Every four years, most of the world turns its attention to the FIFA World Cup. In Saiden, a village nestled in the hills of Meghalaya in northeast India, a different spectacle also unfolds.
Villagers watch the rain clouds gather, wait for the first summer heat to subside, and for the moment the forest floor gives way beneath their feet. Then, almost overnight, the silence vanishes and the forest begins to sing.
Millions of niangtaser cicadas emerge from the ground after spending four years underground, transforming the village for a few short weeks from May to June.
“Every four years, the World Cup comes and the niangtaser come too,” said Evansis Jones Myrthong, the strapping village headman in his forties. “For us, they are the same calendar.”
As a teenager, Evansis spent evenings collecting cicadas, then hurried to the village school building – home to the only television in the village, a black-and-white set provided by the government – to watch World Cup matches live late into the night. “The school building was packed,” he recalled. “We left the niangtaser at home and went straight there to watch until two or three in the morning.”
He still remembers the players more vividly than the months: Roberto Baggio, Romario, Bebeto, Batistuta. Most of the villagers supported Italy. The old TV still sits in the office of the Dorbar Shnong village council.
This coincidence is not merely curious. The niangtaser cicada, a rare species found only in this corner of Meghalaya, follows a strict four-year cycle, just like the world’s biggest football tournament. In a village where generations have grown up awaiting both, entire lives are marked by their return.
“The sound of the forest and the arrival of the World Cup are the same signal. One starts to buzz; the other begins. It’s that simple a calendar,” said Livingstone B Marak, a lean betel nut farmer in a faded baseball cap, his face lined from years of working the hills.
Just after sunset, Livingstone – affectionately known as Livi in the village – pulls on rubber boots, switches on a black plastic flashlight, slings a hand-woven bamboo cage called a tyndong over his back, and steps into the night.
