Bamboo houses , Mithuns and Apong

It was a Sunday without rain. We were excited because we were finally going to meet some villagers. The school was next to a village and school staff regularly visited the place. This visit had two things on the agenda. One was to visit a few households and try to start a process by which the ladies could supply the school some vegetables, pickles and such foodstuff for which the school had to go far and buy from the market.

The other purpose was more sensitive in nature. Early morning, we had heard sounds of gunshots from the village. An old man from one of the more prominent houses in the village had died in the night. The gunfire, we were told was part of the rituals. A good way to spread the word around.  Later, when we met him, the dead mans son told us that his father had mixed this gunpowder himself, specifically to be used for this purpose after his death.

The inhabitants of this village were a community called Digaru Mishmi . Primarily subsistence agriculturists, but this village benefited perhaps from being so close to the road. Most people in the dead mans home were educated and at the next house we went , the husband was a road building contractor.

In spite of all this progress, no one had bothered to make permanent houses. Even the educated and the well off lived in traditional bamboo long houses and wore the traditional dresses. There were still weaving looms on all the verandas, chicks and pigs under the raised floors and skulls of animals sacrificed earlier still decorated the walls. 

We asked someone later, why every one prefer these bamboo houses. There is always the danger of fire and they need to be maintained and rebuilt frequently.

Maintenance and rebuilding is not a problem, they said. The whole village pitches in and helps building a new house. Bamboo is plentiful and it just takes a few days to get the whole thing done. And there is a pooja and a big party afterwards!

The main reason why people still live in bamboo houses was quite interesting. The people of Arunachal do not have a religion. They do have a lot of poojas, that is their hindi translation for rituals performed by the shamans, again, translated as pujaris. They do not believe in Gods but in a variety of spirits which the shamans invoke and try to please during the rituals and sacrifices. The good thing about bamboo, we were told, is that the spirits find it much easier to come and go as they please through the slits in the thin walls, especially during a pooja.  

The road outside the school was lined with gigantic silk cotton trees. Beyond these, a green tangle of saplings, trees and vines of all sorts. We perceived a movement and crossed the road. A huge dark animal crashed into the undergrowth away from us. We had seen our first Mithun.

Larger than cows, almost as large as the Gaur but with straight flat horns and similar in appearance and colour, Mithuns are fascinating creatures. Wealth in Arunachal is not counted in terms of bank balances but in the number of Mithuns a family owns.

Mithuns are never milked or worked in fields. They are sacrificed during important poojas and are essential to determine the family’s wealth when arranging marriages.

Mithuns are never fully domesticated . They are free to roam the jungles as they please, yet, they recognize their masters and respond and come close when he calls them.

These giants are tamed by salt. A young mithun is kept at home for some time and along with fodder is fed salt and its ears are clipped for identification. After it is old enough it is set free . It always remembers its master as the one who gives it salt.  The master visits his mithuns in the jungle from time to time and feeds them salt to renew their bonds. Some times the mithun visits the masters home if it is nearby and wants some salt.

The entrance to the village is marked by a low bamboo gate. Once a year this gate is closed for a few days and outsiders are not allowed in. Rituals take place for the overall wellbeing of the village.

 First , we visited the home of the old man who had died to offer our condolences. It was a prominent household in the village. We were asked to enter the house form the back door as is the custom during such a visit.

The houses are elevated and stairs to the house are generally in the form of a single log with large notches cut for footholds. The houses are almost entirely made of bamboo. The roof is thatched . The thatch varies from village to village as a locally abundant material is used. The house can be compared to a railway bogie. It is long and narrow. A corridor on one side and the other has a number of square partitions , much like rooms without doors . Families are large and joint . Each couple in the family uses one such room. In the center of each room is a small square plastered in mud for a small fire . On top of the fire hangs a rectangular wooden frame. This can be used to smoke meat and dry fire wood. It would also keep any stray sparks from reaching the roof. Before the partitions start is a small portion that is used as a living room . This too has a fire place. And a wall of this portion of the house is decorated with long rows of skulls of all the animals sacrificed by the family.  

The Digaru  Mishmis cremate the dead. The method for disposal of dead bodies varies from tribe to tribe. The Digaru Mishmis are close to the plains and have probably been influenced by Hinduism. But they told us of some tribes that are so practical that they just leave the bodies at the place of death while some are so impractical that they bury the dead Egyptian style with all their movable property. This latter we did not believe at first , but later at Guwahati , we saw a video clipping of such a burial with the pit being dug by a bulldozer and the dead one being buried with, among other things, a double bed mattress and a Yamaha motorcycle!

The old man was laid in his room . Knees are folded on death . It is easier to transport a bundle than a long stretcher in the thick jungle and undergrowth. In the living room section of the house sat three or four old men not looking much different than normal old men. They sat around a fire smoking opium. They were pujaris getting ready for the rituals. There was hardly any grief and no crying anywhere. The young people had erected a beautiful pagoda like hut in the front of the house. Some one was adding finishing touches and some were deftly carving figures of birds out of soft wood with a knife. Some more decorations made from knotting bamboo strips were being made. All was going to be needed for the rituals. A few of the dead mans possessions would be kept in the miniature hut for a few days as part of the last rites.

We did not disturb the family further. We had a word of condolence with the eldest son , an educated city man , but still rooted to his village , and walked ahead to meet the next family on our list.

Our next stop was at a more modest dwelling. A similar house but smaller and this time we could enter it from the front door. A far less number of skulls greeted us here.

Mishmi men are notoriously lazy. The ladies of the house have to take care of home, fields and kids . Men come into the picture only when a house needs to be built or a new plot of land needs to be cleared. These are rare occasions so most of the time is spent roaming around fishing or hunting , smoking and drinking Apong.

Apong is a drink all Arunachalis love. It is a simple beer made from rice or millet , some herbs and ‘medicine’ a cake like but brittle fermenting agent that is bought from the market. Apong is drunk by young and old. School teachers were baffled since some kids in the KG class always slept during school hours. The secret of this sleep was discovered much later . The kids had a glass of apong everyday for breakfast.

  The tribals are not blood thirsty meat eaters as perceived by the average city dweller. Their diet is mainly some vegetables and rice. Hunts rarely put large animals on the table and domestic pigs and chickens are too few to be slaughtered frequently. So apong also adds to the meager nourishment they derive from their simple meals.

Apong also has social significance. Apong is offered to guests when they enter the house and it is considered impolite to refuse. The teachers and staff of the school visit this village home often and to most of them , drinking is taboo . In order to diffuse this tricky situation the smart mishmi homemaker had found an ingenious solution. She had got two tea plants from assam and planted them in her yard. So we were offered home grown tea laced with home grown black cardamom. This was the best tea we had ever tasted but   since the teachers don’t drink black tea either, only two sips of this was offered to each of us in a tiny glass. 

This whole story of  the teachers' taboo and why the tea was served and not Apong was told to us when by a teacher who herself was from a tribe in Assam.

She was the strictest teacher in the school and had not been as open with us as all the other teachers in the school. When , to her utter surprise , we told her that we too don’t drink but are willing to follow the local custom , her face changed completely. It was as if a wall that stood between us had been broken. She was smiling and our hosts were overjoyed . Bigger glasses were brought out and all seriousness was lost. Later ,the strict teacher who did not even look us in the eye even invited us to her little room in the hostel and showed us her family photos.