A Day in a Reang Village

My story today is from the Bomra Chara Reang village in the Gomati District in Tripura, India. The Reangs are one of the 19 tribal communities in Tripura and is the only tribe that is categorized as primitive. They are still dependent on 'jhum' cultivation or shifting cultivation and prefer staying on hilltops. The Reangs are also spread across Assam and Mizoram, where they are known as Brus.

My friend had time and again mentioned the perils he would undertake in order to reach his village which is atop a hill but he had also spoken of the adventures in his village. Being from the city such kind of a village adventure seemed to have an enchanting and euphoric effect on the mind and hence was my decision to visit his village. To start off, I had to take a local bus from Agartala which is the capital of the state of Tripura in India. This bus took me to Udaipur which is in the Gomati district, again in Tripura. It is not to be confused with Udaipur in Rajasthan. Udaipur was the former capital of the princely state of Tripura when it was ruled by the Manikya dynasty. The city is also famous for the Tripureshwari Temple, which is considered as among one of 'shaktipeeths' in India.

From here, I had to board a big old jeep carrying about 15 people which took me to a place called Nutan Bazar in South Tripura District and this too didn't take me to my destination. My friend was waiting for me here. It was his sister's engagement at his house, even so, he was so sure that I will not be able to make it that he waited for over two hours in order to help me with the onward journey. We decided to take an auto which could only take us halfway and it did. Once we got down we had to trek for close to an hour. Of course, the scenery was just amazing.

It wasn't as tough for me to communicate with the members of the community as some of them could speak Bengali and I had the opportunity to interact with some of them in the only shop of the village where we went to have tea. The prevalence of the Bengali language is because of a nearby school whose medium of instruction is Bengali. Tripura interestingly has Bengali medium schools and there are political reasons for this which I believe has to be covered in more detail and needs a post for itself which I intend to cover sometime in future but not here.

The community does not have the concept of ownership of property and this is probably the reason why someone could easily walk through people's houses and not offend anyone. I was in fact surprised by the freedom with which people in the village lived. I felt as though the Reangs of this village were so tolerant that not much really offended them. Once a little settled, we went to take a bath in some pond that did not belong to one person but the community and was accessible to everyone. In the evening we went from house to house looking for a chicken we could enjoy with the local alcohol which was provided to us by my friends' mother. While another friend cooked the chicken for us, we also went on to explore the village - we wanted to see a huge old tree which I was told was a must-visit. We came back and enjoyed our little sitting and slept. 

About the village - the first thing that disturbs us, city folks, is the non-availability of cellphone networks and that was the case with me too. You need to get to high ground and face a certain direction in order to have good reception but being cut off from the world is also a very welcome change, it helps you re-evaluate a lot of things in life. There is electricity in the village but has been electrified only recently. The community pays for the usage collectively - every household does not have an individual electric meter. Cooking stoves and LPG gas cylinders are available to them but they have to be carried manually by the individuals for every refill which deters the people from using them. Also, the cost of gas cylinders is too high for the community members as against firewood which seems to be a better and inexpensive option. 

There is also the problem of potable water which has to be carried from the plain area and carried uphill - water is a prized commodity and used very judiciously. In every house, the women weave their own traditional attire which is also a unique identity marker for the community. The traditional houses are built on a raised platform and have bamboo flooring. The advantage of a bamboo floor is that it does not have to be continuously cleaned as the sand and the mud from the feet simply seep under. Of late the houses are being constructed with mud floors which my friend confirmed was inspired by the Chakma and the Bengali community who are co-inhabitants of the plain lands.

There is so much more that I had to omit for the sake of an article and a days' experience is not enough to describe life in a community. I hope that my attempt excites people to understand about indigenous communities whole have had a separate evolution and hence a separate knowledge system. It is essential to protect these unique knowledge systems firstly because we do not quite understand them in entirety and this means that we are not quite ready to imbibe the positives from these cultures. Following this line of thought, I want to point out that a certain section of the Reangs who were originally from Mizoram, India had to move out, owing to again political reasons. This same section again has been subject to poor conditions in the refugee camps they had to move to in Tripura. Time and again there have been repatriation attempts to send them back to Mizoram. While some want to go back owing to the historical connect there is the new generation that has no connection to Mizoram and this only makes the situation even more complex. I in collaboration with some co-scholars have written a research article on the complexities if interested please follow the link. 

I would say that my experience in my friend's village was an extremely humbling one. I think that a lot of things that we as city folks take for granted are not so easy after all. Much to my dismay and owing to other commitments, I was in the village for only one day but I consider myself very lucky and am extremely grateful that I have had the opportunity to experience life in one the most remote villages in all my travels.