Cute animals

(I was originally going to title this post "Cute animals that don't always end up on people's menus", but thought it was a bit too long and a little unappealing.)

Chinese people are often said to eat anything. I'm sure many people in India probably have a similar impression of the Nagas (if they've even heard about them). The thing is, most animals in Nagaland are eaten, but there're always a few creatures that don't quite make it to the menu.

One animal that doesn't typically feature in people's cooking here is cat meat (akhosa shi), although there are certainly people who do eat cat. Hutton (1921) noted that cats were not eaten among the Semas due to a number of superstitions associated with them.



Dog meat (atsü shi) is much more commonly eaten in Nagaland, as in many parts of China and SE Asia. However, even here, not all people will willingly consume dog. I have many friends here who steer clear of dog meat. There's also a common belief here that dogs will know if you're a 'dog eater' and will not like you. (That's why I tell people I'm waiting for my dog in Singapore to pass on before I try dog meat.)


Of course, chickens are eaten, but people wouldn't think to eat the cute little chicks. But I'm sure it's not because they're cute...


Alright, you got me. This post was just an excuse to post pictures I took of cute animals over Christmas.

'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...

One language to unite them all?

To start the new year, I thought I'd focus on a very linguistic issue.

At the wedding I attended a few weeks ago, I had a long conversation with a guy who remained convinced that the Nagas needed both a common 'Naga' language, as well as their own unique script.

-What about Nagamese? People from all different tribes and language backgrounds already speak it.

-But it's not Naga. It's from Assamese.

He was right - the local lingua franca Nagamese is largely based on Assamese, with a fair bit of Hindi and Bengali vocabulary thrown in, and hardly any input from individual 'Naga' languages. But the suggestion that all Nagas needed a common 'Naga' language (and script to boot) seemed to me a tad ridiculous.

From a practical perspective, creating a 'new language' from scratch is a massive feat. Which languages do we draw from? And how much should the new language draw on each existing Naga language? 20% Angami, 20% Sumi, 20% Ao... ? Or should we choose a particular language / dialect and base our new language on that, the way Standard Mandarin was based to some extent on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin, or Bahasa Indonesia was based on a dialect of Malay from Sumatra?

Then, how do we go about implementing the -for what of a better word- imposition of this new language on the inhabitants of the state? China managed to impose Mandarin across the country, while Indonesia did the same with Bahasa. Both required considerable resources and a concerted national effort. Nagaland currently has official and unofficial governments and corruption drains away most of the money being channelled into the state by the Government of India.

Also, how would people feel about having another language imposed on them? Most education is already conducted in English, with compulsory Hindi in most schools. Add that to the home language and Nagamese (if Nagamese isn't already the language of the home). Do we really need another language?


But hang on, we also need to create an indigenous script to accompany this new language too.

-What's wrong with the Latin alphabet?

-It's not ours. It can't represent the sounds of the languages here.

Well the Latin alphabet wasn't made to write English either. But somehow English, and other completely unrelated languages like Swahili and Bahasa Indonesia have managed to adopt the same script to represent their respective sounds. Letters can be added and removed, depending on the language's needs. The same letter may be used in two different writing systems to represent different sounds, like 'x' in English usually represents the sounds [ks], while 'x' in Sumi represents the voiceless velar fricative [x].

As with implementing a new language, introducing a new script would require considerable resources. But again, people already have to learn to read English (and Hindi) - do they really need another script to learn? Furthermore, it'll be used to write a language that no one currently speaks!


Looking at the bigger picture, what is the point of having a common 'Naga' language and a unique script? Undoubtedly, the perceived need for these is motivated largely by political and ideological factors, not practical ones. After all, having a common indigenous language is one way of asserting a 'Naga' identity, in contrast to an 'Indian' one. Similarly, an indigenous script is seen as necessary to being a 'real' language when viewed within a larger 'Indian' discourse, given that individual languages across the subcontinent like Bengali, Kannada and Tamil usually come with their own scripts. (European languages that use the Latin script aren't judged along this criterion though.)

This person I spoke to also believed that speaking one language would help unite the Nagas. There are people around the world who believe that if we all spoke one language, there would be less conflict. China and Indonesia had national language policies designed to create a sense of unity their respective countries.

But does speaking the same language reduce conflict? As important as language is in the creation of identity, it's still just one component - other differences may still arise within the same speech community.

For instance, one thing I've noticed is that there are very few dialectal differences in Sumi (with the exception of speakers from the Pughoboto area), so that people from across Zunheboto district as well as those in Dimapur and Kohima, are able to communicate with each other in Sumi. In contrast, Angami speakers from neighbouring villages sometimes have to converse with each other in Nagamese because they speak such different 'dialects' of Angami. I was told that this was the case for Angami speakers from Bara Bosti in Kohima when they meet people from nearby Jotsoma village.

But despite this 'linguistic unity' of the Sumis, it hasn't prevented the interfactional violence we've seen this past week around Zunheboto town between NSCN (K) and Unification.

So would one language unite all Nagas? I seriously doubt it.

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!

Christmas 2011 in Nagaland - Vishepu (I)

Everyone will tell you that Christmas time in Nagaland is best spent in a village. The towns and cities tend to empty out. It's just as well I wasn't in Zunheboto town because there was a situation involving two UG factions, so people weren't even setting off fireworks on Christmas Eve, which is the usual thing to do.

You might remember that last year I was in the village of Natha New, which is actually just next to Zunheboto town. This year I spent Christmas in Vishepu, since my friends I. and N. had come back from Australia to throw a Christmas feast for the village.



As with all Christmas feasts, preparations start weeks, if not months, ahead. But it's in the week before the feast that most of the village is mobilised for the feast. One important thing is pounding rice into rice flour.



Here, two kinds of rice flour (normal and glutinous) are mixed and water (and some salt and sugar) is added to make a a kind of dough. This is then wrapped in banana leaves and boiled or steamed (though some are baked in a fire). The result is Sümi sho or 'Sumi bread'. Personally, I like it when they fry it, although I've had some very good steamed Sümi sho.



What's a feast without the meat? And a real feast in Nagaland involves the slaughter of at least one mithun. The fellow here got a bullet through his skull on Christmas Eve morning. I got to witness the killing only because the person knocked on my door at 5.30am looking for ammunition (he was looking for the guy who was supposed to be sharing my room because he apparently knew where the ammo was kept.)


And being Nagaland, there's lots of pork.


This wasn't all the pork, because a few pigs were slaughtered a few days earlier and the meat distributed all over - I.'s sister even came to where I'm staying in Zunheboto to deliver a portion.


Finally, with the food all ready for the feast, there's the entertainment as well. Here the guys were setting up bamboo poles with meat and money hanging from the top. Teams then compete to climb up the pole to get the prizes. It's a game I saw last year in Natha New. Also, the poles are greased with pork fat, since watching the guys slide down the pole as they try to climb up is probably the main highlight of the game.

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!