Mulberry Musings in Shillong

From left its oranges or rather the locally grown small but extremely sweet tangerines.The pile of little green fruits next to it are bay-berry or what the Khasis call Soh Phi (soh in Khasi means fruit), it has such a tarty sour taste that sets the teeth on edge, that those biting into it for the first time are bound to recoil in total shock. When you buy a small polythene packet of Soh Phi, it comes sprinkled with a mixture of salt and red chilli powder. You buy it, find a comfortable place to sit and bite in, involuntarily squeezing your eyes tight the first time, your teeth almost rattle in protest, your tongue goes into  paralysis mode at sucking the squirt of the most sour juice ever. And yet you can't stop at one! Soh Phi in Shillong signals spring, to me it is intrinsically Shillong like the pine trees and the rustling breeze. Soh Phi is also pickled and sold in mom-and-pop stores, but the pickled version is very tame. Incidentally, the same green fruit grows wild in hilly areas of Uttarakhand and Nepal and in Nepali it is called Kafal. There are even songs about the fruit, the most famous one being 'Kafal pakyo, kafal pakyo' (Kafal has ripened) The ripened ones initially turn an orange-ish red and gradually acquire deeper hues of dark red and purple and can often be mistaken for raspberries. The shock inducing tangy quotient reduces and acquires a sweetish touch with still a bit of the acidic. In Khasi the ripe variety is call Soh Shang and in the picture above it sits right next to its green avatar.

Then comes the mulberries! And every time I see them, its immediate transportation to childhood and junior school and that infectious song, ' here we go round the mulberry bush so early in the morning....' In our old house we had a small mulberry tree along with a tomato tree.  If memory serves me right, it didn't bear much fruit but it always seemed to have caterpillars crawling around. It was the too-much caterpillars that ultimately resulted in its untimely death, it was uprooted and done away with. Fruit wise mulberry doesn't have any distinct taste, but what it lacks in punch it more than makes up with staining everything a dark black purple - your fingers and nails naturally from handling them,  your clothes, your face, anything that you touch with your mulberry stained fingers and above all, your teeth. And you realise that being an adult doesn't mean you stop from flashing your mulberry juice dripping teeth at everyone, especially kids while at the time making sure you are cock-eyed!  So there we were, a friend and I, slurping on mulberries at Police Bazaar, Shillong and smiling at everyone! By the way there is a trick to eating mulberry, you hold one by its dainty delicate stem, push the whole thing into your mouth, hold firmly the stem and pull it out. What you get is a mouthful of splattering mulberry in your mouth and a tiny stem in your hand to be discarded. 

April in Shillong is also when the wind blows fiercely, like an angry avenger blasting its way everywhere. Thankfully, there are long breaks in between. If you happen to be out when the strong gusts happen, and if you are wearing dresses, please drop everything and ensure that you pull down and hold your dress for all its worth! Eons ago it was one of the most hilarious, make that howlirious sight to see one 'aunty'  desperately holding in place her jainsem with one hand and her wig with the other! And if you are inside you make sure that the clothes are pegged on tight on the washing line and nothing is left outside that can be literally blown away. At late nights, when few lights twinkle faintly in the hills and there is darkness all around, maybe a car passing in the distance and the furious wind wooshing about violently, it is easy to imagine other world spirits and such on the prowl. This is when you slink in deeper into your quilt

April is also when the flowers are in full bloom in Shillong.  The wild roses are everywhere as are carnations, balsam, geraniums, calendula, pansies, dianthus, daffodils, lilies, cosmos, petunias, fuchsia, more roses and just what have you. Several houses have flowering orchids too, the branch laden down with the weight. Some are just beautiful, some so exotic and haughty, one feels like bowing before them. In the midst of traffic on a busy thoroughfare near the Governor's House one stops suddenly, there is an old structure, the kind not seen around much. It is some government office and before it a bottle brush tree stands regally with its fiery red flowers spreading cheer. There is a Zen feel to it all - the simple white limestone washed wall, the black wooden frames, the naturally coloured wooden doors and the red tin roof. You smile for a long time after that.

Close by on a dirty wall a poster catches the eye. Shillong is not the place one would expect the communist party to be active but there it is, with a yellow background with ' prevent price rise, price of diesel' written in green and red and signed CPI (Communist Party of India). One can't help but remember what is generally said about youths and communism: If you're not a communist before you are 25, you have no heart; if you are a communist after 25 you have no brains (or something to that effect)  I am sure the CPI poster was the first one on the wall or why on earth would it be next to the one that announces, 'Dance for Respect'. Someone  from the Megha Rockers Dance Academy in Shillong surely has a deep sense of humour!    

Another day rushing down long narrow steps it is suddenly time to apply the brakes again. There's a small house, which looks like any other insignificant house in the hills, at a level lower  than that of the steps going down. What makes you smile is the roof turned into a flower garden. Nothing posh-tosh, nothing elaborate, just pots lined up in rows on the two levels of the cemented roof with blooms of every hue. It must be a cheerful feeling for the house inmates to know that above their head is a little paradise.

  

Another day going around hunting for starfruit (don't ask why!) Everywhere I am told its not the season as yet. The search for the missing starfruit takes me to the Laitumkhrah Market and what I see instead are small snails everywhere! I am told the most common way of having it is to boil the snails for sometime, strain it, let it cool and eat it like the way you do with mulberry - hold in your mouth, suck in the flesh and discard the shell. There is no way anyone is going to get me to suck on snails!

A bright red coloured signboard catches the eye. Its for a Khasi food restaurant called Red Rice, named after the locally grown rice with its reddish brownish colour. The red rice is organic, wholesome and very healthy, though not as tasty as fine polished Basmati. A blend of mashed red rice and the locally grown seeded banana is common baby food. We walk into Red Rice, ignore the Chinese section of the menu and order Khasi veg and non-veg platters. What comes makes me laugh - the platter is served on a square steel plate with inbuilt bowls like those you get in school/college dining halls/canteens and army messes and there is no sign of any red rice anywhere. The rice is white Basmati. I call the waiter, could he please exchange the white rice for the red rice? He can't because there is no red rice. Huh! so why name the place Red Rice? And why on earth can you have a Khasi cuisine eatery without red rice?

Time flies and suddenly Barapani (Lake Umiam) is behind you and, ahead Guwahati is much closer. I don't like it but I have no option. Zoom, zoom and Umiam disappears in a jiffy....

 

 

Soon after you have reason to smile again. As you drive from Guwahati to Shillong, there are sections between the borders of the two states where it can get a bit confusing over demarcation. One moment the left side is in Meghalaya, the next in Assam and so on.... The best way to  identify, without fail, which portion lies in which state is to look for the wine shops. Yep, good ole booze shops. There are none on the Assam side, there are more than enough on the Meghalaya side. And they come with the most amusing names- Transcend (you know obviously what!); Grace; Good Will; Doni Polo; Shenki; Capital; Blue Hill; Cash and Carry (love it!); Lakhan; Border: French and so on. For all the grand names the shops are small,  unimpressive, some even hole-in-the-wall affair, some with strong iron grills  between the customers and the shopkeeper.

 

Long, long ago there used to be one called 'Stagger In'. Sadly that seems to have disappeared. Maybe next time there will be more amusing names. Talking of names, one hotel on the bypass road to Guwahati airport seems to be suffering from a major identity crisis- there are quite a few huge signboards announcing its presence, just that in some it is called  Hotel Bhargav and in others Hotel Bhargab. Sigh, guess it is a question of  ' to v or not to be!'

TRULY CHINESE!

Ni Hao and xeixei are all the Chinese I know! But that hasn't stopped me from having a lifelong love affair with Chinese cuisine. Long before the 'food wave' or rather deluge that has permeated most nooks and corners of urban India, the fare most people ate out was Chinese, or rather what went for Chinese- the usual chowmein, chili chicken, sweet and sour chicken, the momos of course and such. Where I grew up, for some strange unfathomable reason, most Chinese eateries served the dishes along with a small plate of sliced onions and whole green chilies. In fact, most places still do. Then one got acquainted with China Town in Kolkata and above all, the eateries in Tangra. There were several Sundays of getting up early and heading to China Town for breakfast. I had a simple rule, I ate what I could recognise. The five star hotels were of course always there but in one's youth the pocket is not always that way inclined!

When you move places - literally that is - and get to know another city, learning about, being told and discovering eating joints is always a big part of life. Then you walk into one and you know  that's its for keeps. Walking into Taipan, the Chinese rooftop restaurant at The Oberoi, New Delhi, is like meeting up with an old friend. Everything is familiar and warm with a feeling of happiness and a sense of continuance. Taipan in Chinese denotes Supreme Leader and the restaurant lives up to its name every which way. This is one place where the Chinese food is as it should be -authentic to the core. In a world that seems to be hurtling by at beyond the speed of light rate and where traditional cuisines seem to acquire indefinable avatars and so called cutting edges, it feels good deep within to know that some eateries remain constant. Incidentally, The Oberoi, New Delhi celebrates its golden jubilee this year! Taipan, that opened in 1982 is course much younger but what I really love is the decor and ambiance which has remained as it was then - classy and subtle, like a regal beauty ageing gracefully.

To be at Taipan during the Chinese New Year (February 19-26) is to celebrate the Year of the Sheep with a festive menu drawn up by Chef Qian Jian. The special menu is compact but perfect, going from chicken and Chinese cabbage Jiao Zi dumplings to chrysanthemum red snapper with sweet and sour sauce to tofu with black fungus, snow peas and baby corn in a spicy soy sauce to stir fried rice noodles with Chinese cabbage and much more. The convenient part is one can have any of the dishes from the new year menu individually or as part of a  set menu, which to me couldn't have been better because if you are in Taipan and you don't binge on its wide varieties of dumplings, it seems an incomplete meal. And that is exactly what we did - making our picks from both the menus (new year and a la carte) with, naturally, help from Chef Jian.  

I have no qualms in admitting it was binging with a bang! We began with the chicken and Chinese cabbage Jiao Zi dumplings and went on to devour shrimp hargow; the signature four seasons dumplings; char sew bao and shrimp and asparagus dumplings. Every bite was a melt in the mouth affair with paper thin casings, except for the bao which  traditionally has a thick-ish casing while the generous stuffing were all delicious. For the main course we had braised pork dumpling (yes again!) in soy sauce, from the new year menu, with its tantalising sweet and savoury taste; the chrysanthemum red snapper with the delicate sweet and sour sauce; the wok fried string bans with green onion and fresh red chili - the crispness of the bean certainly requires a very deft hand - accompanied by stir fried rice noodles with Chinese cabbage from the new year menu. It was a meal that makes you feel that everything is all right with the world and the one above there is looking down on you with benign blessings.

Braised pork dumplings in soy sauce

Chrysanthemum red snapper in sweet and sour sauce

Wok fried string beans

When it comes to sweet dish, I have no hesitation in saying that  if you have a Chinese meal forget the desert and instead go with green tea. Chef Jian however had a pleasant surprise in store, the sweet date dumpling (yes, yes again!) in syrup, also from the new year menu. When it came it looked like a hardened small rasogolla in a watery syrup, but when you bite in, the date filling inside wins over your palate with subtleness. For a dish that gave nun-like vibes and look, just white and almost childlike simple, the taste was just that, restrained yet so winning.

 

Sweet date dumplings in sugar syrup

As we walk out of the rooftop restaurant, overlooking a stunning verdant spread below especially the golf club greens, you realise that for all the world experimenting with food in every which way from molecular gastronomy to what-have-you, nothing can ever score over authenticity, especially in a classy ambiance. It makes you fall in love with Taipan all over again!

CRAB-BY CALLS

There are family tales and legends and one often related in mine is how my mother, pregnant with her first child, binged on crabs! Those were not exotic dishes but simple river crabs, freshly caught and roasted over wood fire. She of course, had nothing to do with the catching, cleaning and cooking- the crabs were served on a platter and she gorged till kingdom come. I guess those days there were no doctors who told pregnant women to be careful when it comes to sea/river catch. Every time I heard the story I would somewhat shudder and wonder how anyone on earth could eat  those claw-y things. Must be hormones I would tell myself. Never play smug is what I have now learnt especially if you have a mother who salivates at the mention of crabs!

My crabby affair started rather late but once it did I plunged into headlong, eyes open and whooping all the way. It's another matter that in the years we lived in Kolkata, I would curl up my nose when it came to crabs despite the crab delicacies specially made for us at one Chinese restaurant in Tangra. I wish it was possible to self deliver a backside kick! And yes I do have a crab story too. That was the time we were living on  Baker Street, Kolkata (Yes there is one indeed, close to Bhawani Bhawan, abutting Alipore and bang opposite the South 24 Parganas  administrative headquarters). It was a ground floor flat with the drawing room windows that opened bang into the footpath outside, which meant the windows remained permanently shut. That was fine but what was not fine was I could never ever figure out why those who built the flat never made windows on the opposite wall that had a small neat garden outside, accessed through the dining room only. That, those in the know say that's what PWD flats are all about; that's the sarkari public works department. So be it. To come back to my crab story - one morning I get up early, walked down the little corridor from the bedrooms leading to the kitchen-dining-sitting area, turn left into the kitchen, switch on the light and start screaming. There were these little creatures crawling all over which in my early morning befuddled state looked like giant insects from a horror movie. There was a bucket with some water in one corner and these little crabs were crawling out of it and all over. Apparently, someone had got tonnes of river crabs for the spouse somewhat late at night and the home guard had left them in the bucket.

Crabs? Does one eat crabs? The home guards looked at me as one would at a child saying no to ice-cream. That's where girlfriends come in - and they did, two of them. We rushed through work and rushed back to tackle the crabs. The two did and we squatted down on floor cushions and had a feast. Well, I had a bit here and there but watched others go loco. A Bombay-based banker (then it was yet to be Mumbai), the spouse's batch-mate, dropped in suddenly. Everyone offered him crabs. Those were the days when newly married and all that, forget crab tongs and the paraphernalia, we didn't even have a fully furnished home. The Bombay-banker, took a big claw and sigh, the claw got to him first -the cut was long and bleeding and all washing, Dettol, cotton pads, gauze bandages finally managed to stench the blood flow somewhat.

Somewhere my equation with crabs changed - ate them/eat them everywhere, anywhere and in any style, though the Singapore chili crabs remain the perennial favourite. Like a continuing story, the daughter first wouldn't touch it with a bargepole and then, like all neo converts developed an almost rabid passion for it.  For a family of crab lovers, strangely I never cooked them at home. I still couldn't get myself to handle them prior cooking, till last Christmas that is. A dear friend from Kolkata, on a visit, decided that Christmas eve meal would be a sea-fare and not the usual giant leg of ham etc. So off she trotted off to INA Market with her daughter and came laden with crabs and more crabs and jumbo prawns.Apparently she first bought the sea crabs though her first choice is river crab and suddenly, in one corner shop she spied river ones and naturally she had to have them too. The duo threw us out of the kitchen and set to work and .............

Crab-ilicious!

  

Prawns to pine for!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then of course there had to be plum cake from Nahoum's, New Market, Kolkata, dark, luscious, scandalous and to-be-pounced-upon at all cost. 

One moment, it was big and the next- nearly gone!

The recipes that my friend followed was ultra simple, I have always believed that when the main ingredients are to die for it is absurd to go for a complicated recipe. All that the crab dish had was ginger-garlic and garam masala, salt and coriander garnish.The prawn recipe was another simpler affair and all the more delicious for it.

Like someone testing hot waters by tipping in a toe, I decided that it was high time that yours sincerely tackled the crab in my own kitchen. Like all first timers one decided it had to be Singapore chili crab, my style that is, and nothing else. The first attempt was less than passable. But of course, you don't give up, do you. And I went at it again. It was about two and a half  kg of sea crabs and here's how I went about it:

Crabs, 21/2 kg (before cleaning)

Ginger-garlic, 2 tsp, minutely minced

Onion, 1 small, minced

Red pepper, 2, minced (Actually bird's eye chili or tiny red chillies should be used but some in the family have no capacity at all to eat anything even remotely chili spicy!)

Tomato puree, 250gm

Indonesian ketchup, 2 tsp

Shrimp paste, 2 tsp

Salt, to taste

Sugar, 1/2 tsp ( I use what we call mishri, tiny powdered sugar bits because wedding invites or Diwali gifts somehow seem to have mishri packets tagged!)

   

Heat a wok, toss in the ginger-garlic mince, stir briskly briefly, add minced pepper and stir, add onions and stir briskly. Throw in the crab pieces and stir fry for a while till a tinges of orange appear. Meanwhile in a glass bowl mix the tomato puree with the Indonesian ketchup, shrimp paste, salt to taste and the sugar (if you want the gravy slightly thick mix in a teaspoon of cornflour too), pour over the crab pieces and mix well. Cover with a lid and let it cook for 4/5 minutes on simmer, stirring occasionally. 

That's all that needs to be done.

    

                                       

And guess what we had it with? Since I had no clue on how to make the Singapore style Sala pao (the steamed buns served with the crabs) and didn't want the botheration of looking up the menu on the Internet, I decided that, like or lump it, it would be Yorkshire pudding as accompaniment. Call it cuisine corruption of the highest order or whatever but boy did it work! It was just perfect to mop up the slurp-y gravy.

While making Yorkshire pudding I follow a simple formula - the eggs, the flour and the milk should be of the same height, yes same height! Take a glass jar or bowl and break in the eggs (I used 5), mark the height carefully and pour in the eggs into a bigger bowl. It is best to mark the egg-height on the outside of the glass jar/bowl because you have to dry the inside to put in the flour, the level has to be exactly the same height as that of the eggs. Get the drift? Pour the flour over the eggs. Then pour in room temperature milk, yes up to the same level and pour that over the eggs-flour. Put in a pinch of salt and pepper and mix thoroughly. Let the mixture stand for at least half an hour; it would be  best if you could let it rest for more, maybe a couple of hours.  Heat the oven to 250C. I use muffin cups. Grease the cups generously either with butter or oil and put in the empty greased muffin cups into the oven. Yes please empty cups! It will take a minute or two for the muffin cups to heat up thoroughly and the grease to start smoking. Take out the muffin tray and instantly fill in each cup up to halfway. Be careful as there is lot of sizzling and splattering. Put the tray back into the oven (250C) and bake for about 15-20 minutes. Keep an eye as you can see the pudding puffing up furiously. Take the tray out - fat Yorkshire pudding and crabs- that's some combination!

Time to head to the kitchen.................................. 

BY THE BOOK!

On November 7, last year, after a few days of hectic activity and tonnes of misgivings and fears as to whether it would actually happen or not, The Book was finally launched. The Seven Sisters, Kitchen Tales from  the North East, a Westland Publication finally saw the light of the day, it became a reality. It was a book on which my co-author, Sanghita Singh and I had worked on for nearly two years. As journalists we were used  to working with maddening deadlines and improbable targets; sometimes after working tirelessly on what we call 'stories' we had to sit back and accept that it would ultimately not happen. But there would be no time to brood and lament the lost hours and effort, it meant moving on to other stories and the perpetual deadlines always hovering. But the book seemed to be one project that just continued and continued.....

So when the union minister for state for home, Kiren Rijiju stood on stage untying the ribbon at the four-day North East Festival in Delhi, we could finally heave a sigh of relief and like proud mothers step back and watch with smiles. It was of course, another story that Sanghita Singh was running a very high fever and was ready to topple over any moment!  It was after the launch, the speeches and okay, the applause, surrounded by families and friends and well wishers, that we looked at each other and said, it is over. Or was it? Because the launch had been organised at such a short notice, like a runaway marriage, several arrangements fell short, the most crucial being that we left out more from the invite list then we invited. So much so that a friend made me sign, 'to the friend I forgot to invite for the launch' on her copy!

Serendipity is a word that one doesn't get to use much. But for once it is a phrase that I can use it in the true sense. Because that alone can explain how the book came about. The beginning was almost flippant- as some one born and brought up in the North East of India, I have done my fair share of explaining the people, culture, cuisine and such to the rest, not always of course with the expected reaction. It was a lah-di-dah place, beautiful people, mostly ladies and the spirits and foods were flowing. Which was great, but to be constantly reminded, and that too not very politely, by the caterer/manager/whoever-quite-stuffy, that the food was healthy yet delicious, the best of ingredients from abroad, blah blah and why, oh why couldn't Indian cuisine be like that. Now THAT got not just my goat, but buffalo, pig, chicken, fish and the intense desire to shake him into sense; not sense into him, but him into a cauldron full of sense.  Maybe one can call it a moment of epiphany but that was when one decided to write a book on North East cuisine. One made a loud declaration and that declaration got transferred into a contract with Westland.

So far, so good. Even deciding on the content, the format wasn't difficult. We knew that though we love food beyond everything, cook regularly, been fortunate to have travelled around a bit and tried a very wide variety of cuisine, but we were not chefs and it couldn't be our recipes. It had to be recipes of the people of  the seven North East states - Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. If there are family recipes, there are family stories and that was exactly what we wanted. The book would have personal touches, pictures and each state would have a brief introduction; it would be something like a documentation of the North East food heritage. 

In one's mind and to some extent on paper, the book concept seemed good. It was when we began work that we felt that we might have bitten off more than we could chew. The first task involved reaching out to friends, family friends, friends of friends, relatives of friends, friends of relatives of friends and an endless human chain. There were hundreds of phone calls made, hundreds of emails shot off. Explaining the concept took a long, long time. Getting responses took a re-a-a-a-a-a-a-ly long time! Worse, only a fraction of the people we contacted responded. But persistence, I realised, pays. We shamelessly invited ourselves over for North East food. The whole exercise also made me realise that just because someone is from a particular region of the country, that person need not necessarily know everything about the region. That 'someone' in this case was yours sincerely, whose smugness because I-am-from-the-North-East-and-I-know went flying out of the window!

It was maddening, exasperating, funny, hilarious, sad, what-the-%$#@&*^%, exhausting, enriching, every gamut of emotion but it was great. There was one time when our good friend and photographer Anuj Parti had to virtually slap my hand to stop me binging on the exquisite Kalhang Pork that Pemi had whipped out because he feared that none would be left for the food shoot. In fact, there were several dishes, half of which made their way into our bellies before the shoot! Then there was a security personnel at the Manipur house who fled the room when we unpacked the fermented fish. There were many dishes we cooked ourselves and patted ourselves for it! There were outdoor shoots where we had politely ask curious people to step back and shoots where we had guard against thieving cats!

Suddenly one day we had the content, the pictures and everything in place. We also had much much more over that - scores of new friends, scores of old friendship revived, friends whom we saw in new light, families of friends who welcomed us into their families. It was not just North East but people from North East living elsewhere in the country and abroad too. And the memories associated with each recipe ah! Ultimately, it made me realise what wherever you are, whoever you are, whatever you do, the fulcrum that holds everything in place is the kitchen of your home.  What happens in every kitchen in every home is like a magical chain that binds the family together even though you may not be living in that home anymore and may be far away from your family.  So? We all know that, don't we might say. Sure, but for me it was reliving that again, a reassurance that even though I might be living far away from the North East, it lives within me.
 
Why didn't I write about the book earlier? Hmm! Can one be allowed to say that I thought the review of the book would best be done by reviewers? I was told by a friend that it was a case of snobbery. I don't know what exactly that implies but there, I have done it! Talked about the book that is. I am even attaching here some pix, many of which were not incorporated in the book. So there!

 

A roadside bamboo structure in Majuli River Island, Assam

A lake in Manipur

Fishing in Nagaland

The famous Root Bridge, Meghalaya

In traditional attire,Mizoram

Traditional Bodo dress, Dokhona on sale, Assam

Rural market, Meghalaya

Dukan Sha bad Ja (Tea and food stall), Meghalaya 

 

WHAT THE NECK?

 

The initial shock and discomfort is such that despite being aware of it, having seen pictures and even documentaries, the first encounter is an unnerving experience. I kept feeling my neck and ensuring that not only was I breathing normally but that I could gulp down saliva without any pain and of course, talk.  If that sounds dramatic, it was indeed to some extent. We were at the Long Neck Karen Village in extreme North Chiang Mai, close to the Burma (still find it difficult to say Myanmar!) border and the first sight of a beautiful young mother with her neck circled by enormous brass rings, with an adorable baby on her lap, was something like being hurtled into Alice in Wonderland domain where things were not what they appeared to be. It was unnerving truly even though the mind, and the ticker up within the head said loud and clear that it was a touristy village perfectly laid out to entice gullible tourists like us. All I could think and that too with dread, even as the young mother posed for the camera, was does a similar fate await the young baby girl on her lap? Suddenly all I wanted to do was envelop my daughter in my arms even though she was far away.

Getting inside the Karen Village started on a wrong note. The guy manning the entry said it was 500 Baht per head. We were the only tourists there and peeking in all we could see was a narrow lane flanked tightly by small shops selling every souvenir. Too much, we said. For the upkeep of the village, he said. Still too much, we replied. He waved us away; we did an about turn and walked off. The alternative was either the Tiger Kingdom or the Elephant Poopoo Park. It didn't require any voting, the Poopoo attraction held sway. When we stepped out of the elephant park (more of that later) after a delightful morning, guess whom we ran into outside the gate - the sullen man from the Karen Village. Like an foggy Zamindar from pre-independant India, he said he was ready to give us a discount and it would be 300 Baht per head. We took it, some among us with much cajoling.

From the moment we stepped inside the bamboo barricade we knew the Karen Village was a touristy trap with shops every which way you look, elaborately dressed  Karen women and girls holding centre stage in the well-orchestrated tableau, some weaving on looms, some posing pretty as a picture and most of them trying to peddle some ware or the other from hand loom fabrics to silver trinkets. There was not a single man around and it was an all women show! 

But soon we found ourselves caught up in the novelty of it all, especially when an elderly woman, strangely minus the strangulating brass neck wear and teeth totally blackened by nonstop chewing of raw betel nut, betel leaf and lime making her seem all black gums, prattled on with us with her face splitting smile never wavering. I loved her, first because of her infectious bonhomie and second, because she made me desperately want to chew the betel- nut-leaf-lime combo! It made me both nostalgic - where I come from the same combo is called kwai and in our childhood nothing gave us more kick, literally and otherwise,to gobble some behind our parent's back, feel the warm tingling take over your body, especially the ears and head and then fight over whose teeth were stained the most red- and I so achingly wanted to wing myself back to those times!

It took some time to get over the initial reaction of shock, awe and innate discomfort before I could actually get myself to take a deeper look around and find out more about the community. It was then I saw the huge scroll explaining about the tribe. In brief, the long necked women belonged to a sub Karen tribe, the Paduang, a sub sect that apparently suffered much persecution and still does. Thailand, we were told, also does not recognise them as citizens. What the lengthy description makes no mention of is how the women came to wear the heavy brass rings around their necks. In fact, there were few whose neck had elongated to such extent that one immediately thought of giraffes! 

There were still others who seemed to have escaped the brass rings but not the tonnes of beads circling their necks and elaborate head wear bound to give anyone, what else but a stiff neck.

That wasn't all. When she passed us by, at first we admired her inherent elegance and the big colourful ear piece she sported with beads dangling down. Hang on! What had happened to her earlobe? Because of the enormous ear piece she had wearing since a little girl, her lobes had expanded and hung down rather grotesquely. Yes, that wasn't all, she also had brass rings tightly circling her leg just below the knee and a second lot just above her ankles. After frantic efforts at communication with our hands and crazy gestures it seemed to have dawned on her on whether the leg rings were used for young girls too because she took us to a little girl diligently working at her loom and with similar brass leg rings.  Being a girl in the Paduang community seemed a tortuous business - to us that is because they all seemed to be happily getting on with their lives.

Earning a living I suppose makes one avail whatever resources are around, peddle the uniqueness of the community and anything else possible. As afternoon passed and we decided to leave,  I took a last look around. A little girl, another one with the brass rings around her neck seemed somewhat petulant but as I asked her to look at the camera I felt almost guilty as if exploiting her situation. The little girl must have been tired or maybe she had enough of posing for the camera; she looked like what girls her age everywhere would look if they had been all dressed up and asked to lure in the tourist, a look that said please leave me alone. 

As we approached the exit, I turn around to take a last look. Somehow the Karen Village looked desolate, a tiny hamlet, staged as it may be, lost, forgotten and left to their own plight. It is not something I would my village to be.

Call it ironic or whatever but the experience at the Elephant Poopoopaper Park was another experience altogether- delightful, amusing and quite educative. Chiang Mai is one place where elephants seemed to be almost revered and everywhere in the city cute statues of the animal stand out. The Poopoopaper Park is where we realised that nothing of the Jumbo animal goes waste, not even its waste! At the entrance, standing next to a thatched structure is an all gold baby elephant statue that inevitably makes all us approach it and pat it lovingly.

Our guide is the petite Kim.The park is a sprawling undulating spread, green every which one looks with little water bodies. Kim takes us through the entire process of how the elephant waste is collected and then turned into beautifully textured and coloured papers. In between we admire the lush birds of paradise plant, endless number of trees and for the first time, at least for me, we gush over the peanut patch. If we were not told, we would have thought that it was some local greenery ( some kind of saag). What are huge balls of elephant dung morph into not just paper but stunning paper products from exquisite bookmarks to  greeting cards to little animal figurines. The cafe attached to it is an open relaxing zone with some amazing smoothies. In an instant Kim transform from the elephant poo expert to  an adept chef! Adding to the charm of the cafe was a dog constructed out of discarded gumboots complete with a water bowl in front of it. Yes that reminded me of the one at home and home and.......

Kim at the Elephant Poopoopaper Park

 

 

Peanut Patch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wag a tail!