Phou-oibi, the Rice Goddess - a Manipuri ballad opera

I just got to see Phou-oibi, the Rice Goddess, as part of the Tapestry of Sacred Music 2013 programme here at the Esplanade in Singapore.  It is described as a Manipuri ballad opera, performed by the Laihui Ensemble from Manipur in North-East India.

It tells the story of a number of goddesses, including the Goddess of Fish, the Goddess of Water, the Goddess of Land, the Goddess of Metal, the Goddess of Wealth and the eponymous Goddess of Rice, Phou-oibi, who are sent by the Supreme God to the realm of humans, Lamlen Madam Madaima, to help them prosper. However, when they try to leave, they are stopped by the four protectors of the realm, under the orders of the Supreme God who believes that humanity will suffer once they leave. Phou-oibi, the Goddess of Rice, is the only one unable to escape - the stream she tries to cross turns into a huge river. Unable to cross the river, she meets a man, Akongjamba, who is out hunting. They meet and recognise instantly a connection they had in a past life. Akongjamba eventually proposes to Phou-oibi, who makes him wait till the full moon of the month of Sajibu to give her response. [Incidentally, we are currently in the month of Sajibu, which started last week with Sajibu Cheiraoba, the Meitei New Year.] However, at the appointed time, Akongjamba fails to show up. Enraged, Phou-oibi throws paddy down on the land.

According to the creative director, in other versions of the tale, the two end up together. In one version I just found in the book The Lois of Manipur: Andro, Khurkulm, Phayeng and Sekmai, Phou-oibi only spends a day in Akongjamba's house before she is forced to leave by his mother.

You can see short excerpts from the show here:



There are also videos of the performance on Youtube, though I'm not sure whether the uploader has the copyright.



I thought it was a wonderful production, from the performance to the lighting. The women, and especially the lead female, showed such control over their bodies and voices. I particularly enjoyed the flowing hand movements. I was also impressive by the physicality of a somersault that the women performed, given the limited movement afforded by their clothes and accessories (the wrapper around their waist, is what I think is called a phanek).

The post-performance talk / Q&A left a sour note in my mouth though. The very first question was, "Where are you from?", which I found to be incredibly offensive and disrespectful to the performers, given that the information was provided in the programme! As a follow-on question, I heard the same audience member make a comment that they didn't 'look Indian'. Surely, there are more culturally appropriate ways to ask someone about their place of origin. For instance, "I'm not familiar at all with Manipur, could you please tell me more it?" In contrast, asking "Where are you from?" basically implies, "The programme says you're from India, but where are you really from?" And of course, I get upset about these things because I have many friends from NE India who have to continually assert their membership as 'Indian citizens', both outside India and even when they live in other parts of India - though I do think / hope this is changing, with greater visibility by people like Mary Kom, a boxer from Manipur who won Bronze at last year's Summer Olympics.

But that aside, going back to what I loved about the show - what I loved most was, as stated in the programme, that the production was a collaboration between the various performers, musicians and artists and more importantly, that:

"Laihui Ensemble's The Rice Goddess gives free rein to its artists to improvise, and in doing so, allows them to reconstruct a traditional art form into a contemporary setting."

Culture and cultural performances are not static (unless we want them to be), and I think there's a lot to be said for finding the right balance between respecting tradition and producing work that a contemporary audience can still appreciate, even if it is a niche audience looking for something 'exotic'.

Nagaland village focus: Khuzama

As I prepare to leave India again (this time to spend Christmas at home with the family for the first time in years), I thought I'd share some photos from a visit to another friend's village in Nagaland. Like Khonoma village that we also visited, Khuzama is an Angami village. You can tell it's an Angami by the suffix -ma (corresponding to Sumi village names that end in -mi). However, most Angami speakers seem to replace the -ma with -ra / -rie when they refer to the villages in speech.

While Khonoma is a Western Angami village, Khuzama is one of the Southern Angami villages situated on the highway between Kohima and Imphal in Manipur. It's also the last Angami village before you reach the state border with Manipur and the start of Mao territory. The Maos (not to be confused with Maoists) are another related tribe. Linguistically, Southern Angami dialects are so different from Tenyidie (standard Angami based on Northen Angami) that they might constitute a different language altogether. My friend from Khuzama says he finds it easier to understand Chokri (one of the main languages of the group previously classified as 'Eastern Angami' but now known as Chakhesang).

The current Khuzama village gate

The weekend my friend from Australia was around, our Angami friends who usually live in Kohima had a church function to attend in Khuzama. I thought it'd be nice to go for a walk around the terraces and they were happy for us to take us to the village. They got one of the boys in the village to take us around, and also to explain to people why a couple of strangers were walking around their village.

Our 'guide' for the afternoon brought us to our friend's plot of land. Unlike with jhum cultivation, which involves shifting to a new field site every 2 years and the re-allocation of new plots to people to cultivate (typically by the village chief), terraces are 'owned' by the same people every year. They are also passed down from generation to generation, but only to sons I believe.

From the village, we could also see the neighbouring village of Viswema. I'm told it's the largest of the Southern Angami villages. If you've been on the highway from Kohima to Imphal, you would have probably noticed that most of the roofs on the houses have been painted red, making it almost look like some Italian village on a hilltop.

We walked down all the way to the little river / stream. It would've been nice to have a picnic on the rocks in the middle of the stream, but we hadn't organised ourselves that well.

We had a really pleasant afternoon walking around the terraced fields down to the stream. It didn't take us long to get down, but the climb back up was quite strenuous, and we weren't carrying baskets of grain or anything back up to the village with us! We were told that when there's a lot of work to be done in the fields, some villagers do sleep in the field huts that you can see dotting the hillside.


I should add that the Angamis and Chakhesangs (formerly 'Eastern Angamis', as mentioned above) are cited as the only two tribes in Nagaland to have started practising terracing before the arrival of the British. (They do still practise some jhum cultivation to grow other crops.) I've been asking around about the origins of terracing in these tribes, as it strikes me as imported technology, but no one I've asked has been able to give a satisfactory reply. I would be quite interested to find out more about local stories / folktales surrounding its origins in these communities.

Alright, this will probably be my last post in India for a while. I still have a backlog of material to upload, and I'll try to do that when I'm back in Singapore or Australia. In the meantime, Happy Holidays everyone!

Khonoma village (Take two)

Two years ago I visited Khonoma village, which is about 2 hours from Kohima (depending on road conditions). Unfortunately, the day I visited was terribly foggy and it was hard to see anything (see here). This time, I visited again shortly after the Hornbill Festival. Thankfully the weather was much better, since I also came with a friend from Australia who may not have another chance to come back.

Now, there are some friends who don't feel that Khonoma needs any special mention or recommendation. Even among my Angami friends, people from Khonoma are often perceived as being particularly proud, arrogant even. The village itself is famed for its defiance of the British which culminated in the Battle of Khonoma in 1879 that resulted in the deaths of a number of British soldiers.

The villagers even manufactured their own guns, based on models acquired in the plains of Assam. This particular gun required two people to hold it up, while a third person loaded it.

Another reason for the perceived 'smugness' might be because the village has also produced a number of intellectuals. I'm told the reason for this is that during the British siege, the villagers smuggled out a number of kids to Dimapur where they eventually received their education (and hence the overall better standard of education in the village compared to others in Nagaland). I'm not quite sure how true this is, but in the absence of other explanations, I'm willing to accept it. The village also produced a number of founding members of the Naga independence movement, including Phizo himself.

In any case, Khonoma is a pleasant place to visit if you're in Kohima for the Hornbill Fesitval (although the Southern Angami villages past the Kisama Heritage Village are also quite picturesque - but that's for another post). It prides itself on being a 'green village', and there are rubbish bins all over the village which to my eye are actually used. To my surprise, I learnt that the village still has a functioning morung, a kind of dormitory where young men were sent to learn about traditional ways and to form bonds with members of their peer group. (It was even more of a surprise for me because Hutton in his book The Angami Nagas mentions that the morung wasn't very significant to the Angamis). Some villages also had a female equivalent, although I was told there was none in Khonoma at the present time.

The streets are generally well maintained, with competitions between the various peer groups, known as peli in Tenyidie (the standard Angami dialect used in church and schools). Here, one can see the work of one peli working on a section of road, so that they don't get outdone by other peli who are in charge of other sections of the same road.

My Angami friends in Kohima organised the visit for us. We had a local guide named Michael, who used to be the president of the students' union here (I believe), and who was very knowledgeable about the village's history.

I don't normally do such recommendations, but I was quite impressed by his role in organising the members of the village to maintain its cleanliness and preserve the local wildlife. I would say that many villages in Nagaland could benefit from learning from Khonoma's system of organisation, but I don't want to inflate the villagers' egos any further!

If you are interested in visiting Khonoma village, you can contact Mr Michael Saphi (Khonoma Tours & Treks) at +91 98 5655 9394.

Hornbill Festival 2012

So the Hornbill Festival at Kisama has come and gone. This year I brought a friend from Australia along to enjoy the festivities. After my experiences at the festival last year and the year before, I didn't really want to spend all week in Kisama, since many of the shows start to feel repetitive after a few days. I thought it'd be best if we arrive on the 4th day for the last few days, then stay back a few more days to enjoy some of the sights around Kohima when most of the other tourists would have moved on. I think it was a good decision (as I sit here typing this in our now empty guest house).

My friend quite enjoyed the whole event, which his colleague in Melbourne had described last year as 'better than National Geographic', which makes me laugh a little. Sadly, in this post I won't be waxing lyrical about the festival, but would like to point out a few things that made me quite unhappy and in the process, perhaps raise a few questions about the future of the festival.

Looking at the photo below, you might notice the big black stage that was set up right next to the performance area, taking up a large chunk of what was previously audience space. This stage was used for the opening and closing ceremonies of the festival, on the 1st and 7th of December respectively. In between those two days, it seems that the stage was not used at all.

As far as I could see, additional seating had not been provided (apart from some reserved seats for soldiers and their families), even though a third of the previous years' seating was now taken up by a stage that was largely non-functional for the majority of the festival. And when it was used, the sight lines were so bad because of the large speakers, that many people sitting in the audience area (myself included) weren't able to see the actual performance onstage and had to resort to watching a small screen at the back of the stage. It seems the only people with a proper view of the stage were the people in the VIP area.

This non-consideration of general audience members was apparent during all the cultural performances too. While some performances were geared to the audience, most of them, especially the song items were not oriented to the general seating area, but to the VIP booth.

The Zeliang cultural troupe performing a song for the VIPs

If I now asked: "Who is the festival really for?", the answer would be rather straightforward. Not Nagas from all over the state. Not tourists, domestic and foreign. It's the small group of people that the organisers have deemed 'very important'.

I'm sorry, but people didn't come all this way to see performers' behinds while they perform. (Okay, maybe some people did, but only to take photos of them in costume.)

I was particularly disappointed at the closing ceremony - it didn't help that I could barely see the stage. At one point, the performers from the various cultural troupes had to get up and form the usual lines to welcome the Chief Guest who, as custom dictates, arrived late. In the middle of their chanting and singing, the 'pre-entertainment' started on the opposite side of the performance area, where singers on the big black stage started their renditions of ABBA and Bruce Springstein, while Bebop dancers popped and locked to Michael Jackson and the Black-eyed Peas. Given the much louder competition from the stage, many of the cultural troupes eventually stopped their own singing to watch the concert, as it was unclear when Neiphiu Rio was actually going to turn up.

What could have been 'cultural fusion' had turned into 'cultural confusion', with modern pop music drowning out the traditional (or rather, the acceptable version of 'traditional').

Once the Chief Guest arrived, the audience was treated to a concert, but it eventually took two hours for the large bonfire to be lit. During the concert, audience members were encouraged to come and dance, and many did, even though my friends and I thought it would have been much better to finish the formalities, like lighting the fire before asking people to jump in and let loose. I felt quite sorry for many of the cultural troupes, especially villagers from the eastern parts of Nagaland who looked cold as they shivered through the concert. A large bonfire while the concert was going on would have much more comfortable.


The question here I posed was: "Who is the concert for?" Maybe it was to expose the villagers, especially from the eastern regions to modern culture? It didn't look like many of them enjoyed it though. Maybe it was for the tourists, to show people them that 'Nagas are modern'. But after 2 hours of listening to Adele, Celine Dion, Psy and ABBA, my friends and I were saying, "Yes, we get it: Nagas are modern. Just light the damn fire already!"

Perhaps it was most obvious, when in the middle of the show, there was a request made to the Chief Minister to let the youth 'party a little bit more'. What could have been interpreted previously as an act of education, I now simply viewed as an act of self-indulgence, at the expense of all other audience members. Of course, even before the fire was lit, many younger audience members had already left, presumably to the Hornbill Rock Festival at the IG Stadium on the other side of Kohima.

In a number of ways, I think this year's festival truly reflected Nagaland in its current state. You could see the over-privileging of a small elite, the over-indulgence of youth consumerist culture, and the general struggle for a sense of cultural identity in today's world.

I don't think there's an easy way to address any of these issues. However, before I encourage other friends to come attend this festival (which itself was a creation of the government), I think the organisers need to sit down and reflect on who the festival is really for: Nagas (and which ones in particular), tourists (domestic or foreign) or just the VIPs?

Visit to Umananda Mandir, Guwahati

As I'll be heading back to Nagaland in a few days' time for the Hornbill Festival, I thought I'd finish posting about some of the sightseeing I've been doing in Guwahati the past two weeks. Last week, my friend A. S. dropped into Guwahati for a few days and we ended up doing a bit of sightseeing, visiting places that I hadn't been to, even though I've been in Guwahati since August, and this is the 2nd extended stay here.

One place we visited was the Umananda Mandir on Peacock Island, situated in the middle of the Brahmaputra, just north of the city. I'd seen the island many times from my walks along the Brahmaputra, but had never actually visited the island.

Getting there isn't too difficult. There are ferries (shared or for individual hire) at Sukreswar Ghat (or rather, the makeshift ghat next to the Sukreswar Ghat park between Fancy Bazar and Pan Bazar). We paid Rs 550 to hire a whole boat to take us to the island and back at our own leisure, but some guys that came back as we were heading off paid Rs 500. I think there was also a shared ferry that left at regular intervals, though I can't remember the price for that.

There is another ferry service that lives from Uzan Bazar Ghat, but I don't know the price either. [Note: this photo was taken near the end of the monsoon, when the water level was still very high. At this time of year, the boat on the left sits on a sand bank.]

The boat ride was pleasant enough, and took us past the real Sukreswar Ghat.

The highlight though, was seeing the sun set over the river. We left around 3.45pm, and given how far east we are within this time zone, the sun sets by about 4.30pm at this time of year here.

The temple complex itself was charming enough. It was originally a Shiva temple built by an Ahom king. (The Ahoms actually came from further east, speaking a language that is closer to Thai than to Assamese.) However, most of the original temple was damaged in the quake of 1897 and the temple was subsequently rebuilt. The current Wikipedia article says it was a 'rich local merchant', and judging by the use of tiles, I would hazard a guess that it was a Marwari merchant whose family hailed from Rajasthan.

And this is the temple itself.

Apart from the temple, the island is known to be home to a small troupe of golden langurs (a kind of monkey). We didn't have enough time to look for them as we walked around the island, but we did manage to see them in the trees on the boat ride back to Guwahati.

Next time I go, I'd probably give myself another half an hour or so and leave Sukreswar Ghat around 3pm (or roughly 1.5 hours before sunset), as I would've liked to have more time to look for langurs.

Still, it was a wonderful afternoon out on the Brahmaputra, and we got to see one of those amazing sunsets over the river that I've come to love.

Zunheboto Church (under construction)

A few weeks ago, a friend saw a photo I had posted of Zunheboto town asked me what they were building on the hill. I suppose from afar one might think it was some kind of stadium, but anyone who's familiar with this part of the world would know that it's typically large churches you find at tops of hills.



It's been a few years (five?) since they demolished the main Baptist church in Zunheboto to build a larger one that can house most of the town's population (and that can provide sufficient parking). When I first visited Zunheboto back in February 2009, a friend took me into the construction site of the new church. Back then, it was only two storeys, but what shocked me was that pretty much anyone could just walk inside the construction site, climb up the makeshift bamboo stairs and go for a walk around the 1st floor.

Three and a half years on, the building's gone up a couple more storeys, but it's still pretty much open to anyone to walk in and take photos.

(Don't be fooled by the smile: I was quite terrified to be up there.)

My first thought was: occupational health and safety people would be having a fit! A few days later, I read a New York Times article a few weeks ago, titled "Safety Lessons from the Morgue", which reminded me of the current situation in India. One passage in particular struck me:

When Baker started her career in the 1960s, public health was still mostly about preventing disease, not injury. Tuberculosis and influenza killed tens of millions in the first part of the 20th century. To the extent that people were injured or lost their lives in accidents at home or at work or on the roads in between, corporate and government leaders generally viewed that as a cost of doing business, an unfortunate accompaniment to progress. It was the responsibility of the individual to keep himself safe from these dangers. [emphasis added]

Here, it's still pretty much the responsibility of people here to keep themselves out of harm's way. If I want to  wander around on a building site here, it's my responsibility to keep myself from falling off. In a similar vein, it's my own decision whether I want to use a seat belt or not, or to wear a helmet if I'm on a motorbike. Also, I'm not too sure about workers' 'rights' here, but I imagine that like early 20th century America, it's still seen as their 'responsibility' to look after themselves in such working environments (which by no means back home would be considered a 'safe working environment').

Still, one can only hope that as health risks decline across the country, occupational health and safety standards go up.

1st Sumi MT Literacy Development Workshop (Oct 2012)

For this special 200th post, I thought I'd cover something that I had the joy and honour of organising and running in Zunheboto last week. It was the very first Sumi Mother Tongue Literacy Development Workshop. The workshop ran from 23 Oct 2012 till 26 Oct 2012, and was conducted by the North East Literacy Network, represented by Palash Nath and Luke Horo, with the support of SIL International and also our wonderful benefactors in Melbourne, Inotoli Zhimomi and Nick Lenaghan.

Our very humble hand-written notice on the white board

It was hosted by the Sumi Literature Board and held at the Sütsah Academy in Zunheboto.

This workshop was meant to be a first step towards teaching Sumi as a subject in the private schools in Zunheboto (which mostly use English as the medium of instruction), with the further possibility of teaching content subjects in Sumi, along with a gradual transition to English. The philosophy here is that children learn better through a language they are familiar with. Importantly, they also learn to read and write more quickly in a language that they already know.

The first aim of this workshop was to introduce to the participants the importance and rationale behind the use of the mother tongue / home language in an educational setting. With a well-implemented program, research around the world has shown that children have the opportunity to to do better in school, and even learn other languages such as English better than children who are plunged into an all English-medium school from class 1, especially when they don't receive much exposure to English outside the classroom.

The second aim was to look at ways to develop a syllabus throughout the whole year. Here, the concept of a 'cultural calendar' was introduced, to get teachers to think about what the children are experiencing in the real world during every part of the calendar year, and using that to build the syllabus. Again, the focus is on moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar. This can then lead to 'reintroducing' children to more traditional practices that are no longer being transmitted from the older generation, and can serve as a kind of cultural revitalisation.

Participants on the 2nd day of the workshop. 2nd and 3rd from the left: Scato Swu and Hokishe Yeptho (Sumi Literature Board)

The final aim was then to bring the participants through the process of producing basic materials to teach children to read in Sumi. One issue that consistently pops up in these workshops, as noted by Palash and Luke, is that the first time people write such stories, they are usually suitable for adults. The stories are often too long, the language too difficult, and the stories don't lend themselves to being 'pictured' (having a picture accompany every line of text).

About half of the workshop was spent on producing materials that children would be able to enjoy. Other materials included: primers, riddle books, rhymes, posters depicting scenes familiar to them. Younger ones may not necessarily be able to read the words in the story books, but the pictures should be able to help them (and older non-literate speakers of the language) follow the story.

Here we have some teachers (along with the talented Mr Toino) writing and illustrating their own childrens' books.

Within just 4 days, the teachers managed to produce 10 books! Of course, they still need to be checked for spelling, grammar and punctuation, and also tested with children to see if the language used is appropriate, whether the pictures are able to tell the story etc. They will also eventually need to be graded by target age of the reader. 

The teachers told us that the books they were working on at home generated a lot of interest and excitement amongst their families and neighbours. This is the kind of excitement we hope to continue to generate, as people see their language written down in formats they are not used to.

At the end of last day, the workshop facilitators were presented with these lovely traditional Sumi shawls / aqhumu. Technically, I think this particular shawl used to be worn only by men who had killed a mithun / avi / Indian bison. But I suppose nowadays it could be a symbol of any kind of accomplishment.

From L to R: Luke Horo; myself; Jekügha Assümi (principal, Step by Step School); H S Rotokha; Nihoshe Jimomi (Sumi Literature Board); Palash Nath.

A VERY big thank you to the hosts, especially to H S Rotokha who came every single day for the duration of the workshop. And to the teachers: Sharon K Jimo, Aghatoli Jimo, Aviholi Kiba, Atoyi Awomi and Amento Achumi. Also special thanks to Toino, for helping us with the illustrations and kindly acting as our driver.

If you're Sumi and would like to help out with this project, please get in touch by leaving a comment below, or by contacting the Sütsah Academy. This is a long-term project that requires a lot of community support. We need people to come up with more stories - you may also want to ask your parents / grandparents for more traditional stories to draw inspiration from. We need people to do illustrations. We need people to help train others to create new materials, with the possibility for some people to be sent to Guwahati and elsewhere in India to receive further training from international and local experts.

Most importantly, we need people to advocate for the use of Sumi in schools, at least in the Zunheboto district where Sumi is the predominant language used in households. We are certainly aware of the need for English (and possibly Hindi) to get a job in India, but what we are trying to make people understand is that by introducing English through the mother tongue, children can actually go further (than simply parroting what is being taught in class and regurgitating it during exam time).