THE YAKHA: CULTURE, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN ...

striking in terms of the dichotomy presented at the beginning of this
section was that they did not produce many dairy products. During our
first year in the village, in the vicinity of the house where we iived
there was no-one in possession of a milk buffalo or cow, The tea we
consumed was either made from belcham (Acomastylis elata) bought in the
market or was flavoured with lime from squeezed juice kept in the sun
for a week to stabilize and then stored in the kitchen in a bottle.
Many Yakha just had tea with a pinch of sait, although those that liked
and could afford it used sugar. However, milk was never used. Other
dairy products were similarly rare: the only time we had curd (m) was
at Dasai- when Apa was sent some by his m a relative (a Tamang) further
up the valley. I wondered at first whether this might be due to a
biological inability to process lactose but when our mother was sick one
day and we purchased some milk from the tea shop (which in turn was
supplied by a Chetri family from up the hill in Phumling) to make
Horlicks to share with her and Kamala, this was well received.
"Drinking milk is just not our habit" we were told; "cuha is our milk".
More strange than the lack of milk cows in a society where the
eating of beef was forbidden was the general lack of buffalo, since the
Yakha, unlike the Brahmins and Chetris, ate this meat. Buffalo meat was
required for wedding feasts and for pnul-~8ti day in Dasai- (see below).
While we did occasionally eat Yakha-owned and killed buffalo at times
other than Dasai-, we had the impression from our survey and general
conversations that it was becoming less common for Yakha to keep buffalo
than it had been in the past. This was probably because of their
increasing expense, as Macfarlane (pers. comm.) has observed amongst the
Gurunga A young buffalo from the 1 ivestock off ice in Mamling cost NRs