Handsome raiment though you wear,
I’m not for you, I do declare.
(The original Kachári verse is singularly emphatic.)
Or
“You come to me in bright array:
I’m not for you; be off, I say.
This dandy swain my mate would be?
No ‘second-hand lover,’ girls, for me.”
The above couplets may perhaps be fairly looked upon as typical illustrations of the Kachári temperament and character, and it may be inferred from them that human nature among this interesting race does not greatly differ from human nature in other and more civilised countries of the world.
It may perhaps be added that whilst the Garos living in the plains observe both the January and the April Bihus, their brethren in the Hills ignore both, though they would seem to have certain special harvest festivals of their own. The people of the North Cachar Hills, on the other hand, seem to observe only one annual Bihu, of the nature of a harvest home, at any time between October and December. These Kachári festivals are almost always attended by an immoderate consumption of the national rice-beer, not to say by actual drunkenness in not a few cases. On the other hand, they have their good side in that they help to keep the people to some extent beyond the influence of the destructive vortex of Hinduism, in which their simple primitive virtues might otherwise be so readily engulfed, and the adoption of which in whole or in part is invariably accompanied by a grave and deep-seated deterioration in conduct and character.