By Anna Notsu
In Saipung, a Biate village in East Jaintia, storytelling by the ritap – the Biate hearth – remains at the centre of everyday life. Through the making of a bilingual picture book, I came to understand the warmth, difficulty and responsibility of translating stories across generations, languages and experiences.
Any Biate story starts and ends with ritap. It was in the winter of 2025, as I sat by the hearth wrapped in a thick woollen blanket and huddled together with my friends and family in Saipung, that I finally realised the profound significance of the traditional Biate kitchen. I knew from my previous stays in the village that the Biate community treasures a long-standing practice of storytelling by the fireplace called ritap. But particularly on the chilly evenings of January, a small hearth naturally felt like the place to be – a place where the stone surface retains heat, chunks of pork belly sizzle just above the fire, and loved ones nestle close to talk for a while.
With its warmth and dim light, the ritap offers an irresistible environment for sharing daily updates, harmless gossip and discussions of village matters. A small cup of chapak (Biate sugarless red tea) freshly brewed on the fire invites more chatter. The night stretches longer as we pour more chapak into our cups from the kettle. Several cats curl up nearby, upholding tranquillity. And this is how their old tales are carried over to newer generations.
Today, when people are more inclined to scroll and engage in political debates than to listen to folklore, Biate storytelling itself has become a narrative of how people live now – one that speaks of change and the futures it holds.
Divided by the Assam-Meghalaya border, the Biate community in Meghalaya, despite the shared language and cultural practices with their counterparts in Assam, continues to influence and be influenced by neighbouring groups like the Pnar. In Saipung, I often saw Biate young adults obsessed with Mizo popular music and women wearing kyrchah (jainkyrshah), a Khasi-Jaintia daily garment. Though sometimes dismissed as acculturation, I see these as important characteristics of contemporary Biate-ness in Jaintia.
“But sis, this is not what we traditionally wear,” said several of my Biate friends – from both Assam and Meghalaya – when they saw an illustration of a Biate woman wearing a kyrchah in the picture book that I was making together with the Forgotten Folklore Project (TFFP), a project by the Sauramandala Foundation. It was a comment I had anticipated, a point I had discussed many times with my team. Not only the kyrchah, but even items like a steamer for making momos that we decided to include in the book were, to some, ‘not really Biate’.
Yet in practice, as I observed, these clothes and objects are very much part of daily life in Saipung – just as the stories told by the ritap no longer always begin with ‘once upon a time’. These transformations make up a contemporary culture unique to the Biates of Meghalaya, sustaining values upheld over generations.
My picture book sought to present a story inspired by my personal encounters and observations in Saipung – one that articulates how they cross the boundary between past and future through everyday practices, imagination and curiosity. The narrative draws on a plant prevalent in Biateram, known as nathial in Biate and botanically as Phrynium capitatum, often used by the community to pack lunch and wrap snacks for jhum fields.
The story is set in the present day, where the nathial plant refuses to be plucked and instead declares to the man tasked by his wife to bring back some nathial leaves: “I will not go with you if you cannot answer this question – Is she wise?” This story was originally collected by a Biate schoolgirl in Saipung as part of my research project, which I later adapted into a Biate-English bilingual picture book to reflect the evolving nature of Biate everyday life.
This literary and visual storytelling underwent a painstaking back-and-forth process of translation between Biate and English. The original story, handwritten in Biate on an A4 sheet, was first orally translated into English by my friend in Saipung, simply to help me understand it. It was then rewritten in English by a Biate scholar from Assam. Based on that version, I produced a slightly different story – one that bridges the knowledge of older and younger generations, creating a relatable, contemporary tale that allows the community to reflect on their past and future.
To make the book bilingual, this English text needed yet another translation back into Biate. The same scholar from Assam helped with this reverse translation. However, when I brought the final version back to Saipung, where it had all begun, my friends and others in the village expressed confusion rather than recognition. My Biate brother said, “The story is in Biate, but it doesn’t sound Biate. It doesn’t show emotion.”
Stories must be shared. However, in the act of telling, listening, and sharing lies the responsibility to ensure that the essence of the original story remains intact – especially when stories travel beyond geographic, linguistic and cultural borders.
Sharing a story of my own is one thing, but telling someone else’s story is another. The latter comes with much more liability, not just in terms of presentation and accuracy but, more fundamentally, of how to receive and interpret a story. To share means to understand, and understanding demands interpretation. This subjective process adds the care and attention that each story deserves.
On a late evening in October, although the air outside still held a trace of warm, humid summer days, my Biate sister, unprompted, lit a fire in the ritap. As my teacup was filled with chapak, my Biate brother and I sat on a mura (bamboo stool), facing the small flame quivering quietly against the dark. We went over the text line by line. He interpreted each word and phrase, paused, crossed out parts of the written Biate translation, and scribbled new words on a piece of paper, explaining to me each choice.
Fuelling the fire with new logs, even the local cats long gone, a dull ache and stiffness in our legs reminded us of the past hours. Finally, after many hours of translating the translation, he declared, “Now, this is a Biate story.”
Communities such as the Biate are often spotlighted by outsiders eager to portray ‘traditional tales’, ‘authentic tribal life’, or ‘endangered heritage’ in the name of cultural preservation. But what we seek to preserve is not necessarily in the past – it is in the now. How the Biate community lives today, how they interpret their own stories and how they narrate them to a newer generation form the heart of what deserves to be shared.
In this globalised era, where ‘past practices’ so often gain attention under the banner of culture, my experience with bookmaking became a reminder that ‘culture’ is not static or isolated; it evolves, overlaps and sometimes merges with otherness. And that leads to new futures – without erasing where it stemmed from.
This is a Biate story.
(The author is a PhD scholar in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology from Leiden University, the Netherlands currently doing research in Jaintia Hills. Her PhD research is part of a five-year project, Futuring Heritage: Conservation, Community and Contestation in the Eastern Himalayas, initiated by Leiden University and Ashoka University).
