By Anna Notsu
January arrived. The world still carried the lingering weight of December festivities, along with unfinished tasks and duties from the year before. Yet the feeling of a new beginning, though somewhat slowly, nudges all of us to look ahead, to consider how our future might unfold.
In Meghalaya, January is also a high season for wedding ceremonies. Couples begin their new, wedded lives together, and not only two families but two clans become connected through the marital bond between two individuals. Within this sense of ‘newness’, a deep familiarity—whether called tradition, custom or otherwise—continues to structure the future of Meghalaya.
At the same time, within this seemingly cyclical calendar marked by public holidays, familiar ceremonies and anticipated climatic patterns, Meghalaya’s diversity becomes visible in the varied ways people welcome their new beginnings.
In East Jaintia Hills, after the eventful month of December, Biate people once again prepared themselves for another celebration that takes place annually on the 11th of January (the 12th this year)—Nul-Ding Kût. It is a Biate cultural festival signifying the renewal of life. In earlier times, people used to organise it according to the ‘feel’ of the new year rather than by the calendar as they do now. In response to a growing sentiment of disconnect from their great past, the Biate community recently decided to revive Nul-Ding Kût as a way of honouring how they have come to be.
From programme organisation to stage setup, everything is done by the hands of the community. When I arrived in Saipung village a couple of days ago, already close to eight in the evening, we drove past the headman and several other men returning together in a car. They had just come back from this year’s festival site.
Especially since the launch of the first-ever Biate picture book was planned as part of the festival programme, expectations for grandeur were running high. As the days counted down to the festival, the host village, Saipung, seemed to have long forgotten the slow pace usually associated with the new year. Day and night, people worked tirelessly to complete the venue on time.
This year, however, this hectic pace coincided with my Biate sister’s housewarming ceremony. Despite the widespread matrilineal practices of Meghalaya, the Biate community upholds its own post-marriage practice of moving into the husband’s place after spending some years at the wife’s. This move is called Moitui in Biate, meaning “taking away the bride.” My Biate sister was about to move out of her natal home to join her husband’s.
She had once told me, when we attended the Moitui ceremony of our neighbour last year, that she felt lucky because she found her husband in the same village. Indeed, our neighbour’s Moitui required hours of travel, as her husband lived a full day’s car journey away. I joined their Moitui on a pick-up truck from Saipung to another Biate village in Assam, through gusts of dusty wind constantly blowing against our faces.
Nine of us squeezed ourselves into the bare truck bed, barely seated. Our faces were covered with thin scarves and our eyes shielded by sunglasses. Snack wrappers and plastic bottles flew through the air as our bodies bounced with the uneven road. The vehicles carrying us and the couple’s belongings crossed the Kupli River and paused by the riverside, almost like a resting herd of animals.
By dusk, this comical scene and the long hours of discomfort eventually brought us to the husband’s home in Mualdam, far from the wife’s village. While joy filled those who eagerly awaited their arrival, a great wave of emotion overwhelmed the couple who had built their wedded life with her family, and those who experienced it together in Saipung. From that day onwards, they would build their lives among new neighbours and friends.
Traditionally, once married, the husband is expected to spend seven years at the wife’s home. Over time, this norm has been adjusted. Some couples take only a few years, while others stay with the wife’s family for over a decade. By living with the wife’s family, the husband proves his dedication to her through labour. As my Biate brother explained, ‘He can prove himself to the in-laws.’
From another perspective, this arrangement ensures that the husband does not remain a stranger to her family. Living together under one roof allows both sides to get to know each other, deepening family ties. In fact, the wife, though long married, formally takes her husband’s title on the day of Moitui. As my Biate brother put it, “It is like a second marriage.”
The week leading up to the day of Moitui is restless for both families. One side prepares for the departure ceremony, the other for the welcome. As the couple packs their belongings and receives gifts from their family, friends and neighbours, a steady stream of visitors arrives to greet them. The gentle clinking of teaspoons stirring sweet tea and lasting conversations filling the house leave just enough space for schoolchildren to stomp and run through. To call this time “busy” would be an understatement.
The chance to witness my Biate sister’s Moitui evoked a strange sense of beginning anew. The space where I usually dried my clothes was now covered in tarpaulin and decorated with a dark blue velvet drape. Its concrete floor lay beneath a red carpet as the couple’s room grew emptier each day.
Three months ago, when I last stayed in Saipung, the extended family had been my steady home. While I was away, one family had already moved into a newly built house. And now, my Biate sister, her husband and their nine-month-old son are about to settle into their permanent home. The passing of time revealed itself through these shifts, through the quiet re-making of everyday life. Others in Saipung may simply take this as the way things are.
As I sat with a subtle sense of melancholia, I remembered there was another ceremony taking place the same day. Though I could not attend, the church held a service to pray for a bountiful harvest and prosperity in this new year. Across the village, many others were making their new beginnings in their own ways.
Perhaps because of my closeness to my Biate sister and her husband, with whom I, too, shared a life under the same roof, or perhaps because of the timing, this Moitui seemed to amplify the festival’s theme—renewal of life.
When I first heard of Nul-Ding Kût, I wondered why it took place on the 11th of January. Was it not too late for a New Year festival? But now, observing new beginnings take shape in people’s lives, I understand the answer lies in what my Biate brother’s called “the feel.”
In this cycle of life, tradition is not sustained through the simple repetition of the past, or by rigid adherence to a calendar. It lives instead through attentiveness to people, relationships, timing and change. Here, renewal is not about restoring something frozen in time, but about allowing practices to move, adapt and remain meaningful within the current lives people are actually living.
Seen this way, I could no longer see Nul-Ding Kût and Moitui as separate events. They are connected ways of care and belonging. They remind us that futures are not completely abstract ideas, but are made in the everyday—through labour offered to loved ones, through reconfigurations of kinship and through rooms slowly emptied and homes slowly built. These moments hold together memory and anticipation, anchoring people as they step into uncertainty without severing ties to where they come from.
At a time when smaller communities are often spoken about only in terms of loss—of language, land or tradition—the revival of Nul-Ding Kût suggests something far more powerful than stories of neglect. It is not nostalgia. It shows the Biate community deciding what is worth carrying forward, and how. Within this careful negotiation between honouring elders, responding to present realities and imagining futures that remain meaningful for younger generations, they find the ground for a new beginning.
This year, on January 12, we will honour, in collective commotion, what has allowed us to be who we are, and we will renew it by strengthening the relationships we value—within families, across villages and with the land that continues to sustain us. Some may call this rethinking heritage. To me, it is future-making. A future that does not rush ahead, but listens closely to the feel of life as it unfolds, and moves forward with love and care.
(The author is Lecturer, Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology | Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Leiden University, The Netherlands)
