Ties of Culture

It was a silent summer end;
In the hidden shade-
The hills of barren mist shrunk as the moving shadows of their masters returned.
Spreading toe and nail, some climb uphill;
their bamboo-woven bengs filled with gifts of the forest- sijou,aigetil,siengjol and a lump of aipah on the side.
Names you will never hear of,
Flavours you will never know of.
While the rest return from their jhum fields of lush greens,
The birds of the horizon catch wind of the Chavang harvest up east and follow the family of a village busy beating paddy,
sharing laughs, folding time and embracing the small glimmers from the fresh giggles.
Gliding through the raindrops,
Running beneath the clouds,
The hill-people of the far east and near west meet at the river below,
They navigate through the red cliffs and the dark cities of artificial light
And enter the sacred ancestral realm of their stolen culture.
For the most part of the year-
They ploughed and dug their tuchas into the soil,
Long and hard, beneath the wailing sun,
pressed their fingers together
And grew from their lands; fruits of arduous labour.
It was now time to unlearn the hallowing habits and bask under the twinkling stars.
It was now time to build fires, sit by them and gossip of the eerie winter tales.
By design, the skyline too tuned the marvellous sunset into an outburst of yearning colour.
The women of great beauty came down,
An elegant embodiment of the khichong around her neckline, wrapped in the glorious Saipikhup, she sat next to another covered in the marvellous fashion of the Khiangkawi who complimented her sister’s glowing red Gangte Puondum.
One by one, the daughters of each clan gathered around the fire,
And watched the youngest- With her hair braided and white daisies behind her ear, gracefully twirling round’ the fire with her gentle Puanlaisan.

Their murmurs traverse across as humorous songs,
The smoke of their timbres are like sweet-smelling esters,
Their footprints draw a map of their hearts.
The stains on their cups, the broken glass outside their doors, the painted wooden boxes;
Are little reminders of their age-old roots.
The scent of fresh changal-pah from the rusted chimney of the mud-huts,
The pale blue neighbourhoods that run through the rocky trials;
the Unseen havens of buried grief,
Cry out to the night-watchers and skyscrapers.
The empty graves,
The forgotten souls,
The bones of the hill-people
Draw their lines inside their maps,
They wave goodbye to the bulldozers,
They plant flowers on the cement creaks,
So before the daffodils wilt, come hear of the ties of Culture,
come witness the last of undying resilience scattered across untowed lands of the sturdy hillmen,
For it is here where life blooms
And it is here where life ends.

Postscript-
What little I could weave of the many words, I have laid them out bare.

The small and easy stories, the everyday struggles and joys, the rich and powerful sense of belonging in lands of stolen identity,

We find the hard grip of Cultural identity and the deep regard for who we are and the need to preserve that.

For we are who we are because our culture binds us, because we are tied by our culture.