Nagaland village focus: Khükiye Lukhai

Even though I'm currently in Dimapur and am off to Kohima soon for the weekend, I thought I'd do a quick post about another village where I've spent a bit of time on this trip. I'm not sure how well-known it is even in the district - I met a girl who had only recently heard about it despite living in the district most of her life.

The name of the village is Khükiye Lukhai. It's special because it's the home village of the friends I stay with when I'm in Zunheboto. It's a Sumi vilalge, located right next to the town of Satakha in Zunheboto district. In fact, I'm told that parts of Satakha actually belong to the village.

Khükiye Lukhai was actually two villages that merged into one. The two villages were founded by two brothers, Khükiye and Lukhai - it's pretty common for Sumi villages to be named after their founders.

The entrance to the village

The church - having seen other churches around here, I reckon it's in need of some renovation work soon


View from the church


Views around the village




Here are some terraced fields just below the village that my friends' uncle's family looks after.

Pretty isn't it?

'Sumi' fashion

One complaint I hear from my Sumi / Sema friends is that if they're seen wearing red clothing, leather jackets, or worse, a red leather jacket, (and add sunglasses) other Naga friends will instantly ridicule them for dressing like a typical Sema (I imagine a scene where people point at them and say accusingly, 'Seeeema'!) So traumatic was this experience of school / college that some Sumi friends went through a phase where they avoided wearing red altogether. Some of them still avoid wearing red!

Apparently, part of this stereotype originated in the 1980s when leather jackets and sunglasses were all the rage with Sumi men. I'm not sure how the 'red' stereotype started though.

In any case, I don't think it's fair that they get this sort of flack from other Nagas, who can wear leather or red without fear of reprieve. I also don't see anything wrong with wearing red with black leather - they make a good combination. I can't say I approve of red leather jackets though...

Also, for better or worse, leather / faux leather's been pretty popular in Melbourne over the past year and I bought myself one back in May. I already have a real leather jacket, but don't feel comfortable travelling with it (My policy is to never bring clothes I love when I travel in India, in case they get damaged or my baggage gets cut again.)

Anyway, here's my take on what is seen as stereotypical 'Sumi' fashion.

As far as I can tell, the only ridiculous thing is the facial mask I put on to keep out the dust that gets churned into the air every time vehicles pass by. (Come on Zunheboto, you can do better when it comes to the road situation!!)

'Last year' and 'next year' in Sumi

Since we're in the new year, I thought I'd share a neat thing I learnt about Sumi a few weeks back.

The word for 'last year' in Sumi is khanikü [kʰa˩ ni˩ kɨ˩] or [kʰan˩ kɨ˩], with low tone on all the three syllables. The word for 'two years before' is khanikü (alternatively, kkhanikü) [kʰa˥ ni˩ kɨ˩] or [kʰan˥˩ kɨ˩] with high tone on the first syllable instead of low.

Being the language nerd I am, I thought this was cool. But then I found out that the word for 'next year' is toku [to˩ ku˧], with low tone on the first syllable, then mid tone on the next. The word for 'two years from now' is -wait for it- toku (alternatively, ttoku) [to˥ ku˩] with high tone on the first syllable instead of low as well! Now that's something to blog about!

One explanation offered was that people was that in order to say 'two years ago', people repeated the word khanikü, and started emphasising the second one by placing high tone on the first syllable. Then they dropped the first word. A similar thing happened with toku. I doubt this was actually the case, but for the moment can offer no historical explanation of my own.

In other news, I've just learnt that Sumi does have an evidential system, or so I inferred from what someone told me...

Christmas 2011 in Nagaland - Vishepu (II)

On the day of the Christmas feast, the whole (or most of the) village gathered in front of I.'s parents' home (well technically the house owned by her father's brother - I think). I noticed that most of the people sitting in this area were kids. They brought their own plates - you can some of them just brought the usual asükhu, the wood plate with its own stand.

As with the Christmas feast I attended last year, the morning's festivities began with the cake ceremony, after a prayer or two of course. The cake here was brought all the way from Dimapur.


The entertainment programme began with ashi kimiki, where one (or two) guys(s) holds a large piece of pork meat and fat and other men try to bite off chunks of meat / fat. There's also some stylised jumping involved, but I'm not 100% certain what the rules are. Also, even though the name of the game contains the word ashi 'meat', most of it is really fat - maybe some people call it atha kimiki? The word kimiki is the deverbal noun derived from the verb miki 'to bite'.




There was also a comedy act - if you think people from villages don't have a sense of humour, you're sadly mistaken! The main guy was dressed like a tourist, while the other guys were... well one of them reminded me of George Michael. They danced to a Hindi song I didn't recognise. I'd post a video, but it already took hours just to get these photos up.




And after lunch was the bamboo climbing competition. Climbers took part in teams of 3 to 4, with no special climbing equipment allowed except for some ash which they can use to clean off the pork fat from the pole.




The happy winners and their bounty - a chunk of meat and 1000 Rs!

Alright, Christmas is over. Onward to 2012!

Nagaland village focus: Vishepu

Given the number of villages I've managed to visit in Nagaland, I thought I'd do a 'village focus' post for specific ones. This first one has a special place in my heart, because in a sense it's where my relationship with Nagaland started. My friend I., who now lives in Melbourne hails from this village, and it's thanks to her that I started learning Sumi.

A few months ago, Vishepu made it into the local news because some white smoke was seen coming from the top of Mt Vishepu, which is right next to the village. Reports of a new volcano proved unfounded, although no one's quite certain what the cause of the smoke was - some reckon it was just steam being released.

In any case, Vishepu was the first village I visited in Nagaland, back in early 2009 (so it's almost been 3 years since I first came here). I posted some photos on Flickr a while back. One of I.'s sisters was amazed that when she recently googled 'Vishepu', she didn't just find images of her village, but also one of her parents' home!

Vishepu is a Sumi village in Zunheboto district just south of Satakha. It's one of the last villages before you enter Phek district to the south, which is predominantly Chakhesang. It was founded by two brothers, Zükiye and Vishepu. Although Zükiye was the elder brother, he let the village be named after Vishepu. Today the village has four chiefs, two from the Zükiye side of the family, and two from the Vishepu side.

To get to Vishepu from Satakha, you head south along the Chazuba Road, then turn left up the road that leads to the village of Xüivi at the top of the range. You pass Xüivi, then continue down the other side of the range.

This is Vishepu as viewed from the road between Xüivi and Vishepu.


And this is Vishepu as viewed from the top of the church tower and from in front of the church.




I took this shot a few days ago - the light on the surrounding hills was so pretty that day.


This is I.'s parents' house, as seen in Feb 2009. He's one of the village chiefs and you can a few mithun skulls on the front of the house, as well as what I think is a deer skull. This Christmas they're adding another mithun skull, since one was killed for the Christmas feast thrown by I. and her husband.


In Zunheboto district, Vishepu is famous for its woodwork and is reputed to be the first village to start crafting wood plates (asükhu). Here, I.'s father Kiviho explains to H S Rotokha about the history of woodworking in the village. (These photos were taken a few days ago.)


A new asükhu being made from a single piece of wood - I should've bought one of them from the village instead of getting one at the Hornbill Festival!


I've got Christmas feast photos too, but given how slow the internet is, uploading photos might take some time. Hope everyone had a good Christmas!

The road to Zunheboto

Most people coming from Kohima to Zunheboto take the Chozuba road (which most people pronounce as 'Chazuba') which passes through the town of Chozuba in Phek district. Technically, it's a state highway, but you wouldn't know from the condition of the year. However, this year they've started work on widening the road. As a result, most of the sumos are avoiding the road and opting for the 'shortcut' which takes the Wokha Road and involves fording the Langki River. So this time I haven't a chance to see the condition of the Chozuba road.

On Monday, we went down to the village of Chishilimi to watch a rain invocation ceremony (sorry guys, still no rain). To get there, we needed to take the Chozuba road past Satakha, up till the village of M Tsügho (aka M6 - the name of this village could be another blog post) which is the last Sumi village before one enters Chakhesang land / Phek district. This gave me the chance to see what work was being done.

You can see excavators have torn into the side of the hill to make way for the new road. In some parts, it looked like they were making the road as a wide as 4 lanes, which seems ridiculous given that the most travelled road in Nagaland between Dimapur and Kohima is still only 2 lanes wide.


As you can see, the dust from passing traffic is terrible.


But the view is still pretty awesome. The town on the ridge should be Satakha, although to the left, on the same ridge, I think you can almost make out the villages of Khukiye and Lukhai.

Tomorrow I'm off to the village of Vishepu for a Christmas feast thrown by friends who've come back from Australia. Not sure when I'll post again - maybe just before New Year's.

Happy holidays everyone!

'Tis the season to get married (II)

In Nagaland, November to January really is the season for weddings here. Just ask my friend Cana who's been singing / planning / attending weddings for the past few weeks almost non-stop. I'd be interested to see what the official statistics are for the state (like the average no. of weddings per day in the month of December). Last year I ended up at a Rengma wedding, then a Lotha wedding in Kohima on the same day. I was also invited to an Angami wedding on Wednesday in Bara Bosti in Kohima, but my friend managed to organise a ride back to Zunheboto for me that morning.

All the major local papers have also reported on Friday's 'mass wedding' at the Ao Baptist church in Dimapur as a means of keeping wedding costs low, and Yan Murry at the Naga Blog has written a post calling for more 'mass weddings' in the state: Mass Weddings need to be encouraged in Naga society.

But if people want to have their big Western style weddings and have the money to afford them, who's going to stop them? It's a massive industry all over the world. My friends in Melbourne even run an online magazine dedicated to weddings (around the world) called Little Wed Hen. (Sorry guys, I didn't feel like I knew the couple well enough to cover their wedding for your website.)

Anyway, on Thursday I had the privilege of attending a special wedding here in Zunheboto. Well, I didn't know the bride or the groom until the day before the ceremony, but I did know the wedding planner, the wedding celebrant, and friends from Australia had come back to attend the wedding (being the first cousin of the bride). I also met the wedding singer, who was in the car I was in coming to Zunheboto. I didn't realise he was a bit of a celebrity in these parts. (Sorry Alobo, if you're reading this.)

For the couple's privacy, I've decided not to post any photos of them or the ceremony itself. I've just added a few photos to give a sense of the place, and to show off the suit I bought recently in Dimapur. It still needs some tailoring, but it looked very decent for the price I paid. Also, it's a pain to upload photos at my current internet speed.

Back to the wedding: the bride is Sumi, which is why the wedding was held in Zunheboto. Her husband is Zeme, another Naga tribe. His home village is in Tamenglong District in Manipur. Such 'mixed' marriages aren't uncommon these days - one wedding I attended last year was a mixed one too. (I use scare quotes here because most outsiders / Indians from the mainland would probablu consider all Nagas to be the same anyway.) Mixed marriages is another interesting topic that people have spoken to me about (like 'why Sumi girls don't want to date Sumi guys'). Maybe in another blog post.

The wedding itself took place in North Point, Zunheboto, behind the government college and very close to where I usually stay when I'm here. It was a sunny afternoon and quite warm. The wedding tent was set up the day before in the bride's father's house.



I arrived with the wedding celebrant (whose house I'm staying in), his wife and daughter. (I've already said sorry to her if people thought I was the boyfriend.) For the record, it's nice to arrive with the wedding celebrant, because there's no chance of you missing the ceremony.



During such ceremonies, it's usually customary for all 'international' guests to be introduced to the entire congregation. Thankfully, I was spared the embarrassment this time, (since I barely knew the bride and groom), because the reverend didn't think of me as an outsider anymore.

There were the usual wedding vows. Alobo Naga, who's a friend of the bride, sang two songs and after the ceremony there was the usual feasting. I took some photos with the team in charge of the wedding decorations. They were busy most of the previous day and evening, as well as the morning of the wedding itself. (The night before, I had simply sat by the fire looking bored while they toiled away.)

Finally, you might have noticed I've apologised quite a bit in this blog post. I suppose the last thing I should apologise for is the fact that because I live in Australia, I've missed most of my Singaporean friends' weddings over the past few years. Doesn't seem fair for me to attend the weddings of relative strangers, does it?

Organic Nagaland

I was actually going to promote my friend Abokali's new business, but I ended up promoting her brother's art exhibition in Kohima first.

In any case, Abokali recently started her own business called Organic Nagaland. As you can guess, they specialise in organic produce from Nagaland - given that artificial fertilisers and pesticides are practically non-existent in most parts of the state, it's not hard to find quality 'organic' produce here. However, it is difficult to transport and store the produce given the lack of infrastructure (such as good roads and constant electricity). Yet somehow she's managed to source local produce like oranges and kiwi fruit (which don't require refrigeration) and market it at recent agriculture expos in Bangalore, Delhi and now Guwahati. In the process, she's also rallied together local farmers, particularly women, and given them a source of income.

The main shop (I'm calling it her flagship store) is in Project Colony, Zunheboto. (Incidentally, her brother also designed the logo for her company.)


It really stands out when compared with other fruit and veg shops in Zunheboto, in that it actually looks nice and the produce isn't covered in dust.




Most of the products are already neatly packaged. The shelves are lined with local soya beans (ayikhu in Sumi).


And the prices are quite reasonable compared to other fruit and veg shops in town. The store also sells local spices, including angothi 'Chinese peppercorns' that are related to Sichuan peppercorns (they also give that 麻辣 málà effect) - don't forget that Nagaland is closer to Southern China than it is to the Ganges floodplain.




And the store also sells axone the fermented soya bean dish that the Sumis are famous for. During the Hornbill Festival, I met a person from America who asked me what 'axe-on' was. I had to explain that it was pronounced 'ah-cho-nie', where the 'ch' is like the 'ch' in German ach or Scottish loch. Given that the sound (a velar fricative) isn't found in any other major Naga language, most people know the dish as akhuni.

What the store sells is the dried version, which lasts quite a bit longer.


All the best with the business Abokali! I'm definitely going to take some stuff with me when I go. Definitely some dried wild apple (soooo good) and a bit of dried axone to bring back to Singapore. I doubt Australian customs would let any of this stuff in.

(Also, if you want to contact her, she has a blog here. I'd put up her email address, but it'll just attract spam.)

Angamis, Aos, Sumis and Lothas - Identity

Last week I caught a taxi back from Midland in Kohima. Some Sumi friends accompanied me to the taxi stand to help me negotiate a fare, but I was headed for Bara Bosti, the original Kohima village, which is almost exclusively Angami for historical reasons. The taxi driver, who turned out to be Lotha (another major tribe of Nagaland) was confused and asked me if I was Angami or Sema (Sumi).

It's quite a telling question - even in 'mixed' cities like Dimapur and Kohima, tribal identity is still very important to most people. Most people want to know what tribe someone else is from. Given that Nagaland's not a big state and I suppose this is also about identity negotiation within the very heterogeneous social fabric of the place. Even within each tribe, people will be curious about the village or clan you're from? Last year in Zunheboto, I was asked Khuuno ghami kea? 'Which village are you from?' when I first met someone, before my friend had to explain that I wasn't even from Nagaland.

Often people can tell someone's tribe by looking at physical features, picking up on sociolinguistic cues, or knowing the other person's name. As a last resort, they might just ask someone outright what tribe they're from (like I was asked). I've been told many times that physically, I'm too tall to be a Sumi. Also, despite all attempts at getting a tropical tan, my skin is still 'too fair' to be either Angami or Sumi. One Angami friend reckons that I have the height and facial features of an Angami, but my 'fair' skin makes me look more like an Ao.

These 'rules' (for want of a better word) often strike me as fairly arbitrary. It's true that I tower over most people in Zunheboto (the headquarters of the Sumi-dominated district), but I've met Sumis who I'd consider to be just as 'fair' as me. It's also not as if all Angamis are tall - given that the capital city Kohima is in Angami territory, better nutrition in recent history might have resulted in some people gaining in stature, but only in certain pockets of the population.

My Sumi, Angami and Ao friends often have things to say about the 'character' of people from other tribes. They're gross generalisations, but I find such perceptions of other tribes interesting.

To avoid offending any particular tribe, I'm just going to rely on a song composed by an Angami person named Zutakherie. It's a pretty famous song in Nagaland (I can't find any videos of it on Youtube though). The title can be translated as 'Residents of Kohima' / 'People living in Kohima'.

Kohima te thakia khan composed by Zutakherie

Kohima te thakia khan
Nisa lake phutani,
Wokha pura ahia khan
chalak, chalak ahise,
Mokokchung thakia khan
style kuri ahise,
Zunheboto pura ahia khan jagara,
Sop jati Kohima te jama kurise,
Kohima Nagaland capital,
Naga manu misa-mishi ofis te najailebi
tolop pai - Nagaland city kuribole.

Loosely translated (suggestions, especially for the last two lines, are welcome since my Nagamese isn't good):
Kohima residents
Get drunk and feel proud
People coming from Wokha
Are very cunning / come with their tricks (?).
Mokokchung residents
Come in style
People from Zunheboto come fighting / arguing.
All tribes gather in Kohima,
Kohima the capital of Nagaland.
Nagas casually don't go to work / office
(But still) draw a salary - (in so doing, they are) making a Nagaland city.

So there you have it:
The Angamis (the traditional residents of Kohima) are drunkards, the Lothas (from Wokha) are liars and tricksters, the Aos (from Mokokchung) are overly concerned with fashion, and the Sumis (from Zunheboto) are a rowdy violent bunch.

All according to the song of course.

Angamis, Aos and Sumis - Languages

I was also going to post about inter-tribal perceptions of the main three tribes, but rather than risk offending anyone, I thought I'd just post about common perceptions of their languages, as well as my own.

Over the last few weeks I've stayed with Sumi (aka Sema) friends in Zunheboto, an Ao friend in Dimapur and now Angami friends here in Kohima. Given that the Angami, Ao and Sumi languages are three of the most commonly spoken Naga languages, I think I've started getting the hang of telling them apart if I hear them on the street in places like Dimapur and Kohima where people from all over the state gather.

Given that most of my research has been on Sumi, I can almost always tell if someone is speaking the language, even if I can't understand what they're saying. The most distinguishing feature of Sumi are what people often call 'guttural' sounds. More technically, these are the velar fricatives [x] and [ɣ] - [x] is found in languages like German, e.g. the sound represented by ch in achtung and [ɣ] sounds similar to French 'r', except it's not articulated as far back in the mouth. Sumi also has uvular stops [q] and [q^h] which sound like swallowed up 'k's sound - [q] is found in standard Arabic, as in the word Quran.

My non-Sumi friends have also told that Sumis sound like they're arguing with each other when they speak, even when they're not. They're seen as quite a rowdy lot in general and the language is perceived as being 'harsh'. I'm not quite sure I completely agree with this, but there was one Sumi guy who I thought was always angry, just judging from the general loudness of his voice.

Angami on the other hand, is said to sound 'gentler', 'sweeter' and more 'melodic'. Again, I'm not sure I completely agree with this statement, but I do agree that it can sound more 'melodic'. This might have to something to do with the fact that Angami has more contrastive tones than Sumi: the Kohima dialect has been analysed as having 5, while Sumi only has 3. Also, the lack of 'gutturals' might have something to do with its perception as being 'gentler'.

As a non-speaker of Angami (apart from the few phrases I got my friends to teach me this week), I don't hear the tones at all. What I do listen out for are the consonant clusters 'kr' and 'pr', which Sumi and Ao lack. Angami also has a mid central vowel, like English schwa [Ə], which Sumi lacks.

Of the three, I've had the least experience with Ao, which is said to be the most 'singsong' of the main three languages. I can't comment much on it, except after spending 4 days with a speaker of (Mongsen) Ao, the most distinguishing feature for me is the high incidence of rhotic or 'r' sounds. It's sort of like when I hear Beijing Mandarin being spoken - all I tend to hear is 'rrr ... rrr ... rrr ...'

[Addendum: Lotha, the language of another major tribe, sounds like Ao, except speakers roll / trill their 'r's.]

Certainly, there are many other languages spoken which may fit these patterns, but given the relatively larger number of speakers for these languages, there's a higher probability that my guess is right.

Finally, my friends here can usually tell what tribe's someone's from just from the way they speak Nagamese (the local lingua franca based on Assamese but quite a bit of Hindi and Bengali vocabulary). For some of these friends, intonation seems to be a good cue. I'm sure it'd be an interesting linguistic topic to explore somewhere down the track.

Hornbill Festival 2011

So I find myself back in Kohima for Hornbill Festival 2011. Technically, the main festival ground's at Kisama, which is about 10km from Kohima on the road to Manipur, but there're festival-related activities all over town. It's not the easiest to get to by public transport and thankfully I caught a ride with a friend at 6.45 this morning. Tomorrow though, I'll have to catch a share taxi, but anyway...

As far as I know, the Hornbill Festival isn't actually a traditional Naga festival, but it was created to bring the various tribes from across the state (and sometimes the region) together to showcase various traditional cultural practices, which typically involve dances and games. I heard in a speech today that this year's is the 7th festival, and assuming it's always been an annual event, that would mean it started in 2004. Twice today I heard the event being referred to as "Festival of festivals in the land of festivals", but thankfully I've developed some tolerance for the hyperbolic rhetoric that characterises the speech of politicians in this country.

Here's a Nagaland Tourism poster, with some not-so-subtle advertising by Zumvü Printex, whoever they are...




The Naga Heritage Village at Kisama, features a number of replica traditional houses and morungs (traditional bachelors' dorms used by many tribes to educate young men before the advent of Christianity).


Performers waiting for the guest of honour ( the term 'chief guest' is more commonly used here) to arrive.


A Sumi group from the village of Khetoi performing outside the Sümi ki 'Sumi house'. I actually visited their village with the Sumi Cultural Association a week and a half ago and got to watch them rehearsing for their Hornbill festival performances.


The main performances involved three different groups consisting of 4 different tribes performing at the same time. Something to do with 'unity in diversity', but for people who weren't familiar with the tribes, you couldn't tell who was who, especially when the commentary was nearly always about a tribe putting on 'colourful costumes' and 'performing a dance' for a special occasion.

Last year I complained about tourists taking photos of performers like they were animals on display - I mean, if you're dressing up in traditional gear, you're going to expect people to take photos of you, but some tourists seemed a little more invasive than others. Anyway, this is my favourite shot this year of people taking photos of each other - if you look at the lower side, one of the performers is holding a digital camera himself.



I actually had a lot of fun, but mostly because I got to hang out at a friend's stall most of the time, but that's for my next post.

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!