Jingbam Dih Sha: The Delicious World of Khasi Tea-Time Snacks
On her return to Shillong, Janice Pariat celebrates her homecoming by returning to eating rice and rice-based tea time treats, locally called jingbam.
Every Friday morning, Kong Syntiew will ring our doorbell, and she is always greeted with joy. She will sit on the chair outside and unpack her wares, and we know exactly what we want: everything!
Putharo, pukhlieñ, ja shulia, pu sla, pumaloi…all beautifully wrapped in banana leaves, often still warm from the cooking. Loosely, all these goodies are umbrella-ed under ‘jingbam dih sha’ or tea-time snacks; otherwise ‘jingbam Khasi’ translating to Khasi food, although given the working-class associations of these snacks, this term might better translate to ‘food of the people’. No surprise then, that jingbam dih sha aren’t stocked in bakeries or cafés around town. In those places you will only find cake, eclairs, lamingtons, quiche, pineapple pastries; more middle-class, colonial British-inspired offerings. Jingbam dih sha are usually relegated to working-class spaces — to baskets lugged around by tea ladies in government offices, to counters in nameless roadside shops selling ‘jadoh’ or rice-meat. They are sold in bulk in Ïew Duh, the traditional market at one end of town, and by kongs (Khasi women) on street corners and pavements. And by people like Kong Syntiew who trek from as far as Laitkor, an hour away from Shillong, to bring us these treats.
I must admit I only recently discovered, or re-discovered, jingbam Khasi.
Putharo are steamed rice cakes usually slathered with something sweet.
We ate putharo as children. Flat, saucer-sized, steamed rice cakes, slathered with something sweet — honey, virulently pink Kissan jam — or wolfed down with doh nei ïong, black sesame pork. And on rare occasions, pukhlieñ, a deep-fried rice ball sweetened with jaggery, crisp on the outside and soft and spongy on the inside. My years spent away from Shillong meant they fell out of my dining habits and my life. Even when I visited home, I wouldn’t really go looking for them. The treats we sought were more ‘exotic’ and ‘exciting’: cream buns, chocolate tarts, Danish pastries, honey cake.
Jingbam Khasi only revealed themselves to me over the pandemic years. As did home.
In the winter of 2021, I was in Shillong on my own, enjoying being here as I hadn’t before, re-discovering for myself what it meant to be in these hills. For so long, I and many others had been told by our parents and elders that ‘home’ anywhere in the northeast wasn’t good enough—being here meant ‘trouble’, curfews, few employment opportunities, political instability—and that to make a life, and to ‘succeed’, one needed to be elsewhere—in the big cities: Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, or better yet ‘abroad’. It was an act of love on their part, driven by concern for our well-being. But it was during the pandemic, a time of turbulent shifts and questioning, that this narrative began to hold less sway on me. I realized home too was enough — there were stories here I wished to write about; forest trails, new and forgotten, that I wanted to follow; certain kinds of food that I would like to welcome back into my life.
It helped that I grew mildly gluten-intolerant, and turned away from maida to other flours. Yes, almond, oat, millet, but also in another kind of home-coming, back to rice. A therapist friend had once told me, eat what your ancestors ate—that it would nourish you best. For so many years, in the north of the country, I’d subsisted on bread of all kinds, telling friends that even though I came from a rice-eating part of the country, I loved my rotis. And I still do, but the shift back to rice—hardly the ‘bad carb’ it was made out to be, I realise—has been surprisingly easy. It was simple enough to replace rotis with rice during mealtimes, but what to eat at tea-time if not wheat-filled baked goods?
Jingbam Khasi. Made with rice flour, steamed, local, healthy.
It was also delightful to discover the wonderfully wide array of jingbam to choose from.
Jingbam dih sha (tea-time snacks) or jingbam Khasi (Khasi food) are an umbrella term for a variety of tea-time snacks, typically made with rice, and found in working class spaces.
Apart from putharo and pukhlieñ, there is pu sla, a hard candy-bar of a treat, steamed in banana leaves and gently sweetened with jaggery. Pu doh, balls of sticky rice flour embedded with bits of melting pork fat. Pumaloi, pretty little half-moons made with purple rice flour usually dunked in sweet milky tea. Ja shulia, pats of sticky black rice, best eaten with generous amounts of warm milk and sugar. ‘Rice cake’, a delicately sweet rice flour cupcake drizzled with strands of coconut. ‘Cake Saw’, which looks like a deep, rich chocolate cake, made of steamed, jaggery-sweetened dense red rice. I’m also still on the hunt for the elusive pu nei, a rice flour cake dotted with black sesame.
Pumaloi, pretty little half-moons made with purple rice flour usually dunked in sweet milky tea.
Pukhlieñ is a deep-fried rice ball sweetened with jaggery, crisp outside and soft on the inside.
The humble jingbam dih sha are beginning to make an elevated appearance on certain menus around town. A high-end cocktail bar serves mini-putharo with toppings like smoked pork and local wild mushrooms. At a book launch event a few winters ago, pumaloi was paired with a citrusy orange compote. Elsewhere, at another literary evening, ja shulia was served with local cinnamon and vanilla ice cream. But this, to me, doesn’t seem enough.
There’s so much to celebrate about these local snacks — how they are hearty and wholesome and inexpensive; how easily, flexibly they complement sweet and savoury; how varied they are in appearance and texture and taste. So much to celebrate because this is the food of the people, joining us from tea shop to tea shop, tea basket to tea basket, their presence crisscrossing our hills, reminding us that we are rice eaters, and this is the food of home, this is food for the soul.
Janice Pariat is an author and storyteller. Her latest book, Everything the Light Touches, (winner of the 2023 AutHer Award for Fiction & Longlisted for the 2023 JCB Prize), is available here.
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