By Anna Notsu
In relatively large villages such as Shangpung, death arrives rather frequently due to the large population, or at least it appears so. Death has become inseparable from the everyday pattern of life. While, in a medical world, death is associated with the end of one’s life, this is not the case for the Niamtre in Shangpung. Rather, people see it as the beginning of a journey for the deceased to join their forefathers and foremothers and, in fact, “return” to where Blai, the Almighty God, resides. My local companion therefore once said, ‘Death is a transformation from the material to the spiritual.’
Across the world, funeral services are, regardless of religious views and differences, often considered occasions of mourning—over the absence of a loved one in the world we still inhabit. Yet in Shangpung Pohshnong, such mourning is not quite straightforward. While mourning itself may be universal, the way it takes shape differs. Here, funeral services involve several stages of preparation for the divine journey while simultaneously honouring one’s death as a continuation of clan history. Mourning, then, is not necessarily a simple expression of sorrow. As the cremation fire takes hold of the body and the deceased departs this earthly realm, the wailing and sobbing that have lingered in the background also gradually subside. Betel leaves with a tiny dollop of lime and cracked areca nuts are passed around the women seated in a circle on the hill slope of the crematorium. As though at a communal gathering, jokes are exchanged and laughter is shared. One may wonder, where has the mourning gone?
There is a belief that crying aloud can disturb the spiritual journey of the departed. People grow up with this teaching and, over time, learn to control themselves. The goal of cremation is to send off a loved one, now no longer breathing, peacefully to the divine world. Hence, the deceased is bathed, anointed with mustard oil and offered kwai, daily items, tea and rice freshly prepared in the morning. Earthly routines are extended as a way of showing the highest care for another human being whose soul is about to depart from the body.
At the same time, for the Niamtre in Shangpung, a funeral service is also an opportunity to pay respect to those who passed away long ago, commonly referred to as ancestors. Indeed, the bones of the deceased will later be brought to the clan ossuary. Where the bones are placed depends on the kind of death and the deeds of that person, but in general they are placed together with those of clan forebears. At that moment, female clan members offer the same set of items to both the deceased and the ancestors – that is, those who contributed to the prosperity of the clan.
When I first stepped into the ‘tpep’, where the ossuary is located, an uncanny feeling arose within me. It was not merely a memorial forest, but a sacred one that guarded the collected bones of the deceased. This sacred forest observes the evolution of each clan through the circulation of life and death, sustained through the practice of honouring and remembering the dead. The act of accompanying the departure of a loved one overlaps with remembering all those who came before.
During my first visit to the ossuary, I asked several clan elders who had taken me there whether they felt afraid of being in that place. One replied, ‘Why should we? They are all our siblings.’ It was not that I was afraid of the dead, or their souls for that matter, but rather it was the whole atmosphere that made me feel ‘something’ as though being watched. Ordinary practices such as bathing, food preparation and continued daily conversation at the crematorium have long maintained this otherworldly sense. A while ago, I attended a funeral service in Shangpung. Since the deceased was a twin, his cremation process differed from others. It required open incineration, and no betel bundles were offered to the deceased except by his immediate family. In general, twins are highly regarded and, as a rule, the first bite of any cooked meal must be offered to them. Especially when they are still young children, a great degree of care is devoted to protection by rigorously following customary rules intended to prevent harm and danger. Given this, twins generally avoid consuming food outside their homes. This protected separation continued even after their death.
The crematorium is, much like the tpep, forested. Since it is located on a hill slope, people walking towards it on the day of a funeral service often exchange a particular greeting by asking, ‘Lai lum?’ (Going to the hillside?). Most attendees sat facing the fire, where a few men carefully tended the fire. At that moment, the dark green leaves of the surrounding trees sheltered us from the intense heat and direct sunlight. While the crematorium itself is not considered a sacred forest, no one enters it except to attend a cremation service. Thus, in a similar way to how the tpep is protected, the forest there has so far remained undisturbed.
There are layered forms of protection involved in the whole process of accompanying the departure: protection of customs, protection of the departed soul, protection of clan continuity and protection of the environment that enables such a departure to occur. From another perspective, this kind of protection forms a localised mode of conservation that takes into account both nature and culture without drawing a clear boundary between them. Thinking this way, the entire process of funeral service among the Niamtre in Shangpung honours the cycles of life and death, which are distinct yet closely associated with one another. It does so carefully and in a controlled manner. Mourning here, then, becomes part of this wider ritual of protection.
Over the course of my long-term engagement in the Jaiñtia Hills, I have encountered many deaths, just as I have witnessed the arrival of new life. Some deaths, and their consequences, affected me more than others, at times leaving me unsure of how to react to the unbearable sorrow suddenly brought upon those whom I have come to consider family. Death, while an extraordinary life event that the living themselves cannot know, still finds its place within the everyday.
Even though, as my research companion in Shangpung told me, “death is not a real death,” the absence of what was once living makes a permanent change to those who remain on Earth, continuing the lives we still have. What death leaves behind feels very real. The absence of explicit grief, expressed through crying for instance, does not negate the profound sadness that follows the loss of a loved one. Rather, grief becomes folded into the careful and controlled work of accompanying the departed. Sorrow is not always meant to erupt outwardly, but to move alongside ritual obligations, customary responsibilities and continued acts of care.
Each time people walk up the hill to the small forested crematorium, the connections between the dead and the living are renewed in many ways. The forest and hill, too, participate in this process. The crematorium, the tpep and the house of the deceased, are not just locations where necessary funeral rituals take place, but environments that sustain relations across generations.
In Shangpung, where clanship, intricate kinship and neighbourhood ties shape how life unfolds, religion alone cannot explain how the atmosphere at the crematorium can shift from silence and tears to ordinary conversation and shared laughter. These moments do not diminish grief. Instead, they reveal how death remains part of everyday life, not outside it. The routines of life continue around death, just as the dead remain part of the social world of the living. In this sense, mourning is not simply an expression of loss – but a practice of sustaining relationships despite absence.
Each funeral service I attended reminded me that mourning is not always most visible in tears alone. It is often found in the preparation of food in the early morning, the careful tending to visitors or the collective walk uphill towards the crematorium among friends, neighbours and relatives. In accompanying the dead, people also continue caring for the living, for the clan and for the world that sustains them all.
And perhaps it is there, within these acts of accompaniment and protection, that grief and love come to exist together.
(The author is a PhD scholar 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. Her research is funded by NWO and the Delta on the Move Foundation).
