A
Hmar couple on their wedding day
Marriage, it is said, is made in the
heaven. But for the Hmar boys and girls, it is made instead near the
kitchen-fire. In fact the idea of a heaven for a love-sick Hmar boy is watching
a beautiful girl rolling cigarette called dum
zuol seated near a fire.
Believe it or not, the message of love is
written on the waistband of the cigarette. However, the message is not in
letters but in colours. The green or blue indicates acceptance, while red
signifies refusal and rejection.
Green or blue, therefore, is intoxicating
colours for Hmar boys. But then it is the raven black of a girl’s hair that
sends them into the fifth heaven. In this unique language of love, a strand of
the girl’s own hair used as a cigarette waistband is a mark of ‘intense
ardour’.
When a girl does not know how to respond a
visitor, she can simply use a white colour waistband while offering the
cigarette to him. It indicates that her mental frame is in a neutral state and
therefore the suitor has to wait while scores of white-banded cigarettes are
being reduced to ashes during the visits.
The system of inleng hai or courting girls is an age-old Hmar social tradition. A
sub-tribe of Chin-Kuki-Mizo group numbering about one and a half lakhs
scattered in Manipur, Mizoram and Assam they have a separate identity of
themselves.
The fire-place plays an important role in
their lives. Meat, maize and salt are kept drying above it and it is around
this fire that the fate of many a lover is sealed forever.
After sunset, stuffed with pouches of
tobacco, the boys will come to the house of the girl of their choice. While the
girl is busy rolling the cigarettes, the boys will help her by preparing
fire-wood and pounding rice etc. The tribal courtesy and etiquette demands her
to treat all the visitors equally, though it is her prerogative to select the
right man.
The evening session can be terminated
according to the taste and desire of the girl. She has to signal it by simply
pointing the cigarette towards them while offering it. In that case the unlucky
suitors have to take it in their own stride and head back for the zawlbuk, the dormitory of unmarried.
Konjengbam Kameshore
(Courtesy: North East Sun, New Delhi,
December 17-23, 1994)
