NEILS 6 - Day One

Today was the first day of the 6th annual North East Indian Linguistics Society (NEILS) conference taking place this year at Tezpur University just out of the town of Tezpur, Assam. It's a great place for people for linguists and language workers and teachers working in the region to come and meet.

Now, the last time I came for NEILS it was held in Shillong, Meghalaya. It was a bit of a last minute trip and I'd only decided to attend at the last moment (I actually ended up spending half that conference at Cherrapunjee near the Bangladeshi border, hiking down to see the Khasi root bridges made by 'training' ficus trees to grow their roots across rivers. It was a trip I had planned to do anyway, but it just so happened that someone else from the conference was going there at the time.)

So today was my first time presenting at NEILS - I gave a talk on verb nominalisation in Sumi and how monosyllabic, disyllabic and sesquisyllabic verbs behave differently with regards to such nominalisation. I got some pretty good feedback. It's also always nice to present on the first day of a conference. It means you can relax for the rest of the conference and actually focus on what everyone else is talking about. In my case, it also meant having only one sleepless night.

It was quite an invigorating day for me, given that I got through the paper with no major hiccups. Outside the talks, I also had a few meetings with other participants regarding developing minority language educational materials. The sort of work being done is something I found truly inspiring. It just made want to head back to Nagaland and get a team together to do this sort of work now.

Of course there were a few really painful, though quite amusing moments. The first was when the vice-chancellor of the university, who knew nothing about linguistics, gave his ridiculously long welcome speech at the opening ceremony in the morning. All the while trying to sound like he knew what he was on about. He kept referring to 'the linguistics' and I couldn't tell if he meant 'linguistics' as a discipline or if he just got the wrong word for 'linguists'. For some reason he assumed that the majority of participants came from Nagaland, which was odd because there's only one Naga participant here (unless you also count me, as an adopted Naga). Then he went on for a bit about Nagamese and how to his ears it's like Assamese but 'without the Naga influence' (or something like that). There were a few terrible anecdotes he shared, before he mentioned the fact that he had spent 4 years in Germany and learnt that there are German words like tschüss which aren't found in the dictionary because they're 'slang words used by the young people'! (see Wiktionary entry here)

It's moments like these when I'm glad I'm just a nobody at these conferences and not sitting on the stage having to contain myself in front of the whole crowd.

The second incident happened when a presenter was asked how old the language she was working on was.

Given that languages are constantly changing, the question of a language's age seems quite absurd. I was told later that the Indian government takes the 'age' of a language very seriously, as it is one of the criteria used to judge where a language should be considered a 'Modern Indian Language'. Scott DeLancey clarified that what they really mean is 'How long has the language been written / had a written script?' The belief is that a language is only 'born' when it is codified in some written form.

That means that many languages here are still in their infancy, while most are still unborn!

The language holding Malays, Tamils and Chinese together

On the Johnson blog at the Economist, there was a post a few days ago titled, "The language holding Malays, Tamils and Chinese together", on the choice to adopt Standard English (and the author also mentions Mandarin) as the working language of the country.

While I think the article itself doesn't consider the sociolinguistic reality, focusing mainly on the language policy the government had adopted - yes, Standard English has been adopted but if I were to speak 'Standard English' in most situations in Singapore, I'd be considered somewhat of a snob. You know, really tao and all.

What I find ironic is that the people who push for Standard English to be spoken (some of whom have taken to defacing public signs that use 'bad English' - I'll need to find the link to this at some point), as opposed to 'Singlish' are often people whose English I would consider to be substandard. Just look at the first comment on this blog post:

I have no doubt Singaporean has good grasp or command of English, but
its Singlish or Malish (Malaysian) does give a goose bump when speaking loudly in public.

Singlish is a typical pidgin language or bad creolization of many "pasar(market)" loan words from typically Hokkien or Malay. I hope
Singaporean should pick up LKY style of spoken English but not those
of Goh Chok Tong's English.


Discounting the possibility of unintentional typos, the way this person writes reflects a variety of English that I wouldn't consider to be anywhere near 'LKY's style of spoken English'. To expect other 'Singaporean' to pick up LKY style of spoken English is just plain hypocrisy.

And of course, it's simply absurd to suggest that people follow a particular PM / SM / MM's style of speaking. It's usually politicians and royalty who end up adjusting their speech to match that of their supporters / followers, not the other way round.

Some people want to be teachers

I remember a small incident from the year I spent on exchange in France. I was in Lourdes for a few days and I recall I was looking for a cemetery as I was coming down from the fort. I found a lady at the tourist counter and asked her "Excusez-moi madame, mais où est-ce que la cimetière?" ('Excuse me madame, where is 'la' cemetery?)

Her reply was "Non non monsieur, c'est "le" cimetière." ('No sir, it's 'le' cemetery.')

Now I had mistaken the noun cimetière as being feminine (like a number of other nouns ending in -ière) that needs the article la, when in actual fact it is a masculine noun. Of course, at the time I was tired, hungry and really not in the mood for a French lesson, but it's something that has stuck with me since, and I haven't forgotten the gender of the noun cimetière. It wasn't the first time I had been corrected by a complete stranger in France, and it's something I've actually come to appreciate.


But there are ways to teach and there are ways to teach. Fast forward to this week, here in the Guwahati University guest house. A few days ago I met a visiting Assamese writer from the nearby town of Tezpur (where I'm heading tomorrow). The instant he found out I was learning Assamese, he started telling others at the guest house that the only reason I came to Assam was to learn Assamese, which just isn't true. Making conversation has also been difficult with him - he's quite pretentious and is certainly very proud of himself and where he comes from. To him, Assam is the most beautiful state in India, and Tezpur is the most beautiful town in Assam.

But what really got to me was when he started talking to me about a certain kind of banana that they gave us at breakfast yesterday. It's a local variety that they've been feeding the guests here (or trying to feed) that's quite starchy and has the texture closer to a plaintain. It's not very sweet either and feels like it needs to be cooked first. Suffice to say, I really don't like it. The Assamese writer started telling me it was very good Assamese banana and very good for digestion.

I refused to comment.

Then he said to me, 'In Assamese, they are called malbhog. Malbhog. Say it.'

The first thought in my head was actually, "F*ck you, you pretentious wanker". I mean, who the hell did this guy think he was? But in the end I mumbled something with my mouth full, which made him repeat what he'd just said.

So rather than continuing the conversation, I just took a small bite out of my malbhog and left the rest on my plate for him to see.

(And in case you're wondering, I didn't actually remember the name of the banana after this conversation. I had to ask my tutor for the name again.)

Visiting villages

Between Assamese lessons, preparing my presentation for this coming week's North-east Linguistics Society (NEILS) conference, and being sick, I haven't had much time to blog this week.

One thing I did manage to do was submit a grant application to the World Oral Literature Project (WOLP) for the documentation project Ab. and I are doing. We started fundraising in Zunheboto in early December, and just after Christmas, we got to go visit a few villages in the district to record some traditional songs associated with the agricultural year (I've saved the details for the grant application).

We got to see a few activities associated with shifting cultivation (known as jhum cultivation here) like the clearing of the jungle and the breaking up of the soil, as well as the relevant songs. The villages we visited were Shoipu, Nunumi and Usütomi. While all the songs were performed for our benefit, some could be considered more 'authentic' than others - where the villagers actually performed the songs while engaging in the actual agricultural activity. But I think to most people present, the performances were all pretty authentic.

The male villagers at Shoipu are performing the song associated with breaking up the soil and digging up the roots. The women followed behind using large sticks to break up the lumps in the soil.


Two women at Shoipu that Ab. interviewed after the performance


The field close to Usütomi village. I hadn't counted on the wind being so strong here, so the audio recordings have a fair amount of wind noise.


Me with some of the women from Usütomi. They were a little annoyed that their menfolk left before them. Traditionally, women are supposed to lead the way back to the village.

Here's to visiting more villages in the future. I don't know how much I'll be inclined to blog about, given that copyright becomes more of an issue with these documentation projects. I'm pretty sure members of the community won't mind, especially those who read this blog from time to time.

But I suppose I could just start a different blog with Ab. to document the whole documentation process...

Ringgit

Months ago I commented on how BBC reporters refer to the Chinese currency, the yuan /juɛn/ 元, as the /juan/ 'you-ahn', rhyming with 'one'. And this is despite the fact that they employ people trained in phonetics to research these things. The trend might be due to the fact that other people have started calling it the 'you-ahn', but it's not like a historic standard like saying 'Paris' with the final 's'. So what's the point then of hiring people to check these things anymore?

Today, I just saw another report on the BBC about inflation in Malaysia. The reporter pronounced the name of the national currency, the ringgit, as the /rɪŋɪt/ 'ring-it', without the voiced velar stop /g/. For people who are familiar with Malay and Indonesian, if the word was meant to be pronounced that way, it would be written 'ringit'. The velar nasal is written using the digraph 'ng', while the following velar stop is written with an additional 'g'. So, the currency really is the /rɪŋgɪt/ 'ring-git'.

I don't mind if news programmes completely anglicise the pronunciation of foreign names and currencies, but the BBC hires people to verify how to pronounce these names as close as possible to the source language.

Australia Day vs Republic Day (India)

26 January is Australia Day (to some, 'Invasion Day'), which commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in 1788. 26 January in India is Republic Day (a different kind of 'Invasion Day' to some), which commemorates the coming into effect of the Constitution of India in 1950.

I was half-jokingly saying online that in Australia, people have barbecues and may go see the fireworks. In India (or at least this part of India), people stay indoors and pray nothing gets blown up.

The threat of attacks by various underground organisations in the NE is pretty high around important 'Indian' holidays like Republic Day and Independence Day. Such organisations often call for bandhs 'strikes' around these period, and if you're caught opening your shop or driving a vehicle that is not on hospital duty in some areas, your property will be torched and you may get beaten or worse, killed. People generally don't travel around these holidays and for good reason. Security around bazaars and railway stations goes up - my friend and I were stopped in an auto the other day and questioned about our 'purpose' for passing through the bazaar area.

Over here, Republic Day really is a symbol of Indian colonialism and oppression in the region. I suppose to put it in Australian terms, imagine if the Northern Territory wanted to secede from Australia (I could have used WA, but some people there really do want to secede and I want to keep this hypothetical). The reasons for succession would include: exploitation by a government that takes away resources (like oil and natural gas) without doing enough to support local development; having to deal with waves of illegal migrants coming from a neighbouring Muslim nation (like Indonesia) which isn't a priority for the central government in far-away Canberra; and a distinct Terroritorian cultural identity from the rest of Australia.

Canberra on the other hand refuses to part with the NT for strategic reasons and because it would mean giving up natural resources. With the failure of secession talks, and decades of brutal abuse by the Australian military sent to the region, some groups believe that the only way they can make the Australian government listen to them is through acts of terrorism.

Then imagine that various indigenous Australian groups or 'nations', like the Yolngu, in the Northern Territory felt like their cultural identities were being oppressed by white Territorians. They believe that the only way they can maintain a sense of sovereignty is by fighting their 'white' colonisers, including both the Territorians and other Australians. Arnhem Land in particular is a hotbed of 'terrorist' activity, with weapons and drugs flowing in from neighbouring Indonesia, and people going across the straits to train in guerrilla warfare. Of course, the various groups don't all get along, and occasionally violence flares up between each group. Within each group, fundamental differences in opinion (or men simply wanting to secure more power) may cause splinter factions to form and more infighting to occur.

Now imagine that every 26th of January, Australia Day / 'Invasion Day' comes round. And it feels like a kick in the groin for all the various organisations and factions in the region, especially seeing the other states celebrating with their fireworks and their barbecues.

Hmm. Almost doesn't sound as hypothetical as I wanted it to.


Anyway, I've just been lying in bed all day sick with a cold. Not that I really want to go outside today. Here's a short summary of some attacks just from this week:

22/23 Jan 2011 - I can't seem to find a link for this, but I saw it in a paper on Monday. There was a bomb targetting the Arunachal Express which exploded just before the train passed the area where it was planted. This, and other announcements by rebel groups, then led to the cancellation of all night passenger trains in Assam from 24 Jan to 28 Jan, with night trains going from Guwahati to Lumding (on the way to Dimapur) cancelled till 30 Jan. I discovered these cancellations firsthand when my friend was trying to get a ticket back to Dimapur for the 25th.

24 Jan 2011 - A bus travelling from Guwahati to Manipur via Dimapur was attacked in Karbi Anglong district at 5.15am. 3 people were injured, including a 12 year old girl (another report says it was a boy). The attackers have been identified as being from the Karbi Liberation People's Tiger (KLPT). A goods train also derailed in Lower Haflong - this report says bandh supporters might have removed part of the track, but other reports say it was a bomb blast that caused the train to derail.

26 Jan 2011 - The Indian Telegraph reports that the All Assam Students Union (AASU) bandh turned violent in Sivasagar district with several vehicles being damaged and staff 'manhandled'. The link to the article doesn't seem to work though. I'm sure I'll here more news over the next 24 hours.

Booking a hotel in India

I've had a rather mixed bag when booking hotels / guest houses in India.

My first time in Kolkata in 2009, I'd booked a room at a guest house via email but arrived to find it had been given away (I had been afraid of that, given that my flight was arriving in the evening but I'd given them my flight details). When I was in Delhi a few months ago, I contacted a hotel via email and was given the option of a 'standard' or 'deluxe' room, but did not hear from them when I told them I wanted the 'standard' room. They only replied when I wrote back saying I would 'take a look' at the deluxe room and see if I wanted it. Of course, when I arrived at the hotel, I found I only had the option of the deluxe room.

Yesterday (Friday) I was trying to book a hotel room in Guwahati for me and some visiting friends from Nagaland for Saturday and Sunday night or Sunday and Monday night, depending on when my friends were coming. I visited one hotel to ask about vacancies and they said they were fully booked for Saturday, but Sunday was fine. When I rang later to book for Sunday, there were suddenly no more vacancies (something about a wedding party booking the whole place). But when I dropped by in person this morning, there was once again a room available for Sunday.

Slightly more puzzling was this conversation I had when I rang another hotel:

Me: Do you have a vacancy on Sunday night?
Guy on phone: No sir, fully booked.
Me: Are you sure you are fully booked?
Him: Yes sir.
Me: Okay, I'm actually in Guwahati already. I have some friends coming on either Saturday or Sunday and need a room for two nights.
Him: We have vacancy for tomorrow (Saturday). I think it is better if you come tomorrow.
Me: Yes, but I need the room for two nights.
Him: Okay sir, you can have the room for two nights.

I considered it wise not to point out the obvious discrepancy between his initial response and his latest one. Later I called to push the reservation back one night, with no problems.

It's not the first time I've been first told by a hotel on the phone that they are fully booked, before later finding out - either by going in person, or in the same phone conversation - that a room is in fact available. Why on earth do hotels here feel the need to do this? It's almost as if they don't want full occupancy.

A more prosodic take on Indian English

Today I was at one of Guwahati's few cafes asking the waitress for direction to another place that I suspected wasn't too far away. Now I can ask in Assamese for basic directions now, but being at a cafe meant I could ask in English. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Is it far? Can I walk there?
Her: No, you have to take a bus.
Me: How long will it take to walk there? Half an hour?
Her: It won't take that long.

Now the thing is, when I heard her say 'it won't take that long', I instantly did a double-take and asked if she meant that it would take more than half an hour or less than half an hour to get there on foot. It sounds absurd to me in hindsight because the only possible reading for 'it won't take that long' should be 'it will take less time than that'.

However, for some reason, I interpreted what she had said as 'it won't take exactly half an hour to get there'. Till now, I can't figure out why I thought that and felt the need to clarify. I suspect the confusion was due to a combination of factors. For one thing, I'm always wary of familiar expressions that have slightly different interpretations in Indian English (see my previous post). It also didn't help that in terms of intonation, the word 'that' didn't receive any prominence compared to the word 'long' - if I'd heard 'it won't take that long' with emphasis / nuclear accent on 'that', I'm sure I wouldn't have needed clarification.

Then again, I don't think her speaking in monotone alone was sufficient to cause the confusion (even though it didn't help). Perhaps the reason was more to do with what she'd previously said - if it takes me less than half an hour to walk somewhere (and there's a footpath next to the road and it's not too hot or too cold), why on earth would I want to catch an overcrowded bus?

Making pithas for Magh Bihu

I arrived in Guwahati just in time for the harvest festival মাঘ বিহু Magh Bihu, also known as ভোগালী বিহু Bhogali Bihu - I'm told Bhogali is derived from the Assamese word for 'feast' since the festival is associated with a time of plenty. It also marks the first day of the 10th Assamese month মাঘ Magh.

One of my Assamese tutors (I have two who take turns being my language consultants) was nice enough to take me to a small Bihu fair that was taking place in town. One of the most important activities at the fair was the making of পিঠা pitha, which are typically little rice cakes that come in a number of forms. The process begins with the pounding of rice, which some ladies were doing using the foot-operated mill called a ঢেকী dheki (which I believe is used in Bangladesh too).



Watching the woman on the far right stick her hand in and out of the mortar made me feel like time itself was moving at double speed.


The rice flour is used to make a batter that is cooked on a small pan.


The cooked batter is then rolled up and various fillings are added.


The one everyone was lining up for (or as close to a line as one gets in India) were তিল পিঠা til pitha 'sesame pithas' filled with black sesame, as well as the ones filled with grated coconut (narikol pitha?). We had to wait 45 minutes (!) just to get ten of the sesame ones, and it was going to be another half hour for the coconut ones, so we just left with the sesame ones.

But frankly, having tried other pithas given to me by people, including my other Assamese tutor who just brought some back from her hometown of Dibrugarh in Upper Assam, those pithas from the fair really weren't worth the wait!

Vowels: Does /j/ + /a/ = /æ/ ?

This is something that has been bugging me a little bit since I was in Nepal back in October last year. It concerns the orthographic representation of the English vowel /æ/ in words like taxi /tæksi/ when they are borrowed into Nepali.

The word for taxi in Nepali is ट्याक्सि, which transliterated gives Tyaaksi, where T represents a voiceless unaspirated retroflex stop (the tip of the tongue is slightly further back than when you produce a normal alveolar 't' sound in English). The appearance of the retroflex is not surprising here as English alveolar stops are usually borrowed into Indic languages like Nepali and Hindi as retroflex stops. (Assamese is the exception here as it has lost its retroflex stop series.)

The Nepali spelling suggests that the word is pronounced /ʈjaksi/ (/j/ represents the sound 'y'). My friend Sara insisted that Nepali speakers would palatalise (produce a particular speech sound while simultaneously raising the body of the tongue towards the roof of the mouth) the first consonant when saying the word and her theory was that they were trying to follow the American pronunciation of the word 'taxi'. (Correct me if I got this wrong Sara.)

I wasn't convinced with that explanation. For one thing, I would often hear speakers say something closer to /ʈɛksi/, without palatalising the first consonant and with the vowel /ɛ/, which is much more similar to /æ/. I also didn't see why Nepali would borrow English /t/ as a palatalised retroflex stop /ʈj/ since English /t/ isn't palatalised in this context. Also, I thought it counterintuitive that speakers would follow an American English pronunciation to guide their spelling, given the influence of British English across the Indian sub-continent.

Instead, my theory was that the combination of the letters 'y' and 'a' (या) represent the vowel /æ/ (or a close approximation like /ɛ/) and are not pronounced like /ja/. Unfortunately, other things came up (like 2 months in Nagaland), and I wasn't able to get more evidence to support my hypothesis.

Then today on the bus back to the Guwahati University Guest House, I found myself staring at the sign for the Volkswagen showroom while we were stuck in traffic. While I'm not as familiar with the Assamese script, the main thing I noticed was that the syllable corresponding to 'wa' in Volkswagen was written as ওয়া, which would be transliterated as 'oya'. Now, I'm assuming that the transliteration of Volkswagen in the Assamese script is based on the English pronunciation of the word and not the German one - the presence of 'o' in 'oya' suggests that it is trying to approximate /w/, not /v/. If this is true, then it provides evidence from another Indic language that a combination of the letters 'y' and 'a' are used to represent the English /æ/, as in 'wagon' /wægən/, or a close approximation of that sound.

I have to take a photo of that Volkswagen sign next time I pass by. Once I do and have evidence that Assamese does in fact use 'ya' to represent /æ/, I might try and confirm that Nepali uses the same strategy to represent this vowel.

(Note: standard Hindi avoids this problem altogether because it has the vowel /ɛ/ in its phoneme inventory, which is close to /æ/. It is often transliterated as 'ai' even though it is not a diphthong, e.g. in टैक्सी Taiksii 'taxi'. Also, the vowel in Bollywood actress Katrina Kaif's last name is not pronounced as a diphthong in standard Hindi.)

Popular Linguistics

Hooray, there's a new online magazine Popular Linguistics that will hopefully bring some (more) linguistics to the general public:

http://popularlinguisticsonline.org/home/

Not that I'm expecting people to stop asking questions like:

'So what is it that you study?' or
'Oh, how many languages do you speak? or'
'My father does logistics too!'

(Okay, so the last one wasn't a question, but someone did say that to me once.)

Adivasi or 'tribal'?

The Lonely Planet guide to Northeast India (2nd edition, 2009) features a pathetic 50 pages (!) on the seven main Northeast States of Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh. The remaining 330 pages are devoted to Kolkata, West Bengal, Sikkim and Orissa, with a section on Bangladesh and Nepal too. But the book really is disappointing if you're looking for information on travel in what I think of what I think of 'Northeast India'.

But that's not the only reason I'm disappointed with the book. Throughout the book, the editors have decided to use the term Adivasi to mean 'tribal person' (as defined in their glossary). Now, in other parts of India, the term Adivasi is used to refer to all tribal people, but in the Northeast (which the guide claims to be about), the term is used exclusively to refer to the descendants of people who were brought to Assam by the British to work in the tea plantations. They are treated as a separate 'tea-tribe' ethnic group, as demonstrated by this 'traditional Adivashi house' (like in Nepali, sh and s have merged into one sound) at the Kohora ethnic village.

If you're looking for an umbrella term for the other ethnic groups of the region, the term tribal is used more commonly, even if it does sound terribly political incorrect and colonial to Western ears. There is still sadly the connotation of people who are backward and primitive and unfortunately, it's a view that doesn't look set to change in the near future.

Counting in Indic languages

To commemorate my 100th post on this blog (yes, it's been a hundred) and the fact that I'm learning some Assamese here in Guwahati, I thought I'd talk about learning to count in an Indic language - basically any one of the many Indo-European languages spoken on the Indian subcontinent, including Hindi, Bengali, Nepali and Assamese.

Now I'm not talking about their numeral systems, since most of us use a derivation of the Hindu or Hindu-Arabic numeral system on a daily basis, which is a decimal system that uses only 10 digits from 0 to 9. What I'm talking about are the names for the numbers in these languages.

Now non-native speakers learning to count in English from 1 to 100, technically only need to memorise the names of the numbers from 1 to 20, then every multiple of 10 till 100. That's because after 20, we simply say 20 'twenty' and 1 'one' to get 21 'twenty one'; 20 'twenty' and 2 'two' to get 22 'twenty two' and so on. However, they still need to learn what 11-19 are since we don't say 'ten one' for 11, or 'ten two' for 12. They also need to learn the names for the multiples of 10 since these are not entirely regular - we don't say 'three-ty' for 30 or 'five-ty' for 50. (Sure, you might say there's a pattern with 40 and 60-90, but it's not as regular as say, 21-29.)

What non-native speakers find learning to count in Indic languages is that while there are some patterns like the kind you find from 60 'sixty' to 90 'ninety' in English, most of the time it seems like you just have to memorise the name of every single number from 1 to 100.

For instance, if we look at 5, 15, 25, 35 ... 85, 95 in Hindi:

5 पाँच paaNch (N indicates nasalisation on the preceding vowel)
15 पन्द्रह pandrah
25 पच्चीस pachchiis          (20 is बीस biis)
35 पैंतीस paiNtiis              (30 is तीस tiis)
45 पैंतालीस paiNtaaliis      (40 is चालीस chaaliis)
55 पचपन pachapan          (50 is पचास pachaas)
65 पैंसठ paiNsaTh             (60 is साठ saaTh)
75 पचहत्तर pachahattara     (70 is सत्तर sattara)
85 पचासी pachaasii            (80 is अस्सी assii)
95 पंचानबे paNchaanabe     (90 is नब्बे nabbe)

You can sort of see a pattern, but it's not quite possible to analyse each form morphologically and tease out the part that means 'five units'. Goodness also knows when to decide when to nasalise the vowel or not. Also, look at the words for 25 (pachchiis) and 50 (pachaas) - I always get their Nepali counterparts mixed up.

Assamese isn't much different. Here're the numbers from 1-12 in Assamese - which is as far as I'll go for now since it'll allow me to tell the time. I'll probably get up to 31 so I can give dates, and also learn a few more multiples of 10.

1 এক ek
2 দুই dui
3 তিনি tini
4 চাৰি sari
5 পাঁচ pans [pãs]
6 ছয় sôy [sɔj]
7 সাত xaat
8 আঠ aath
9 ন nô [nɔ]
10 দহ dôh
11 এঘাৰ egharô
12 বাৰ barô

When I come up with a good way to memorise the numbers from 0 to 100 in such languages I'll let you know. In the meantime, thank goodness people here in Guwahati also use English numbers.

Surviving fieldwork: Food

Now that I'm in Guwahati and able to better control when I eat, what I eat, and how much I eat - or almost, since the guest house only has Indian food and serves dinner at 9pm (but I can choose not to eat here) - I thought I'd about my eating experiences from the past two months and some strategies I've adopted in order to survive. It's not that I was mistreated or anything, but sometimes being the guest has its risks. Also bearing in mind that every household I've been too has had different eating habits, the three main factors I want to mention here are: 1) what is being served; 2) how much is being served; and 3) when it's being served.

1. What's being served
To begin with, I'm pretty lucky in that I can stomach most things - from amphibians to innards to fermented soya beans - and I can handle spicy food to a certain degree. So when my hosts ask me what I eat, I say I eat anything. But this actually surprises them, since most visitors to Nagaland are from the rest of India, and generally more picky about their food. Some of my friends also don't eat dog (which I wouldn't actively seek out) or blood curry (which I would actively seek out). Nagaland isn't kind to vegetarians (except at that Lotha wedding I attended in Kohima) but people are generally able to still cater for them, even if it's just a single vegetable dish and dal. After a month of feasting, I really wasn't that keen on meat and fat anymore - and thankfully neither were some of my friends.

I don't do so well with monotony, so being served the same dish everyday makes me lose my appetite (my friend Lauren is more familiar with this), but I remember that this trip I mentally prepared myself for rice at every meal and to focus on the variety of meat and vegetable dishes I was getting. (At the end of my last trip I had such a bad craving for salmon sashimi. I was surprised and thankful this trip when Ab.'s brother brought back seaweed sheets from Delhi.)

2. How much is being served

The ideal situation is being able to serve yourself, so you can eat as much or as little as you want. The most important rule here is controlling the amount of rice on the plate from the very start (and to take into account the fact that you're expected to have seconds). Of course, sometimes the host insists on serving the rice from the start - one person did so even after I had quite loudly protested. The problem here is that many people are used to eating mountains of rice and also to serving mountains of rice to their guests, where I would only have about the third the amount back home. My last trip I remember absolutely dreading every single mealtime because of the vast quantities of rice I felt compelled to eat. It doesn't help that since I'm bigger than most people here, they instantly assume I eat more than them.

But mealtime shouldn't be nausea-inducing, and I did discover this trip that it is perfectly reasonable to give rice back right after it has been served without offending too much - it's much better than having a heap of leftovers on the plate that might be taken as a sign that the food isn't good. Another thing I've had to get used to is eating a lot more rice with a few dishes, since I used to having a little bit of rice with a whole lot of other dishes.

I know friends doing fieldwork in other parts of the world often face the problem of not getting enough food (some hosts may think a couple of biscuits is enough for a meal), but in Nagaland, the danger is more from being overfed as the guest.

3. When it's being served
Towards the end of my stay in Nagaland, I was asked at what time I normally 'took food'. My reply:

"I eat when I'm fed."

And it was true. My stomach no longer knew when it should be filled, simply that it is should be filled when food was provided. My first week I had to get used to having lunch at 8am and dinner at 4pm. Then at another friend's place, I was having lunch at 11am and dinner at 8pm. On Christmas Day, I remember getting tea, biscuits and Sumi sho at 7am, then being offered lunch at 8am, before the Christmas feast at 2pm. After nightfall I think I just had a light snack.

I suppose there's not a lot one can do about mealtime, apart from adjusting slowly to it. One thing I did to cope with having a big meal at 8am (remember, mountains of rice) was to wake up early, like between 5 and 5.30am so that my hunger would build up slowly. The other thing I did was to have snacks on hand like dried figs, or ask for bananas to quell my hunger during long stretches without food.

A pretty nice dinner set-up - and just the right amount of rice for me!

Also, these mostly apply to more intimate settings when I've been invited to people's homes for food. Ironically, it is much easier to get through the big feasts without feeling nauseated because they're all done buffet style, so you just line up, take as much or little as you want and go sit somewhere where people are too busy to observe how much you're eating. I also noticed when returning my plate that other people had left mountains of rice on their returned plates, which made me feel better about myself.

Standing 3 hours on a train

Just when I thought the adventures were coming to an end for this trip (it's less than a month till I'm back in Singapore), I arrived at Diphu station this morning at 6 to learn that the train (the Brahmaputra Mail) was late. By 10 hours. Apparently it was only leaving Dibrugarh at 10am, and would take about 6 hours to reach Diphu.

As L., who's from Germany, said, "Back home, we call that a 'cancelled' train."

Since I had to get to Guwahati by afternoon to move into the Guwahati University Guest House and to meet my Assamese tutors, the next best option was to catch the Mariani Guwahati Intercity Express - which my friends called the 'Mariani Special' - scheduled to leave at 8.15am and arriving at Guwahati around 1.45pm.

Unlike the Brahmaputra Mail or the Jan Shatabdi (the train I had caught from Dimapur to Diphu), there are no seat reservations for the Mariani Special. The scene on the train when I boarded at Diphu looked like this.

The train just got more crowded as it absorbed all the other Brahmaputra Mail passengers further down the track, and it was only 2.5 hours into the trip that I got a seat. It was pretty much forced upon me by two middle-aged gentlemen who knew I was a foreigner (like that should matter). I felt quite bad, but I was really sleepy, my back was hurting and they insisted. But I said we could take turns sitting down. However, about half an hour later a woman in her 30s or 40s came up from behind and demanded the seat. The men told her about me, but I ended up giving up the seat to her after 15 minutes. She turned out to be a lecturer in political science at a local college and she was quite lovely to talk to.

Eventually the train emptied itself as people got off at their respective stops before Guwahati and I got to sit down for the last hour of the journey. I also got to see a few things I hadn't seen before on trains here. Since I've usually had a comfortable set in the 'cleaner' and less crowded compartments, I hadn't seen as many men selling badam, channa and other snacks walking up and down the crazily packed aisle. There was also a pair of girls who got on while we were on the outskirts of Guwahati and started doing backward cartwheels and somersaults in the aisle.

We finally arrived in Guwahati at 2.15pm, just half an hour behind schedule. My voice went hoarse from yelling at people trying to board the train while people were trying to get off. A Karbi guy I met on the train and his friend helped me with my luggage and got me an auto to the University Guest House.

Overall, it actually wasn't too bad an experience. It reinforced my already positive impression of people from NE India as being friendly and accommodating.

Karbi Anglong

Given that I've spent most of the past week here, it's only fair I post a thing or two about Karbi Anglong. It's the largest district in the state of Assam, with its headquarters at Diphu, which surprisingly isn't even featured on the map in the Lonely Planet guide to North-east India. The name of the district translates as 'Karbi Hills', the Karbis being the dominant ethnic group here.



I'm here visiting my friend L. who's been doing research on the Karbi language for some years now. I got to sit in on a few sessions with her main language consultant which was really cool. I'm also staying with a Karbi friend whom L. introduced me to when I first visited in early 2009 and have been staying at her family (apart from the 2 nights I was at Kohora).



The Karbi totem pictured above is known as Jambili Athon and consists of a bird at the apex surrounded by five smaller birds and two even smaller birds on the main body of the totem. I like it because the main bird is a drongo, usually a species of racquet-tailed drongo with its long tail feather extensions. You can find drongos in rainforests across SE Asia and they're always a pleasant find (unless you're from Australia, where the word 'drongo' refers to an idiot). Anyway, according to my friend here the drongo symbolises the king of the Karbi people, and the four birds around it represent the four main Karbi clans. The little birds are also said to offer food to the drongo, who pretty much lives in luxury.

One reason my friend says the drongo is respected is its ability to mimic most other sounds, including the barking of dogs - a fact I'm familiar with back from my nature guiding days in Singapore. Its call also signals the presence of danger nearby, although I'm not sure what one would listen out for it in the jungle, given its ability to mimic most other sounds.

L.'s language consultant called it a 'bird of paradise', which is apparently what many people call it in English. However, true birds of paradise are only found on the island of New Guinea.

Now the last time I visited Diphu in 2009, the situation wasn't terribly stable. I remember there was a protest march near the football field and seeing a few fires lit. I'm not quite sure, but it was probably led by a rebel group agitating for independence / greater autonomy from Assam, following the shooting of someone by the police.



Since then, the situation has stabilised with the surrender of most members of the Karbi Longri National Liberation Front (KLNLF). In exchange, the government has offered them both amnesty and plots of land. According to my friends here, some people who weren't KLNLF members also 'surrendered' in order to get some land. Hmm....

A take on Indian English

I always say that NE India really isn't like the rest of India, but something that does remind me that I'm in India are the brands of English I hear around me. They're not all the same, but given the prevalence of Indian TV here and the fact that many English teachers have come  / still come from the 'mainland' (the rest of India), I often still find some features I associate more with Indian English here. (I'm also aware that Indian English itself comprises numerous variants, but this is my own overgeneralised impression.)

It's not so much the phonology (speech sounds) and intonation I notice - there are too many accents, which seem more heavily influenced by speakers' first language. As a point, my Sumi and Angami friends often make fun of the English spoken by Ao speakers. Rather, it's certain collocations that use the verb 'take' that have stuck in my mind and after two months here I've taken to using some of them in my daily life as well.

The first one I use all the time is take food. People always ask if I've 'taken food' and I will often ask people if they've 'taken food' as well. If I'm in the mood, I usually reply that 'I've taken / not taken food.' but if I'm not, I will tell them that 'I've eaten / not eaten.', which is what 'taking food' means.

Another one I hear often and sometimes use is take rest. People will tell me to 'take rest', which as you can guess is an invitation to 'have a rest'. But I'm not sure if I would actually tell people to 'have a rest' back home, unless they were lying sick in bed...

Finally, there's one 'take' collocation I heard used a lot at the Ahuna festival in Zunheboto, and then again at the Hornbill Festival in Kisama. Before each item, the announcers would invite participants to 'take the stage' and 'please take your time'. I was first a little taken aback by such brazen use of sarcasm at a public event, till I realised that they were actually telling the participants: 'use the time allocated to you to perform'.

I suppose it's kind of like telling people to 'seize the day'.

(might upload a video if I find one where the announcer was saying 'take your time')

[UPDATE 11/01/11: The Assamese caretaker of the guest house I'm staying at just told me not to take tension, meaning 'don't worry'.]

Hey BRO, whaddup?

If you visit Nagaland, one thing you may notice on the drive from Dimapur to Kohima are signs along the highway issuing warnings to drivers. They generally start with 'Bro' and are followed by the usual 'Watch your speed' or 'No mobile while driving'.

Some even extend into the realm of the philosophical, with sayings like 'Money Isn't Everything'.

But if your initial impression - like mine was - is that these signs are trying to appeal to younger male drivers and / or are being sexist in assuming all drivers are male, think again.

'BRO' just stands for 'Border Roads Organisation'.

Still I can't help but feel that the sign makers are aware that 'BRO' is read as 'Bro' and are using it to their advantage, sexist as it may be.

Facing up to your food

I often believe that if people living in cities in developed countries had to kill their own animals for meat, meat consumption would be much lower than it is. My mum would always tell us that back during those kampong days in Singapore (when most of the population lived in small villages across the island) they had to kill their own chickens for food. Fast forward to today's Singapore, and there are people who've never seen a live chicken, though they may have eaten plenty of them.

A few years ago, a friend of mine in Melbourne decided to stop being a vegetarian. However, in order to make the transition, he decided he had to kill a chicken himself, which I suppose was a symbolic gesture to acknowledge life he was killing simply by purchasing and consuming meat. (Jed, if you're reading this, correct me if I'm wrong.) A few weeks ago, while I was staying at my friends' place in Kohima, she asked half-jokingly if I wanted to kill the chicken that a relative had given. Her husband was out of town that week and it's usually the men who slaughter the chickens. I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to, since I didn't know where to begin strangling the poor bird. In the end, and to my relief, my friend said she was just going to send it to the butcher's to do the dirty work.

It's odd though, that despite all the slaughtering, much of the killing has been out of my sight. Most of the time, it's freshly killed animals I've seen being prepared for cooking - not unlike being at the butcher's back home. Still, it can be a confronting experience for people unused to seeing certain animal parts, especially for people who only eat meat which does not look like it used to be alive. Also, given the lack of proper refrigeration, the best way to keep meat fresh is to keep the animal alive. It's a little disconcerting for some to see an animal that was alive and kicking one day (and making a helluva lot of noise) lying lifeless the next, having its feathers plucked or its fur singed off.

I admit I've become a little desensitised to the killing. I can still bring myself to eat an animal which I had previously seen alive, fully conscious of the fact that I am eating something that once had a beating heart. I personally think it's healthy to acknowledge that, given that most of us are so far removed from the process of killing to obtain our meat.

However, there are still limits to my desensitisation. When I stayed with a friend in Dimapur, I had a lot of fun playing with the very cute puppies at her place - that is, until she told me that her external family members would come round for dog soup when they were sick. The thought of it made me feel slightly queasy myself, especially with the puppies right there. No offence to dog eaters, I just wouldn't be able to consume dog unless I had no other choice.

**WARNING**
Some readers may be disturbed by the following images of dead animals. (And no, there are no pictures of dead puppies.)

*   *   *

One thing I notice about pigs is how peaceful they look when they're dead.

When the guys were singeing the hairs off a pig for a Christmas feast, it looked like the pig was just sleeping.


I suppose it's because they look like they're smiling when they're dead.


A dead mithun, shot in the head for the Christmas feast.


Cutting up the dead mithun. I thought it was a rather artistic pose. You can't see it in this picture, but unlike pigs, all the mithun and cattle heads I've seen have them sticking out their tongues after death.



On New Year's Eve I saw a pig being dragged out of its pen, squealing in fear as a group of men stabbed it in the heart. I took a video of the whole affair, watching as the pig started to cough out blood from its mouth. I was quite disturbed, especially the way they guys were laughing about killing the animal, but I suppose they view animals very differently to the way I view them.

Given the amount of pork I consumed during my time in Nagaland, I figured I should watch the death of at least one pig. And I did manage to eat that pig I saw die.

Surviving fieldwork: Space, Stimulation and Sanitation

Doing linguistic / anthropological fieldwork in any place which isn't your own native environment can be a daunting task. Alhough I wasn't doing fieldwork this week, some of the principles of surviving fieldwork still apply. Many people doing fieldwork have the romantic notion of 'living like the locals' (that's also assuming all 'locals' live the same way which isn't the case), but for a healthy fieldwork experience - and I'm speaking only from personal experience - there are three necessary conditions that need to be met to the satisfaction of the researcher. If these are not met, one should get out of the situation before it takes its psychological toll with the researcher wondering what the heck they're doing there, longing to hide in a room or run away, and basically not getting much research done.

For the sake of alliteration, I'm naming them: Space, Stimulation and Sanitation.

But before I talk about them, here's a little preamble about the events of the past few days which have led me to post on this topic.

So having left Nagaland, I arrived in Diphu in Karbi Anglong - the largest district in Assam - on Tuesday. On Wednesday my friend here invited me to spend a few days with her at a cultural festival organised by one of the main political parties in the district. The festival was taking place at the new 'ethnic village' in Kohora close to the entrance of Kaziranga National Park. Having just left Nagaland, I was up for another adventure. I'm not quite sure what my friend expected was going to happen at the festival, but for me, living arrangements did not meet these 3 Ss.


1. Space
When doing fieldwork, one of the first things to establish is your own space - space to put your things, space to rest, space to hide from the rest of the world whose language and culture you barely understand but are - hopefully - trying to learn. The amount of personal space needed differs from person to person, but generally, a nice secure location, if only to store expensive equipment, is preferred.

For the 3 to 4 days I was going to be at the festival (my friend wasn't certain when we would be coming back), the sleeping arrangement was simple. There were two parts to the model house in the 'ethnic village'. The women were to sleep on the floor in the main part of the house, while the men were to sleep in a smaller section of the house right next to the toilets. During the day, these areas were used for the exhibition area and a baggage storage area respectively. This meant that the sleeping mats were only set up when guests had stopped visiting for the night and they kept early in the morning to prepare for any arriving guests.

3 to 4 days may not sound like a long time and one might say, "It's only a few days, I can suck it up." But imagine having just travelled 4 hours from a different town, arriving in a new place where no one's telling you what's going on. All you want to do is lie down and take a rest, but there's nowhere to do so. You don't know when people are going to bed, and you don't know what time they're waking up. Worse, because you don't speak the language and people don't speak English or may be shy to do so, no one's telling you what's happening, and your friend's busy with her own work and doesn't quite know the situation herself. In fact, 3 to 4 hours is generally more than enough time to get frustrated with the whole set-up.


2. Stimulation
Being in a foreign environment is often an isolating experience. Even if people speak your language, they may have a completely different view of the world, and many conversations don't progress beyond 'Hi, how are you?' or people asking about what you think of their town / village / customs. It's a legitimate question, until everyone you meet asks you the same question every time and you find yourself having to praise even the dullest of locations. It's quite easy to just go into your own internal monologue and shut out everyone around you. It's necessary to have some sort of mental stimulation to avoid this - and not research-related stimulation either. For many, a book to read or a journal to write in might be enough, unless it's too painful to do any reading or writing that isn't research-related.

Being at a cultural festival doesn't guarantee all-day entertainment. After looking at the models of traditional houses at Kohora (and the workmanship really wasn't as good as what I'd seen at the Hornbill Festival at Kisama and at the Agri Expo in Dimapur), there's only so much dancing and singing I could take before calling it a day.

The first evening was probably the worse, because everyone was busy setting up for the exhibition, while I had absolutely nothing to do for about 5 hours. I didn't have a book to read (nor light nor a space to read if I wanted to) and I had no one to talk to. I had visited all the traditional houses (which took about 15 minutes) and there was nothing to watch apart from the long meeting held by the organisers of the festival. Worse, because I didn't have a space to lie down, I found myself pacing up and down like a caged animal. At one point I found a stone block under a pavillion to lie down on, but when I got up, I realised I'd be lying next to a dog the whole time!


3. Sanitation
This is probably the most important to many people. Keeping clean is an important part of feeling happy. Some, like myself, are psychologically prepared not to bathe as often as they are used to when they are in a different environment, especially if it's very cold and hot water comes in buckets (it's the time spent drying off afterwards that really bothers me). Access to a clean toilet is definitely a must, even if it means getting used to squatting and not using toilet paper for some. Also, for researchers in South Asia and other areas with heavily sweetened drinks, daily toothbrushing (and flossing) is essential if you don't want a hefty dental bill when you return home.

Now, between the 20 or so people staying in the house for the duration of the festival, there was one toilet and one bathroom, neither of which had any water. To make things worse, the toilet seat wouldn't stay up, so the guys simply peed on it. Naturally, many of the women refused to pee there so they used the drainage hole in the bathroom instead. The bathroom door didn't have a lock on the inside, so every time my friend went I had to stand guard outside.

Now, I was clearly aware that the sleeping arrangements were well outside my comfort zone. But I was more aware of the psychological trauma of spending 3-4 days in this kind of environment and I wasn't about to be gungho about the whole thing.

In the end, I only spent one night in the house, on the condition that my friend help me find a way back to Diphu the next day. However, it soon became clear to me that my friend did not want me to leave the next day since she herself felt uncomfortable in this situation - a clear sign that me as a foreigner shouldn't be in that environment. It was only after my mini-meltdown, when a guy I had spoken to for 2 minutes asked for my number simply because I was a foreigner, that she said it would be alright if I left.

In any case, transport back to Diphu that day turned out to be a bit of a problem, but thankfully her boss was able put me up in a hotel close to the festival ground the next day. However, that day I was actually moved no less than four times from one hotel to another (for various reasons), with people simply coming in to the room and telling me to "packing". Such uncertainty is another source of trauma. Also, although my friend's boss's bodyguard always had a cheerful smile on his face, I was always wary of the semi-automatic weapon (I think it was semi-automatic) he had slung over his shoulder.

I finally got back to Diphu yesterday when my friend's brother drove the 4 hours to the festival just for the afternoon.

This photo was taken after my friend had just made all the women move to a different section of the house so I didn't have to sleep with the boys next to the toilets. [UPDATE: the reason why I look so miserable in this photo wasn't because I had to sleep on the floor, it was because I was feeling super guilty that my friend had made all the women move out of the area so I could sleep there.] There was another guy sleeping next to me, so I wouldn't feel too bad.

But did I mention he snored like a dying pig?

To block road, to dam to fish

The other day as I was going through the Sumi-English dictionary by Lozhevi Sema, I found this verb:

yekhi: ala lakha, yekha keu akushino azü yekhakeu = to block road; to dam to fish.

While my friends weren't too familiar with this particular entry, it seems to refer to blocking either a road or a river (the latter for the purpose of catching fish).

This immediately brought to mind what happened last week as we were travelling back to Zunheboto after doing some cultural documentation in a few villages. We were crossing the Lanki River - which I dubbed the 'Lion King' river - when a rather peculiar sight greeted us.

The Lanki River


First, I couldn't make out where we were meant to ford the river, but the driver didn't have any problem plunging the car right into part of the river. When we emerged on the embankment in the middle of the river, there was a car parked on it, with a few men in military uniform standing around with guns - members of the Underground.

For those who don't know, there's an insurgency problem in Nagaland, with a whole 'government' running parallel with the government recognised by India. They're not terribly popular, given their penchant for violence and extortion. At least now there's a ceasefire between the Underground and the Indian Army, but there are also a number of different factions which still fight amongst themselves.

Anyway, the curious thing that day wasn't anything to do with violence. It was a steam shoveller in a pond. And it was blocking our attempt to cross the river.



What these guys were doing, was using the steam shoveller to dam the river and make a smaller channel so they could catch fish! In the process, they had also changed the course of the river, thereby blocking the usual road, and the car had to struggle up a muddy path, aided by a few of us pushing it up.



The verb yekhi would therefore be doubly appropriate to describe what happened here. Of course, damming the river this way and blocking all traffic just to have a bit of fun definitely doesn't make the guys in the Underground any more popular.

Failed illegal immigrant

On the weekend, the government announced that, apart from Pakistani and Chinese citizens, foreigners would require no special permits to visit N-East for 2011. They will require to register - I'm assuming at the local police station - within 24 hours upon arrival. They're trialling this idea for one year, and the permit exemption programme will apply to the states of Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram. (Arunachal Pradesh is still pretty sensitive given that China still claims it as part of their territory and like people I've spoken with in Nepal, there's the belief that China will invade within the next decade or two.)

This is fantastic news, since I won't have to worry about getting a Restricted Area Permit or RAP (also known as a Protected Area Permit or PAP) the next time I come back this year. The process of obtaining one is lengthy. First, you either need to apply and travel as a group of four, or as a married couple. Since I am neither of these (although my pork consumption for the month is making me feel like closer to a group of four), it's amazing my friend has been able to get me two RAPs to visit the state.

Next, you need to already have a visa for India in order to apply for the permit. This sounds reasonable, until you realise that India tourist visas are valid from the date they are issued, not from a specified date afterwards. Given that it takes 6-8 weeks to be granted the RAP, this means having to get the India visa about 2 months before actually arriving in India. The first time I tried this, the consulate staff (or rather, the people the consular staff outsourced their visa processing to) were not happy that I was getting a visa so early and wanted to see my plane ticket to India.

On the application form on the RAP, which I have scanned and emailed to my friend in the past, it is also required that you state the route by which you will be travelling when you are in Nagaland. This means naming all the towns that you will be passing through even before you've got the permit.

If and when the permit arrives (my friend emails it to me), it is usually valid for only 10 days - I am so grateful my friend managed to get me an RAP that was valid for a month since I was here for the Ahuna and Hornbill festivals. It is possible to extend the permit, which did so I could stay till after New Year's, but this requires more time and there's always the chance it won't be granted so it's difficult to make long term plans.

You then have to make multiple copies of the permit. The reason for this is that at every major town, and for some minor towns, there's a security checkpoint. Foreigners are supposed to report to the local police station in every town they pass through to deposit a copy of their RAP. This is the most painful process because an already long 6 hour journey from Kohima to Zunheboto for instance, might take 9 hours, with 3 hours sitting in police stations answering questions, or worse, just waiting for the local police to come back if they're on duty at the time. It is also expected that you follow the route you specified in your RAP or questions will be asked.

And you have to leave when the permit expires!

I've been lucky in some aspects, some of which I will not elaborate on here. I can say that my last RAP extension granted me permission to remain in the state till 2 Jan, which was a Sunday, when inter-town transport is very difficult - taxis / sumos don't run and most people are at church or with their families. It was therefore difficult to leave by the date written on the RAP extension and I thought I would have to risk being an illegal visitor for two days (I'm leaving for Assam today), but it seems my attempt at being illegal has been foiled by the government of India.

It was a very last-minute announcement and I don't know if it will make a huge impact on foreign tourist numbers this year, since most people don't even know about Nagaland and the other NE states. It might have a bigger impact next year, and with more publicity.

In the meantime, tell your friends to come visit NE India this year!

Sex sells fireworks?

Happy New Year from Nagaland!

Now, going back to Australia for a second, most Australians associate (or have associated) Canberra with being able to legally purchase porn and fireworks. It's a bit of a misconception, since fireworks are no longer freely available in the nation's capital and seriously, who buys porn in shops anymore?

Anyway, I have a point somewhere here. With Christmas and New Year's over, there's been a helluva lot of fireworks (locally known as 'bombs' here). While fireworks for New Year's is fairly standard for me, nowhere have I seen Christmas celebrating with such prolific use of explosives. It's a wonder I got any sleep on Christmas Eve.

But - apart from the loud intermittent blasts throughout the night - it was the packaging that really caught my attention. Most packaging looks fairly tame, bordering on family friendly even, but note the position of the woman's hand in this picture:

Others, on the other hand, are a little more shameless.

It's almost like a combination of porn and fireworks!

Okay, not quite, but I do find it hilarious that you're able to purchase these potentially life-threatening and sexually explicitly marketed babies, given that people aren't even allowed to go to cinemas here because it's considered a sin against God.

There are some things I don't think I'll ever understand.