Playing the Tourist: Why I love ‘returning’ to Kohima

I spent a major part of my early years in Nagaland in this once sleepy, cold and rainy town. When I think of her, it’s her green mountains, sometimes blue-sometimes gloomy skies and rain on repeat that first come to mind. My other sensory memories are of mildew, smelly black school socks and my melancholy when the rain just wouldn’t stop and it would get dark by afternoon without warning. 

I spent my early years in Kohima below BOC in rented accommodation; we later shifted to the government quarters in Agri Colony, which looked palatial compared to our tiny one-floor apartment squished between other private buildings. 

My recollection of the BOC years is hazy, but I do remember shrubs of azalea blooms and dark, dingy rooms and empty white ceilings that I used to stare at while singing nursery rhymes to put myself to sleep. 

My dear mother never once told me how out of tune I was and would lovingly smile at me as I croakily rattled out one nursery rhyme after another, all taught to me at Little Flower School, the first school I attended. 

My favourite childhood memory is of growing up in a sprawling government bungalow in Mohon Khola Colony, which was like a mini farm. We had fresh raw milk from the Jersey cows, and eggs from the free-range chickens who nested in the garage area. The pigeons also nested in the garage-cum-granary storing paddy from our farm near Dimapur town. 

It was crucial to have calendars in our home because all the dates of laying, hatching and retrieving chicks were meticulously noted for every mother hen. We would eagerly wait to see what colour chicks would emerge from the partnership of a handsome rooster with feathers in every brilliant, radiant shade of red and a scrawny black hen, and then count how many chicks we were blessed with. Rabbits occupied another space in the kitchen garden so that they could easily be fed grass. 

They were caged because we had locally bred dogs to guard the house and white mice to guard the grain from the rats stored in the granary, our mini granary ale. We kept ducks who freely swam in the midsized man-made fishery, which we would frequent on hot summer days, floating on discarded inflated tyre tubes. Whenever we were bored, we would make fishing rods using a bamboo stick and string, attach a bent pin to this and hook an earthworm as bait. 

We were experts at digging up the soil to excavate fat earthworms because we needed them to feed the ducks and to use as bait for the river crabs that frequented our man-made drains during the monsoon. 

Clear water flowed perennially in our drains because of a fresh-water spring that was right behind our kitchen, and for the longest time, I thought that was the norm for every house. During Christmas and other celebrations, we had the best pork because it came from pigs that were home-reared at the bottom of our hillock kitchen garden. 

Throughout the year we had a steady supply of pumpkins, squash, corn, herbs, pears, French beans, yams, indigenous greens, carrots, potatoes, garlic and ginger, depending on the time and season. All our meals were prepared after a visit to the huge garden to determine what was available that day. Many Naga households lived, and continue to live, from kitchen garden to mouth, before the concept was even born elsewhere. 

My dearest and sweetest younger brother, Toka, was an animal whisperer. His roosters were the colony champions in cockfighting. He would even ferry them in local buses to other colonies to challenge the reigning champions there. He would bargain and plead, tears included, with my dear mom not to slaughter them. Unfortunately, the bloodshed continued behind his back, when he was at school, though his favourites were always spared, including the reigning champion rooster at that time. 

I remember he gifted one to his dearest school friend, who was equally passionate and crazy about roosters. Toka had a hatchling whose life he had saved, and as it grew, the hen would follow him wherever he went. This proximity to him became her trump card and kept her alive for a long time. My little brother was curious about everything wild and free. Once, he even cupped his hands to collect goat poop because he was fascinated with the droppings’ round shape. 

Because he loved the outdoors, the first thing he would do on coming home from school was lock himself in his room to finish his homework, so that he had the rest of the evening free to wander and play with ease. He would purse his lips and let out a secret whistle which he would make, and his neighbour friend would hear him and come running down to join him. His love for nature continued when he joined a boarding school in Shimla, and I was told that his teacher once caught him with live crabs in his pocket when he had gone camping with his boarding mates. 

These are all the memories of Kohima I have stored in my mind and heart. 

As life went on, I became a stranger to her as I left to join a boarding school and subsequently my parents decided to relocate to a less charming and more humid location. The status quo, however, has changed, as I started visiting her every May because of the work that I do as the Standing Counsel for the State in the Supreme Court of India. 

From being a stranger, I have now become a visitor, and fortunately, my visits have become longer, warmer, more intense and more meaningful. It feels like I am now reigniting a neglected relationship, fuelled by the realisation of how much I missed her. This time I decided to stay at Circuit House, situated on Aradurah Hill, which is closer to my idyllic former home. Since most of my waking hours are spent on work in the civil secretariat, I realized that perhaps the only way to reignite the relationship was to start afresh by waking early to greet her before anyone else does. 

These walks made me breathe in the cleanest air, revel in the bluest skies and enjoy the greenest pines. I got the best exercise from the steep inclines and descents, giving my limbs the wake-up call they needed despite the many months of running in a man-made park behind our home in the city. It is ironic, but to see through the eyes of a stranger or a tourist enables you to witness more beauty and charm since the routine makes everything mundane and all the splendour that erupts from a place become normal and not splendid for the locals. 

On my daily walks along the hill, I was met with flowers bursting from every nook, every windowsill, and every balcony of every household, big, medium or small. The sheer joy of witnessing flowers of every kind bloom around every corner to say it is therapeutic is an understatement. 

To witness the beauty of nature is to get an iota, a tiny glimpse, of the goodness of the Creator; these encounters reach our very core. I was simply astounded as to how I had previously missed the glorious pines of Kohima, these majestic trees that had probably witnessed her birth, these silent stories and secret keepers. And to relish the lush, dark pines against the blue skies—oh! No amount of money or riches could replicate that feeling. 

I encountered other early risers, like the sparrows and the furry, fluffy dogs of Mohon Khola, and as I greeted them, they informed me that they are well, healthy, happy, pampered and loved by their owners. They wanted the rest of India to know that they are not in any danger, that they do not need to be rescued, and that the issue of dog meat is only being radicalized via social media. 

In fact, they abhorred the fact that they are portrayed as victims when they are the malik and had even contemplated a bounty on the head of the human who started this whole drama in the first place. 

Kohima is tiny, compared to what it offers. And I realized I was only scratching the surface because it is just one corner of the town that I was privileged to explore during my brief five-day stay. The hundreds of cherry trees I encountered during my walks left me salivating and imagining how they would look when they bloomed. Forget Tokyo; this is where I wanted to be when they started budding. 

The botanical garden, which is a new addition for me since my childhood, is yet to be explored because my work hours and its opening hours are not friends. Time is one enemy I long to befriend, and I have constructed a framework of understanding over the years, but the agreement is yet to be fructified and I doubt I will witness the signing of the final agreement in my lifetime. 

Back in the day, a low-strung length of barbed wire protected the forest, but Toka would jump over it with a kettle to hunt tiny crabs and tadpoles. Once he joined boarding school, his winter break adventures, perhaps inspired by the Famous Five novels he would read, would include carrying chai in the same kettle and biscuits for picnics in the green patches of the forest. His neighbour friend came in very handy because I was informed that he acted as an agent, inviting former classmates of the opposite sex to join them. 

How successful their mission was, I do not know, but it was an exciting proposal for Toka, who was in an all-boys boarding school. 

As I would cross over to the other side of the town for work, my heart would burn and my fingers itch to explore all that I saw. 

What caused me the most excitement was the many thrift stores dotted all over town. I was once very good at rummaging, and I wondered if that skill had moved on or remained within me. 

The small organic stalls dotted everywhere made me long for a tiny apartment here for myself, so that I could bargain for the precious foraged greens and experiment with them for every single meal. 

The fact that the weather was warm but pleasant made my urge to don my apron grow even stronger. It is a staple of my travels to go to a food market wherever I am, from Mapusa in Goa to Sant’Ambrogio in Florence, to the daily food market that is set up in Place Richelme in Aix-en-Provence, to the fish markets in Krabi. 

That is where I feel the pulse of every spot, not at clubs throbbing with music or crowded restaurants. But markets in Kohima take the experience to a whole new level, where you witness, smell and experience the entire world in a tiny space: jumping frogs, which are consumed in China and France, protein-rich bee larvae and silkworms, eaten in Southeast Asia and large parts of Africa, and varieties of foraged medicinal leaves that will put to shame any organic store. 

Our cuisine is over, above and beyond the raja mircha, and our culture is deeper and more profound than what can be witnessed in the annual ten-day Hornbill Festival. I could only partially immerse myself in Kohima’s nature this time, and I longed to drink its cultural creative juice on the next trip by staying on the other side of town. 

I made mental notes of what is left to be done: cafes I am yet to sip at, restaurants I am yet to chew at, finds I am yet to make at the thrift stores, pines in the forest colony that I am yet to greet, paths I am yet to tread. 

Apart from the plants and flowers waiting to be documented, there are dogs yet to be photographed, greeted and interviewed, and cherry blossoms yet to twirl and fall on my face. 

When my five days ended, I waved a brief goodbye with an aching heart (not to mention my aching calves and gluteus maximus!), with the deep hope that this separation would be brief. 

To those who have dated, wooed, flirted with courted and entered a relationship with her, to the many who have married her, and to those of us who have forsaken her, we all have a tiny piece of her tucked in the crevices of our hearts. And this time that tiny piece caused my heart to blush and burst with sheer joy. Thank you, Kohima.

Views expressed are personal. The author dedicates this to her younger brother, Tokato Kiho, whom she lost tragically in 2016. Never to be forgotten, always to be missed.

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