Kohima - Battle & Market

Today was a day of stark contrasts. We went from the village where we are staying (Konoma) to the local town of Kohima. It was there that the decisive battle of the 2nd world war took place between the Japanese and the allies. After the Japanese lost at Kohima, they never recovered. Given how hilly it is and how steep the valleys are, it's difficult to imagine a battle here, but a visit to the war graves assures us that something big and terrible happened here. The death toll was about 4,000 on the allied side and much more on the Japanese side because they had poor supplies of food, and many starved to death. The war graves are quite moving because the soldiers are so young, mostly in the range 20-30, but the youngest being only 16. For me, an added emotional reaction came from reading the names of many Scottish soldiers and trying to imagine how the families felt when they learned their sons had died so far away. The epitaph says rightly that they gave up their today so that we could have a future. Sad, incomprehensible, moving. I should not forget to say that at that time, there was still the British Empire, and so there are many Indian and Nepali soldiers buried or cremated there too.
After that visit to remember the horrors of the past, the day turned to much lighter and fun activities. We visited the local museum and a place where the regional tribes each year have the hornbill festival. The festival site has a house build in the particular style of each tribe. Both these visits were interesting if somewhat underwhelming because we had seen a lot in real life in Konoma.
The real fun part of the day was to visit the local fruit, veg, insects, and small live animals market. The market is quite small but has some really exclusive produce such as silk worms, redworms, hornet larvae, hornets, small frogs, big frogs, live eels, mice, guinea pigs etc. The kids bought everything on that list except the frogs, the eels, and the guinea pigs. Later, they feasted on them, and apparently, the red worms are the best of that assortment. I deferred and ate some veggie pakora and mushroom curry. There was one exception, Lola had bought a live mouse, but after she gave it a name and was building an emotional attachment to it, I convinced her to let it go rather than kill it. (Driven by bad memories of my own animal killings on my grandparents' farm when I was about the same age).Читать далее