Moatsu aro, (festival has come)
Tsunglu aro, (rain showers have come)
Mepong aro, (wind has come)
Takum tajung meyiba aro. (Beautiful life has again come)
This song in Ao naga dialect summarises my relationship with Nagaland. I made up this song when I started joining various words I was learning when I spent my first monsoons in Nagaland. 1st of May is the day for Moatsu festival among Ao people of Nagaland. This is the tribe that has given me a name, title and inheritance as adopted daughter. I became their daughter in 2011, That year I became Akalalemla Jamir, tensula (eldest daughter) of the family with two younger brothers!
My naga mother, my Oja, learnt hindi over few months to be able to make a phone call to my birth mother, my maa, and tell her “we should share this daughter!” My mother needed hindi translation of my naga mother’s hindi. Just like that, acting a translator between two mothers, I got into a setting of two mothers in one lifetime!
Aka aro, (Aka, my naga nick name)
Oja aro, (Oja, mother in Ao)
Meimer aro, (Meimer, love in Ao)
Takum tajung meyiba aro. (Beautiful life has again come)
Weaves of back strap loom in harmony with a boxed and stripe patchwork of Malkha cotton gives this shawl a dynamic wearable setting. I intentionally chose the construction of bold patchwork with subtle triangle and rhombus motifs woven into the back strap loom weave pattern.