Wrapped in twine and bamboo leaves

A two-hour drive southwest out of Shillong takes us to a village named after my favourite fruit, Sohïong. A black, fleshy cherry transformed by my mother every summer into juice, jam and wine. We’ve left the sprawl of town far behind, and the countryside is pleasingly open. The landscape, softly rolling past us, was once covered in Sohïong trees, I’m told, but the hills now lie sadly barren. Unfortunate as this is, we haven’t trekked all the way here for fruity delights. Our poison of choice is something else entirely, and brewed in a small tin shack that looks like an abandoned cowshed.

“Are you sure this is safe?” I ask timorously.

“Best in the world,” my companions reply, not quite answering my question.

We park along the only road in the village and head to a jadoh stall (possibly the only one in the village), rickety but clean, and supplied with a few wooden benches and tables. A plate of meat swiftly falls between us — soft, succulent pieces of country chicken cooked in a simple ginger-onion paste. Our waiter places a curious bamboo tumbler before me, it holds a gently fizzing, lightly bubbly liquid the colour of milky sunshine. Rice beer or kiad um (water liquor), so called because of its low alcohol content. I’ve tasted lao pani in Assam, also made with the same ingredients, but this is slightly sweeter, more tart.

While we sip our drinks, I’m also treated to a lesson on the history of brewing in the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo Hills (long before they were clubbed into Assam and then carved into Meghalaya in 1972). Legend has it that the Welsh Christian missionary Thomas Jones, who invented the Khasi script, had taught the Khasis how to brew kiad (there is, in that, a rare, pleasing symmetry). It was the mid-1800s, and minor cuts and wounds were accountable for many lost lives, simply for lack of antiseptic medication. Jones’ ‘remedy’, the locals soon discovered, also tasted pretty darn good. It warmed them up on cold winter nights, and made them inexplicably happy. The magic potion was deemed powerful and potent enough to be interwoven into social rituals and customs. During the traditional naming ceremony, for instance, the elders share a cup of kiad um; a few drops are also given to the baby to eh rngiew, for him/her to grow in strength. Khasi mantras, a string of words or ktien, believed to perform certain tasks — bring rain, stem a bleeding wound, fetch water, dislodge a fishbone stuck in the throat — cannot be uttered without kiad um to suet bad shor or to scatter.

Yet with vast numbers of Christian conversions in the region, a deep-seated puritanism also set in. Converts were encouraged to view indigenous culture as ‘barbaric’ and backwardly heathen. If this led to a drastic decline in the promotion and practice of indigenous art, particularly music, it also prompted the government to ban the production and selling of local liquor.

“Which is why,” one of my companions explains, “we’re sitting here.”

While foreign alcohol floods Meghalaya’s markets, welcomed as a mark — as with other branded things — of progress and development, local brewers are forced to work in the shadows and deal with the humiliation and inconvenience of frequent police raids. In many places, kiad is sold illegally (in plastic bags), and with no official supervision, mostly adulterated beyond recognition.

When my bamboo tumbler empties, I’m given a glass of clear-as-water liquid. A light sniff, and my nostrils burn. “That’s 70 per cent pure alcohol,” I’m warned, “the good stuff. Just make sure you don’t drink and smoke at the same time.”

Diluted with water, it glides down my throat, leaving a warm, bittery trail in its wake. A piece of charcoal sits at the bottom of the bottle — “To preserve its alcohol content”. The kiad is triple-distilled, making it immaculately pure, and at about ₹100 a bottle, immaculately cheap. Variations include kiad tangsnem, drunk, they say, by grave cremators and nongshohnohs (kidnapper/killers) to fill them with bravado before their gruesome tasks. I drink slowly but struggle to finish. The liquor is fiercely strong, rushing straight to my head.

Weeks later, one of my drinking companions sends across a present — a gigantic bottle of beetchi, fermented rice beer brewed only in the Garo Hills. It’s the colour of dull honey, and packed with a wonderful smoky, sweet flavour. Deceptively light and utterly delicious.

Inarguably, I’d found my favourite.

Until the day I can walk into a shop and purchase this freely over the counter, it comes surreptitiously to my doorstep, wrapped in twine and bamboo leaves. It’s time, I say, to raise a glass for the local to be celebrated and unchained.

(Janice Pariat is the author of Seahorse)

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