as wonderful, if not better, than anywhere else in India.

One of the nicest things that happened during my long stay in India this time was getting back in contact with my school and college friends both in Guwahati and in Delhi. It started right on the very first day on my arrival in Delhi with a really big reunion of my Carmel school friends after 28 years! That was really a very happy occasion and I tried to do the same in Guwahati with my St. Mary's, Cotton College and University friends. Miraculously things worked and it was just wonderful to have had the chance this time to reconnect with so many of my old friends from school and college with whom I share so many unforgettable memories. As I look back on those wonderfully happy get-togethers I can only feel blessed and be grateful for having been given the chance to meet them all again.

While on friends, there were a few old friends, Roshini and Liza amongst them, who I could not reach or find despite repeated efforts, and I kept wondering what the matter could be. I still don't know but maybe it is just that as time goes by people change and with it change their preferences for friends. To make up for the ones I have lost, I also made a few new ones, and that made me very happy -- Lisa from Itanagar, Bhaskar in Margherita, Altafda and Nazrul in Guwahati to name just a few. I also had a few amazing experiences and also met and got to know some incredibly nice and impressive people. More about all of that, in my note on the Tangsa that is to follow. And as I now begin the process of figuring out which of my friends in Europe I have lost, and which ones I still have left after so many months of no contact, I can only tell myself that no matter what the outcome is, these were six months in India well spent.





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Back again in Volkach

Just to say that I am back home again in Volkach, after almost six months away. Most of the time I was in Upper Assam working with the Tangsas. I also spent a lot of time in Guwahati and got involved in many things -- some new and some old. But about all that later -- just wanted to record a few things I noticed immediately after getting back before I forget them.


Almost the first thing that Stephan did as we tried to board a taxi at the train station was to open the driver's door to sit down! Even he, although he had been away for just a month, had forgotten that cars are left-hand-drive in Germany. I chuckled and teased him about it but the next morning when Inez, Stephan's sister, called and started listing all the flowers that were blooming in her garden and describing how lovely the weather was, and I found it all a little unusual, I realised that even I had got a little out of sync. For when was it, if at all, during the last six months in India that anyone had spoken about flowers and weather and garden in the same vein? Okay some people in India also had pretty gardens but flowers and lovely weather were never so crucial to a person's general well-being there as it is here. But we don't need to continue this discussion any further -- in a few days I will also be chattering away about the flowers and the weather like Inez, I am sure.

We had timed our return to be in time for Easter in Germany. And it was lovely to have an invitation -- but coming back to find a world decked up in yellow and orange with Easter eggs everywhere, and the impossible attempts to find the right presents to take along, were not easy to take in one's stride. It was Bihu in Guwahati just before we left and even there we had had to worry no end about presents for everyone around us. There were also japis and gamochas to be seen on many shop-windows in Guwahati and loud Bihu music everywhere -- come to think of it, Bihu there and Easter here were not all that different, and we seemed to have inadvertently landed up having to do the same things twice -- no wonder it was beginning to pale.

Well... in any case I shouldn't be complaining for even after being away for six months I found this world here, as well as our house and garden, more or less as I had left it. That is one of the nicest things about Germany -- nothing changes, or at least, not very quickly. In six months certain streets in Guwahati can change beyond recognition, but not here. The friendly shopkeepers were all still in place and acknowledged my presence after so long in their usual friendly and polite way -- if they were surprised to see me back after so long, they did not show it. Our housekeeper was there looking very much the same as ever, her usual efficient self -- she was the one who had kept this house going all this while. The kitchen, the sofas, my table, the bed-side lamp, my little gosain-ghar, the owl at the front-door,...looked very much the same -- it was all very comforting.

Of course the huge stack of letters (and Christmas cards) waiting to be opened did tell a story of their own. Also the plants in our garden had lived through another very severe winter since I was here last -- not all of them have survived, but still... Now that that spring is in the air and I am back, I have to make sure the garden looks good again... it gives me something I enjoy doing to do, something familiar to hold on to, as I try to find my feet again in this world, so different from the one I have left behind in India. The telephone does not ring all the time here, friends do not keep dropping in all the time, the neighbours don't come to smother you with affection and food the moment they see you arrive, even the silences are longer here, but still I do feel very welcome. I could not but be grateful for the happy chatter of the birds in our garden as I woke up in the morning to the soft chiming of the church bells and told myself that I had really come home.









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Munin Barkotoki Award Meeting

My first thoughts after the Munin Barkotoki Award Meeting on 5th March 2011

The Munin Barkotoki Awards for 2009 and 2010 were given away by distinguished Asamiya literateur Arun Sarma, in the presence, amongst many others, of distinguished Manipuri poet Robin Ngangom and my mother Renuka Devi Barkatati in a well-attended meeting at the Lakhiram Barooah Sadan in Guwahati. Arun Sarma khura spoke eloquently and very emotionally about his personal assocation with Baba and read out a few excerpts from Baba's Bismrita Byatikram. Robin Ngangom delivered a very powerful and excellently-crafted invited lecture on 'Poetry in the Time of Terror'. For me, however...

the personal high point was my first ever public speech in Assamese -- I had taken Upen Khura's help to write it down and had tried to rehearse it once, but the whole things was forgotten in a flurry of other activity till moments before I had to actually speak. Thankfully I found my sheet of paper on time and somehow managed to do my job. The occasion was the release of the book titled 'Winners All' comprising English translations of select pieces from the Prize winning entries of the first ten years (1995-2004). Pradip Acharya, the editor, had translated the poems and I had done the prose. Since Pradipda could not be present at the meeting, I had to speak. Another book in English titled 'Pensive Pioneers' edited by Dr. Sivanath Barman containing biographical sketches of some of the foremost Assamese men of letters was also released at the meeting.

The meeting also helped me to see more clearly a few facts -- first that the Munin Barkotoki Award has become widely known and established over the years and that it had moved out from being just a private initiative of the Trust to achieving a much wider level of acceptance and recognition. It was very gratifying indeed to see, besides many of our well-wishers and friends, so many distinguished Assamese men of letters, turning up for the meeting and happily sitting through the two-hour long meeting. And I felt very happy that Baba is not forgotten, at least till today. The next very happy realisation was the fact that I still had very many friends -- amazing people who had gone out of the way to help me get this meeting right, and shown once again that they still care. To balance these two very happy thoughts was the rather unhappy realisation that Ma was getting rather old -- she had done everything that was required of her for yesterday's meet but it was hard for her to cope with the pressure. I'll have to find a way to manage things without burdening her too much in the years to come.

And that is a very sobering thought because a big event is ahead of us -- Baba's centenary celebrations are due in 2015. I hope I will somehow be able to see my way forward...




For the moment just want to say a big thank you to everyone who helped yesterday in so many different ways to make the meeting a success...







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Saurav Kumar Chaliha on the web

For those of you who have not already done so, please visit the website SKC. I do not want to say more about the great SKC -- the website says it all... just want to say how happy I am that this website has really happened and pay my tribute to two true and noble SKC fans who 'double-handedly' made this happening possible -- renowned filmmaker Altaf Majid da and young enterpreneur Nazrul Haque. My hats off to both of them!

Comments for improvement are welcome. We'd also be grateful to hear from more SKC fans and also from those SKC fans who can and are willing to translate some of SKC's untranslated stories ... there is a lot still left to do before the work will be done...do come and strengthen our hands...

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Autumn update

I'm off to India next month on a field trip and will be back only just before Easter next year. Hope to have many more stories about the Tangsas to tell after I get back. I'm rather sorry to have to have to leave at a time when the trees and forests look glorious in their autumn colours. Also sad to be missing Christmas in Germany this year, but that can't be helped. I'm also not sure whether internet will work there -- so don't expect anything new for the next few months.


These last couple of months have been full of out-of-term-activity. We've had guests (Mamoni Baidew and Paban Bhindew), travelled around a bit (in the Hohenlohe and Rhon area), and have also had some quiet days at home, ruffled only by a wisdom-teeth extraction. Last weekend I went off with Petra to Speyer and Worms -- two of the oldest cities in Germany. We had a great time and I loved watching the sheep-shearing at the Bauern-markt in Speyer on the Saturday and visiting the Niebelungen Museum in Worms, just to mention two of the many special things we did there.

And there are trips to Bremen, Goettingen and Nijmegen planned for the coming weeks for me, and a trip to Afghanistan for Stephan. Sometimes it begins to seem a bit too much. But we seem to not know when to stop. Anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that everything goes well.

And now, as thoughts of India come closer, I am not sure what to think about the news filtering in about the forthcoming Commonwealth Games in Delhi. Some of the comments one hears makes one head hang down in shame. It makes a joke of slogans like 'India Shining' and 'Hamara Bharat Mahan'. Are we not good at anything else?




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Asamiya Get-together in Volkach

A short description of the recent Asamiya get-together that Stephan and I hosted in our home in Volkach on the weekend of the 31st July-1st August 2010.

After months of talking about it, weeks of preparation and quite a few dozens of e-mail messages and phone calls in all directions, 21 people converged to our house in Volkach (14 of them Asamiya, with their families/spouses/partners) in the last weekend of July for a first Asamiya get-together of sorts in this part of Germany. We were expecting quite a few more, but given that it was the very first time, and there was very little contact before, I think it was quite a success.



I want to begin by saying thank you once again to all those who came for coming, for the very kind words you had to say about the get-together and for sharing your photos with the rest of us, and, to share a bit of the fun with those who could not come, to make sure that next time we have a bigger gathering. A special thanks to Ellie Bou and Nirode da (the celebrated historian Dr. Nirode Barooah from Koeln) for coming and for bestowing dignity and grace to the whole event.



The four of us at Volkach (Hans, Magdalena, Stephan and I) felt very happy to have managed to keep to our rough plan and although it took some organising, it made us feel very satisfied and happy in the end. This was the first time we had as many as a dozen people at one time spending the night as guests in our house, and it was a really nice feeling. Thanks also for the larroos and pithas, the singing, music and dancing, the map with the flags, and for the friendliness that imbued everything with a sense of fun. The patch of parched grass in our garden reminds me constantly of the lovely bonfire we had going in our garden that night.



For those who did not come, a brief description: people started arriving around lunch time on Saturday and we started with a round of introductions around 4 p.m. that lasted till a little after dinner after which we all settled around a bonfire for some music and singing, ending with a Husuri and Bihu dance around 2 a.m. the next morning. On Sunday our guests did some sightseeing in and around Volkach. Some had to leave during the course of the day but those left met for lunch and again around dinner-time in our house for another round of talking and laughing ending again in the wee hours of the morning.


Most importantly, the weather was perfect all through Saturday and Sunday -- it started to rain from early on Monday morning but by then nobody was complaining. But the time we had together was just not enough -- wish we could have prolonged it for at least another day. I hope we can keep meeting informally like this, at least every 1-2 years. And there was a sort of informal agreement that the next meeting will be during the Autumn school break of 2011 in Mr. Yaso Mahanta's Dorfpark Hotel in a beautiful corner of Austria.

And you can be assured of amongst all other things, culinary delights like laroos and pithas made by Rita, music by Sushanta (trumpet) and Kakoli (violin) and some real authentic Husuri from Mr. Mahanta. And if Thunu can be persuaded to join Mr. Mahanta and Wolfgang can be persuaded to bring his guitar along, then you can be assured of a very long and enjoyable night...



For me personally, it was a huge occasion to come to terms with my personal home-sickness, and it made me feel happy again about being an Asomiya and at peace again with the big wide world. There is another reason for me to feel very happy -- when I had first started planning this meet, I found it hard to explain to Stephan how I was so sure that this would work, even though I did not know most of the people personally. But he went along, never-the-less, and helped in every single way he could. In the end, not only did everything work beautifully but in turn our guests were quite amazed at how hard Hans and Magdalena worked to make the whole thing a success and how well they gelled into the predominantly Asamiya atmosphere, given the fact that they were the only non-Asamiya couple in the gathering.

At the end of it all everyone left with a few more friends than they had before they arrived here, and to know that is a wonderfully good feeling.









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Half-way down 2010 already

About the experience of going on a hot-air balloon ride, about trips to Prague and Vienna, and how different they were, and finally a few thoughts related to the Football World Cup currently taking place in South Africa.

Time just goes by -- can't believe that I haven't updated my blog for so long. For the first few months of the year I kept grumbling about the incredibly long and hard winter, and now, without half a chance to change gear, we are plump in the middle of summer -- with temperatures that can well compete with the summer heat in India. Only difference being that here there are no fans, no air conditioning and no coconut water to be found. But enough of grumbling... to other things...


The high point, by far, of these last months, happened at the beginning of June when we went on a hot-air balloon ride from Volkach. High time too, for we had been trying to find a date when the weather would be right to go on the ride for more than a year; we had already had to cancel three times. But June 4th was a perfect choice. And it was a great experience -- one that I would highly recommend to all of you.


It was simply strange and also wonderful to find the three of us high up in the sky, literally in a basket, with only the wind and the warm air inside the balloon to keep us afloat. The only control Klaus, our pilot, had was the switch to the gas cylinders, with which he could adjust the height of the balloon -- for moving horizontally he had to depend solely on the wind (which differed in strength and direction at different heights).

The funny thing was that after the huge amount of time we spent before take-off helping to set things up and being told what to do in case of various eventualities, I hardly noticed when we actually took off -- it was only when I saw people waving at us from below that I realised that we were off the ground. I felt a little cheated at first but soon the spectacular views of the area around us, the initial excitement of trying to float right over our house, of trying to identify the various little villages around Volkach and of being amazed at the sheer beauty of the many little loops and bends of the river Main around this area kept me completely spell-bound till it was almost time to land. I had not realised how pretty the area around here is till we actually got high enough to get a panoramic view -- and believe me, Google Earth is no match for what one sees from a balloon up there -- I heard me telling myself -- By Jove, our earth is really beautiful.

We had been told that we had to steer clear of the vineyards -- they were too dangerous to try to land in. That took us almost all the way to Iphofen. We finally landed in a field of baby cauliflowers and it was amazing to see the skill with which Klaus Bernhardt tried to steer clear of the plants and direct the balloon in order to land precisely at the crossroads. His wife Edith and son Alexander had in the meanwhile followed us the whole way in their big and sturdy station wagon, and were right there to receive us, at the crossroads, in the middle of a field of cauli-flower plants, next to nowhere we had ever been before.

But nothing had prepared us for what was to come after we landed -- but I will not tell you more about that here, in order not to spoil the fun for those who plan to go on a balloon ride -- the only hint, we were treated like royalty in the end!

In the last three months I've also been to two of the prettiest cities of Europe, Prague (end May) and Vienna (end June); both are spectacularly beautiful but I don't want to go into the details as there is nothing I can add to what you can find out easily from elsewhere -- just two old lessons based on my actual experience of the two cities -- first never visit such a city as a tourist during a weekend during the tourist season -- you will see nothing but other tourists and never want to go back there again, and second, it is much nicer if you can find someone, who actually lives in such a city (and has nothing to do with the tourist industry), to show you around -- then you will seen what not many tourists have seen and will come away having a real feel for the life of the city.

Two cultural tips however: while at Prague, do go to see a show of the 'Black Light Theatre' -- it is something very different, very aesthetic and very creative. I enjoyed every minute of our "Yellow Submarine Show" in a tiny and quaint little room filled with dozens of puppets, that served as the theatre. And in Vienna, there is a huge screen set up outside the State Opera House which screens every performance that is going on inside, live, for free. There is easily space for at least a couple of hundred people to be seated in front of the giant screen. Of course you have to bring your own chairs or towels to sit on, but you don't need to dress up, nor do you have to abstain from eating,drinking or talking, during the performance -- highly recommended!

Another thing also happened, or at least started to happen in the first half of this year -- the Football World Cup. The football mania gripping Germany, and perhaps other nations too, is to be seen to be believed. I have often wondered at how the normally sane and self-controlled Germans can become so loud and boisterous when it comes to football... But maybe that is precisely why -- for the first time in a long while, the Germans have something to celebrate, to be happy about -- football seems to have given this nation a new and positive sense of identity.

Good for them, and also for South Africa! And almost automatically, without any big effort,I find myself happily sharing in their excitement. It is a very good feeling. I caught the contagion only gradually though, understanding very little about football. At first, it meant little more than trying to locate the 32 countries on the map. But soon I found myself worrying about the outcome of the matches, and empathising with the heart-break of the losers, as well as with the jublation of the winners, that I saw on the faces of complete strangers at the end of a match.

I can't imagine what will happen afterwards,though. I wonder if the beautiful stadiums that have been built there will ever be made available for use by the local people. Reminds me in a sense of the National Games that were held in Guwahati a couple of years ago -- wonder what has happened to all those stadiums and the other facilities that had been created for the Games -- are they being put to any real use to encourage sports in the region -- I am not sure. I guess, Indians on the whole, don't think sport to be really important -- if they did we wouldn't do so miserably in almost every international event. Of course, cricket is important for many Indians, but more for the glamour, less as a sport, I guess. Cricket in recent times has become more like Bollywood Cinema -- all about money and beautiful people -- I don't quite understand it anymore.

But, to end on a happy note, if it weren't for the terribly annoying Wuvuzelas and the fact that India does not figure anywhere in the scheme of things as far as football is concerned, I couldn't have hoped for anything more from this World Cup. If one believes what one sees on TV then it has brought all South Africans together, and the rest of the world closer to Africa and also to one another. It has been the only good news we have had for a long while, in a world where only disasters can make it to the news -- for example all that oil that is gushing out in the Gulf of Mexico, to name just one. Let me not get started on that, else this wish to end on a happy note will get choked too...

Tonight is the final between Spain and the Netherlands, the oracle octopus Paul has already predicted who will win, let me try to be stupidly unoriginal and say, that doesn't matter at all as long as it is good football...

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Eating cham and drinking phelap with the Tangsas

Some observations about the food habits and life-style of the Tangsas

I have always stayed with my Tangsa consultants during my field-trips in the last years. Although the Tangsas live not far away from big towns like Margherita, Ledo and Jairampur, their style of living and their food habits are very distinctive. I am rather cross with myself for not having really bothered so far to learn to cook a few typically Tangsa dishes. But, as often happens in the field, there always seems to be something more important to do, and later, it is just too late.


The Tangsas are a small hill tribe who have migrated to India from Myanmar probably within the last couple of centuries and have settled in the north-east Indian states of Assam (mainly in the Margherita area of Tinsukia district) and Arunachal Pradesh (in the Changlang and Tirap districts). Most Tangsas today regard themselves as Nagas, but as a distinct group within them. The Tangsas in India comprise over 30 different sub-tribes , with considerable linguistic diversity, and although the cultural or linguistic difference between some groups may not be very large, there is a large amount of variation, allowing for further re-grouping of the Tangsa sub-tribes into Pangwas and Tangwas. Most of what I describe below is based on my observations and documentation of the food and life-styles of three Pangwa subtribes – namely Cholim, Lochhang and Rera, using the names they use for themselves – or alternatively, Tonglum, Langching and Ronrang, using the names others use for them.

I have been working with the Tangsas since 2008 and have spent a few months in the field, both as part of a team with the other project-members and also on my own. What struck me most about Tangsa food when I first arrived in ‘Tangsa-land’ were the timings and the menu -- huge mounds of plain boiled rice (cham) formed the major part of every meal; and there were two main meals per day – the first rice meal was served around 7 a.m. – rice with a bland and very watery śak-soup , sometimes with a very hot and spicy chutney (basically a paste of tomatoes and chilles), sometimes with a spicy vegetable item and every few days a few pieces of roast or fried meat (mostly pork). My colleague Stephen, who is an egg-etarian, sometimes got a couple of boiled eggs instead. Another meal, with roughly the same items but even less elaborate, was repeated at dusk, around 4 p.m.

In the morning we got milk tea sometimes with a few biscuits when we got up which was usually early, say around 5:30 a.m.; then in between the two main rice meals separated by nearly 10 hours, we got almost nothing -- sometimes at around noon we got black tea (see more about it below) with a piece of boiled ‘simon-alu’ (a sweet potato-like tuber), or a couple of cookies, or a slice of bread, if we were lucky. For anything more than this, we needed to go visiting other people’s homes (where we could be sure of being offered a cup of black tea at least) or were at the mercy of the occasional guest: for we would also get a cup of tea if we happened to be around when the guests were being served their tea. But otherwise that was it. It took me a few days to get used to this new regime – I was not used to eating so much rice at a time, that too so early in the morning, was not used to the very long gap in between, and the food was either too bland or extremely spicy for me. But I quickly adjusted...

The first Tangsa word I learnt almost automatically, out of sheer necessity, because I am somebody who cannot survive for long without tea, was phelap. Phelap is the black and bitter tea that the Tangsas left ‘cooking’ (more appropriately ‘smoking’) in a black and sooty kettle on a tripod over the hearth (not the inner kitchen hearth but the one in the adjoining outer area where the men usually sat) most of the time. Except for the one cup of milk-tea served in the morning (which was usually served sweet), the rest of the day one got mostly phelap. I was completely fascinated by the self-made and much-used bamboo mug which our host used to drink his tea from. Home-made wooden ladles, spoons etc. were also regularly used in the kitchen.

They rarely used sugar in their tea, and even otherwise they had no idea of a dessert, did not cook anything sweet in all the time I was there, and also very rarely used milk or milk-products. Even the one cup of milk-tea we got in the morning was usually made with milk powder. I wondered about the children, but never saw a child being given milk to drink, probably a consequence of the fact that traditionally Tangsas did not rear cows. After mother’s milk, they moved straight on to drinking phelap, I guess. And their diet did not include fruits either, apart from a few, like bananas and papayas, that grew locally.



Another omission was potatoes, simply because they did not grow it in the hills – Tangsas seldom eat potatoes even today. They eat cho (arum; kasu in Assamese) instead. The food is mostly boiled and roasted, they use hardly any oil for their normal cooking , nor our normal spices. But they did use chillies and some other herbs that made certain items of the menu really eye-wateringly spicy.

One special vegetable that I encountered was called ‘khi-mo-jak’, which is a kind of vegetable they got from the jungles (called ‘nefa-phool’ in Assamese, I was told); although they ate it in the winter it turns very bitter in summer. Another herb which was commonly used at least in Balinong was called ‘nge-tang-pe’ (see picture above). Another vegetable, that I encountered for the first time in Balinong, was called, not surprisingly, 'sari-kona-sabji' or 'four-cornered-vegetable' (see picture below). It can also be eaten raw.



Rice and arum were the staples, and there were various things that they made out of these two basic ingredients. Of course rice was used also to make rice-beer (chhai, lao-pani in Assamese), while various some types of arum served as fodder for pigs. For ceremonial and festive occasions, the rice would be wrapped in koupat(a kind of big flat and thick leaf, that grew wild and abundantly in the jungles) in the form of rice-balls, and this not only kept the rice warm for longer and facilitated distribution but also when opened the koupat served as a plate to eat from. Bamboo sungas (containers) would normally be used for serving water or for rice-beer. A very good lesson in environmental-friendliness to be learnt there...

While women did most of the usual cooking at home, at big festive occasions, it was usual to see the women in charge of making the rice, wrapping them in koupat and brewing the rice-beer (and also cutting tomatoes, onions and cucumber to make a sort of salad, which I assume is a modern addition) while the men were in charge of cutting, cleaning and cooking the meat – be it pork, beef, or of any other sort. I have often wondered about the reason for this obvious division of labour, but don’t have any clear notions yet.



In the picture is a locally-made container for storing and serving rice-beer.
What surprised me very much in the beginning was the amount of rice-beer the Tangsa women could drink – although they did not drink regularly, on festive occasions they did not lag behind the men at all as far as drinking and making merry were concerned. Equality, I guess, even in such quaint forms...

And as one dug deeper, there were amazing facts that one discovered related to food: for example that in the Hakhun language the verbs for preparation of different foods are different: so for example: the verb ‘to make’ in English can take different forms in Hakhun: to make vegetables (phom) the Hakhuns would use the verb ‘abbi’, but to make tea (phelap) they would use the verb ’lomlo’ for rice (cham), the verb ‘poilo’ and ‘limlo’ for meat (gnam) and so on. Stephen, our linguist, told me that among the Pangwas there are three words for the verb ‘ingest’. One, sah means ‘to eat rice, bananas, fish, eggs’, a second phak means ‘to eat meats and vegetables and other solids’ and a third nying or something like it means ‘to drink’ but would also be used for smoking. Our Cholim host often said mitha (sweet) to me in Assamese when he actually meant ‘salty’ – it took me a long time to figure out how salt could taste so sweet ...

Soon it was clear to me why the meal times were the obviously natural ones – the Tangsa villagers, who are predominantly farmers, try to work and sleep according to the sun (and that, given the very erratic and unreliable power situation in most villages, is a very sensible thing to do in any case). They get up almost before dawn, and the women start cooking the morning meal while the men tend to the pigs, the poultry and other animals. Soon after the morning meal, almost every able adult member of the house – men and women alike – leave for their tea-gardens , paddy fields or their vegetable patches where they work during the day. Some older member of family – usually a grandfather or a widowed grandaunt -- remain at home and took care of the kids, if any, left at home.

The women return home only around 3 p.m. often carrying loads of fire-wood on their heads, while the men follow a little later, carrying leafy arum stems for pig fodder from the forests. Then the women begin with cooking the evening meal in the main kitchen, while the men cut up the arum stems and put them to cook in the outer hearth. By the time the animals are fed, the meal is eaten and the dishes done, it is well past 6 p.m. – and soon after it is normally bed-time for the Tangsas.

Despite the over-consumption of rice at the price of under-consumption of almost everything else, the Tangsas are remarkably healthy and strong and hardy. And they have incredible stamina – especially the women, who never sit idle for a minute, and do not wait for their men to do the heavy work – I have often seen young Tangsa women running up the narrow wooden ladder of their chang-ghars carrying a full sack of rice (mostly half quintal sacks but often heavier too) on their backs, after having carried it from the fields on their bicycles for several kilometres.

When I marvelled about this many Tangsas told me that the secret lay in their preference for boiled and bland food. Many older Tangsa men told me that the fish, water and rice from the hills were tastier and healthier, and the air was purer there. But times were changing. Mr. H.K. Morang from Nampong maintained that the earlier way of life and food habits of the Tangsas was much healthier and better – for example, earlier they used to drink the juice of raw fish called ‘psa’ which was very good for health – now they eat unhealthy fried fish instead . Today they don’t drink home-made rice-beer which never did anybody much harm but drink cheap rum and brandy instead! And of course there is still the problem of opium addiction – the British introduced opium in the hills with the hope of keeping the hill people quiet – but the Tangsas seem to have adopted it for their very own now and show no sign of letting go...

Of the various other facets related to food I tried to find out more about the use of food items for other purposes – such as for performing rituals, for doing augury and even for sending messages. In the village of Jengpathar in Arunachal Pradesh I was shown how messages were sent in olden times. As people were illiterate, the Tangsas would normally send little packets (called ‘gyeng-fit’) through messengers. Chillies and coal would mean bad news (usually war, in which case the fellow-tribe-members would make haste to come armed with guns and rifles ready to go and fight the enemy), rice for good news (like a birth or a marriage) and tea-leaves to express anger or unhappiness (as it was bitter).

It will take me much longer to figure out in detail the ritual use of food, but one thing that was very clear to me at the end of already my first field trip was that rice is not just the staple food of the Tangsas, it is also an essential element of a lot of other activities that define Tangsa life and culture. But to be able to say more a lot more work will have to be done... not just in this one aspect but in many other aspects as well. For besides their very healthy food-habits and egalitarian lifestyles, besides their almost involuntary environmental friendliness, besides their ability to live much closer and yet in complete harmony with nature, I believe there is a lot more about the Tangsa way of life that we would do well to emulate...

Volkach, 15th May 2010









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The Tangsas and the Asamiyas

Some instances of cultural misunderstandings, some illustrations of Tangsa simplicity and integrity, and some reasons why the Tangsas can’t like the Asamiyas

I have been working with the Tangsas since 2008 and have been spending a lot of time in the field, both in a team with the other project-members and also on my own. And in this time, I have discovered a whole new world of wonderful people, living right around the corner from where I have lived most of my life but with whom I had had absolutely no contact with before. Did I say I learnt a lot about the Tangsas, I think I learnt as much if not more about us Asamiyas as well.



The Tangsas are a small hill tribe who have migrated to India from Myanmar and China probably within the last couple of centuries and have settled in the north-east Indian states of Assam (mainly in the Margherita area of Tinsukia district) and Arunachal Pradesh (in the Changlang and Tirap districts). Although probably of the same stock as the Nagas, most Tangsas consider themselves to be a distinct and separate ethnic group.

I am an Assamese living in Germany and although I have visited Tinsukia and Dibrugarh and have also been to Margherita in the past, as is most often the case, I have only visited my own relatives and friends in those places and have never had much to do with people from other ethnic communities who also live there. Therefore I wanted to work with a minority community in Assam to get to know at least one such group a little better. That chance came my way when I was offered a job in a DOBES -project documenting the music, song and dance of three communities (including the Tangsas) of Upper Assam.

And even as I got to know the people better, I realised how easy it was for me to make mistakes, to misunderstand and to misinterpret, all the more because we Assamese tend to look at things through our own coloured lenses. A good example of this was the time when a senior Asamiya journalist, when called upon to speak at a meeting held to celebrate the Wihu-kuq festival of the Tangsas declared with great elan that the word ‘Wihu’ was derived from our Assamese ‘Bihu’, without giving any reason whatsoever why it should be so (and why, for example and using the same logic, it could not be the other way around). He even went so far as to question the sense of celebrating the festival already on the 5th Jan. when our Bihu was still 10 days away! Why do we Assamese believe that we always know better? It seems that even after having paid the price so many times over for our patronising attitude, we have still not learnt our lessons. And I wouldn’t mind so much if we at least had our facts right.

In that sense it can be even better to be a complete outsider and arrive with an unprejudiced and neutral mind and take it from there. In that sense I did envy my foreign project-colleagues, as they did me, because I could start talking to everyone almost immediately as most of the Tangsas can speak Asamiya. But the mistakes were not all in one direction. All through my long stay last year, I had noticed that my informants were always careful and very polite whenever they mentioned the Ahoms. I wondered why, but could not find any plausible reason. It was not until almost the very end of my trip that I could get to the end of that – we were talking about languages and the Tangsa gentleman I was talking to accused me of having forgotten my own language and adopting Asamiya instead – suddenly it dawned on me that for some unknown reason the Tangsas seemed to believe that because I was Assamese, I must be Ahom, and hence had made every effort not to offend my Ahom sentiments!

The funniest incident happened however, when I arrived in Nampong. Our host while politely welcoming me, kept looking behind me, as if expecting someone else to come too. Later he told me that he was a bit puzzled when he first saw me because he was expecting a German guest! The cloud cleared much later when I asked the person who had made the arrangements for me at Nampong – for him it was clear that I was German since I was married to one! Such are the rules of the Tangsa world. And of the rest of the world as well, he claimed. For according to him, Benazir Bhutto who was allowed to rule over Pakistan, since she was married to a Pakistani and hence one herself. But the same did not apply to the Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as she was married to an American. So much for our naive assumption that the tribal people are ignorant and completely unaware of the big wide world!

They are not only well-informed, they are also incredibly knowledgeable and wise. Since their languages are oral, and most of the older people are completely illiterate, they simply had to ‘remember’ everything. But it was mind-boggling to realise just how much they could remember. Just to illustrate my point, let me tell you a story: Phulim Hakhun, completely illiterate, aged about 75 years, is our principal informant in Malopahar near Ledo town. One time when I was there, we arranged that he would come for a chat with me at 3 p.m. one afternoon. He came around that time but looked rather troubled and disappeared quickly, telling me that he had to go to the village first. When he came back a couple of hours later, I was really annoyed and asked him why he had kept me waiting for so long. It took me a while to understand that the problem was that he had forgotten a line from the song he wanted to sing to me that afternoon – so he went to ask if anyone in the village could tell him the missing line! But nobody knew it (which was not surprising given the fact that he was the eldest in the village), so he had come back, only to tell me that he would have to go all the way to Burma to find some old man who could fill in the missing line!

Since I do not know the Hakhun language, I would certainly not have noticed anything missing – and I told him so. But that didn’t matter to him – he told me that if he was singing something he had to sing it right – whether I understood it or not was not his problem. After a lot of coaxing he finally agreed to sing the song for me (and hum the line he didn’t know) – he went on to sing, from memory, for a full 45 minutes! It was not only his powers of memory but Phulim Hakhun’s pride, his honesty and his integrity that shone through that evening and made me feel lucky to be there. To have the strength to speak the truth and to be able to say it simply, without fuss, is something that we probably need to learn from the Tangsas.

And there were times when one just couldn’t help loving and feeling sorry for them – like the other time when I was working with another old gentleman, Mohen Ronrang, nearly 90 years old but still fit and active. We had worked out a pattern of starting work early every morning. One morning, Mohen Adu came looking very crestfallen and unhappy. He kept muttering ‘Kot je herai gol’ (don’t know where it is lost) to himself. I was still not quite awake and not quite ready with my equipment and didn’t pay much attention at first. But I asked him what he had lost when he continued distractedly, ‘bisari to powa nai’ (have not found it) ‘kot bisarim’ (where should I look)… Without replying to my question he kept muttering to himself ‘sabate salu, katu nai’ (I have looked everywhere, it is nowhere to be found) and looked really upset. My first thought was that probably his cow or pig or hen had gone astray overnight, but he shook his head when I asked. The real story was nothing that I could have figured out by myself: while going home the previous evening Mohen Adu had remembered a very nice story. He decided he would tell me the story the next morning, and went to bed happily after having thanked Jesus for having reminded him of the story – he was sure it would make me very happy when he told it to me. But the next morning, he could not remember the story anymore and he did not know where to look for it, and where it had hidden itself again!

Before we left Phulbari, Mohen Adu pestered me to arrange some way for him to record the story, should he happen to remember it again between now and our next visit, because he was terrified he could lose it again. It made me sad to see how helpless he felt. But his sweet child-like simplicity and innocence was simply out-of-the-world. I tried to make sure that someone would write it down, next time he remembered. For, he had told me some wonderful stories already, ancient stories about where they came from, from the time of the beginning of creation, full of beauty and wisdom. I was constantly amazed at how willingly and how ungrudgingly they shared their knowledge with me, and I took it as a sign of their trust and their incredible generosity.

There were many times, however,when they were not sure what to do with me because even though I was not quite a Tangsa, I was not a complete outsider either; what is more, I was a woman, that too, a woman, apparently claiming to have a husband but one that none of them had ever met, roaming around all by myself, or with a bunch of men, none of whom was my husband! Of course I got adopted as a daughter and a sister into many households very quickly but still I am sure many of them must have wondered, if I was not a government spy or some undercover agent, at least in the beginning. I did take pains to explain what we were doing to everyone who asked, but I am not entirely sure they believed me – after all, why should Germany pay for an Assamese woman to go and hang around with the Tangsas for months on end, with apparently no other job but to just chat with people and make free video recordings of village events for them.

That much suspicion is unavoidable, and even understandable, under the circumstances. But it was the reaction and the conclusions drawn by other Asamiya men, who did not know me and who happened to run into me accidentally in Tangsa-land, that were much more annoying. Most of them never bothered to come up to me and ask me who I was and what I was doing – they already ‘knew’, it was absolutely clear to them that I was a journalist, especially if I happened to be filming with my video-camera at that time. After looking around in vain for a heavy-duty vehicle of the sort normally used by media-personnel, the only question they deemed fit to ask was which television channel I worked for! And if I happened to be with any of the foreign project-members, then I was equally clear that I was their interpreter! I am not sure what it is about us Assamese that makes our minds work in this fashion, and why we are so incapable of coping with anything more than a few standard categories – I wonder if it is simply a lack of imagination, or if it is just a complete disregard for womenkind beyond a certain level. Not very complimentary, in either case.

But many of even those who knew me and also knew what I was doing, among them quite a few of my high-flying and modern convent-educated friends in Guwahati and elsewhere, did not lag behind in making clear their incredible ignorance of and their complete disdain for their tribal neighbours – do they still eat snakes? do they wear any clothes at all? Many would beg me to tell them more only to scream and squeal to express their utter inability to cope with any of that; many of them were ready to swoon when I described a Tangsa toilet to them – how can they live like that, and how can you call them human when they live like that? None of them asked me to tell them the ancient stories (full of beauty and wisdom) that I had heard from the old men in the villages, nor was anyone interested in finding out the secret behind how the incredibly hardy but beautiful Tangsa women could work so hard all day in the fields and then come home to do all the house-hold chores, and then find time to sing to their children or weave intricately beautiful patterns on their looms. We were such a pathetic lot, I was beginning to lose my self-respect. Did I also behave like this a few years ago? I wondered. Who was more human? I asked myself.

What was it about us that made us so blind, so lacking in curiosity, so lacking in respect... It did seem to me that we had deliberately built a wall between us and them – a wall that kept them out, a wall that only spoke of our insecurity. And it was not only the rich and spoilt Asamiya lot living in cities that behaved like this, even those who lived nearby, who were forced to come in contact with the tribals on a daily basis, wanted to pretend that the tribals did not exist, that at best they were unavoidable nuisances which one should not suffer a moment longer than absolutely necessary. In the field, I often witnessed the absolute arrogance and total disregard for the local people demonstrated by many of the Assamese bureaucrats, police officers and civil servants posted in that area . The very hospitable tribal people on the other hand treated them like royalty. I will never forget the time when a young Asamiya SDO, gracing a public function organised by the Tangsas as the honoured Chief Guest, spent all the time that he was not speaking into the mike to deliver his lecture , talking into his mobile phone, paying scant attention to what was going on around him. I was very ashamed and did not dare to think what the dignified tribal people themselves must have thought of such outrageously bad behaviour. I never could understand why the Asamiya officers behaved the way they did – to think that these people had this wonderful opportunity to get to know the tribal people better and that they just couldn’t be bothered...

Nor will I forget the occasion in the last field season when after a long wait, the local BDO and SDPO arrived at a cultural event organised by one of these groups, more than an hour later than promised – nevertheless they were given an incredible welcome and a ceremonial guard of honour accompanied by the beating of gongs and drums and the showering of flower petals. There were many older and distinguished guests (like the much-liked Singpho veteran leader Bisa Raja and the highly respected Tangsa leader Lukam Tonglung) in attendance (who were the real VIPs if you ask me) who got barely a namaskar as greeting

It was already well past noon then but since the organisers had arranged for tea to be provided on arrival to the VIPs, the two officers (and their attendants) were first treated to a lavish round of tea and a large assortment of home-made snacks typical of the host community, while the Bisa Raja who had arrived much earlier had to do with a little cup of tea. After this the VIPs did a round of the stalls, inaugurated the exhibitions and and stayed maybe in all for about half an hour. Then they declared they had to leave – this made the programme go hay-wire as the organisers felt obliged to offer lunch to the VIPs (and their huge security entourage) before they left, as a result of which the open session, in which the VIPS were supposed to participate, got postponed by more than a couple of hours. The ones who came and stayed on to participate in the Open Session had to either wait on an empty stomach or wait till the VIPs had left and hope that someone would let them partake of the left-overs. I have never felt so outraged by the behaviour of my fellow-Asamiyas and so ashamed at being Asamiya myself ever before in my life.

Mercifully, there were a few redeeming exceptions – like the old retired Asamiya school-teacher who had spent all his life trying to educate Tangsa children, and who knew no other way to refer to the Tangsas but in terms of equality and respect. And I tried to learn from that humble but great teacher and made an extra effort to behave properly with my Tangsa hosts, hoping that I could make up in some small way for the offence and hurt that the arrogant Asamiya officers must cause to these proud but helpless people.

For I felt very lucky to have the love and affection of these wonderful people, despite the fact that I was also a wretched Asamiya. Proof that they had accepted me as their own came on the very last day of my last field trip: I was doing my final rounds of farewells when an old Tangsa lady, who lived in the village but with whom I had not had much to do came up to me and asked me whether I had been there ‘all the while’ – yes, I said. You mean, since that time a few months ago when you first came here? Yes, I said again, since then. She went away but came back a few minutes later looking very troubled, didn’t you say you were just recently married? she asked. Yes, I said a third time. Where is your husband? At home, I said. Who is cooking for him? I’m not sure, perhaps he is cooking himself, I replied. Will he be angry with you for being away for so long? I hope not, I said. The other women tried to reassure her that there would probably be no problem. But she cut them short saying, with men, you never know; if you are lucky well and good but if not then it can be bad. Then turning towards me she said, in case your husband is cross with you and misbehaves with you then you come right back here – you can stay with me in my house, you are my daughter. Saying this she gave me a hug and walked off.

I came away happy and secure in the knowledge that the ice had been broken – that although I had begun with a disadvantage – the disadvantage of being an Asamiya – I had managed to make it to level ground, and that next time, it will be much easier for me, not only to go deeper into the amazing world of the Tangsas but also to not get so worked up and hassled about the outrageous misbehaviour of my fellow Asamiyas... next time I promise to tell you more about the Tangsas and not just about why it is important to work with the Tangsas in order to find out why they cannot like the Asamiyas...

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