Nima Wangdi writes about a favourite Bhutanese pastime
As the mercury dips below zero, bringing to a close the agriculture and tourist season in the central district of Bumthang, nuts start to crack.
With nothing much to do, Bumthaps spent their winter days sitting outside their houses and shops soaking up the sun while leisurely cracking walnuts and scooping out their oily insides.
Cracking walnuts is a family affair and fathers take the lead role. Nuts are prised open, using a knife, and the pieces passed to the women and children, who carry needles to pierce the inside and pop it into their mouths and to dig out the bits stuck in the corners of the shell.
Sometimes, children break the walnuts with stones and, more often than not, end up smashing a delicate finger in the process.
According to Lemo, 58, from Kurje, there are two types of walnuts, locally known as Khachi and Kongda. “Khachi has a hard shell and can be cracked only with a knife or a stone, but the Kongda can be cracked open by the teeth,” said Lemo. “However, the Khachi is superior in taste and flavour.”
Lemo said that sometimes, when she consumes a lot of walnuts, more than a dozen, it gives her a headache and irritates the throat.
Bumthaps also grind the inside of the nut and use it to prepare suja (butter tea). Most of the dzongkhag’s supply of walnuts, one of the oldest fruit trees known to man, come from Chokhortoe.
Karma Namgay, 66, from Chokhor, said that walnut shells are as good as hard wood and when burnt in the bukhari (wood-fed heater) keeps the fire alive for a longer time and gives more heat.
The soft cover on the outer shell is also used as a dye to give a black colour to fibre. The walnuts are harvested in autumn and dried before they hit the local market. In Bumthang town, for Nu 5 you get two pieces of the Kongda walnut or three pieces of the Khachi variety.
“The thing about eating walnuts is that once you’ve had one, you feel like having more and more and it really affects your housework,” said an old woman from Saram in Chokhortoe. “I used to eat walnuts as a young girl and I still do today.”
