Behdienkhlam - The Mud Dancing Festival

‘Go to Jowai. There is a festival there. I think you’ll like it. Jaintia tribes-people celebrate the sowing, trying to drive away plague and diseases and hoping for a good harvest. The men dance in the mud and carry huge chariots around and go from house to house carrying bamboo poles and beat the rooftops of the houses to symbolically drive away evil spirits.’

That’s what I’ve been told. And why not go and see men dancing in the mud in a pre-Christian sacred ceremony of a religion that also worships one major god and other lesser spirits?

Incidentally, another Romanian fellow is travelling around the area on a Royal Enfield bike, so we decided to go together. But Romanian customs work just as well even 10000 km away from the motherland and, although we started riding at around 11 AM, we managed to lose track of time and cover the 120 km from Cherrapunjee to Jowai in almost 5 hours. Of course the ceremonies will wait for us; we’re Romanians after all. At least that was what we’d hoped. But by the time we reached Jowai, the biggest city in the Jaintia Hills and the place where Behdienkhlam is held every year in July, the masses of people walking hurriedly through the streets meant that the mud dancing part was over. No matter, the weather was great and the people were in a celebrative mood, so we stayed around to see what else was going on. And, sure enough, our patience payed off: each year after the bad spirits have been chased away (through mud dancing, clearly), the locals have a football match between the upper part of the town and the lower part, making the winning team the agents of good crops on their side of the town.

Not only is this a very serious matter, kept every single year for generations, but it is also the perfect occasion for the townspeople to display their best clothes and accessories. We went along with remarkably well-dressed families (feeling very out of place with our own modest attires) and sat down on the side of the road in a large square lined with shops and masses of people to watch the football match.

The town’s elders, dressed in Sunday clothes bearing ceremonial canes arrived bringing along the traditional ball, the one used over and over again for every match. Something seemed out of place: why would the elders carry a coconut for a football game? But, as it was explained, this is a wooden ball, used so many times that the wear and tear of countless football games shrank it to the size of a fairly round grapefruit.

The players followed in this strange procession: different every year, these young men proudly engaged in what would turn out to be a fight that could have been easily mistaken for a mass kickbox match with a funny wooden ball misplaced amongst them. They would run around the square barefoot, hitting the wooden ball, trying to score for their side of town.

The game began. Kids, photographers, town elders, policemen, and bystanders all gathered as close as possible to the players, leaving only a small circle for the players to pass the ball. Whenever the ball rolled to a side, the circle would also move accordingly. I couldn’t distinguish any delimitation for this football field and it appeared that neither did the players, the referees or the onlookers; nor did they really care about that. Casualties were left to tend to themselves as the game went on while the spectators cheered for one team or another. The confusion climaxed in another part of the square, so it wasn’t clear for me who won. I was to find later that, as it mostly happens, the lower part of town won the game. I suspect that it’s also because the terrain is slightly inclined towards the lower part and, naturally, the ball would eventually find its way there.

The people quickly scattered after the elders proclaimed the end of the festivities, leaving everyone to enjoy the most important holiday of the Jaintias however they liked, mainly by carousing until the early hours of the morning, dancing happily to music played on cell phones, eating barbequed meat and rice, and simply enjoying themselves all night long. We were invited to join a family of no less than 100 relatives, who kept on coming and going, drinking rice beer, shaking various hands and taking countless pictures with us.

Well, the next day, a beautiful, peaceful Sunday, the bike refused to start. No pleading, persuading or cajoling could get the bike moving and no mechanic could be found awake and/or sober to take a look at the electric wiring, as all the people in Jowai were having their well-deserved rest after the celebration. A full day of waiting around resulted in the transport of the bike and us in a pick-up truck that came to our rescue from Shillong, where we spent the night.

To recap: the whole trip turned out to be a hell of a roller coaster ride – fun to be on and eager to look past the next turn – and my disappointment that we missed the actual ceremony of the festival was put aside because everything else was really great. Still, next time, I’ll try to be in time for the mud dancing.