Discolouring someone's soul? Of Magic Potions and Pumpkin Hats

After a long break and with no excuse... except for terrible internet connectivity in rural Nagaland, but i've got something interesting that i really want to share here.

I have come across many people in Nagaland who believe in "Jaadu" or magic. When people say "Jaadu kuri she" (magic spell cast on someone) it usually has a negative connotation, "jaadu" here almost always means magic performed to harm someone. I remember hearing quite a number of stories from friends and relatives about people who became mentally unstable after getting some sort of magic spell or magic potion from someone, mostly love potions! It is interesting to note that these evil spells it seems are usually a result of intense love or hate; when the victim or victim's family commit an act utterly unforgivable to those who possess magic or in many cases when desperate plea for love is not reciprocated.

In our oral traditions too there are records of people who performed witchcraft, people who could talk to the dead, or designated individuals who performed magical rituals to heal the sick, see off the dead, talk to dead ancestors besides those whose spirits were tigers and pythons (Were-tigers are real, at least here! But that needs a separate story-telling session). According to ancestors and elders, in our culture witchcraft is hereditary  - only the offspring of a witch or a wizard can inherit magical powers from their parents. Here,  no "Muggle" :-) can have magic no matter how much they wish for it.

The Sümi word "Ghü" is to dye, to turn something into a different colour and "Ghübide", usually negative, is to totally alter the colour or character of something or someone leaving no trace of the original look. So in Sümi, one meaning of Ghü is to dye, usually dying of raw cotton yarn with different herbal concoctions transforming the yarn mostly into red, indigo, yellow and black for weaving traditional shawls and skirts. The other meaning of Ghü translates to something like "dying someone's being" changing the very colour of her soul with some sort of magic potion.

In the month of April 2012, i came across this man in a relative's house. I wouldn't have noticed anything if it wasn't for the conspicuous rind of Pumpkin around his head. At first, no one was ready to tell me what was going on, they said it was just a treatment for headache.

For a day i decided to respect their silence but the Pumpkin Hat treatment continued the next day. More fresh pumpkin rinds chopped and fashioned into hats and even the treatment duration strictly timed: putting on the hat every alternate hour, replacing with a fresh new rind.Very scientific!

I could control my curiosity no longer and i almost forced my relatives to tell me everything saying that i was genuinely interested in learning about this strange ailment and this extraordinary treatment. After much coaxing and pleading and pulling them into discussions about some very unrelated topics, they conceded.

This man agreed to tell me his story (which he told in bits and pieces because he was "jaadu-ed". I got a "formal consent" from him to publish his story and his photo(without showing his face of course!) wearing the Pumpkin Hat -- what i was really curious about.
It has been a while since this man moved away his village and has been working in a farm in another village. He said he left his village after certain complications arose between his family members regarding land ownership. Although he maintains a cordial relationship with his kith and kin he rarely sees them and it was after a long time he traveled back to his village in 2011 to pay a visit to his relatives.

A few months after returning from his village he fell ill, his mind was disturbed, he could not eat or sleep properly and headaches increased. This was when people around him and he started suspecting that a "Jaadu" was performed on him. His friends took him to a Witch Doctor (yes!) to diagnose the illness and they finally found out the cause: apparently on his last visit to his native village someone had cast a spell on him using some strong magic potion discolouring his mind and soul.

The Witch Doctor prescribed a list of remedies and the Pumpkin Hat was the major treatment he had to undergo for a week or two. Only the white pumpkin variety is used for this treatment. It cools the head and and the mind when worn for a long period. Cooling Pumpkin. Makes sense.

He traveled over 200 Kms to Dimapur to see the "doctor" and a friend had to administer the medications, keeping a strict timer for Pumpkin Hat wearing duration, night and day.

Fortunately for him, the Witch Doctor's treatment worked. All the efforts paid off. This man is now cured and in good health.

Curiously, he told me that the same headaches would increase when time got closer to the State Assembly Elections. Nagaland State Assembly Election 2013 is near! We might need a lot of Witch Doctors!

P.S: There's also this local treatment of Jaundice by rubbing lime on the patient's head and pulling out black thread-like substance from the skull to cure the illness, mostly performed by elderly women. For this i shall investigate more and share the findings here.