As Bohag Bihu approaches each year, I return first to smells. The scent of freshly cut greens, the smoky jaak made by burning dighloti and makhiloti in front of the guhali and around the poduli, the faint sweetness of blooming orchids, the earthy fragrance of jetuka, and the wild mix of leaves gathered from fields and riverbanks signal that spring has arrived.
Bohag has always been less about spectacle and more about sensory memory, recognising seasons through smell, touch, and taste.
Celebrated in mid-April, Bohag Bihu marks the Assamese New Year and the arrival of spring. Villages welcome the season with rituals of renewal, communal performances of Husori, Bihu Naam, Bihu Naas, and shared meals.
These practices are inseparable from rural rhythms and deeply tied to food and ecology. Bohag is both a temporal marker of nature’s cycles and a cultural space where women’s work, care, and knowledge quietly converge.
Growing up in a village in Assam, Bohag unfolded through small, everyday moments. I remember counting how many kopou phul had bloomed that year, running my fingers across their soft petals, trying to hold onto their scent before it faded.
Then a voice — my mother, a neighbour, or an aunt — would call me to join them in collecting greens. Without hesitation, I would leave the flowers behind and follow the trail of smells that marked spring’s arrival.
These walks were never merely about food. They were lessons in reading the land. The women in my family moved through fields, backyards, and riverbanks with quiet authority. They knew which plants grew near wetlands, which thrived under bamboo shade, and which appeared only after the first rain.
They bent down, touched leaves, and explained names without making it feel like a lesson. For them, foraging was not a task. It was embodied knowledge, inherited through practice, observation, and care.
Bohag also arrived with storms. We grew up hearing stories of Bordosila, the spring thunderstorm imagined as a married daughter visiting her mother’s home. When Bordosila arrived, winds shook trees, branches broke, and the landscape transformed.
Broken neem branches lay scattered, and newly bloomed neem flowers held droplets of rainwater. The smell of crushed neem leaves mingled with wet soil — sharp, bitter, and comforting all at once — a signal that Bohag had truly arrived.
After Bordosila, we, daughters of the land, stepped out with the women in our families to gather greens. Khorahi in hand, we followed their quiet authority, learning the names of each plant, the right time to pick it, and the subtle differences between similar leaves.
The work was both practical and pedagogical. Through touch, smell, and movement, knowledge passed from one generation to the next.
One of the most significant food traditions of Bohag Bihu is Ekho Ek Bidh Xaak, the preparation of 101 varieties of greens and herbs. Often described as Assam’s heritage of 101 greens, this practice embodies a deep ecological and cultural relationship between people, food, and seasonal rhythms.
Each plant carries specific medicinal properties. Tengesi xaak aids digestion. Matikaduri supports urinary health. Bhedai lota is used for stomach ailments. The selection varies across regions and households, reflecting local ecologies and ancestral knowledge.
Yet the custodians of this knowledge often remain invisible. Identifying, gathering, and preparing these greens has historically rested on women. Mothers, grandmothers, neighbours, and aunts became keepers of seasonal wisdom.
Their knowledge was precise, accumulated through experience, and passed down through daily practice. Ekho Ek Bidh Xaak is as much about ecological literacy as it is about food. It is women’s labour, care, and memory encoded in plants and seasons.
Even in villages, gathering 101 greens is becoming harder. When I call home during Bohag, my mother pauses before listing the greens.
The list is shorter now. Some plants that once grew near ponds or along pathways are difficult to find. Others appear only in scattered patches. The number itself is not the point. The absence is.
Landscapes that once made this practice possible are changing. Wetlands shrink, backyards are reduced, and agriculture shifts toward monocropping and chemical control. Water bodies disappear.
Concrete replaces damp areas where herbs once flourished. When plants become rare, the walks grow shorter, and the slow pedagogies of foraging — the unhurried sensory ways women teach one another about land and life — begin to fade.
These transformations are not only environmental. They are gendered. Women’s knowledge systems depend on everyday interaction with landscapes. As those landscapes change, women’s roles as custodians of seasonal knowledge become harder to sustain.
The disappearance of plants is also the quiet erosion of embodied knowledge passed across generations. Bohag Bihu, historically a space of female labour, care, and creativity, now reveals the fragility of these intertwined ecological and social systems.
Today, I live in Delhi. Bohag arrives differently here. The air is dry, the seasons feel rushed, and markets offer limited varieties of greens. Even when I try to recreate Bohag Bihu meals, something feels incomplete. Migration changes not only where we live, but also what we eat, what we know, and what we remember.
Sometimes, during Bohag, I call home and listen as my mother lists the greens they have collected. Each name carries a smell, a memory, a place. Wet fields, early morning sunlight, laughter, the scent of crushed neem after Bordosila’s storm, and hands stained with jetuka return through these conversations.
Food is never just consumption. It is memory, belonging, and care. Ekho Ek Bidh Xaak reminds us that nutrition is biological, cultural, ecological, and gendered. It reflects the slow rhythms of village life, the seasonal wisdom of women, and the ways communities have historically interacted with land.
Even as landscapes change and plants become rare, women continue to carry fragments of these ecologies in memory, in kitchens, and in conversations across distance.
The 101 greens may no longer be gathered as before, but the knowledge of walking, recognising, and caring still travels quietly across generations. Bohag Bihu, with its festivals, rituals, and meals, is more than a celebration.
It is a repository of cultural memory, a bridge between past and present, and a reminder of how deeply our lives, our food, and our labour remain entwined with the earth.
Views expressed are that of the author and do not reflect EastMojo’s stance on this or any other issue. The author is is a researcher, storyteller, and cultural curator from Assam.
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