Excerpt from "The Nature Lover's Guide to Survival" by Shirley Lalrinfeli

Blogger's Note: Mizo writers in English tend to write more poetry than prose, particularly among the younger generation, so I was frankly euphoric to come across this short novel last week. A very recently published YA book, written in impeccable English with a fairly authentic Mizo setting and entirely plausible characterization. It took a while to track down the writer but it's a relatively small world around here so here we go :)

                                                                       One

      It was in September that Puia somehow decided that he was tired of his life. It wasn’t a decision that he took because of some major mishap. It was rather a series of unfortunate events that somehow ended in a death wish. He stopped coming to school, rarely attended classes, and when he did he often got kicked out for doodling or daydreaming. He drank. A lot. And I guess a seventeen-year-old is not supposed to have all these bottles of alcohol in his room, but he did and he knew where to fill up his stock. Presumably from his dad’s.

I wanted him to stop. I tried almost all the behavioural modification techniques that they have come up with to stop addictions. I talked to him about repressed feelings and childhood trauma and everything I could find on the internet. It just didn’t work. He wouldn’t stop, and I couldn’t force it upon him either.

Puia didn’t get any better than he was when all of this first started. It didn’t help matters much that Anu and Apa were extremely cautious about my hanging out with him, so we met up for nothing more than a few hours every week just to catch up on things. There are a lot of things to catch up on when you’ve known someone for ten years and they sort of evaporate into thin air, like their whole presence in your life was all just this hazy dream or something.

Puia was the “got his nose in my business but also both hands on my back” friend. The substitute for a big brother, my fellow treasure-hunter and mystery-seeker. A stargazer and moon-watcher every now and then when he fancied becoming one, and always, always a story-appreciator. Now he was light acid rain sprinkling its cold mist on your skin, on the verge of exploding into a downpour.

A usual day in our lives was now markedly different. We talked less, possibly because of the fact that he disliked company (but I constantly imposed it upon him anyway).

I supposedly had Borderline Personality Disorder as a psychiatrist had concluded that I did, so I had to take medication for my supposed depression which I was sure was only sleeplessness disguised as a monster lurking in the dark, but then no one really listened. Anu and Apa insisted that I chit chat with my therapist Pa Terema every week, braving the storm. Because I was a warrior, we come from warrior stock, don’t you ever forget that, young woman, that you are a fighter of the greatest physical-and-mental-strength kind, and you should never let that memory slip like a cartoon character slipping on banana peel. Pa Terema would ask me all these questions about emotions and feelings and all sorts of mumbo jumbo. Then, seeing that I wasn’t cooperating, he would sigh and go into a long lecture on the juicy site-of-origin-of-all-rumours that was teenage depression and how I must never give in to the big bad monster of mood disorders and brain chemicals gone awry, some racing at the speed of F1 vehicles while some preferred to laze about in the vacuity of my brain. He was okay, except that I didn’t want to tell any strange-looking man that I had dreamt about big gnarly hands clawing at me, nails digging into me, or that I had panic attacks whenever I left for school. These secrets were better left unsaid, leaving them as thoughts that come before words do, before language can expose them.

And then there were the people whom you could share the most amazingly embarrassing secrets with but who won’t ever judge you. Puia was one of those very few and fine people. And I knew for sure he would never betray my trust.

It was on a frost-bitten Monday morning in November that Puia came into my room, microscopically thin red lines in his eyes, hair a mess, like he had been caught in a storm and had just narrowly escaped with only his Iron Maiden hoodie to give him what little protection it could. He stank of stale alcohol. Like it would ever surprise me. He crouched by my bed, his head buried in his hands, and I could hear the tick-tock of the clock as the seconds passed by, then a whole minute. I thought his hoodie was black when he came in. When I looked closer, I noticed it had the faint grey of twilight, the colour of a nesting place where birds would flock for food and company, the shade of a safe hiding place. I stepped in on his daydreaming.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Just drowsy."

“Let’s go up to the tower.”

“Right now? It’s too cold up there.”

“All the better. Besides, there’s something I’ve been meaning to show you.”

We took a ten-minute walk to the water tower, which had an indubitably rich and colourful history, needless to say, what with the badly painted graffiti of Bon Jovi lyrics symbolic of the coming of age of half the town’s teen population. We climbed up the ladder and upon reaching the top, took a seat at the same spot where we usually sat, right at the edge of the tower overlooking a large part of the Falkland area, at the point where the cold wind coming from the south hits your face. We were guarded only by a few widely spaced bars. Aizawl in all its splendid entirety of wooden houses on stilts and large concrete buildings rose up on the hills opposite ours. A concrete mass built on the humble bamboo of its ancestors.

From where I sat, I could see them. The family of pigeons that nested in the tin water collector of the building next to the tower. The parents were feeding their young, bringing them worms and insects. I nudged Puia and pointed in their direction, and he mumbled something and I can’t remember what he had said, but when I look back on that day, I always remember how I wanted to be like those birds, to be so free that nothing in the known physical world would ever stop me from taking flight to whatever destination I wanted to reach. A shackle-free existence surrounded by white morning mist and jasmine petals that grew right next door lulling me to sleep and below me tall grass, making the sound of drizzle when the wind blew at it.  

I wanted freedom, and not of the kind where you’re free to wear make-up. Something more, something long-lasting.

I told Puia that this family of birds was the closest thing to perfection that I had ever seen, and he agreed. It was terribly windy that day. Dust collected on my lips and my cheeks. Temperatures had dropped a few days before and still hadn’t risen.

He sat beside me, staring into the vast expanse ahead, his face unreadable, his eyes a deep dark black.

“Puia.”

He turned in my direction.

“What’s going on? You’re not yourself. You haven’t been yourself for a while now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, I mean, you’ve changed.”

“Oh? I didn’t realise.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

He let out a long heavy sigh.

“Amawi, I don’t know about anything anymore. I’m so tired of everything. I’m so wasted most of the time, it doesn’t matter what I try to do. I can’t get anything done and it doesn’t make any difference to my family because they’re never around anyway. It’s just U Seni, and she’s away in college now. Tell me, what can I do? What should I do?”

“You can’t just waste away like this, Puia.”

“Yeah, that’s news.”

“You just, I don’t know, you need to try. You just try, and it doesn’t matter if things don’t work out. You just need to try a bit.”

“I do try my best to survive, alright? So hard sometimes. You don’t know how hard.”

He picked up a pebble and flung it to the field below us. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, to the furthest corner that my voice would carry me, and yell at whatever obtrusive pesky little thing lay in my path.

Puia and I walked home and I went to church in the evening with my friends, but I couldn’t get him out of my mind, and through all the hymns that we sang and all through the sermon, I kept going back to him and the sun falling on his dark brown hair as he spoke to me and how his hoodie was a sinister black, and his eyes sad and lonely, and it made me so sad inside to think about it. I tried to suppress it, but there’s something about feelings that won’t let themselves be suppressed and they will fight their way out to be seen, and felt, and heard, and I just couldn’t take it any longer. I shouted inside, the loudest scream that I could have allowed myself to scream, like a sound that hasn’t materialised into measurable decibels, and screamed some more in pure emotion, untainted by the acoustics of physical space and away from nosy pesky acquaintances that spread drama like it was the news, and it was such a sad thing to think about.

That was the first time Puia told me about how he really felt, although I’d always sensed it, and whenever I look back on that day, all I remember is the water tower and the heavy wind blowing at us as our legs dangled over the ledge, and how his black eyes looked listless even in the bright of the morning, and the family of pigeons chirping beneath us.

***

I escape to different places, new places, when I need a break from things. So that night I went to the woods and walked through the thick trees and into the hollows where I’d always go. There I found white lilies, the kind that I love. I also found pink and red ones erupting out of the ground from green bulbs. At the mouth of the spring was a white daisy and I thought to myself how I wanted it to be of an altogether new shade, something different, maybe the colour of ocean reefs, majestically blue, with what looked like strips of verdant fields running through it.

I saw it in my mind's eye, a new world filled with lilies and daisies that are of entirely new patterns and colours, and fields that have what seem to be fountains of water gushing through them, flowing upwards in defiance of gravity and spraying water on my face. I saw myself catching droplets with my tongue, tiny droplets the colour of rain-bearing clouds and some the shade of deep, majestic oceans. This was a place where water had all sorts of different shades and flowers reinvented themselves and transfigured into shapes with different hues and textures, and where black earth is now the colour of fancy, iridescent gold dust.

I knew I had to come here again and again. It was a necessity, almost.

I wanted to be there with only my thoughts to keep me company, and maybe see if I could live for eternal time here, to explore the possibilities that this new world held, and not keep myself chained up inside this claustrophobic, damp pigeonhole, because that wouldn't do at all, not when we had the whole world ahead of us.

And what I saw there was a drop of gold emanating from the clouds. But the next instant I saw it again. My heart raced. My hand turned cold and damp. I saw a strong calloused hand grabbing me by the wrist, and it tightened its grip on me, pulling me towards a darkness I could not fathom, and I shouted for it to let me go.

I blinked. The blue lights shone above my bed. Comforting, if not in anything else, at least in their familiarity, and I let out a long sigh. I couldn't erase the image from my mind's eye. It was so powerful and consuming, and all I wanted was to feel safe and protected.

I climbed out of bed, slipped into a hoodie and walked downstairs to the living room. Anu was still up watching a documentary on Nat Geo.

"You're up late," she said.

"I couldn't sleep." She made space for me on the sofa. I slipped in next to her.

"Well you're in luck because look what's airing. A documentary on the food habits of sloths. If that doesn't make you sleepy, I don't know what will."

"Why on earth are you watching this?"

She smiled. "Hey, it was either this or a video of a hippopotamus bathing."

"Isn't there anything better?"

"Apparently the rest of the channels air only PG 13 shows past midnight."

"I'm sixteen."

"Just three years older than thirteen."

I rolled my eyes.

"Oi Anu, em em a. You’re too much."

She burst out laughing.

"I'm the parent here. No buts."

"Okay, okay. So I guess we'll just watch a sloth eating his way through an insurmountable quantity of food. What more could I ask for?"

"That's right."

After a moment's pause, I told her. "Nu, I saw it again. It was only a hand that I saw this time, but I got so scared."

"Amawi, Amawi. I'm so sorry Bawihte. It’s gonna be fine." She kissed me on my right cheek. I felt safe sitting there with her, the monotonous music on TV giving calming rhythm to my flustered breathing.

"Have I told you the story about the time I went to Champhai for a youth congress?"

No she hadn't.

It had been a long trip, she said, some seven hours in a rattling bus that broke down every hour sputtering and choking on its fumes. When they’d finally reached it was already five in the evening. The service was supposed to start at six. She and her friends were staying at the home of a second cousin who was working at a school there with her husband. They’d washed up and quickly gotten ready for church. On their way up a cobbled and rugged path with no streetlights (their torchlight battery had run out), her friend had lost her balance when she stepped on a log lying in the middle of the road and had fallen into a pig trough. She was drenched in mouldy pig feed that was days old. The second church bell was ringing. Someone would already be at the pulpit welcoming the congregation, reading a Bible verse, and praying for blessings. They had no time to go back and change. She grumbled and rained curses on the frightened pigs, now snorting because they’d smelled food, and this angered her all the more. She was supposed to sing in a trio with Anu and another friend, but it had ended up being a duet where Anu’s friend sang way off key in front of thousands of people, because apparently the friend who had had the mishap was the best singer among them. They’d been careful to carry an extra pair of batteries from that night on.

Anu always had the most embarrassing anecdotes up her sleeve, stories revolving around her days in college. They must have been infuriating in the heat of the moment, but they brought a smile to our faces when seen in retrospect. She could have filled quite a large library with them, I reckon.

 

 Three

 A few days later, Puia and I met up for the weekend. A Labrador pup dressed in a pumpkin suit came running towards us, his tail wagging in excitement. When the pup had gone back to his owner, Puia, his head bent down, observed his bowl of sundae like it was fake lava erupting from the volcanoes that we made for science projects back in primary school.

“What’s wrong?” I asked in characteristically tactless fashion.

“It’s my dad. He comes home drunk every night…What on earth is wrong with him? And my mom couldn’t care less about him.”

“I hope things get better, Puia.”

“Yeah. It feels pointless sometimes.”

I nodded that I understood. I didn’t really, although I wanted to.

“What’s the point, Amawi. It doesn’t get better. It has not gotten better in years now,” he said, playing with his now melted ice cream, making circles in his bowl. “It would be easier to just let go of it all, because whatever I try, I don’t know if it’s going to work. And you know something else? It always gets worse. Yeah. Every time.”

“Puia,” I said. I was silent for a long time before I finally managed to say something. Words get stuck somewhere in your thoughts and decide to abandon you when you need them the most. “I think of the same things that you think about. The truth is, I don’t know if it gets better or if it just falls apart all the time. But maybe this is just one small fraction of your life—the things that weigh you down. Your life is so much bigger than that. And maybe you’re stuck in a terrible situation now, but it won’t always be like that, right? I mean, there’s always so much to live for.”

I hated my sentimentality. I sounded like I was trying to inject some concoction labelled “happiness” in gaudy yellow lettering into the dark nihilistic veins of a seventeen-year-old without so much as an attempt at empathy. Stupid stupid stupid.

He sat back in his chair and gazed at the empty space in front of him. His eyes were full of distant places and lonely people. I could not discern what or who even after years of secrets being shared between us. He was a distant nebula, and I was a dull meteor that wandered aimlessly. I couldn’t help him, try as I may. I couldn’t even help myself.

“Yeah, you’re right. You say the smartest things every once in a while, though not very often,” he said, coming back to the situation at hand.

“Yeah, and this is one of those times, apparently,” I said.

“Most of the time, you speak the most nonsensical things. I have to remind myself that you are Lalnunmawii My Best Friend and not an Extra-Terrestrial who is having a hard time adjusting to life here on Earth.”

***

The night of the farewell party we had planned for our seniors arrived. It was at this eighties themed retro club in Chanmari, with glaring disco lights hanging from the ceiling and party music booming everywhere. All our seniors were pretty wasted and so were my classmates. I was getting tired of all the noise and went to the balcony and sat there, the breeze blowing softly on my face and my neck. The rich warm scent of jasmines floated across the heavy night air, and it was so soothing, so heavenly, after all that cigarette smoke. And I turned off every thought in my head and took a deep breath and all around me were miles upon miles of flowing grey grass, almost the colour of hay. When I opened my eyes, the sky had darkened. It was twilight. I saw Anu’s face in the expanse of the darkening sky. She was smiling at me, and her eyes were the stars. Apa had his arms wrapped around her, and he was gazing at me, almost in a frown, like he was concerned.

At the end of the hallway a guy was running to the toilet, trying to keep himself from puking in front of everyone, and another guy was supporting his girlfriend who could barely walk, and I felt the tall grass brush against my hands as I ran across the field and flew up to the sky to be where my parents were, like I had wings or something. I felt the cold air rush into my lungs and I breathed out warmth the next second. I saw a silhouetted figure approaching me and sit down next to me. It was Puia.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all.”

“What a waste of time, isn’t it? They’re all idiots,” he muttered.

“At least the party is a success.”

“Yeah, we threw them one helluva going away party, you know, just to celebrate them not bullying us anymore.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But you’ve got to admit, they’re so bent on sucking all the juice out of this, I kinda admire them. The way I see it, Amawi, there are two kinds of people in this world. The ones who go after what they want, no matter the cost. They will fight till their very last breath to see that they get what they truly want in life,” he said as a matter-of-factly. “Even if that something is getting drunk till you can’t even stand straight anymore and you puke all over the car. Then there are people who are too afraid to go after their dreams. They’re scared.”

“And in which category do you fall?” I asked him.

“The first one, obviously. No questions asked. I don’t want to deny myself the pleasure of living every moment to the fullest.”

“Yeah. That’s an awful cliché. Live every moment to the fullest and everything will be swell and jolly. It’s not even possible.”

I just didn’t believe in it because I had tried to do that every single day and I had always failed. Good and bad must co-exist in this world and so on. Like yin and yang.

“It’s not cliché if it’s true.”

“You’re an awful excuse for Hedonism, Puia.”

“Aaah I get you. I get you.”

“It’s just, when you try to escape all of this, your life, everything… I don’t know. Don’t you think you should confront it, maybe? Can’t you try? I mean, at least try.” He looked pained and I bit my tongue. “Yeah. Never mind. I’m sorry. What was I thinking?”

“It’s alright, I get you loud and clear. Everything is so clear in my head and what you’re saying is just so little of what I tell myself.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Hey, no worries. You’re good.” He tousled my hair and I felt like an idiot. My mind was in a whirlpool with thoughts from here and there swinging in confusion and making a ruckus.

I told him about the field that I saw and how the colours were changed and lilies were brand new colours. The drive home felt magical—I saw pretty lights everywhere. As I sat on my bed, I remembered how great it felt to be there, and decided to write down a survival plan. I got up, walked over to my desk, and rummaged through my drawer for a notebook, one with a floral cover, which Anu had given me on my fifteenth birthday, and grabbed a pen. I turned on the LED lights above my bed, opened the door to the balcony to let the breeze in, and I turned to the first page.

This is my guide to survival. Immerse yourself in the world of nature overflowing with green and serene beauty, one which is far removed from its man-made counterpart, the universe of brick and concrete jungles and stone walls.

 

Step One of the Nature Lover's Guide to Survival: The Marshes

Go to the marshes at dusk and you will find glowworms there, fireflies floating above the swamps, turning the scene into something beautiful. Forget everything you’ve been told about how ferocious the animal kingdom can be. Relearn what it means to be human, so you can live in harmony with nature.

While you're there, breathe in the scent of everything else that is around you, all that is not affected by the stench of the rotting vegetation. As you explore whatever there is to explore, be on the lookout for flowers, especially sea lavenders and marsh rosemary (lilac blue water lilies will do if you can't find anything else), and let them be, a crown on their stems, but bend towards them, go nearer, lean into the petals and take in a breath of their perfume. Think about what it does to you and how you feel light-headed with just one breath, and take a step back to consider if it arouses in you any glimmer of whatever God-given hope you still may have. Take in the sound of the waters breathing with life. Of waters filled to saturation with algae and ferns and detritus, of green terrestrial matter turning into atmospheric matter and breathing new life. Taste the electrifying scent of pure marsh air, undiluted and pungent, as it pulses around you and spills into your eyes, your hair. Breathe it in, allow it to seep into your skin and revitalise all that is dry and dying.

 

Shirley Lalrinfeli grew up in Aizawl and Bengaluru and has an MA in English from the University of Hyderabad. She enjoys painting, writing long-form fiction and daydreaming. Her first poetry collection, Sigma, is forthcoming from Writers Workshop.

Zorami - Malsawmi Jacob

A Burned Out Stub
(Chapter 29)

“Dinpui, Dinpui, min lo nghak rawh!  Min kalsan suh!  Wait for me.  Don’t leave me!” Sanga mumbles. 

A startled Zorami puts down the book she has been reading and gazes at her sleeping husband. 

    She sits up and shakes him awake. “U Sang, what is it?  Who are you calling?”  

He sits up and rubs his eyes.  She puts a hand on his shoulder and asks, “What is troubling you?”

     “A sad dream.” 

“Who is Dinpuii?”

After a long silence he tells her. 

Dinpuii is the girl he loved.  He can’t forget her, though he has tried. 

Zorami feels like she’s hurling down into a black abyss.  

And then she feels nothing.  No anger, no grief, no emotion at all.  Only a heavy deadness.  “No wonder there’s no spark of romance in our life together.  He’s only a burned out stub, poor guy!” she thinks.

At last, in a flat, lifeless voice she manages to ask, “Where is she now?”

“Dead.”  

Dinpuii and Sanga were in the same class in college.  They both took up Honours in Political Science in first year BA.  Dinpuii was the best student in the class and the favourite of all the teachers.  She was passionate about the subject, passionate about studies.  She was brilliant and talented, the college champion in debate.  And she was beautiful.

Unlike most pretty girls, she was quite unconscious of her good looks.  Tall, slender and straight, with big expressive eyes, hair tied in a simple pony tail, she wore a blue and white checked shirt with a plain dark-blue puan when Sanga saw her for the first time.  From his seat in a corner, he noticed her entering the classroom through the door at the front.  Her large, lively eyes quickly glanced round the room and settled on his face for a moment.  She sat down on the second row with two other girls. After the class started, he heard her pleasant contralto voice answering the teacher’s questions.  By the end of the period, he was utterly and desperately in love.

They became good friends in a few days.  Sanga was surprised at her rather un-girlish interests.  Her favourite topics for discussions were matters relating to the socio-economic and political condition of Mizoram.  She liked hockey and sometimes joined the boys at the games, though girls normally did not touch the hockey-stick those days.  She played the guitar fairly well; better than he did at any rate.  And she immensely enjoyed debating.

During off periods, they would go for walks around the college campus.  And talk.  Her animated face would glow as she talked of her dreams for Mizoram.  Schools in every village.  Colleges in all the regions.  Hospitals within easy reach of all.  Factories to produce all essentials like cloth, paper and other things.  Her dreams seemed endless.  She would conclude with, “All these will be possible when we become independent.”

Sanga disagreed with her on the point of independence.  “Independence is like a fruit in heaven.  It’s not possible to get it in our present situation.  We became part of India when the country became free from the British, and now India will never agree to let us separate,” he would say.  They often argued on the subject.

One day after classes, Dinpuii walked back to the rented house she shared with a friend.  When she reached the front door and was about to open it, a man’s voice called her name and she looked back. The man, hobbling up with crutches, caught up with her and spoke loudly.  “Dinpui, don’t you recognise me?  Remember we both gave our names to join MNF on the same evening?” he said.

     “Awi, it’s Ralkapa!” she exclaimed.

As she said this, she saw two men in army uniform, not very far behind.  They would have heard the conversation, whether they understood all they said or not.  In any case, they would have realized that she and Ralkapa knew each other.  She understood what that meant.  Ralkapa’s horrid deeds were well known.  She had to escape, and fast.  There was no time to inform anyone, not even Sanga. 

  

The army men did not move forward to arrest her.  Perhaps they were planning to do it later.  As soon as Ralkapa went away, she fled to the house of a friend.  She hid there until this friend located some MNF soldiers who helped her escape to their underground shelter.  Her letter, narrating all these, was hand-delivered to Sanga by a stranger some weeks after Dinpuii’s disappearance.

Soon, stories of a girl called Lalpuii among the MNF filtered out.  She was the only female in what the cadres named Blue Valley Camp.  There were no proper medical facilities there, but they said Lalpuii tended wounded Mizo soldiers with loving care.  They nicknamed her Florence Nightingale. 

The Indian Army discovered Blue Valley Camp and raided it.  Some were killed, some were captured alive.  Others disappeared.  Those who escaped regrouped later, but Lalpuii was not among them.

About a month after the raid, a badly mutilated corpse of a woman was found near an army encampment in the same area.  Though no one actually identified the body, it was generally believed to be that of Dinpuii. 

Sanga could not eat or sleep properly for weeks and months.  And then exhaustion took over, and he gradually resumed life.  But he lived with a gaping hole in his heart. 

“Why did you marry me then?” Zorami asked at length, still numb with pain.

     “There was no point in going on that way.  I was hoping that being married would help me forget her a little.  I’m so sorry to hurt you like this.”

     “Why did you pick me?  From your description I’m just her opposite in looks, nature and everything.  Why didn’t you go for someone more like her?”

     “That’s impossible.  I’ve never seen anyone even remotely like her in any way.  Besides, I grew to like you once my uncle pointed you out, and there was truly no one else I was willing to marry.”

After Dinpuii’s disappearance, and especially after the corpse was found, Sanga had lost all interest in life.  He felt he was only a living body without a soul.  He wished he could give up that life too. But he had his mother to consider.  He mechanically went about his routine.  He attended classes, wrote the exams when the time came, and finally graduated and got a job in the State Bank.  Once he settled at his post, his family wanted him to get married.  His uncle kept suggesting some girl or other, but Sanga remained uninterested. 

Finally, when he was nearing thirty three, his uncle talked about Zorami.  Her family had come back to Aizawl after she finished her post-graduation in English, and she had started working in a college.  He agreed to consider her.  When he got to know her, he thought he loved her and that’s why he had proposed.  But he could not bring himself to forget his first love as he had hoped.

Zorami left the bed and went off to the sitting room.  She knew attempting to sleep would be futile. 

Sanga stayed on in bed, closed his eyes and tried to sleep again.  But his heart was burning.  Dinpuii had appeared in his dream, smiled at him and walked away.  He ran after her but he couldn’t catch up, she was too fast.  That was why he had cried out.  “Dinpui, how can I forget you?  You are the most beautiful person I’ve seen, beautiful in mind and heart,” he whispered to his pillow.

Zorami sat on the sofa, drawing up her feet, head on her knees.   

    

     “One can’t compete with the dead,” she thought. 

She recalled lines from Yeats’ poem:

     Does the imagination dwell the most

     Upon a woman won or woman lost?

     “Woman lost is much more precious,” she told herself.

     “Two broken lives brought together.  Can they ever become whole?” she wondered. 

Broken?  She was lacerated, ripped apart.  A fiend in human body did it in revolting lust.  When the thirteen year old did not come back from the tuikhur where she had gone to fetch water, her worried mother took a couple of neighbours with her and went in search of her daughter.  They found her unconscious, her dress torn and soaked with urine and blood, in the bushes.  In the hospital, after she regained consciousness, a nurse stitched her up.  Without anaesthesia.  How she screamed!  The needle pierced her again and again. Stinging pain upon pain.

And the dirt, the dirt!  How she wanted to wash herself clean, to be immersed in a flowing river!  But there was no such river within reach.  All she could get was a few mugs of water for a bath.  She loathed her defiled body like a rotten carcass.  In sleep, she dreamt of a brook running down a hill. She ran to it, hoping for a dip in its clear, clean water.  But when she reached there, she saw only muddy, filthy water. 

Within a day, the buoyant, rather boisterous young girl had turned into a weepy, terrified wreck. When she was sent back to school after being discharged from the hospital, she went without fuss, without spirit.  She walked with head bent, looking at the ground.  She avoided everyone and kept to herself, hardly talking even to Kimi.  She struggled to keep up with the lessons though earlier she used to be considered the best student in the class.  As soon as school was over, she walked straight back home and stayed inside for the rest of the day. 

As dusk fell, she was seized with terror and broke out in cold sweat.  She sat by the fireplace, her head buried in her knees, and trembled violently.  Her mother tried to soothe her, but only succeeded in making her cry uncontrollably. 

As time passed, the wounds on her body healed, leaving scars.  But her wounded psyche festered. 

Two broken lives.

~~~

What an incredible privilege to blog an extract from a soon to be released book that's also due to be a historical first, being the first ever full-fledged novel written in English by a Mizo writer.

Malsawmi Jacob, established poet and writer, takes on the most traumatic period in Mizo history, the Insurgency years of the sixties, to tell the story of a young Mizo girl, Zorami. Coming of age, after an uneventful, idyllic childhood, at the same time that the political unrest and struggle for independence gathers momentum and breaks out to devastating effect, Zorami's life and experiences reflect those of her beloved people, land and culture. Written in Mrs. Malsawmi Jacob's distinctive restrained, understated, always beautifully lucid style that breaks into poetry in moments of passion, the novel, titled Zorami after its protagonist, is expected to be released in May 2015.

A Frog's Frock - Vanneihtluanga

Translated by Dr Margaret L. Pachuau

I am quite the boss, but since I am not the kind to sing praises of myself, I will tell you about my friends. And by then, if you are not a fool you will be able to decipher exactly where I stand in life. On my left, sat a man who was a media person cum industrialist, and he was probably as profound as the Rihdil¹. On my right, there sat a man who was quite punctilious and absolutely eloquent to the hilt. He was well versed in the nuances of prose and verse and as for the word sluggish, why, it never existed in his dictionary. So you see, exalted men such as these sat by my side. Let me tell you that sitting in the centre is actually a kind of prestige. A lamb on the right and a goat on the left, and lo and behold, the one in the centre will remain the undisputed king. In fact, if you recall, even at the time of the crucifixion, the men on either side of the cross were remembered only because of the one man in the centre. In my case, the ones by my side were neither lamb nor goat. Nor were they criminals who deserved to be hung. As I have indicated before, they were illustrious people, who had been able to stand on their own feet for over the past forty years. They were the kind of men who were consulted by people, on matters related to the home, the hearth and the state. So the fact that I was ensconced between the both of them like their beloved youngest child, was for me a matter to remember always and I was proud of that. Mind you, I was not merely sitting in the warmth of the living room couch, rather I was actually on my way to Guwahati, inside a vehicle of great speed, popularly known as a Gypsy.

The friend on my right held on to the handle of the vehicle tightly, even as he drove, and it was evident that he had my safety in mind. The friend on my left was equally poised and on guard to defend me from wild animals. You see, he sat as though he were my bodyguard. In fact when I first embarked upon the vehicle they both cautioned, “Lest you be the one to meet danger head on.”

And so obviously they did not permit me to sit up front. But after a while when things were seemingly more stable, they made me sit up front, flanked by the both of them. Although the prospect of sitting with the gear box between your feet seemed uncomfortable, they assured me, “Kings and gentlemen do not sit with their legs crossed while traveling, and in fact, sitting in the manner that you do now, is a sign of greatness.”
And so I sat likewise in a most contented manner.

None of us spoke much during the journey. Yet we conversed about the ginger export rates in Mumbai, how it was not the wise to make a crown out of hnahthial², the magnitude of the Subash project, and the fact that there was no interconnecting strand between AIDS and soyabean. We delved into the aspects of total prohibition, the
efficiency of the CBI, the invincibility of the Rajput carriages, the magnificence of Bill Gates and the Microsoft company, and eventually in that manner we arrived at Guwahati.
I must confess that we were not there for any particular reason. In fact, the three of us had decided to get away because we were fed up of being under the thumb of our wives, so we decided to go ‘camping’ without them. So thoroughly did we enjoy ourselves that we did not even feel the heat of the summer. We passed the zoo, went across to the press, and visited the offices of the Sentinel and North East Times. Why, we even met with the editors and shook hands with them. We purchased tobacco as well. There was one thing though…we were not avid shoppers and so we were uncomfortable with the ordeal. At length we trudged through the market, and the rickshawwallah zoomed us right across town, and very soon he deposited us amidst a throng of people. We gawked around for a very long time when the friend on my right spotted a sign in the distance that said,
“BUY 2 SHIRTS, GET 1 FREE!”

All three of us scrambled into the shop in search of the great bargain offer. Both friends to my right and left purchased two shirts of a matching colour, and that great buy actually got me two free shirts. We stepped out into the light, and perhaps because there were no other shops that could quite meet our expectations, we ended up once more stepping inside into the “BUY 2 SHIRTS” store. My friends repeated their purchase of buying two shirts of an identical colour and once again I ended up with two new shirts on the house. We went back to the hotel and freshened up and wore our new shirts of similar colour and we meandered about the streets of Guwahati. Again, we stepped inside the store where we had purchased these very shirts and got yet more shirts. The salesmen were wise to the fact that we were wearing the shirts that they had sold us, just about three hours back and they kept smirking slyly at each other.

Of course, we did not dare to go back without buying anything for our wives so, we decided that we should buy a ‘pawnfen’³ for them. Yet we were apprehensive about the purchase. Since we were not at all expert in buying clothes for women, we pondered about whether they would be offended by what we got for them. Yet we shuddered at the prospect of going back home without getting them a gift. So we approached what seemed to be a shop selling ladies’ apparel. It was a huge air conditioned store, with very smart sales ladies bustling about. And the man who opened the door for us was elegant enough to pass off for a Major in the army. While we were walking astride the marble steps of the shop, attired in shirts of the same colour, the friend on my left whispered,
“Hey, I do not know what they call a ‘pawnfen’ in English, how on earth do we buy one?” I replied “Isn’t it pretty god…no, pettygoat is what it is… I think…” I was miles away from the Chambers’ Dictionary which I had left at home.


But the friend on my right was a know it all, and he was actually very deft in the nuances of translation, so he confidently argued, “Of course not, prettygod refers to a beautiful god, while a petty goat is a small goat; it doesn’t refer to a petticoat at all. I think it is called petty guard”.

I felt it was not quite right but since I myself did not really know the right word, we decided to agree upon that term amid much apprehension, even as we confidently sauntered forth.I, being in the centre, was regarded to be quite fluent in English. So I bolstered my confidence and approached a lady ,whom I regarded to be the smartest and the most attractive salesgirl. Very politely I said, “Madam, I have the honour to say that I want to know whether you have a petty guar…”
When the friend on my left broke me off and hissed, “Stop speaking to her, she will never reply for she is only the mannequin.”
And I took a good look and realized that I was indeed speaking in earnest to a wax figurine. I took a lingering look at the figure I had spoken to, and before I could recover I noted that the friend on my right was speaking to a sales girl in a high pitched voice,
“Do you have Petty guard…petty guard?”

I felt his tone was most impolite, but then assured myself that it was allright, just as long as it fetched us what we wanted .So I sauntered forth to his side. Just as we feared, we realized that the salesgirl was totally unaware of what a petty guard was. Most diplomatically she queried “You want petticoat?”
“Yes, pettyguard,”he replied.
And not content with that, he even spelt out the word for her. She was most astonished and she whispered a hasty, “Excuse me” and went to fetch the manager.

The manager was a man, endowed with a flowing beard and whose countenance was as stately as that of Rabindranath Tagore. It was indeed daunting that we should have to explain what we wanted to him. After sometime, with explanations rallying back and forth he decided to show us a sample. There were samples galore! Apparel that were designed in myriad ways; trouser like-skirts, school uniform skirts, saree-like skirts, dhoti -like skirts … yet none that could remotely resemble the kind that our wives would wear.

The man on my left asked in dismay, “Tinbo, Sike, Siphu, Elevenday
hai?” (Actually, ‘hai’was the only word he knew in Hindi) At this everyone in the shop grew more and more perplexed. In utter consternation they called for the owner of the shop. At her approach, all the salesgirls stood ramrod straight, akin to all their mannequins. She was a huge lady of a rotund frame. We spoke in what we felt was, to the best of our knowledge, in the tongues of men and angels, but we still could not make ourselves understood. We even wrote down the term ‘pettyguard,’ and baffled them all the more. In despair I turned to the friend on my left and declared in a conspiratorial whisper, “My friend, instead of “prettyguard” I think it should be ‘pretty-God.’”

At that the owner of the shop declared triumphantly, “Ah! Now I know what you want.”
And saying this she led us to an inner room where the gods were kept. “Shree Durga or Lord Ganesh or Hanuman?” she offered.

It was way off the mark and did not feel right at all. In utter dismay, our friend on the left, took off his pants and demonstrated the manner in which his wife wore the required garment. He gestured wildly both upwards and downwards, and pirouetted back and forth. After he had done all that he could, the owner of the store took a deep breath, looked at us with folded arms, and declared, “I think what you want is …frock,”
“Frog?” we cried out in unison. So astounded were we. “Yes frock, a woman’s frock,” she pronounced confidently.

We rolled our eyes in horror, and were no longer interested in the purchase. In despair and utter bewilderment, we walked out of the magnificent store, leaving a host of equally perplexed people behind. How we reached our room at Guwahati Mizoram House I am yet to decipher. The words, “Yes frog; a woman’s frog” was enough to diminish our morale.

The man on my left declared, “When that lady saw me gesticulating wildly, she must have felt that we wanted to seek out a prostitute. And in all her wisdom, must have realized that a woman is actually a frog. Being unable to bear the fact that we were about to lie abed with frogs, she must have decided to tell us the truth.”

As for me, I, have always placed women on the same pedestal as God, and I have always treated my wife with great tenderness. So it was an even more greater hurt. I mustered up all my knowledge about the English language but yes, there was no doubt about it, she did say, ‘Yes, woman’s frog.”

There was no other way to interpret it. Surely such a noble woman belonging to a learned community was far more intelligent than us. I thought of the wedding vows I had taken and became mortified. The friend on my right, being well read and profound counseled, “It could be true. Even Europeans say that women are frogs. If my reading of history serves me well, then I recall reading about a prince who could not find a wife. Eventually, he kissed a frog nestling in a lake and she turned into a beautiful damsel. And he married her. But alas…she always needed a kiss to retain her human shape.”

By now, we had spent four nights in Guwahati, and it was true that it had been quite a while since we had last kissed our wives. We were horrified at the thought of them turning into frogs while we were away. There was no time to buy garments for them now. And secretly we were all apprehensive about kissing the frogs we had left behind, but we reminded ourselves that we were indeed chivalrous men, who had to rise to the occasion. Why…if others could do it, there was no reason why we could not do the same. We packed our belongings in the hope of rescuing the women who were about to turn into frogs… and raced away from Guwahati in tremendous haste.



¹the name of a lake,to the east of Mizoram, said to be passed by departed spirits on the way to the abode of the dead.


²the name of a plant and also its leaves.

³petticoat

Happy Valley - Vanneihtluanga

Translated by Cherrie Lalnunziri Chhangte

In a part of Aizawl that was nearly inaccessible by virtue of the sheer inconvenience of the roads leading to it, and yet, was paradoxically situated in the heart of the city, where the roads meandered like the intricate maze of a mole’s burrow, some people, on their way back from work headed for home. The road that led them home was a dead-end one, and there was no way to return from there except by the same torturous road.

Had the Creator not destined this particular locality to be in the very heart of Aizawl, no sane man would have chosen it as his dwelling place. Yet, since Aizawl city had already chosen these particular people to dwell there as her guests in that rocky ravine, the citizens of this place led a contented existence, bolstered by the knowledge that there were many who were not fortunate enough to have even a place like theirs to claim as their own in Aizawl. The place had no resemblance to what the likes of John Keats romantically described as a “vale”. There was no justification for naming it ‘Happy Valley.’ Most of the inhabitants had probably never set their sights on the haunting beauty of the place called Happy Valley in Shillong. Thus, one could surmise that they had not named the place because the denizens of this area were nostalgic of Shillong’s Happy Valley, and were reminded of the beautiful landscape of that place. The simple explanation was that they chose an English-sounding name, easily pronounceable, and which even the barely literate amongst them, who had learned their ABCs in adult schools, could write without fear or apprehension.

The people of this area did not have such lofty ambitions of making the place live up to its beautiful namesake in Shillong. I do not think they said, “Since we belong to Happy Valley, let us make it as beautiful as Shillong’s Happy Valley.” For them, it was simply a place to go home to after spending all day trying to squeeze their share of the fat from an already-lean Aizawl. There stood their ramshackle houses which afforded them shelter from wind and rain. Having few expectations, they spent their time there not particularly envious of anyone.

Who lived in Happy Valley? Few of them actually owned the houses they lived in. Aizawl was becoming more crowded everyday; prospective tenants multiplied, accompanied by a corresponding increase in the rates of house-rent, and no matter how unappealing a house or its location was, there was always someone to rent it at the right price. The few people who owned land in Happy Valley were aware of this, and as much as their financial and intellectual resources would allow them, they constructed simple dwellings, tenements that would perhaps fetch them between fifty and a hundred rupees per room.

Those who afforded such dwellings stayed there, more possessive of their homes than their landlords themselves. Thus, all kinds of people gathered there: peddlers and merchants who were not necessarily Paihte, malaria-ravaged people from the west, Maras¹ from the extreme south, wandering Evangelists, Muster Roll Drivers, Muslims who paid no heed to Ramzan and Id, Sericulture office workers who had no inkling of what a cocoon was, babysitters who worked in other people’s homes, those who babysat these babysitters, their assorted family and friends, those whose only field of expertise was in auto repair, others who had always belonged to the Left ever since Mizoram entered the political arena; also, those whose sole reason for being sent to Aizawl by their parents seemed to be to appear for Matriculation exams, a big man whose drunken behaviour differed depending on whether he drank local liquor or the imported variety, a few who still vehemently declared that they would have no other ruler besides Kumpinu², some who wanted to withdraw their names from the Church Registry because they were unhappy with the latest translation of the Bible and the new version of the Christian Hymnal, and those whose character could never be ascertained owing to the fact that their stays in Happy Valley were few and far-between, as sporadic as a comet’s visits.

“New tenants” and “moving out” were two key-phrases in Happy Valley. Every week, down the torturously step road leading to Happy Valley came a few new tenants carrying kerosene stoves stained with dal, and bedding that had sadly seen many better days strung together in an untidy heap; at the same time, those moving out laboured their way up the road equally burdened with kerosene stoves stained with the yellow gravy of behlawi bai³ and a locally-made double-stringed guitar, which, however, sported only four strings.

Whenever there were newcomers, Happy Valley bachelors asked two very crucial questions: one, was there a pretty girl in the new family? And, two, if there was any such beauty, did the family have any chairs to sit on? This was indeed a pertinent question in a place where many of the new arrivals were likely to inform all and sundry that furniture such as chairs had been “left behind in the village”, a piece of information that brought more gloom to the listeners than did Reagan’s Economic Sanction in South Africa. Thus, a lively discussion about any new people who had a pretty daughter always merited further discussion on whether they had seating facilities as well.

Cutting through Happy Valley was a public road on which rambled along vehicles of all sorts: huge, shiny, and indiscriminately noisy. While those living near the road were privileged to breathe in the faint promise of a glorious future, those living in the outer periphery below the dust of the main road were not unduly worried about the sounds they could hear from above, of people jostling with each other as if eager not to miss out on their share of riches, power and glory. They had a complacent and satisfied aura about them, since they saw the futility of attempting to even join the rat-race, and even if they could hear these sounds of materialistic struggles with their outer ears, they learned to shut their inner ears against them, and instead, forged a lifestyle and attitude that was in tandem with their income, a mixture of village life and city life which resulted in a unique lifestyle adapted to their means and needs.

When dusk fell, people who belonged to diverse professions, as if having made a pact to go home together at a certain time, met on that rocky road like beavers on their way home to their burrows, and disappeared into their homes for their evening meal. After that, electric lights – those powered by stolen lines indistinguishable from the legal ones – began to flicker and illuminate the rooms one by one. Some lights seemed brighter than necessary, while others were mellow and dim. Whether out of neglect or inconvenience, the locality, although it was situated well within the bounds of the city’s heartland, did not have even a single electric post. Hence electric lights had to be powered by an electric post high up above their locality. Those who could afford longer cables had electricity, and that was all. In the monsoon, because of the terrific length of these few lines, when the rain and wind spewed forth in fury, the electrical cables fizzed and sparked dangerously.

On what could dubiously be called a terrace, the roof of a badly-constructed concrete building, girls sat after washing the dirty dinner dishes. They squeezed together on a bench that had some legs missing, and every time somebody moved, the bench creaked in loud protest. Inevitably, a young man would come carrying his guitar, a most pathetic sample of such an instrument. He had tuned and adjusted the strings so tautly that the bow of the guitar was bent at an angle, making it difficult to coax a decent sound even out of the “D” key. Incredibly, the guitar’s owner could somehow persuade beautiful music to issue forth from this hopelessly battered instrument, which would have defeated even guitar maestros like Jimi Hendrix. When the tune was in danger of going flat, he would push the relevant string sharply upwards with his finger, and melody would return.

And then, how they would sing! How fortunate the composers never heard them sing their songs! An ex-army man, the only one among them who knew any English, would always join them, and tipsily taking the guitar, would proclaim that he sang nothing but English songs. Crossing his legs, taking the guitar and strumming a hringdup, hringdup⁴ beat, he proceeded to sing what could possibly be an original composition, judging from the extreme dissimilarity to the authentic version of the song he was singing:

I’d like to saddle round

But they won’t saddle round

A virgin tube must be a rolling stone!

Down every road there’s one more Satan

Aim on the rock

The Highway is my home.

The words, no doubt, might have been strange, but the spirit that gripped him as he sang was certainly exalted. As soon as his performance was over, in true Vanapa Hall⁵ fashion, his audience clapped and cheered, to which he magnanimously replied, “Thank you…with effect from tonight” in unadulterated English.

Now it was the turn of Mawitea, the lad who owned the guitar, to sing. In total contrast to his upbringing and lack of formal training, he expertly used his fingers to reproduce the opening chords of Europe’s “The Final Countdown”. His audience, expectant as they were of hearing a song by Europe by virtue of the introductory notes, were somewhat taken aback when he proceeded to follow the magnificent solo with a song by The Crusaders. Then he gave renditions of songs by The Invaders and Vanlalruati; when he had sung a verse each from three songs, the girls cried out, “Mawite, Mawite, ‘Zanlai Thlifim’” and in the blink of an eye, they were transported to the side of the great singer, Lallianmawia⁶. Whichever song he sang, he had the ability to replicate the exact pitch and style of the singer who had made a particular song famous, be it C.Lalrinmawia, Zirsangzela Hnamte, or C.Vansanga.

In their midst was a man who felt justified in calling himself one of the “owners” of Happy Valley. It was apparent that he considered himself a very big fish in a pond of small fishes. He was as pale as the unexposed side of a bitter gourd, and apart from the pale skin, red nose, the abundance of pimples on his face and the protuberance of his behind, there was not much to distinguish him. He was a strange man. Outside Happy Valley, he was just another man looking for favours from those higher up than him in the hierarchy. As soon as he entered Happy Valley, however, he became Lord of the Universe in his mind. When he truly became himself, he would hold forth on all topics based on what he had heard on the radio or read from old issues of Time Magazine, liberally sprinkled with lies that he dreamed up. He would then speculate and make authoritative conclusions based on the scant information he had gleaned thus. In front of the Happy Valley men and women who had gathered, he would talk of strange and amazing things. He talked excitedly of Reagan’s Star Wars Programme. At another time, he said, “Michael Jackson is going to the USSR, and there they will change his name. He will no longer be known as Michael Jackson, but Mikhael Jacksonov.” His audience was silent. They had no idea if Michael Jackson was a rat or a bird. The only other person who had heard of him, said, “I know who that is! A female soldier who screams a lot, and walks very stiffly. Reminds me of an arthritic trying to dance.” Another, said “Oh, I see” while chewing on tobacco leaves, and from there the conversation fizzled out. The ex-army man, wanting to contribute something to the topic, but at a loss for a suitable thing to say, said, “I once bought a black ticket at Zodin cinema too.”

When they talked of matters close to their hearts, however, they became so enthusiastic that they had to fight for a chance to speak. The topics varied from charcoal sold in the market, wholesale prices of firewood and mustard leaves, a coin found in a bag of fermented fish, present prices of Burmese cattle, the irregularity of supplies such as dried mangoes and cloth smuggled surreptitiously from across the border, how they had been miraculously healed seven times through Evangelist Lalchungnunga’s ministry, how they positively loathed men who wore earrings, how many tiny pebbles there were in this week’s ration-rice, and how, seeing that they were born only once, they were determined to request at least one song on All India Radio during their lifetime. Towards the end, a small boy who always hung around them would make an innocent comment such as “I don’t think the pebbles they add to the ration-rice make it any tastier” and they would all burst out laughing.

With the break of dawn, the crowing of cocks in the distance and the loud rumble of water-trucks out to supply water to the citizens of Aizawl woke up the people of Happy Valley. Since they were in the west, they had to peer towards the east, to the hills of Reiek in the distance to see if the sun was up or not. A woman called her neighbour, “Neighbour, what are your plans for the day?”

The neighbour appeared at her window, “I thought I would go to Civil8 today for a check up.”

“What is wrong with you?”

“Oh! Haven’t you heard about the new machine they have installed there, Endawskawp or something.”

“No”

“Everyone is all praises for it, they are all going there to consult it, and I thought I would go too.”

“And what ailment are you going to get yourself checked for?”

“I’m not sure. All I know is that the machine is good. Maybe I will let it check my insides.”

“Well, maybe I should go too; my eyesight is not so good these days.”

“Eh! Let’s go together then. I have been having this persistent pain in my ankle too. I went to get myself checked the other day, and I think just a single visit has relieved me of so much pain. It seems to work better than the X-ray.” Thus, they went to consult the endoscope machine, an instrument meant for examining the inside of the human body, believing that it was some sort of a medicine, and hoping to be cured of all their ailments.

In Happy Valley, it was impossible to survive without that amazing word, “borrow”. Since times were hard, it was not uncommon for a family not to have even small items like knives and scissors. If one had too many visitors, one simply borrowed chairs from neighbours, and sharing utensils was a common practice too. Nobody was aggrieved over these matters. Since what they did not have far outnumbered what they did have, borrowing became a way of life for them, and they did what they could to help a neighbour who, after all, lived just on the other side of the wall.

When we had lived for a considerable amount of time in this manner, video invaded happy Valley in a big way. As before, young men and women gathered after supper, but things had changed. Mawitea walked around with a scarf covering his face, only his eyes visible, while a samurai sword was perpetually strapped on his back. Happy Valley was no longer a safe place. That was not all. One fellow, a driver by profession, refused to wear clothes any longer after watching a Rambo movie. When he was not carrying a baby on his back, an old bicycle chain was draped around his shoulder, and even when he was carrying a baby, he did not refrain from tying a bandanna around his head or wearing hunter boots. He had a maniacal gleam in his eyes, as if he wanted to chew and spit on the world in general. The Mara boy, on the other hand, could not walk past a pole or tree or any object that one could circle, without singing, “Tarzan! My Tarzan!” first.

The erstwhile simple babysitters now looked like local versions of Cindy Crawford and Sridevi with their charcoal black eyelids. Whenever they came together, they clutched fashionably thin bags with pictures of Popeye under their arms. Once a neighbour from this group came and excitedly said, “Oi, they were selling some neil pawlissh⁷ at really cheap prices…” and proceeded to take out a bottle of stencil correcting fluid out of her bag. Such incidents were not cause for wonder or embarrassment in Happy Valley.

Handshakes now were offered at great peril to the owner of the hand, for the young boys were likely to throw you over, with a great shout of “Freestyle!” Any old bin or pieces of tar lying on the ground became instruments for practising kung fu.

~ ~ ~

Nights falls, and they all disappear to watch videos at a neighbour’s house. There is nobody left at the rooftop where they once congregated. It is eerily silent. The bamboo groves far below swish and rustle when the wind blows through them. Above, the waning moon, looking desolate, inhabits the night sky like a lone ship on a vast ocean. All the young men and women who sang so well, spoke so well, and related to each other like kindred spirits – where have they all gone? There is no other sound except the noise from a far-off television set, where music from MTV blares out the song, “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

Notes:

1. Paites are a clan belonging to Mizoram. They have been traditionally portrayed as peddlars and small-time merchants.
2. Kumpinu: The East India Company, here synonymous with the British Empire.
3. Behlawi Bai: A Mizo dish made out of certain leaves called behlawi.
4. Hringdup beat refers to the simplest form of the swing rhythm, a beat popular in many Mizo songs.
5. A public hall in the centre of Aizawl city, where most important functions are held.
6. The Crusaders and The Invaders were popular gospel bands in the 1980s, who followed Evangelists and complemented the sermons with their songs. Vanlalruati, Lallianmawia, C.Lalrinmawia, Zirsangzela Hnamte, and C.Vansanga are well-known singers in Mizoram, and the story is set at a time when they had reached the height of their popularity.
7. Nail Polish.
8. Civil Hospital

Vanneihtluanga is among the most outstanding Mizo contemporary writers. Written in the mid-80s, this piece comes from his autobiographical collection of short stories Keimah leh Keimah first published in 2000. He still lives in what's sometimes fondly called Happy Valley by its inhabitants in Chanmari, Aizawl, although now in a spacious multi-roomed house.

Cherrie Lalnunziri Chhangte works in the English dept at Mizoram University. Actively involved both in creative writing in English and translations from Mizo to English, her prose here has a lyricism that is beautifully poetic.