The Centre has nominated Meghalaya’s Kongthong village as “Best Tourism Villages” award along with two other villages in the country.
The village, also known as the ‘Whistling village’, was nominated by Ministry of Tourism for the World Tourism Organization’s
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman congratulated Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma for the achievement.
Sitharaman informed on Twitter that in Kongthong village people compose a tune for calling a person instead of names.
In this village, a mother calls her child by a tune instead of a name, like–Eeooow, Ooeeo, etc.
The villagers have two names in Kongthong-a regular name and a song name. In fact, the song names have two versions, a short song and a long song.
The short song is normally used at home. The longer names are used in the forest to keep away evil spirits.
The musical names are called ‘jingrwai Iawbei’ in the village.
The village, with a population of around 700 people, has one school up to Class 8th, and 3 km is a secondary school.
For higher studies, the villagers go to Shillong.