Is Ningol Chakkouba turning into a social contest ?

Ranjan Yumnam *

Is Ningol Chakkouba turning into a social contest ? :: Pix - TSE

After one’s own marriage, Ningol Chakkouba is perhaps the only unavoidable and the most important event for a Meitei. The reasons are apparent. Ningol Chakkouba celebrates and renews family bonds, and it is an occasion to partake in an indulgent spread of delicacies topped with a multi-cuisine grand feast. Then, there is the unspoken yet the most significant part of the celebration: the gifts to the female siblings, especially those married.

In recent years, the festival faced hiccups due to COVID-19 and now the ethnic conflict that has engulfed Manipur and disrupted all aspects of society since May 2023. However, if truth be told, the interruptions were notional; families just fixed another date for the get-together, skipping the original date of Ningol Chakkouba. In that way, it can be said that Ningol Chakkouba is immutable, like a law of Physics.

This may be a good thing. Blood is thicker than water, and what better way to remind us that family towers above all relationships than by devoting one particular day in a year for it ? People break laws, commit murder, and act heroically to protect their kin and family honour. The Taj Mahal, the Medici Chapel and the Pyramids are living monuments of love for a wife, family, and clan members.

MISUNDERSTANDING SIGNS AND SIGNIFIED

Ningol Chakkouba has its own symbolic architecture centred on gifts that signify the love of the parents and men for their daughters and sisters. The material gifts by themselves are value-neutral; they don't scream “I love you.” Stretching this logic, the expensive Rani Fee doesn’t come with a QR code that scans to “I love you more.” The actual worth of the gifts is in the meanings imbued to them by us.

The simple cotton phanek is no less valuable than a designer Muka Fee if its primary function is to reaffirm and demonstrate by way of a token the sacrosanct nature of our blood relationships. In other words, the gifts are the signs, and the emotional connection is the signified.

Problems arise when the gifts (signs) and the meaning (signified) are confused. Over the years, we have decided that expensive gifts represent more ardent love than simple ones. This is a thinking fallacy, one that defeats the pristine spirit of the Ningol Chakkouba.

The second issue that needs to be highlighted is the social competition in raising the bar of the gifts' monetary value. This is the consequence of equating expensive with profundity, as discussed above, regarding the conflation of signs and meanings.

Ningol Chakkouba, more than an anticipated event, seems to cause anxiety for many parents as they try to outdo or match their neighbours on expenditures to arrange elaborate gifts. For this reason, poor parents dread the prospect of Ningol Chak-kouba like a Damo-cles’ sword hanging over their heads as the D-Day nears.

Besides the financial challenge, a family of less means has to grapple with the twin evils of social judgment and their daughters' disaffection. The social judgement is vicious. If you fall short of society’s expectations and fail to arrange lavish gifts, you are seen as an irresponsible provider and guardian of your family. Social ranking, inferred and unspoken, is biting and attacks your very identity of manhood.

The pressure from the women further heightens the sense of urgency of making a good show. Married women always feel shame and belittlement if they return to their husbands’ homes and have nothing special to show, such as gifts received from their parents. The evening on Ningol Chakkouba is a ritual of comparing gifts and feeling proud or disappointed in front of other women and sometimes husbands.

Ningol Chakkouba, then, has evolved into two cultures—the low and the high. The popular culture of celebrating familial ties is divided by the materialistic yardstick of gifts in the middle.

The low culture is for poor families that can’t afford extravagant mementoes, and the high culture identifies itself with bulging gifts. This chasm results from the minority elite’s effort to differentiate from the masses by adopting exclusive practices bordering on excesses.

MAKE A FAMILY PACT

The writer offers two suggestions to reduce this artificial divide and prevent Ningol Chakkouba from becoming an instrument for signalling social status. It demands a pact of understanding in every family that pricey gifts are secondary to what is sign- ified—reinforcing family connection and conti- nuing a cultural heritage. The signs and the signified must not be confused.

It must be highlighted that real competition in society should be measured with worthwhile achievements in education, sports, entrepreneurship, literature and art, skills, or social service. The materialistic rat race on Ningol Chakkouba is too low a hanging fruit even for a wealthy family that wants to be seen practising high culture. It doesn't add any value to society, save for hand-wringing, envy, and needless social comparison.

Increasing consumerism also hurts the local econo-my more than it enriches it. Most popular items, from industrially packaged sweets to coconuts that women take to their parental home, are bought from department stores that sell goods replenished by the supply chains run and benefited by developed States, draining the local economy. The local woman vendors do not have a chance in this lopsided business.

If 3 lakh families spend an average of Rs 10000, the total bill is estimated at Rs 300 crore, inundating the market on this day. It is doubtful whether any chunk of this amount goes to the pouches of Ima Ibens peddling their modest wares on the roadside.

This is outrageous, given that many families, especially those in the relief camps, struggle to find a sustainable livelihood and business opportunities while vast sums of money and business opportunities get diverted to outside companies on a silver platter.

A COMMON GIFT MENU

The second suggestion is to standardise the gift menu and set quantity limits. For instance, the Meitei community can chalk out and advocate a prescriptive list of permissible gifts and their quantities to promote mass awareness and, ultimately, a new norm.

Of course, liberal-minded sceptics may sneer at this idea, arguing that it will infringe on matters that fall within the private domain of families. They may protest that nobody should dictate how much they spend and how they celebrate the festival.

They are cutting the clothes according to their income size, they will retort. After all, it’s an annual event that can't be celebrated like daily bathroom routines, and so it's up to the individual families to exercise restraint according to their capacity.

The argument is flawed. The private behaviour and lifestyle of high society are contagious and have an outsized impact on people's aspirations to belong to that group, even through superficial pretences. Often, the superficial is the superstructure of the cultural trend that becomes a fetish.

Underlying the rising pomposity in the celebration of Ningol Chakkouba is the conspicuous consumption that globalisation promotes through the mass media, ostentatious displays of wealth by the ultra-rich, and brand consciousness fuelled by advertisements. The ‘Ve-blen goods’, not essential in life but primarily luxurious accessories, are all the rage, a phenomenon seeping into our small society.

Culture consists of beliefs, norms, practices, languages, rituals, and material objects and can be likened to a living organism. It evolves through its ideology and material components, which are equally important.

Non-material components, like religion, secular thoughts, and norms, drive a culture's character more than the material features. But when the materialistic obsession trumps the spiritual content, a community loses order and starts fighting for the material prize.

Unfortunately, the traditional Ningol Chakkouba has been coopted into a tournament for modern wants and social status that has no limits. By eschewing over-the-top gifts, we can restore the true spirit of the festival, which is to elevate the emotional bonds of family over the glittering of ephemeral gifts. This is how we can ignite a counter-culture.

May this Ningol Chakkouba be a happy and meaningful one in which the laughter in your family drowns the allure of materialism.