![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ratt.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/IMG_3937.jpg\" "\\"Bethel\\"")
<\/a>Bethel<\/em><\/p>\nThis woman also has a talking name, Bethel – and she is to some point a very picture of the whole khasi people.
\n<\/p>\n
First thing her name tells us is her being a Christian: Bethel is an ancient Biblical name. In Meghalaya you can meet a whole list of names from the Old Testament – little dark skinned boys and girls would all be revered Ebenizers, Noahs, Ruths and Judiths.<\/p>\n
Our Bethel has a small food stand, as they call it here, on a “coal” highway, serving mainly the truck drivers. This diner is actually a tiny shed of nailed together wood boards, the walls are fancily decorated with rather fresh newspapers ( she changes those once in a while, so you can always read some two month old news at your morning tea). The food stand is hidden behind the wighway turn, so not too much people ever notice it, but Bethel still keeps her chin up. We pedaled into her shelter late at night, on dusty bikes, with a traditional motto of Russian travellers: “Can you get us some tea, we are so hungry, that we don’t know where to spend a night?” This didn’t scare Bethel away. She made a fire, brought a traditional coal stove for us to get warm and started serving all sorts of food she didn’t sell out that day.<\/p>\n
The five of us very soon broght her a week’s revenue; then guided by Bethel we moved the tables aside and very soon were sound asleep. When we woke up, there was big construction going on outside: practical Bethel was using the earned money to put on a new bright sign-board.<\/p>\n This might be usual thing for you, but for provincial India this is more than fantastic. You will see all those people here, selling bananas, cigarettes and paan, sitting on one corner with these same cigarette pack for many years and handing the business to their kids, that would also seat on the same box for many years and never try to change anything. A business-minded woman here is something like a fairy-tale. But this doesn’t hold true for the matrilineal khasi. (It’s interesting, they not only hand down legacy to daughters, but it’s the youngest daughters who fall heir to property).<\/p>\n Bethel is really proud of her name: she doesn’t know a thing about the ancient Biblical city. For her, as well as for the whole South-East Asia, betel is a plant. A plant probably sharing popularity with the indispensable rice. Betel leafs together with nuts of a betel palm and slacked lime are chewn everywhere from Pakistan to Micronesia Islands. Chewn and spitted away together with the read saliva. All sorts of grounds are found for thi chewing – medical, philosophic, psychological. In India the mixture is called paan or pan. The habit to chew pan is as old as time. Pan keeps drivers awake and makes the soldiers brave, makes those miserable feel happy, those weak strong. 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