One Lucky Head

Do not stare at their faces. Do not look at their dresses. Do not laugh. Do NOT try to talk to them. Just walk straight. Look far away. Do NOT laugh.

My mom repeated endless instructions as we planned to visit a local street market for the first time since my dad's transfer to Tizit, a remote village in Mon, the “backward” region in northeast India. His promotion as inspector in the state police earned him the transfer in a new duty station. The 6th Nagaland Armed Police Battalion in Tizit was a fairly new unit and the most unfavorable destination of all the six police units in Nagaland, and the most dangerous. The area was infested with separatist National Socialist Council of Nagaland rebels, popularly known as “the underground.” But this was also the land of the fierce dao-carrying tribes, the head-hunting Konyaks.

All of us carried some impressions about this tribe as we prepared to leave for the market. I was 11 years old. Boys in my neighborhood had filled my ears with bits of bizarre images about them.

They just wear a strip of cloth to cover their genitals. (Even women wore scantily on their top and covered their chest with heavy traditional ornaments.)
They have black teeth. (Because they chew katha-paan, a mix of wild red bark, beetle leave and raw beetle nut that perpetually made their teeth black)
They cut off your head if you laugh at them. (It was believed they hung human skulls around their houses to show off their valor and compete to become the village lord, gaonbura).
They drink opium flavored tea. (Tea mixed with opium, known as kani.)

As we were reaching the market I could see blur images of some nearly cloth-less men walking on the sides of the road. At that age I was already aware that walking naked was immensely obscene. My sense of decency mattered to me immensely. After all I was taught in school that a proper dress is the mark of civilization. Therefore, these scenes of half-clothed men resembled pictures in my history book that talked of Iron Age.

Dad’s driver pulled the Jeep near a huge mound of red soil through which passed a 2-lane state highway. As I got out from the back of the vehicle, I saw several pairs of walking buttocks of brown men who hung their flickering dao, a machete with a very short handle, on their backs. All walked barefoot. Their neatly trimmed head resembled a mushroom sprout. Some men wore necklace that had replicas of human skulls. Later, dad told me that the numbers of the head in this skull-necklace increased as they added human heads in their houses. Most adults had the tribal blue marks on their face with some dots in their chin. Their cheek bone rose prominently in sunken cheeks. One could count the neat shape of the muscle in their arms, thighs and back. I thought if they spread their arms sideways, they would become a perfect scarecrow. I whispered my thoughts to my mom. But she walked stone-faced. Perhaps any manifested humor would mean another head in the house of the tribe.

The market smelled raw vegetables near the street and smell of dried fish came at the other end. One tribal man wearing half-pants and vest had spread out large chunks of pork meat on the table. His hands were smeared with blood. Other men and women squatted on the floor with their produce. Some smoked bidi, unrefined tobacco wrapped in tendu leaf. They sold yams, wild shoots, michinga leaves, peppers, cucumbers, mustard leaves and many more roots and weeds whose names remain a mystery even today. In the interior portion of the market some makeshift shops were set up by the Biharis, Assamese, Marwaris. These were the plainmanus, people from the plains, or people from different states of the Indian union other than the hilly Nagaland.

Truly speaking, anyone from outside Nagaland was a plainmanu – an outsider. It was the obvious anthropological distinction. The Nagas, comprising Angami, Ao, Sema, Konyaks, Lotha, Rengma, and more than a dozen other tribes, were indigenous to the state who spoke their own tribal dialects of the Tibeto-Burman family. All others were plainmanus who spoke other Indian languages. The neighboring Assamese people influenced in the development of Nagamese, a pidgin with Assamese and Hindi vocabulary that became the lingua franca of the Nagas. We all spoke Nagamese. It is this language that binds the locals and the plainmanus. Underneath this bond, however, exists a tension that no plainmanu wants to ignite.

Plainmanus were denounced because they held jobs that locals would have held. They ran the administration, business, hospitals and schools since the 1950s when the Indian government brought in “outsiders” to run the state machinery. Some people came from nearby Nepal. Dad got enlisted in the early 1960s after working as an elephant-chaser in Bhutan as a boy, and later, working for a judge in Assam. Now after nearly 25 years in service, he spoke most of the Naga languages, but not Konyak, and knew how to deal with the locals and the undergrounds who were becoming more militant in demand of their rights. He would always keep several 750 ml. of XXX Rum for unexpected strangers. I was beginning to realize that when the rebels needed some revelry they would come to our house. When dad asked his orderly to carry couple XXX bottles, I knew there was someone in the market who had to be acknowledged. That was necessary for a plainmanu’s survival.

Of course, as a boy, I had heard it all and seen it all. In this market when my mom selectively chose to stop at shops run either by a plainmanu or less ornamental local women, the amorphous relationship shared by the locals and the outsiders made a tell-tale sign of the undefined antagonism that existed between them. Women like my mother only ventured into those comfort zones. But that’s not why I came to the market. Her routine did not seem romantic to me. When she stooped to ask for a price of an item, I would try to get a quick glimpse of the facial marks on the women’s faces. Some women had thrust the 6-inch hollow silver torch light in their ear lobe as an ornament. Even the women’s teeth were black. But by following my mom this way in the market, it was almost becoming certain that I would not get a chance to peek at a house that hung several human heads. Well, some boys had told me there was one such house near the market.

At a Marwari’s shop when mom paused to buy some lentils, I quietly crawled out of her attention to stroll in the market and to look for the skull-house. At that age nobody wants to become a mamma’s pet. What stories would I take to my boys? That I held my mamma’s pinkie throughout? That escape meant so much to save me from the disgrace to let the boys know of my great adventure to the house of skulls.

The escapade and the courage came with a sudden confusion. The snaking market corridors that I walked just a while ago now seemed a little strange, more frightful. It was only the walking buttocks that kept me amused. A little further toward the ridge of a nearby river, a group of men flocked at a Bihari’s tea stall. I wanted to know whether they bought kani-tea.

“Bhaiyya, kya ka chai hai?” I asked in Hindi. (What tea is this, brother?)

“Phika chai,” he said. (Raw tea.)

It was common for the locals to drink raw tea unlike plainmanu’s style of adding milk. But this cleared my doubt that the man did not prepare kani-tea, and so, he was uninteresting. I only enquired whether he knew of a skull-house nearby. He said he has never heard of it. Perhaps one didn’t exist today. But how could my boys go wrong? And why would all men carry a dao on their back? What purpose did it serve other than head-hunting?

Then, very boldly, I turned to the locals and asked them whether all had human heads in their house. One of the younger men suddenly stood up and grabbed my hands. He spoke fast in an unintelligible language as he dragged me a few steps and shook my innards. None other men spoke. His eyes bulged red, his breath smelled bidi. I looked at the Bihari whose eyes seemed unsympathetic. Other men spoke in Konyak and tried to pacify the young guy who was now reaching behind to grab his shining 20-inch dao. Every year during Dasain, the 10-day Hindu festival, we marveled at a similar weapon used for animal sacrifice in a temple. Now I felt like an animal whose head will gloriously hand among several unfortunate others. Customers who were buying something now looked the boy shrieking and shouting. The guy’s friends struggled to snatch the dao from his hand. I hadn’t even practiced screaming in the past, but now I shrieked loud.

In a flash, my dad appeared and grabbed the young guy’s hand. His police uniform and imposing built body froze the guy. I thought, brave dad. The guy blurted out something in Konyak, which I am sure was his best expletive. An angered Naga isn’t pacified by an apology. Dad just waved his hand to the men gesturing, ‘Go away.” Then, turning toward me, he gave a piercing look, and twisted my left ear so hard that I heard some cracking sound. I knew a sound beating waited for me at home.

Nobody spoke in the Jeep when returning home. But, I had enough stories for my boys.