ABSTRACT
‘Do not accept guwa pan (areca nut and betel leaf invariably offered by the Khasis of Meghalaya as a sign of hospitality) from a Khasi girl.’ This was how one of the authors of this chapter was cautioned by his mother when he was about to leave for Shillong to join North-Eastern Hill University as a Reader in September 1991. When asked why, she said: ‘If you do that you will be under her spell throughout your life.’ His mother’s construction of the Khasis was certainly not based on her first-hand knowledge of the people in question but on the basis of what she had heard from her relatives who came to Meghalaya from the eastern hills of Nepal in the 1890s to work in the forests and on the roads.
