Sleepless in Kohima January 2012

Even before you reach the parking lot of the festival venue, fragments of sounds emanating from the performance area clamour for attention: the dull thud of a wooden drum, the shaky twang of a plucked string, and an exuberant, ululating whoop. These sounds draw people towards the performance arena, where a reenactment of a harvest ritual is underway. A group of women sing and thresh paddy stalks – the steady, synchronised thumps from the threshing forming the backbeat to their own unhurried melody.

Next, a group of boys divided into two competing teams perform a game of spinning tops. The objective is to topple the opponent’s top by twirling your own at it. Soon, tops are skittering in every which direction, spinning furiously. The competing aspect of the game apparently forgotten, the rest of the performers join in, throwing their tops across the field.

Later, a tribe takes to the field to perform a war ritual, planning and seeing through an attack. The warriors first huddle together, perhaps to discuss strategy or to inspire courage. Then, silently, amid an air of tension, the cautious approach into the enemy territory begins. Suddenly, they attack. The silence gets broken by the sounds of fighting, the air filled with whooping war cries.

This open-air arena, the centrepiece of the Hornbill festival, is home to such performances for a whole week. Sitting on the semicircle of concrete bleachers are the spectators as well as the performers from the 16 officials tribes of Nagaland. Clad in their traditional clothes, they are the centre of attention for tourists and journalists alike, all jostling for pictures. At the edge of the half moon, two adjoining makeshift spaces have been set aside for the media and the Assam Rifles.

Elsewhere in the Naga Heritage Village, there are all shades of activities and distractions: a pork-fat eating contest (the winner this year ate a full kg of the fat in just one minute!), Naga wrestling competitions, a literature festival, stalls selling traditional handicrafts and a WWII museum on the crucial Battle of Kohima, now the state capital of Nagaland.

Many visitors, locals and tourists alike, however, spend most of their time in the hills directly above the arena, in one of the sixteen morungs, or houses, of the tribes set up for Hornbill. Each morung boasts a warm, smoky kitchen selling a particular tribe’s traditional foods. A big serving of sticky rice is a given. Other options – smoked beef, spicy pork, flavourful snails, boiled greens, tiny fried frogs, and tough wild boar – though, depend on the tribe the morung belongs to. Still, all these are washed down with frothy, sweet home-made zutho, a rice beer served in tall bamboo mugs.

In the evening, the Heritage Village shuts down and the scene moves 10 kilometres away to Kohima. Usually a quiet town that goes to bed early, it gets transformed by the flurry of Hornbill events. For that first week in December, Kohima stages a non-stop parade of rock concerts, night markets, fashion shows, film festivals and vintage car rallies. The spirit of Hornbill, after all, is as much about a merry spectacle as it is about cultural exchange.

~ Dhruba Dutta is an independent photo-journalist based in Guwahati.

~ Surabhi is a writer based in Kathmandu.