The World Cup cicada: India’s rare insect on a four-year clock

Every four years, much of the world turns its attention to World Cup football.

In Saiden, a village tucked into the hills of Meghalaya in northeastern India, another spectacle is under way.

Villagers watch for gathering rain clouds, the first break in the summer heat, and the moment the forest floor yields beneath their feet. Then, almost overnight, the silence lifts 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 brief weeks from May into June.

"Every four years the World Cup comes and so does the niangtaser," says Evansis Jones Myrthong, the broad-shouldered village chief in his mid-forties. "For us, they are the same calendar."

As a teenager, Evansis spent evenings collecting cicadas before hurrying to the village school building, where Saiden's only television - a government-issued black-and-white set - showed live World Cup matches late into the night.

"The school building would be packed," he recalls. "We would keep the niangtaser at home and go straight there to watch until two or three in the morning."

He still remembers the players more clearly than the years: Roberto Baggio, Romario, Bebeto, Batistuta. Most people in the village supported Italy.

The old television still sits in the office of the Dorbar Shnong, the village community council.

The coincidence is more than a curiosity. The niangtaser, a rare cicada found only in this corner of Meghalaya, emerges on a rigid four-year cycle that mirrors football's biggest tournament. In a village where generations have grown up waiting for both, entire stretches of life are measured by its return.

"The sound of the forest and the arrival of the World Cup are the same signal. One starts humming; the other [just] begins. The calendar is that simple,” offers Livingstone B Marak, a slender betel leaf farmer in a faded baseball cap, his lined face shaped by years of working the hills.

Just after sunset, Livingstone, fondly known as Livi in the village, adjusts his rubber goloshes and clicks on his black plastic torch. Flinging a handmade bamboo container, called a tyndong, across his back, he heads off into the night.