When Rice Remembers…

There are days when I miss the food of home so deeply that it almost feels like missing a person. And when I say food at home, it is not about typical comfort food in the ordinary sense. I mean food that carries a time, a place, a season. Food that arrives with all the drama that surrounds it. It could be firelight, bonfires, cold evenings, chatter, and the feeling of being held by something familiar.

Sometimes it was the sound of children—mostly my nieces and nephews. One of them at the piano. Another on the guitar. Others giggling, skating, jumping, and cycling. Their laughter moved through everything, filling the spaces in between. That, together, is what made a memory of home.

Then there was the aroma of food drifting in from the kitchen. It always felt like a call. We knew, without being told, that it was time for something special.

Now, the thought of home comes back loudest when the seasons begin to change.

Rice, Poured
Across Northeast India, rice is eaten and drunk. Fermented rice beers—apong, zu, kyat and ting—are made with herbs and starters, shared at harvests yearly.

Where Everything Begins
At the heart of that longing is rice. Always rice. In the Northeast, rice is not just what we eat; it is how we live. It fills most of our fields—nearly seventy percent of the cropped land—with pulses quietly following behind. And yet, despite the endless green of our hills and valleys, this entire region contributes only a small fraction to the country’s rice story. We grow rice not because it is easy or profitable, but because it is inevitable. Because it is a way of life.

That is why certain foods stay with you forever.

One such taste is tanghou. No matter where life takes me, this is something I return to in memory. Just hearing its name brings back Manipur in winter—the fire burning low, hands stretched out for warmth, the air thick with smoke and conversation. Tanghou tastes best then.

Tanghou is a sticky rice cake, and nearly every community in the region has its own version. Making it is never a solitary act. Sticky rice is grown patiently on difficult land, often high up in the hills. Once harvested, the paddy is pounded, the chaff separated, winnowed, and cleaned—a slow, careful process.

The rice is then ground into a fine powder. Water is added slowly. Hands bring the dough together and shape it gently—because the hands matter, and that care shows. It is wrapped in banana or plantain leaves, knowing the leaves will add their own gentle flavour, and then steamed. When the leaves are peeled away, soft rice cakes emerge, warm and fragrant. They are eaten with black tea, sweetened with jaggery.

This is rice remembering where it comes from.

Across the Northeast, rice adapts to the land. It grows high in Arunachal Pradesh, spreads across Assam’s plains, thrives in Manipur’s uplands and lowlands, softens in Meghalaya, fills valleys in Mizoram, and survives in hundreds of preserved varieties in Nagaland. Productivity has always been low. The land is fragile. But rice here is grown with acceptance, not ambition.

This was often our evening on Christmas. And on the night of the 31st, it was essential. Rice was pounded in advance, stored as powder. Tanghou was made, and the New Year arrived.

Rice Beyond the Plate
In the Northeast, rice marks more than meals. It signals harvests, gatherings, farewells, and beginnings. Long before it is eaten, rice has already done its work.

Why Smoke Matters
Smoking was never just preservation. Above the hearth, food absorbed time— days, conversations, seasons. The flavour of smoke is also the flavour of waiting.

Smoke Held in Time
Another taste that never leaves me is that of roasted pork. Thick, chunky pieces of meat, salted and sun-dried, kept on the khintung—a bamboo shelf built above the kitchen fire. The khintung is becoming rare now, but when I was young, it was a familiar sight in my grandfather’s kitchen in Mission Compound, deep inside southern Manipur’s Churachandpur district.

It was where nearly everything from the farm ended up. Chillies were hung to dry. Yam leaves, rolled like small woolen balls, were stored away. Mustard leaves were kept there too, drying slowly. The kitchen fire was almost always on. A kettle, blackened by smoke, sat over the fire, filled with tea—that was how visitors were welcomed.

The pork hung there for days, taking in the smoke, drying slowly, cooking in its own time. Once ready, it was roasted over an open fire and eaten just like that. Sometimes it was cooked again with broken rice, ginger, and garlic—what we call mehpok. Other times, the chunky pieces were sliced and made into chutney, mixed with tomatoes, ginger, garlic, and chillies. And then there was the one cooked with mustard leaves—leaves grown right there, in that soil. Because the soil matters.

And maybe that’s why so many who live away from home still wait for parcels of food grown in that same soil. What they really carry is memory and flavour.

How Evenings End
And then there was tea. Most often black, without milk, sweetened with jaggery. When it was milk tea, it was unapologetically rich—just milk boiled repeatedly. It was thick, without sugar. That depth of flavour was a treat and an indulgence, the kind you wanted to sit with a little longer over good, hearty conversations that are now rare.

Tea held everything together. It warmed cold hands, slowed conversations, and anchored evenings. With tanghou, with pork, with firelight, it marked both endings and beginnings. It was poured when suitors came calling, and it was there at funerals and weddings alike. Tea is what connects and symbolises many things.

When the New Year arrived, we brought out our best homegrown tea and drank again. These foods are more than recipes. It is the taste of home.