Rinchin Jomba’s momo recipe stole the spotlight at the Millet Recipe Contest in 2023, organized by Krishi Vigyan Kendra, the government-run agricultural center.

Jomba’s special recipe was made of kongpu, a type of finger millet. Her aim is to revive this Indigenous grain for the younger generation.

As a child, right before sunrise, my siblings and I would often accompany our father on treks to the higher altitudes. Climbing the mountain would tire us. We carried loads of our harvested crops (maize, millet), bartering them for yak chhurpi and ghee. We would return to our homes only at night.

Jomba belongs to the Monpa tribal community, an agrarian ethnic group that has long inhabited Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang and West Kameng districts. Some subgroups traditionally cultivated millets, barley, buckwheat, and maize, while other subgroups such as the Brokpa specialize in rearing yaks.

All the traditional grains are disappearing, with refined flour becoming easily accessible in markets. Because of eating such food items, we don’t have the physical strength that our ancestors used to have.

Earlier, the Monpas were largely self-reliant. They lived isolated in the Himalayan high altitudes, with limited or no access to the settlements below, and depended heavily on local resources. However, this isolation also meant that food scarcity was common.

In the mid-1960s, after border conflicts with China, the Indian Army established permanent bases in Arunachal Pradesh. Rice and wheat became popular after that, and the local residents also got introduced to some spices and oil.

Earlier, it was difficult to travel in vehicles due to poor road connectivity. Nobody owned vehicles. Because it’s a cold region, only a few vegetables such as radish and lettuce used to be cultivated.

When road connectivity improved and the government provided subsidized rations, rice became a staple. Before that, we used to have coarsely ground flour.

When food became cheaply accessible, most farmers gave up traditional farming. Even if they did go back to farming, it was for crops that are commercially viable.

As people migrated from villages to towns and cities, they also left behind their traditional agrarian lifestyle.

Now, innovative efforts are in progress to reconnect with traditional food items.

Damu’s Heritage Dine is one such initiative where we thought that Monpa food, which is directly linked to forest, is a foraging-based diet. So, we thought if there’s a way that we can have a restaurant where people can get to experience traditional Monpa food, then it would be a win-win for the community as well as for tourists who are coming down.

We are trying to see how the people here, the locals here, can have an alternative source of livelihood, as an incentive to promote and to conserve their forests and natural resources.

We were part of a women’s self-help group. Nishant sir from WWF-India convinced us to work on this restaurant’s idea. We asked our mothers about the dishes that we used to eat. We told Nishant about the dishes.

So, I think while we were discovering or making the list of recipes, the one recipe that stood out to us was this recipe called phursing gombu. It’s essentially made of two key components. One is corn flour. So, corn flour dough is roasted over an open flame over coal. And then it’s shaped like a bowl. And in that bowl, you put in the resin. It’s the oleoresin of the Chinese lacquer tree.

Very few people can harvest phursing. It causes severe allergies amongst people. I mean, I think it’s about to be extinct in terms of the accessibility of the oil. And, it’s only one person supplying it.

So, I think that’s one dish that’s definitely attributed to Damu’s Heritage Dine, and you know, the Chug’s conservation efforts to bring back that recipe. We believe that because it comes from the forest, the forests have to remain for this food item to remain. So, the more popular this becomes, we are definitely supporting the conservation of forests here.

We have requested the farmers in the area to cultivate buckwheat, millet, and red rice. We will buy those crops from them. This time, they cultivated a lot of millets.

In just a year, Jomba’s millet momo has become a hit among the residents and tourists. The greatest pride for Damu’s Heritage Dine is that people from the Monpa community regularly visit the diner. For many, it’s an emotional journey back to their childhood, eating foods once lovingly prepared by their mothers and grandmothers.