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Carved out of the Naga Hills Tuesnsang Area, Nagaland is dominated by the Naga communities. This north-eastern state of India covers an area of 16,488 sq. km. and is home to a diversity of flora and fauna. The state is renowned for its quality handloom and handicrafts, including tribal shawls, Naga mekhelas (sarongs), Naga hand-bags, etc.
The Festival
The 10-day Sekrenyi Festival, also called Phousnyi by the Angamis of Nagaland, is celebrated in the month of February by them. Generally, the festival falls on the 25th day of the Angami month of Kezei.
Comprising of a series of rituals and ceremonies, Sekrenyi commences with the ritual Kizie. It involves a few drops of rice water poured from the top of a jug called Zumho, which the lady of the household put into leaves and places at the three main posts of the house. This first day begins with all young and old men going to the village well to bathe.
In the night, two young men go and clean the well, and then it is guarded as no one, especially the womenfolk, is allowed to fetch water from it once cleaned. On the following morning, the young men bathe at the well ceremoniously. In the ceremony Dzuseva (touching the sleeping water), they wear two new shawls (Mhoush and Lohe) and sprinkle water on their breast, knees and right arm to wash away all their ills and misfortunes. After they return, a cock is sacrificed by strangulating it with bare hands, whose entrails are taken out and hung outside for the village elders to inspect it. From the fourth day of the festival begins a three-day session of singing and feasting.
The high point of the festival is the Thekra Hie where the young men sit together and render traditional songs all day. They are catered to rice beer and meat. On the seventh day, they go for hunting.
On the eighth day the most important ceremony takes place, when the bridge-pulling or gate-pulling is performed, or inter-village visits are exchanged. Till the festival concludes, no one goes to the fields, as revelry prevails. The young unmarried girls with clean-shaven heads sit with bronzed youth and recreate a past where no care touched the human soul by voicing tunes of ancient times.
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