Lotha Naga Folktale: How Chillies were Discovered

Generations ago there in the Lotha valleys, Nagaland lived a family of 9 sons and two daughters and their parents. Not much could be recollected about the family except that the fourth child was different from the other children. He had impaired speech and would stammer and be unable to express himself. His name was a Yimbemo. Which in Lotha means dumb or imperfect and the name it self indicated that the child was considered having no potential. Yet they loved each other and so Yimbemo was never treated any differently. 

Now the family had just moved to a new settlement and after clearing the thickets had found a new village there. Since it was a new settlement, life would be harder for the first few months. They had immediately sown new crops on moving there and when the fall arrived it was time to harvest. In between getting the crops ready , they were also clearing the vast undergrowth in and around their house.

From time to time the parents and siblings used to take turns to water a crop and weed out the wild. Most days the parents uprooted the weeds and the children out to fetch water from the stream to water the fields. One day the father noticed a strange new plan which they had never seen just  the spot where one of the wooden pillars of the house we are erected. It had a very pleasing gentleness about it, with its short height and dainty lives that were small and very alluring Lee Green. He called out to the mother and said ,” Neyo, look what I have here. This is a plant we have never seen before. How pretty it looks! What shall we do with it? Keep it or root it?”

The wife came up and inspected the plant and admitted that this was indeed a plant unknown to them. They decided not to deracinate the plant but to keep it, thinking that it may come to use later. So the plant grew well, a healthy given that once full grown was the size of two year old child. They noticed small white flowers blooming on it and wondered if it was flowing tree or if it could have other purposes. They decided to wait for time to get the answer to this question. In some weeks the plant’s flower gave way to a slim and long fruit that resembled the lady finger but was smaller, smoother and better shaped than the former. Some of the fruits were a beautiful cherry red and some were a darker version of the green of grasshoppers. The fruits grew redder with time. The family saw these amazingly gorgeous fruits and was anxious to taste them but they could not bring themselves to do it. ‘What if it is a poisonous fruit’? said the eldest son. They all hesitated because there were many plants and flowers that were known to work as poison. It was also known that a wild plants could drive a man insane. It was like a verboten fruits that was calling out to them yet none could dare to taste it.

The father then decided that Yimbemo must take it. He is quiet as normal as the others so even if the fruit were bad, it would not do any worse to him than the state where he was already in. So father called out to Yimbemo and said ‘Ango, we have got a special new fruit just for you. Please come and taste it. We are all trying it and it is very delicious so come and partake of it’. Yimbemo came running to his father and on seeing everyone eating, he took one and put it inside his mouth. The others were not eating it but just pretending as if they were, lest Yimbemo refused to eat.

As they waited with bated breath for verdict of the tasting, out came a loud sound from Yimbemo’s mouth, a sound that was not soothing at all to the ears. 

‘Aaaakaaa… A…aaaaa.. Aaaahhhh’, he shrieked his face convulsed, he hung his tongue out and was panting like a dog. Something was not right. His face turned red. The family began to have mixed feelings and grow nervous about what would happen next. The mother ran to the kitchen and got him water to drink. He drank up the water and did not utter anything for the next few minutes. Then suddenly something that they would never have expected in their wildest dream happened Yimbemo talked!

He said, ‘This fruit is good, Apo, it is very hot but it has very unique tingling taste. We must grow it with every harvest. I could not talk for sometime because the heat had burnt my tongue and numbed it”. Even Yimbemo himself did not realise that he was talking tilll the youngest of them all, one of the sisters cried out and said, ‘Ata Yimbemo is alright now. He can talk!’. He is now cured of hid stammering, the family was so excited by the restoration of normally of their dumb child and thanked the chilli for giving him a new lease of life.

After what Yimbemo had said, they all tasted and realised that it is flavourful to eat so they started putting it into their machihan and than. Since then chillies are a part of the staple diet of the Lothas and it is said that they are so accustomed to the spiciness of chillies that they eat the hottest curries in all of Nagaland. The family continued to discover more benefits of chilli among which were its medicinal value and its ability to heal cold and cough. Thus till today, chilli is now part food and part medicine for the Lothas.

An extract from DR. Jasmine Patton’s book  “A Girl Swallowed By A Tree: Lotha Nagas Tales Retold”