A stroll down Hong Village. And..
We saw the local culture but didn't fully experience its charm.
We visited Hong Village in Ziro.
One of the ways we spent our time in Ziro was visiting the Hong Village, accompanied by a very uninterested guide. Our travel operator had enlisted her services, and I do not believe she had any interest in being our tour guide, probably because we were not going shopping and there was no way she could earn any money from us.
Tribes and languages in Arunachal Pradesh
During my last visit to Arunachal, I noticed that everyone spoke Hindi, which surprised me at the time. I learned then that the people of the twenty-six major tribes speak their tribal languages, and Hindi (along with English) has become their bridge language.
The Monpa people live in Tawang, while the Apatani reside in Ziro. People told me that the school authorities have now started teaching Tibetan to young children in Tawang. Once upon a time, India was a global center of Persian–speaking culture and literature. If the Chinese have their way, Tawang may become the last bastion of the Tibetan language in the coming years.
Villages in Ziro. Reaching Hong Village
There are several villages in Ziro, and I forget the actual number. Hong Village is the largest, and the guide insisted that the village is the largest in Asia. I am unsure if her information is accurate.
There is one main road in Ziro, and if you are driving from ‘Old Ziro’ to Itanagar, you will see a gate on the left, welcoming you to Hong Village. After a two-kilometer drive on a road flanked by green fields, you arrive in the village. Unlike many parts of North India, which have become dust bowls, populated with rowdy drivers and starving cows, the fields here are green and healthy. Once, when we asked for directions while searching for Ziro’s second lake, a lady informed us we could not go down a particular road because the sign clearly marked it as a one-way street. The only car that attempted to drive the wrong way in Ziro had a Delhi number plate. This incident proved my point that people in North India are often rowdy and tend to break rules.
Flowers grew in one patch, and we noticed youngsters taking photographs of themselves. Happiness was in the air, even though the sky was overcast, and we expected rain.
The village differs from North Indian villages
The village itself was unlike anything I have seen in North India. Broken huts dominate the landscape in North Indian villages, and there are times you see factories belching smoke. Here, you will spot traditional houses, with a few modern buildings interspersed between them. The roads were in good condition, with a few small cars parked on the side of the road. Squawking chickens ran about in some of the narrow lanes. These are healthy chickens, tasty and full of flavor, and free from hormones and antibiotics. Eat them, and you will stay healthy. Moreover, they run about freely, and they appear happy. Some of their happy spirit must transfer itself to the eater: good, positive energy, unlike the sad energy a broiler chicken transfers to the person eating its meat.
Free-range chicken and stupid industrialists and scientists.
Agronomists and corporate professionals congratulate themselves on improving ‘animal productivity’ and staving off all Malthusian nightmares. Still, while we do not lack for calories, we do not eat healthy food, leading to ‘hidden hunger’ and massive personal investments in useless supplements. I’ve sold vitamins and enzymes to companies that make supplements, and I know that most of them are unnecessary.
Bear with me as I continue my digression. We produce enough food to feed the world, yet millions still die of starvation. Aggregated, Malthus may not have been proven correct, but when you drill deep into the data, you will conclude that his ghost is alive, well, and sneering at us.
The religion and homes of the Apatani people.
People here follow the ‘Donyi Polo’ religion, with the white flags and red emblems of the sun and moon fluttering on the rooftops. The Apatani people build their wooden houses on stilts, and the homes also feature a bamboo totem pillar that signifies the number of household members.
Our guide assured us that the wooden homes last for many decades (but probably less than a century), unlike modern buildings, which in India show their age after two decades. I also believe that architects do not design modern buildings to keep people comfortable inside, and neither are they climate-friendly.
Digressing into a discussion on pollution.
Pollution has returned to Delhi-NCR, and I can no longer open my windows on cool mornings. Apart from the smog, DLF is constructing apartments and a mall right outside my home. The construction has been ongoing for three years, and dust has become a perennial companion. Afternoons are unpleasant, with internal humidity levels rising to unprecedented levels, which is ridiculous.
Meanwhile, Delhi’s politicians have been sending trucks to spray water on AQI machines to deliver low pollution readings! Stupid intelligence, as Albert Camus expresses it, rules the day.
Meanwhile, as the post-Diwali AQI in Delhi rose to 500-600-700, Ziro’s AQI remained at 8. Yes. You saw that number -8. Eight. E-I-G-H-T.
The food and housing structure.
The staple meats consumed in Ziro are chicken and pork. I wanted to visit a local Apatani restaurant. Sadly, I decided against it because one of our group members is a vegetarian and did not wish to consume the boiled vegetables they offered him.
The houses were fascinating. Traditional houses fascinate me, and I was eager to go inside and explore their interiors. I was immensely curious to explore the interior layout of the homes, but I was concerned about invading the residents’ privacy. Tread carefully when visiting different lands, even if they are in your country. In a country as diverse as India. The diversity of culture in India is astonishing, and, even though my conversation at the lake informed me that the Arunachali people are animists, I could not help but wonder if the Donyi Polo religion that the Apatani people follow is a special kind of animistic belief.
The sun and the moon are natural symbols, and I found no evidence of idol worship. Westerners often sneered at us, accusing us of idol worship, but worshipping Jesus on a cross is a form of idol worship.
Squat toilets and North Indian boorishness.
I would like to discuss squat toilets and basic hygiene. While driving to Ziro, we stopped at a restaurant for chai. The owner was also selling beer, and when we asked for the toilet, she pointed us to the back. She had placed a pair of slippers at the entrance to the bathroom – for obvious reasons. After we completed our labor inside the toilet, a guilty thought crept into my brain and would not leave. None of us had taken our shoes off and worn the slippers before using the toilet.
Our behavior was boorish and unthinking. Did we city slickers believe that we are superior to those people who live on the highway, and that their practices did not apply to us? I did not dare answer the question because I am sure the answer would not boost my self-esteem. Our behavior was typical of those who march, unconcerned, into someone else’s home, disrespecting their way of life because we believe we know better, and that we think we are better. Our behavior proved otherwise.
The young girl in the shop.
While walking along the road, I spotted a shop. The young girl who ran the shop sat behind a caged window, and I walked up to her to buy mints. I recall visiting Manila’s narrow lanes many years ago to make sales calls. Shopkeepers sat behind caged windows, and when I queried the reason, my Filipino colleagues told me that drunkards and louts often walked the lanes at night. The shopkeepers sat behind caged windows to protect themselves from the rowdies. I assume that no one used guns in those areas. The cages would not save the shopkeepers.
Why, however, did the young girl sit behind the caged window? I still don’t have the answer.
Second, she refused my ten-rupee coin, telling me that coins were not valid tender, and insisted I use my mobile wallet. Wild thoughts about the future of physical money ran through my brain, creating chaos before the divine light of wisdom assured me that the future of physical cash is alive and well.
Digressing into bribery.
Try to imagine bribing a politician or a cop/official with a bank transfer or mobile phone payment system. Authorities track digital payments, making it easy for anyone to trace the source of the crime. Apart from catching both – the person who gives the bribe and the person who accepts it – governments may require the recipient to pay income tax on the money received. If bribes become digitized, will the cost of bribery escalate, with the recipient demanding bribes that include the income tax component?
The future generation must continue this discussion in the coming decades.
The lapang, nose plugs, and patriarchy.
Apatani villages have a large wooden platform called a ‘lapang,’ where villagers gather to discuss local affairs, conduct religious ceremonies, and, I assume, engage in socializing and gossip. However, the prohibition on women – especially menstruating women – sitting on the lapang indicates that old-age patriarchy is alive and well.
Since I speak of patriarchy, I must describe the nose plug tradition that is peculiar to the Apatani tribe. According to traditional practice, women have wooden nose plugs – called ‘yaping hullo’ - inserted into the sides of their nostrils. Villagers source the wood from the forests and sterilize it before inserting it into the nostrils. Additionally, the women have vertical tattoo lines (’tippei’) on their faces.
It appears that Apatani women were beautiful, and men from neighboring tribes lusted after them. To keep them ‘safe,’ the tribe’s men began this tradition. Did the Apatani men force the women to make themselves look – in classical terms – ugly? Did Apatani men consider the women beautiful after the facial deformation? Again, I do not know.
What I know is that many girls nowadays refuse to adopt this custom, so the practice may die out in a few decades.
Human zoos and converting people into spectator sport.
The bigger problem that Apatani women may face in the coming years is that when people from other parts of India visit Ziro, thanks to the Ziro Music Festival, they risk becoming a spectacle. I do not exaggerate. In the 19th century and early 20th century, the English and Americans loved gazing at caged humans. The human zoo was popular before the practice died out.
My friend grabbed one of the ladies we encountered in the village. He accosted her, grabbed her, put his arm around her shoulder, and asked his best friend to photograph the two of them. I photographed her quickly and noticed the discomfort on her face: she did not appreciate us treating her as a curiosity piece, and we were guilty – once again – of a transgression.
The Myoko Festival.
We also noticed an abandoned platform in the village, a remnant of the Myoko Festival that the villagers celebrate every year around March. This festival marks the beginning of the agricultural cycle. The festival symbolizes peace, prosperity, and tradition. During the festival, the Nyibu, or local priest, conducts a ceremony to contact people’s ancestors or maybe the ancestral spirit of the village. Ziro has several villages, and every year, one village hosts people from the other villages, who feed everyone, including Philistines like myself, who may visit Ziro during the festival on a future day.
Given the onslaught of social media, will the villagers be able to preserve these old traditions? Old traditions will yield to newer ones, but when people sell their souls to their mobile gadgets, will we continue to remember our ancestors?
And further on….
The stroll around the village was brief, and then we walked to the ground to attend the music festival. Ziro’s weather can change rapidly, and the clouds gave way to blazing sunlight and humidity. I walked past the paddy fields and considered diving into the shallow waters to cool off. We met a bunch of bikers from Sikkim, and they were such cool, polite dudes! How is it that people from this part of the country are so polite?
I am North Indian (or, North-West Indian), and North Indians often scare the living daylights out of me because they are, as a collective, rude. Once upon a time, people here preached politeness and good manners, insisting that individuals live a refined life within their means. Cynics will point out that the preceding statement applied only to royalty, nobility, and the rich, and they will be correct. Sadly, even within this lot, the concept of refinement exists only in memory. We must learn from our North-Eastern brethren!