| Social and cultural significance |
Apart from their daily consumption, food is considered as huge part of preparation in the celebration of their festivals, marriages, birth ceremonies and death rituals. A huge amount of food is consumed in the birth celebration or death rituals. Lhops believes offering of food or meat during festivals and rituals to the deities brings them good health to their family, and the community, and in some cases, good luck.
Lhops also appeal the deceased ones with food and drinks so that misfortune or bad luck does not befall the living beings. Lhops also consider food as a serious death taboo, during which the widow or widower cannot offer touched food, or food to another person during those three years of mourning the dead.
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| Transmission method |
Lhops now grow buckwheat, millet, paddy, sorghum and maize, and cash crops such as cardamom, oranges and ginger farming on a small-scale basis, as a source of their income. They also prefer to grow vegetables such as beans, creeper, squash, pumpkin and gourds nearby their houses, and almost all maintain a proper small kitchen garden for their supplementary nutrition.
Lhops raise cows, pigs, and chickens, all of which are used in rituals, for consumption and sometimes, also for commercial purposes. Recently, Lhops have started to into earning hard cash through transportation of oranges from orchards to the markets. The money is then spent in purchasing grocery items and also alcoholic drinks from the market.
Although most of the Lhops do not grow rice, it has become their staple food in the recent times, and is purchased from neighbouring shops. Maize and millet are prepared in the same way as rice or made into dough, while pancakes are made from buckwheat. Rice, millet and maize are also used to brew alcohol, which is enjoyed during community gatherings, including rituals and festivals.
Lhops’s food consists of varieties of cereals, roots and meats. Cereals such as kersey (buckwheat), raam (maize), jarto (millet) and chakto (sorghum) are essential and indispensable food items in their life and rituals. Chakto is boiled the way rice is cooked and taken as main food. Jarto is used mainly for making yu. Buckwheat is ground in a ratag (a stone mill) for bee (flour) and taken as roti (flat bread). They eat pork, beef, and meat of wild animals is their favorites. Lhops are generally non-vegetarian. Even though they are not particularly fond of vegetables, they sometimes consume paem (bamboo shoot), saem (edible variety of ferns, chuisey (squash), jungka (pumpkin), sengsey (beans) and sanag (spinach/leafy vegetable), etc.
Lhops usually prepare all of their meals starting right from pounding, grinding, winnowing and collecting water and so on. They start their day by preparing their morning meal. Preparation works for each meal include collecting firewood, and other things for food from the forest, making fire, collecting water in bamboo cylinders and pots from the nearby stream, pounding cereals or preparing boiled roots, making strong tea and processing fermented millet for the morning’s drink. Nothing is ever kept ready for the next meal at home.Cooking includes a very simple process of boiling. With little oil, most of the food is boiled simply in water and consumed with salt (dii) and chilli (muris).
Their day begins with breakfast in the morning, lunch at around noon and, then followed by dinner in the evening. The morning meal for Lhops includes tea, boiled roots, cereals and fermented millet. Lhops usually finish their morning meals at around 7am, and then disperse for their respective day’s work. Around mid-day, they take lunch consisting of rice accompanied by vegetable curry. As they return home, they again eat roasted maize with tea. Dinner for the Lhops begins with the fetching of water, making fire and preparing their meals. Meals usually consist of roasted and flattened maize or some morning leftover food. Special night meal called Lipto usually consists of any flour with vegetable curry. It is the time where family members, friends and neighbors drink tea and fermented millet leisurely around the fire after the meal. It is said that, this is the time when people fights among themselves after Lipto since most of the people will be drunk.
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