parai wagu "new rice"

The Dusuns have all kind of sacred beliefs when it comes to food especially rice. My mom sent us some parai wagu last weekend, having finally had the time to have some husked. She has started harvesting a month ago but as usual never had the time to enjoy her early harvest.

(Parai wagu smells really good and it is even more so for some types of rice. The texture is also different, more glutinous when cooked.)

The thing is, when a Dusun gives you some parai wagu, you are supposed to ask whether the harvest owner has already started cooking from that batch of harvest first. If not, you are supposed to wait until they have, before you can cook the rice yourself. Since I kept forgetting to call my mom to ask whether she has done that, I had to wait a few days before I could finally make sumptous porridge this morning. Normally after two days the harvest owner would have cooked from it. Unlike my mom-in-law who, everytime when giving us parai wagu, always tells us when can we start cooking the rice, my mom normally just assumes that we know when...

Failure to observe the belief will bring harms to the harvest owner. No one I know has ever experienced it, but supposedly it will cause significant reduction on the next cycle of harvest :-)