A Whistling Village where a tune is a name !!!!
"A person's name is to him or her sweetest and most important sound in any language." — Dale Carnegie
How damn right he was.
Let's say, On any given day, on the way to office or gym, you just happen to bump in to your friend, say bob?
and You just greet him ‘Hey Bob. What’s up?’
and after the exchange of pleasantries, you both go your ways. A very normal interaction. No second thoughts to it... well that’s the way life greeted each other since a long long time. Right?
How would it be, instead you just called him “ koooho kooho” or “ ooola oooola “. In all probabilities that would be far from a normal exchange of pleasantry. Your friend might as well wonder what you were high on ....Just saying
Well obviously It’s not funny. it doesn’t sound right and moreover it sounds damn insulting
What if I told you there is this bunch of villages where no one is given a proper name on birth, but instead is christened with a tune, a jingle or say a bird call ..
Welcome to kongthong, a tiny hamlet of a 100 or so families up around east Khasi hills in the state of Meghalaya, deep in North Eastern India, where since time immemorial, the name assigned to each member of the village is just a unique tune, a bird call or a jingle. and they call each other by calling a tune!!!!They call it "Jingrwai Lawbei"
Why wouldn't they have names like normal people? well there are a couple of reasons that you are going to find out soon.. and boy, is that interesting?.
Now these are very simple people, who live by cultivation and hunting, sing, dance and live an agrarian or say rustic life. Simple life.Just like any other small village that you come across in your country side. beautiful. isn't it? well..everything is normal here too, and then comes the Names!!! and normal is no more normal.
Now the jingles start very early. really very early in life for these natives. as early as, well even before a child is born in this village. It is said that when the mother is pregnant with her child, she comes up with a tune or a jingle and keep then keep repeatedly humming it over and over and over again. The tune is called ‘Sur’.
In India there is this concept of pregnant women listening to religious discourses, melodious songs, sermons etc with a firm belief that the consciousness of the foetus in the womb absorbs all the good and sweetness that is in these songs and sermons and when the child is born, it is already supposed to have imbibed certain virtuous nature and quality with affinity to sweetness and goodness that it has received while in the mother's womb.
It is a belief in the people and I am not aware if this custom has lent itself to any scientific investigation to determine if it were true.Anyway that is not the subject of our attention here.
This cultivating of foetus with sweetness and goodness of life with repeated listening to musical renditions, reading scriptures, or attending sermons by the mother is in vogue with many communities in India including mine.
It is a belief that has been passed on to us from generation to generation.
So if you are expectant mother, please do listen to sweet melodious songs and musical renditions as often as your time permits. you never know what your little angel will be blessed with when he/she is born..
Coming back to the Kongthong child, the mother chooses up a tune, a jingle or a bird call. Once the child is born everyone around it keep consistently humming the tune so that the child starts to identify itself with the tune. And then the tune gets associated with the child and eventually becomes the name of the child.
No other name is given to the child other than the tune. ( but then times are changing now when these kids move to larger cities in search of a better life, they are left with no option but to have an official name like we all do and mobiles have also made their entry into Kongthong life). but In their village, a name as we know it, does not exist. instead it is cooing still..
As the kid grows, let's suppose he does not like his ‘Sur’ or the tune, he is free to go ahead to change it as per his will. If he doesn’t like his original tune of parakeet he can choose the tune of a canary or a mockingbird or a koel or a nightingale or simply oooolala !!! or whatever.
These villagers are expert hunters and having a tune for a name comes in handy to them while hunting. They call the tunes to communicate with each other and also not to rouse any suspicion from any other hunters around. Perhaps even the animals could be fooled into believing it to be a bird or something and taking it easy, only to be hunted by of these hunters. that's one clever strategy there. .
The tune is versatile enough that from the pitch of it, they understand the nature of the call. Whether it is greeting or otherwise. So the tone and rendition sets apart the different feelings expressed.
It is believed that pitch of these tunes are quite high and this is particularly useful in mountainous regions where a normal shout could reach only that far, but these birdcall tunes are more versatile acoustically that the wind carries them across much farther distance than a normal name like yours or mine would possibly reach. That’s
something interesting. I for one wasn't aware of the science behind this cooing natives till I heard it.
Just like the birds sing a different tune or a different call for mates during mating season, the natives of Kongthong have some rituals and ceremonies since ages. Romance kicks in now..
Each summer the natives have a gathering or a shindig, say a festival of sorts where the young lads, the bachelor dudes sing their own tune as melodious as possible and the one who sings his tune the best is chosen the winner and gets the most beautiful girl as his bride. This is how it happens in the bird world too, the best cooing bird gets its bride, but then the natives of Kongthong also appear to be following some sort of bird tradition.
The tunes are never copied after a native’s death. So it is always newer and different tunes for every new born in this community.
Now Is it possible that their ancestors built their society, culture and tradition around the birds. could they have drawn inspiration from Birds as they diligently charted their course of life. May be but we dont know for sure yet.
Now why would they keep tunes for names? I presume this custom dates back many centuries when these native tribes started evolving and may be the earlier change seekers or thought gurus of those days even before a formal language was created, felt the need to name every individual in their tribe. all they could get to hear around were the chirping birds and the growling animals . so the bird calls that could be easily imitated formed the basis of adoption and for identifying each member of the tribe.
This practise could even date back before any formal language ever took shape or perhaps these tribes were so isolated from mainstream that they missed the language totally. so the concept of name that we all have just did not happen with these native tribes. and they just continued with the tunes.
The tradition is alive till day and the villagers take immense pride in these customs.
Now imagine this.
You are a friend of a Kongthong dude and go to visit him at his village. You arrive at his home while your friend is away in his field about 15-20 minutes walking distance away from his home and these people don’t use mobiles as extensively as we city dwellers do. So how do they call the dude? Just call his tune a few times and you hear another tune of acknowledgement from distance and then pretty soon he joins you for a cup of tea. How cool is that?
How significant or otherwise is this practice. Quoting eminent linguist Dr Pabitra Sarkar said conscious shunning of language is an unheard phenomenon in contemporary world. Anthropologically and linguistically it gathers significance and paves path to further study.
But then, For the people of Kongthong, life is a song that they sing everyday in perfect tune and that too comes to them so naturally. The bird people of the whistling village :)
Just close your eyes for a moment and just visualize. It's a beautiful river bank, The boy cooing in a canary tune and the girl in reply coos in her melodious and soft mockingbird tune and they continue cooing with each other. :)
Can this get any more romantic than this?
Disclaimer: Images extracted from the video of Mr. Simanta Shandilya from internet
All the matter in this blog is sourced from various websites on internet