In Shillong, jingbam dih sha is an integral part of the urban landscape – sold at stalls on street corners and tea stalls, and in its busy markets where women sit at tables with crouched legs laden with an array of these rice-cooked dishes, or roving hawkers carrying them in conical cane baskets. Many deliver their breakfast to offices across the city both in the morning and afternoon. Near the entrance of Ooduh, a young woman sets up shop every morning around 9:30. On a low table made of bricks and wooden planks, she neatly arranges in piles an array of boiled, baked and fried kappu, wrapped in leaves or translucent polythene bags.

There are thick wheels of pusaw, red rice cakes the color of rich plum cakes; cup like pu maloi; Banana pancakes with thick, large, golden crust; The ubiquitous putharo – soft, round, puffed pancakes, the size of small saucers, usually made from high-yield Minari rice from the lush green valleys of the Ri-Bhoi district; And bags of coffee-coloured pukhlane – puffy balls of deep-fried rice and jaggery batter. Crisp edges, soft, chewy but honeycomb-like interior, pukhlen is filled with a deep, mellow sweetness that sits on the tongue like a distant memory.

Putharo, on the other hand, has virtually no flavor, and spoils the taste of the curries and spices eaten with it. At breakfast stalls throughout the city, putharo is typically served with doh-nei-iong or dohjem – ground beef, or pork (usually intestine) cooked with black sesame paste – enhanced with the typical Khasi cluster of ingredients: turmeric, onion, a little garlic and salt. Putharo can also be eaten with jam or a dollop of butter, Chef Dariti tells me, as she hands me a bag full of kpu she picked up on the way to meet me – a stack of putharo and a half-dozen pukhlen.

‘Also,’ she says, ‘putharo tastes great with tungrimbai.’ The spicy, protein-rich chutney is made from the eponymous tungrimbai, or fermented soybean paste, which is sold in Shillong’s crowded market stalls – wrapped in neat leaf parcels – amid piles of fiery chillies, plump tomatoes, wild berries and raw black pepper. Pasih, a village in the West Jaintia Hills district, is ‘famous for its huge production and the best quality of Tungrimbai.’ Recipes for masalas, rich in spices and herbs, vary from household to household and adopt various regional variations. Chef Dariti’s family recipe calls for adding some pork fat to boiling water, then adding dried bird’s-eye chilies (or sometimes also bhut jolokia), a little garlic, yellow turmeric, and mashed soybean paste. Next, crushed black sesame or perilla seeds – or a mixture of both – are added to the boiling pot along with chives and fragrant ing makhir. ‘The masala is usually made in large batches and can be stored for a few days,’ Dariti told me. She adds, ‘I like to give a generous dab of Tungrimbai to my puthars.’

But these indigenous rice cakes aren’t just traditional snacks; They are true cultural artifacts – a storehouse of culinary knowledge and techniques passed down through generations, from mothers to daughters, from masters to students. They are also at the center of a thriving small-scale cottage industry. Even though these snacks fuel the city, they mainly come from home kitchens in the suburban towns and villages around Shillong.

One rainy morning, I set out to meet one such family in Mawlai, a suburban town not far from Shillong – people who have been in the business of making KPU for generations.

The early morning drive to Mawlai in the shabby Kali-Pili is beautiful in parts. The lush green colors of the landscape shining with rain, the darkness and anxiety beneath the darkness, the watercolor sky filled with rain clouds, looks beautiful but sad. We turn left from the highway, onto a narrow uphill road into Mawlai Umthalong village. I look at Ibaiineh Myleem Umlong – aka Iba – or rather, her bright purple canopy, at the end of a misty tree-lined road. Soft-spoken and quietly cheerful, Iba welcomes me with a bright smile and points to a narrow alley around the corner that seems to lead downwards. She says, ‘My house is on that side,’ but starts walking in the opposite direction. She tells me, ‘We will go to my aunt’s house first.’ Iba’s late aunt’s family is also in the business of making kpu, she says – like many other families in the area.

I follow the Iba through a large gate and an open area, behind the main house, to a sort of summer kitchen – a large room separate from the main house. Sparsely decorated and immaculately clean, the room’s red-oxide floor stands out against its canary-yellow walls. The upper part of the walls has become coal-black like the roof due to the soot rising from the wood fire. The place is bustling with activity, yet still has a feeling of peace.

I am welcomed by a woman seated on a low stool at a table filled with piles of wax leaves – water glistening on their shiny surface – and some steel utensils. Her name, she tells me, is Riznai Maylim Umlong. ‘And that’s my father, Wanamanik Te Haba,’ she says, pointing to an elderly man wearing a green windcheater and checkered newsboy hat, sitting on a low stool in front of a long row of wood-burning stoves. Bundles of pine wood logs used to fuel the oven are placed on a shelf built into the wall above the stove. Thaba pours ladlefuls of the thick, yellow solution onto black clay plates with concave bottoms and places a lid on top. ‘He’s making putharo,’ Rijnai told me, ‘and traditional black clay pottery called sarav. These are made in Jaintia Hills. Putharo comes out of the plates as a soft, puffy, moon-like pan cake, with a few air holes in it. He throws them onto a huge net, called a net, which is woven in two layers from a type of reed bamboo and dried palm leaves. A young girl sits near the net with a forked knife, and scrapes off the smallest marks or stains of soot on the puthars. There should not be any stain on these moons.

Riznai, on the other hand, takes scoops of cooked glutinous rice – a mix of black and white glutinous varieties grown in the hills of Meghalaya – places them on leaves, pats and shapes them into rectangles with the edge of her palm, and wraps them carefully, as if they were gifts. She tells me she’s making jaa shuliya, and the leaves, locally called sla lamet, are from Phrynium pubinerve, which grows wild in the wet, dark forests of Meghalaya. I have seen these leaves all over Shillong, especially in the markets. They are used extensively as packaging material in the region, and kpu usually comes wrapped in these leaves which probably release some of their aroma into the delicate cakes prepared from them.

‘Ja Shulia is eaten as a thick syrup mixed with jaggery or sugarcane juice,’ says a woman with a big smile as we walk in. She introduces herself as Stefirai, Riznai’s sister. More women arrive, wearing traditional aprons of different colors, with big smiles and kind words. They are all sisters, he told me, and Thaba is their father. Iba explained to me how in the Khasi tradition, family and clan lineage are traced through the female line. Children take their mother’s surname, and daughters inherit property. When daughters get married, it is their husbands who join their families and clans. In most Khasi villages, the father is called Ki Shongkha, which simply means ‘the coming husband’.

‘Indeed, it is the youngest daughter – called Khadduh – who inherits the responsibility of the ancestral home as well as the aging parents. “He should continue to live with them,” says Iba.

Other daughters may choose to stay in the family home or move out. “They usually live close to each other,” says Iba. Even though Khasi society is more gender egalitarian than patriarchal societies, men still have ‘determined structures of power’. …Khasi women are barred from participating in traditional political bodies, even though they own property, participate significantly in trade and commerce, dominate public spaces, and hold influence within their clans. Khasi darbars, or village councils and assemblies, have traditionally been exclusively male spaces. Domestic responsibilities are also mainly the responsibility of women. Iba told me, ‘In most Khasi households, kitchen work is done by women, but men often help in the kitchen and household work.’

One of the girls frees the aviator and takes over Putharo Station. On a regular day, they make around 1,000 putharos, but depending on the order it can go up to 2,000 or more. This is his specialty. Every morning the sisters start work at five o’clock. Filter, dry and grind the rice soaked the previous evening. ‘Nowadays we use a machine, but originally semi-dried rice was ground manually using a traditional wooden mortar and pestle,’ says Stephirai. Milling rice is an important and necessary step in making all these rice cakes.

I think of a folk song from the North Khasi Hills that I came across recently: ‘Together, O Together, Jrap, I. / To pound rice together, ब्रुप, ii. / Sticky rice, sticky grains, / together at aunty’s tyngkong’

Stephirai told me that people start arriving around seven in the morning for a supply of freshly made kpu to accompany their tea. As if on cue, a young boy of about ten years old, his eyes still full of sleep, asked for a dozen putharos. Riznai quickly wraps up the pile of freshly made puthars and hands them to the boy.

‘Some people may even bring their own tea,’ Stephirai says, placing a plate of ‘rice cakes’ on a small oval table in front of me. Cupcake-shaped – snow-white and spongy – the rice cakes are loaded with sugar. I detect floral notes in the rice, which mingle with nuttiness when sprinkled on top of coconut flakes – like freshly fallen powdered snow. The rice cakes come with a large glass mug of sha ari – red tea. A fresh wave of rain in the lush green surroundings…