Imphal Valley · Northeast Hill Massif

The small things

The pot is the starterNgari is made by packing sun-dried fish into an earthen pot smeared inside with oil, sealing it and leaving it for six months or more. The pots are not washed clean between batches: residue from the last fermentation inoculates the next, so an old pot produces a better and more consistent ngari than a new one. A household's pots are inherited equipment, and a maker's reputation is partly the reputation of the vessels.
An alphabet named after the bodyThe letters of Meitei Mayek are named for parts of the human body — kok is head, sam is hair, lai is forehead, mit is eye, na is ear — each name beginning with the sound the letter carries. It is a mnemonic system built into the script itself, which is one reason the revival could be taught quickly to children once it began.
A script that came backMeitei Mayek was displaced by a Bengali-derived script from around the eighteenth century and was then revived from the mid-twentieth, with formal teaching in schools from the 2000s. The result is a working population that reads its own language in two scripts, and a generation of schoolchildren more fluent in the older one than their grandparents were.
Ground that is not groundPhumdi are mats of vegetation, soil and decaying organic matter whose root networks knit them into a solid raft. A thick phumdi carries huts, cattle and deer; the underside decomposes and the top regrows, so the mat is continuously consumed from below and rebuilt from above. When the water level fell seasonally, phumdi grounded and their roots drew nutrients from the lake bed. A barrage built downstream in the 1980s holds the level much steadier, and the mats no longer touch bottom in the same way — a hydrological change with a direct effect on how thick they grow.
Fishing rings visible from the airFishers cut phumdi into strips and tow them into closed circles — athaphum — which are anchored and used as fish enclosures. From above, the southern half of Loktak is patterned with hundreds of these rings, a fishery drawn in vegetation.
A deer that had to walk on itThe sangai lives on phumdi that gives under each step, which produced the springing, hesitant gait that gave it the name dancing deer. It was believed extinct in 1951; a small surviving group was located two years later, and Keibul Lamjao — about 40 km² of floating mat — was constituted around it, the only floating national park anywhere.
A market run by mothersEvery stall in Ima Keithel is held by a woman, and the traders are addressed as ima, mother. The usual explanation is the old lallup system of compulsory labour service, which took men away from the household for long periods and left trade to women; whatever the origin, the arrangement has outlived it, and the market has been rebuilt more than once without the rule ever being relaxed.
The corner of the houseIn a Meitei house, the south-west corner is the Sanamahi Kachin, kept for Lainingthou Sanamahi, and the hearth belongs to Emoinu. This survives in households that are also Vaishnav, and the two orders run in parallel in the same building — the corner and the kitchen in one system, the temple and the Sankirtana in the other, often on the same day.
The costume writes the choreographyThe potloi is a stiffened cylinder that immobilises the legs. A dancer wearing one cannot use footwork for expression, so everything migrates upward — torso, arms, hands, eyes — and the movement becomes continuous and curved rather than percussive. Manipuri is the only Indian classical form with no audible footwork, and the reason is partly a garment.
Polo, as the valley tells itSagol Kangjei — pony hockey — is played seven a side on Manipuri ponies standing about twelve hands. The local account, which is also the account generally given in the history of the modern sport, is that British tea planters and officers at Silchar saw the Manipuri game in the 1850s, formed a club to play it, and carried it onward from there. Mapal Kangjeibung in central Imphal is described locally as the oldest polo ground still in use.
Rice with the bran left onChak-hao's colour is anthocyanin held in the bran layer, which is why the grain is never polished. Leaving the bran on also means it absorbs water slowly and takes far longer to cook than white rice — one reason it stayed a ceremonial grain rather than an everyday one, and why it survives as pudding and as offering.
Two ferments, opposite directionsThe valley and the ridges above it use the same technique on different substrates: fish here, soybean there. Ngari and hawaijar are both made in this kitchen, but ngari leads and hawaijar supports; in the Naga hills the order is reversed and there is no fermented fish at all. Two neighbouring cuisines built from the same microbiology and opposite priorities.

Small local details of Imphal Valley — customs, quirks and things that are not in any guidebook. (12)