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.

Hornbill Festival 2011 - Favourite things

So now that the Hornbill Festival is over for 2011, with the final bonfire and mass dance.





To mark the end of the festival, I thought I'd put together a list of favourite things from this year:

Rice beer: Angami
Now I don't drink, but my friend had been sampling the various rice beers from different tribes. She decided that the one from the Angami house was her favourite, and I'll take her word for it.

Singing: Chakhesang
I'd put a video up if my internet connection wasn't so slow. Also, I don't think I have a particularly good video of any of their performances. But there's something about the harmony that I find very pleasing. Even many of my Sumi and Angami friends will tell me that the Chakhesangs are some of the best singers in Nagaland.


Shawl design: Khiamniungan
This particular shawl design is actually quite similar to one particular Sumi shawl that I have. The most noticeable difference is that the Khiamniungan has many more of those rectangular red patches. Those red patches on the black background make it the most appealing shawl for me.


Morung models: Ao
Every festival, each tribe needs to have people stand around their model morungs to take photos with tourists. I'm calling them 'morung models'. This year, I thought the young Ao guy and girl made a particularly cute couple, even if they're not a couple in real life. They even thanked me when I took and showed them this photo, so I had to say that I was the one who ought to be thanking them. (It's sort of fitting too, given that the word 'morung' comes from the Ao language.)


Full outfit: Lotha
This Lotha man kindly posed for my photo, although I think he'd been asked to many times during the week. For some reason, it actually reminds me of some sort of military uniform. I thought it really suited him. And the beard didn't hurt either.


Hospitality: Sumi
Well, you might say I'm a little biased here, and you'd be right. Canato did let me leave my stuff at his stall all day while I went walking / hiking around. But also on my visits to the Sumi morung / house, I'd be offered milk tea and Sümi sho 'Sumi bread'. The man in the photograph with me is one of the chief of Khetoi village, which we visited a few weeks ago so we could watch them rehearse for Hornbill Festival. He usually leads the performances, and when we went to visit his village, he was tasked with introducing us over the loudspeaker. On the 2nd last day of the festival, I was very touched when he asked to take a photo with me. However, since the photo was on my camera, I quickly printed out a copy for him to take home.

Animals at the Jew

Two days ago I was running around Kohima town looking for three things: white (banner) cloth, cellotape, and red sealing wax. Why? Remember the wood plate I tried to send last year? It ended up getting sent back to my friends' in Kohima because the post office failed to give me a customs declaration form to sign.

After what looked like a bumpy ride, the plate got chipped pretty badly so I bought a new one. This time, I wanted to package it better, so my friends in Kohima suggested I purchase these three things and do the packaging at home. And yes, it's still common practice in South Asia to use red sealing wax when you're making a parcel.

The cloth and cellotape were no problem, but I needed red sealing wax and none of the stationery shops I visited carried any. Eventually one guy (who was probably of Hindi-speaking background), told me to go to the 'Air to Jed' shop a little further down on NST road.

Air to Jed?

It took a few seconds, but somehow it clicked - I was looking for the 'A to Z' stationery shop.

There are two issues here. One, in standard varieties of English, the letter 'A' is pronounced as a diphthong like [eɪ]. This guy was saying producing with a monophthong [ɛ], which I heard as 'air'.

The second issue was that he substituted the 'z' sound [z] for the 'j' sound [ʤ]. This is actually quite common in widely spoken Indic languages, including Hindi, Nepali and Assamese. In these languages, the 'z' and 'j' sounds are what we call in free variation, meaning that if you swap one sound for the other, it doesn't change the meaning of a word, nor does it make the word nonsensical. For example, the word for 'table' in Hindi can be pronounced as both mez and mej. In the Bollywood film Salaam Namaste (which is set in Melbourne), one of the characters constantly pronounces 'exactly' as 'egg-Jack-Lee'.

Similarly, to this man giving me directions, 'Zed' and 'Jed' are effectively the same word.

Of course, to native English speakers, this can have even more humorous effects. A few weeks ago in Assam, I had to sit through a whole conversation with a friend who was telling me about the how he used to live next to the 'Guwahati Jew' and a soccer ball once accidentally went into the 'Jew'.

Thank goodness my time in Nepal had already taught me that in many parts of South Asia, a 'Jew' is where animals are kept.

Above the Kisama Heritage Village

On Day Five of the Hornbill Festival, I decided to take a short walk up the hill behind the Kisama Heritage Village. It wasn't sunny but I felt the need for some proper exercise and I'd rather it to be cool when I have to do exercise. (One reason I enjoy staying with my friends in Bara Bosti here in Kohima, is that I have to climb up the hill to get back.)

So after running into a Sumi friend who then pointed me in the direction of the path up the hill, the sign I found said that it was 1.85km to the top of 'Mt Kisama'. I'm a little confused about this, because later there was another sign that said 'Mezabo Hill'. I'm going to have to find someone from Phesama village to explain this...



The walk itself was pleasant enough. Some parts of the track were quite slippery. I didn't have shoes with good traction, so I ended up taking more time to come down than I did going up.




Just a little way up the hill and I was already treated to a great view of the heritage village, with the nearby village of Kigwema (I believe)on the ridge in the background. Below the village, the terraced fields are pretty impressive (and pretty too).




At the top of the hill, which seemed to be called 'Mezabo', there was a nice little picnic area that seemed to be maintained by the nearby village of Phesama.






There was also a little lookout pavilion next to the picnic area.


From the lookout, I could see Phesama below and Kohima in the distance. Sadly, the whole valley was covered in cloud / mist at the time, so the photos weren't great.


On my way back down the hill, I spoke to some of the Assam Rifles soldiers who were on duty. A Bengali guy from Kolkata sat me down and offered me a cup of black tea. My knees needed a break and I was starting to feel cold, so I said yes. Also, I try not to reject any offers made by men holding semi-automatic weapons.

We spoke for a few minutes, mostly in English and he told me how he'd been posted to Nagaland for the last 7 years. I ended up taking a photo with him and with the younger soldier who was on duty with him. The younger guy was from the Khiamniungan tribe, a 'minor' Naga tribe from the eastern part of the state. Incidentally, I have to admit that Khiamniungan men's shawls are my favourite among the Naga tribes, but sadly I didn't know how to say it in Nagamese.

In the end, the young guy took out his mobile phone and took a picture of us as well. I'm glad he did - after all, why should foreigners be the only ones with photos to show their friends back home?

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.

Getting to Kisama on public transport

Yesterday I had to get from Kohima to Kisama by myself. I was told that this year (it changes some years), the easiest ./ cheapest way to get from Kohima to Kisama for the Hornbill Festival without a private car is to first get a local taxi to the P.R. Hills Junction traffic point. Coming from the War Cemetery, the Hotel Japfü will be on the hill to the right and the massive Nagaland Police HQ building (see below) on the hill to the left.



Continuing down the road towards Imphal (with the Hotel Japfü to the right and the Police HQ to the left) just a little bit from the traffic point, the road will swing to the right. About 100 metres from where the road turns, there'll be a few yellow Sumos (the big jeep-like vehicles, not the wrestlers) waiting outside a "Network Travels" office to the left. These Sumos should be labelled 'Zonal Taxi'. (When I went there I saw many taxis waiting right at the point where the road swings to the right - I'm not sure if those were also going to the festival grounds.)

The cheapest way is to look for a yellow Sumo that's filling up and say you're going to Kisama. No matter what language you speak, the passengers will understand 'Kisama' (pronounced 'kee-sah-mah', with the stress on the first syllable). Some Sumos will be going straight to the festival ground gate, but many will be heading towards other towns, like Jakhama and Khuzama. These will still pass Kisama, but they'll only drop you off at the base of the hill and you have to walk up (it's only a 10-15 minute walk, but it's uphill).

Yesterday morning, I ended up getting a Sumo that was heading to Jakhama. There were 4 men crammed into the back row, 4 women in the middle row and 2 girls in the front row. Being the only male in the front two rows, the driver thought it most appropriate that I sit next to him.

The reason? When the vehicle's this packed, it's common practice to have a passenger sit with the gear stick between their legs.

The journey wasn't very long and it wasn't as uncomfortable as I thought it would be.

Except a few times when the driver went into 4th gear.

Hornbill Festival 2011 - Bananaga

Yesterday (Day One of the Hornbill Festival), I got to the festival grounds at Kisama with Canato and his cousin around 7.30am so he could set up his stall, under his label 'Bananaga'.


By late morning, after the festival opening(s), business was pretty good, with a near-constant stream of people coming to look and buy stuff. Lots of people were interested in his cards and bookmarks. And as I said to him, many foreign tourists would like his work because they show some traditional aspects of Naga culture (as well as modern), plus they're pretty and light and would make nice souvenirs or gifts for people back home.


He was also selling a T-shirt and bags. At 100 Rs a bag, they sold pretty quickly..


Canato chatting with customers


With Canato at his stall. I even scored a participant's tag but I gave it up since I wasn't really doing any work for him, apart from standing around and telling customers that he was the illustrator.


I had a lot of fun the first day, especially since I had a place to leave my stuff and hang about. It didn't help that I kept buying food and books. (Although I do admit that by mid-afternoon I'd whipped out my Kindle to catch up on some George R Martin.) I'll be heading down to Kisama later today to catch up with him - he spent the night freezing at Kisama.

I also got to hang out at the animators stall, where they let me sit and watch animated clips featuring Beatles songs.


They were mainly promoting a short animated film titled 'Man Tiger Spirit' which is based on traditional were-tiger beliefs. I believe the film's based on research done with Angamis, although many tribes in Nagaland traditionally had people who were said to share the same spirit as tigers (and other animals). But they didn't physically transform into them at the full moon or anything like that. They're premiering the film tomorrow (3 December) at the 'Hornbill Glocal Film Fest' to be held at the Heritage Bungalow in Kohima, starting at 12 noon. The DVD is in English and Angami and I think I'll get a copy.

These stalls were in the Bamboo Pavilion, and I was there early enough to see Dr K.C. Nihoshe (I'm not too familiar with local politicians / important people) cutting the ceremonial ribbon at 9.30am.




This year, Hornbill Conservation Group was formed to find ways to protect the few hornbills still surviving in the state. I'd read about them in the local paper and happily signed their petition.

This poster's also part of their campaign. I know male hornbills feed the female when she's incubating the eggs, but it's because the female's basically imprisoned the whole time until the eggs hatch...