On the road: Nagaland (I)

On of the advantages of travelling by private car and not by Sumo (the most common type of vehicle for inter-town travel) in Nagaland, is that you can stop at the roadside stalls anytime to buy fresh fruit. I was fortunate enough to be able to catch a ride with Ab. and her dad from Dimapur to Kohima exactly 2 weeks ago.

Visitors heading up to Kohima from Dimapur to attend this year's Hornbill Festival will no doubt see a few of these pineapple stands on the way.





Between Kohima and Zunheboto we also stopped outside the gate to the village of Usütomi, where some of the villagers were selling produce. (Usütomi was one of the villages I got to visit last year to do a few recordings.)





On offer were oranges, pumpkins, wild brinjals, chillis and some jungle greens.



There were also a few types of yam, as well as large ginger - the village takes it name from the kind of ginger grown there, ausü (Drop the ubiquitous a- prefix and you get usü. Add to which means 'hill', since the village is on a hilltop, like most settlements here. The mi means 'person / people' and is sometimes dropped when people talk about the village itself, not some villages seem to always keep the mi.)



Of course, having a car is no guarantee that things will go according to plan.



Our car had a flat just a few hours out of Dimapur. As is standard practice, there was a useable spare in the car. Given how hopeless I am around machines, I let Ab.'s father and their driver sort out the car business.



But with hours of travel still ahead of us (some of it through knee deep water), it was thought prudent to get the tire repaired just outside Kohima. While waiting for the tire to be fixed, Ab. and I ducked into a nearby rest stop for, surprise surprise, a cup of cha.



They're nothing much to look at, and the toilets are often pretty gross, but I quite enjoy these little rest stops.


In the end, we decided to spend the night in Kohima, given that the new quicker route to Zunheboto wasn't terribly safe to drive along at night (did I mention the car had to cross a river?)

And it was just as well, because the next day, we had another flat just a few hours out of Kohima!

Eating silkworms

I'm actually really surprised I hadn't had silkworms until this week. I'd seen them on skewers in Beijing but never dared to try them. This despite telling people that I eat anything. Well, there are certain things I don't eat, like dog and cat, but in general, I eat most things that are laid in front of me.

So at the guest house when I was given ingki ok, the Karbi name for this delicacy, I happily ate them. (By the way, ok in Karbi means 'meat', and is found in compound nouns denoting more usual meats, e.g. phak ok 'pork' (lit. 'pig meat') and lang ok 'fish' (lit. 'water meat').

But this was just the 'finished' product on the plate. It wasn't until a few days later that I got to see where the ingki came from. The mum of one of our Karbi friends makes traditional Karbi clothes and bags, and buys (from I don't know where) large quantities of the silk cocoons, as seen below. The silk looks a bit rough, but the threads are very strong I'm told.

The worms come in two colours: green and yellow.

I'm a little glad I got to eat some before I'd seen the live ones wriggling around in a basket. I think it's something about the wriggling motion that sets off my feelings of disgust and revulsion.

In any case, the verdict: I was expecting the little worms to be bitter and mushy inside, but they were firmer and tastier than I expected. I told my friends they tasted like chicken (like most strange 'meats'). I'm not sure if I'd ask for them willingly next time though...

It ain't a meal if it ain't rice

Back in Singapore, there are two things I need to remind myself of. One, I'm once again in a place where tap water is potable! The whole idea seems so alien to me now. Two, rice does not have to be part of every single meal.

I'm aware that this is a sentiment shared by many people in Asia (a tour package Mum and I took to Paris offered rice at every meal except the last dinner, which was the only 'French' meal for the tour) and there are still people in Singapore who need rice in every meal. But I'd say they belong to the older generation, and it's certainly not the case in my family that we need rice at every meal.

Now despite being mostly on my own during my last few weeks in Assam, I was still subjected to rice at most meals. Take for instance the first night I stayed at the hotel in Guwahati. I ordered room service: fish and chips plus a serving of masala peanuts. I knew full well that the fish and chips would be crap, but I just wasn't in the mood for roti and rice (even the extremely oily Chinese fried rice). After the waiter had delivered the food and was about to leave, he asked me politely, "Sir will you be taking dinner?"

A little perplexed, I simply pointed at the tray he'd just deposited on the table and said "This is dinner." The waiter shook his head in the typical Indian fashion to connote agreement. He then appeared again later to pick up the tray asked me the exact same question.

Granted that by this point in the trip I just wanted to eat what I want, when I wanted and how much I wanted, I was more than a little miffed at having his concept of dinner imposed on me!

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.

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.

Eating chillies

Yesterday at the Hornbill Festival, they held a Naga Chilli eating competition for the first time. The winner popped 8 of the fiery peppers, known as raja mircha, ('king chilli'), Naga jolokia, bhut jolokia.

This may not seem like a lot to people used to popping  which may not sound like a lot, unless you know that these chillies have been found to rate up to 1,041,427 units on the Scoville scale which is a measure of spicy heat. Wikipedia gives the rating for Tabasco sauce as between 2,500 to 5,000 units, while bird's eye chillies rate between 50,000 to 100,000 units. The only chilli hotter than raja mircha is a hybrid called the Naga Viper made by cross-breeding the raja mircha and two other chillies and was developed in the UK.

Prize-winning chillies at the horticultural centre next to the Hornbill Festival grounds at Kisama.


In any case, these are still the hottest chillies in the world that are being cultivated and consumed en masse. There are even reports that the Indian army plan to put them in hand grenades. Dangerous stuff.

Burmese snack

Last week I was given this little packet of food (?) that I was told had come from Burma. The Burmese writing on the packet seemed to confirm this - not so sure about the anime style pictures.

Me being me, I just had to try it, despite the fact that the contents looked more like pet food pellets. I'm still trying to figure out what on earth I ate. It was an odd mix of sweet and a savoury...

Hornets for lunch?

As we sitting at one the stalls at the Ahuna festival drinking milk tea and snacking on beef liver and intestines (they do them so well here), I.'s cousin A. asked me if I'd ever tried 'hornets' or 'hornets larvae', I quickly said no. Within seconds, he'd gone up to a lady selling food wrapped in large leaves (the leaves are called aküghü in Sumi) and bought two. When he came back he told me, 'They were out of hornets, this is just fish.'

I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Did I just dodge a bullet, or was he pulling my leg? Not that I would mind trying hornets, I just thought an entire package of them would be a little too much. In any case, he said I didn't have to eat whatever was in the package there and then. So I said I'd wait (till I was somewhere more private).

When I got back to the Heritage tourist lodge (there was a break between the morning and evening programmes), I placed the package on the bed since I had no table inside, and - rather like a leopard - I didn't quite feel like eating in public.

I opened the package to find a small mound of rice, as is the fashion here, with a few pieces of pork fat, and another smaller leaf package.

And lo and behold, there were fish in the small package! They were small, and surprisingly easy to eat, the bones being small and soft. However, I still think some of my friends would be a little grossed out by the way the little fishies were staring at me as I ate them.

So those hornets for lunch will have to wait another day.

दाल भात तरकारी (Daal Bhaat Tarkaari)

For maybe the 4th time (I'm losing track) in a week and a half, Lauren and I were treated to dinner at L. and S.'s house. As usual, the menu consisted of Nepal's 'national dish' - दाल भात तरकारी daal bhaat tarkaari (lentil curry, rice and vegetables), followed by the best दहि dahi (curd) I've ever had.

S. decided it was time I learned to be a good modern Nepali house husband and help with the preparation of dinner. So after Lauren and I broke up the सिमी simi (beans), I got to peel and chop the लसुन lasun (garlic), प्याज pyaaz (onion) and अदुवा aduwaa (ginger), as well as the गोलभेंडा golbhenDaa (tomatoes) and धनियँ dhaniyan (coriander).

After putting some तेल tel (oil) and खुर्सानी khursaani (chillis) in the wok (now the details start getting sketchy), the beans, onions, garlic, half of the ginger and some काउली kauli (cauliflower) were thrown in, along with some बेसार besaar (turmeric), and given a good stir before being covered. A few minutes later, the tomatoes and the rest of the ginger were thrown in with some जीरा jiraa (cumin). Afterwards, the wok was taken off the fire and the coriander finally added.

And since I was the Nepali house husband in training, I was given the honour of standing over the hot stove stirring the veggies.

Me and S.

S. making sure I didn't ruin dinner