In Kongthong, every child has a lullaby as ‘unique ID’

Every time a baby is born in Kongthong village, the mother composes a lullaby that becomes a unique identity of the child for life! What’s more, the lullaby has no words. It is a tune, a kind of babble or a hum that only the villagers are able to recognise and understand.

Although more than a dozen villages in the East Khasi Hill district of Meghalaya follow this tradition, it originated in Kongthong, 56 km from capital Shillong. Believe it or not, each of the nearly 700 villagers have their unique ‘identity caller tune or hum’.

“This has been going on for generations,” says Rothell Ksongsit, who was recently in Jamshedpur to attend a samvaad (conclave) of tribal youth leaders.

Each lullaby is anything from half-a-minute to a minute long. “One need not sing the whole lullaby to call out, simply its title, which is about five to six seconds long, is enough,” says Ksongsit.

How can one be sure that the lullaby composed for one child is not similar that of another child? Ksongsit says usually it is unique as it comes straight from the heart of the mother for her beloved newborn. Nevertheless, each lullaby, or jingrwai lawbei in their dialect, becomes a permanent marker only after ensuring it is indeed different from all others. Not that the people do not have proper or nicknames but mothers use these melodious tunes to call out to their children, who too learn to respond in no time, he says. “Every child in a family will have its own lullaby.”

Out of ghosts’ hearing The melodies are typically inspired by nature and birds. Nobody is sure how this practice started, says Ksongsit, but there is a belief among the villagers that “there are unseen ghosts and spirits in the dense forests or in the rivers, and if they hear somebody’s name called out then that makes the person sick. So, the songs are used to call out to them, as a way of protecting them.” Folk tales also tell of people being saved from goons through this unique communicating method. The person under attack calls out for help to his friends using their “caller tune” and thereby outwits the attacker and is rescued in time.

Over the years several overseas scholars have stayed in the village to study the lullaby tradition as a distinct system of communication. “Although media, both local and foreign, has written about this tradition of communicating through humming, the government has not given it any recognition,” laments Ksongsit

He left his government job to lead the Indigenous Agro Tourism Cooperative Society as chairman, and is keen to see these lullabies documented and the village declared a tourist spot. “The administration should provide the infrastructure needed for tourists to stay in the village, and enable villagers to showcase their culture.”

Almost three-fourth of the villagers belong to the Niam Khasi religion, the rest have converted to Christianity. Pineapple, oranges, broom grass, bay leaves, white and black pepper grows in this picturesque village, which has come to be known as the ‘whistling village’.

However, Ksongsit says, most people here are poor. He believes that the arrival of tourism can help improve living standards.

He also wants the government to help preserve the villagers’ art of communication through humming and whistling as a unique heritage.

The writer is a senior journalist based in New Delhi

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