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...

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....