The Food of the Gods

Naga scholar Kekhrie Yhome writes that food of the Nagas unfold into a trajectory of carnival, mishap, aesthetics, vulgarity and, now, politics.

Beyond the scientific definitions of food, beyond the moral and cultural perspectives on eating, beyond the preferential choice theory of what to eat and how to eat, what more can we say about food, of food-habits, and eating. Surely it must be the food of the gods, for there are human limits, mundane realities we have not so voluntarily or involuntarily choose to partake. The food of the gods has become a great debate again. The food of the gods has been attacked again!

There is a well-motivated politics, a well-entrenched frustration, by a set of individuals, a set of groups, ready to struggle, ready to legalize… to define what the Nagas should eat and what they should not eat, to calculate what should go into our cooking pot and what should not become an integral part of it, to regulate, control, and mitigate ideas of civilizations into the very aroma of our appetite, into the very mineral aggregate of our esophagus and belly. Surely it must be the food of the gods that Nagas eat to make others protest, insinuate, or even decry! Surely it must be the food of the gods that Nagas eat that has initiated a massive, a very parliamentary debate, amongst a people that hate, detest, envy, and even shun what the Nagas eat. For, science has already defined, classified, and catalogued, in the first place, food, between flesh and plant, between organisms that produce their own food and organisms that depend on the other for food. Then, we have the cannibal, carnivorous, zoophagous, omnivorous, etc., loosely but strongly restraint between metabolism and life-process sustenance. Finally, we have the more distinguished ‘vegetarian’ and ‘non-vegetarian’, dividing the table of food into two, dividing the ‘fuel of life’ into two bio-cultural constructs and structures of attitude.

The food of the gods is mired in three entwining intellectual traditions: the mythos, the practice, and the antagonism. The food of the Nagas thus unfold into a trajectory of carnival, mishap, aesthetics, vulgarity and, now, politics.

The Mythos:

The energy of what that is neither true nor false, the mythology; the fable that is at once verifiable but at the same time non-verifiable. For, the Nagas, as the fable goes on, eat whatever flies, walks, and runs, except aeroplanes and trains. For, the two Special Nagaland Armed Police designated to guard the residence of Menaka Gandhi, the ‘mother Teresa of animals’, at New Delhi, ate up her most favorite pet dog and were later suspended. For, the engineer student at Osmania University, Hyderabad, who could not finish his course/degree even after eight years, likes eating the ‘national bird’, the beautiful and tasty peacock. For, the ‘Talibans’ even fear the Nagas, when the American and Egyptians were giving them military training in Afghanistan, because the ‘hyena’ can be good for the hungry palate. For, the Bengalis thought that eating fish is good for the brain as and when fish sales increases during examination time in Naga areas.

The Cultural:

And, what in reality have the Nagas not eaten that cannot be eaten? It is neither the temptation, the voraciousness guided by gluttony, nor the eccentricity mixed with starvation and hunger. There were no famines for Nagas to resort to any form of freakish eating habits, no orthodoxy to cling on to any exotic food habits, no technological innovation for Nagas to go gaga over any organic or inorganic food materials. We were at peace, at peace with the food that we eat. We have remembered cleverly that we eat to live. We have ingeniously split, flavoured, and seasoned the size and shape of our meat, the cereals that grow in our farmland, and the plants that exist as part of our ecosystem. We have never been pretentious… we were quite at ease salvaging ‘dal’ or ‘lentil’ with ‘roti’, ‘biryani’, ‘thandoori’, or Chinese soups and noodles…except, maybe, in recent times, ‘prohibition’. Our Naga receptiveness for anything called food is also partly because of our uninhibited cultural habits. There is nothing to take pride…so long as we continue to eat and live accordingly.

The Antagonism:

Yet, for those with whom we have the least knowledge or contact or interest, the Indian People for Animals (PFA), the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), the Blue Cross of India (BCI), or the Parliament of India, have written down in their ledgers of hatred, of disdain, that Nagas are eaters of “disgusting food,” consumers of their gods and goddesses, of “filthy swines,” of “nauseating caterpillars” and “rotten fish.” Such damnation, such degradation, of what will always be ours, part of ours, of our culture of eating. Such ludicrous innovation of cultural campaign, predisposed antagonism, vainglorious avatars of senile irritation. What do they want? What do they expect us, we Nagas? To reform our kitchens with sandal wood scented incense over a “phallus”? To bring a puritanical renaissance of ‘oil’ cooking civilization? Have the Nagas eaten something so Romanesque that we are genetically predisposed or biologically postdated?

Semiology of Statecraft and Food Cart:

Is there, really, an art of eating, a policy towards what can be produced but cannot be eaten? For, eating has nothing to do with food or, for that matter, the colour of the food has nothing to do with eating! Who really believes that an apple a day keeps the doctor away? It is the idea, the idea of eating, the idea of what to eat, what can be eaten, what cannot be eaten; the imaginable and the unimaginable thoughts that are morally wounded in the mortal cauldron of cultural aesthetics and values. The idea that has been overshadowed, without rhyme or reason, and filtrated into an orthodox irrationality, that “cows” need an ordinance or even an act of law by parliament, to be protected, sanctified, for the helm of a civilization we are now too familiar with!

We have not seen much amusement of food related entities becoming political weapons, not so much since the rat-bamboo famine nationalism of the Mizos in recent times, of the great Indian Hindu avatars, where a battle line has been unilaterally declared even on our food habits, on our ability to cope with so much and yet resist so belittle. Who has actually been bothered; the village elders are laughing with blues to hear that “beef” has become a portal of deadly debate! Who will not be bemused over a jocular act of trying to remodeled us with the art of eating, like the Pavlovian experimentation, where our tongue and saliva comes gushing out the moment we mortals are exposed to the sacred texts, the reciting tones of what to eat and what not to eat! The foods of the gods are indeed fatal!

By Kekhrie Yhome