Two Non-Mizo Poems in English of Mona Zote: An Observation - S.D. Baral

In an early poem (2008), The Idiot Goes to Hell, Mona Zote works a few delicate surprises that complicate the Christian meaning of the Cross on the eve of a suicidal death. This death meticulously carried out on the Holy Cross does not make the dead a Christ figure. More disconcertingly, the mother praises her ‘idiotic’ son for the perfect execution of a deed once at least in his entire life of nonsense. The orthodox belief that one committing suicide “goes to Hell” does not however affect his loving mother either; on the contrary, this short lyric reveals a Christian mother’s poised observation  in face of her son’s death. She does not claim to be a Mary figure either. A Christian selecting to hang himself from the Cross in the burial ground is a radical critique in itself. Our traditional Christian perspectives seem meaningless to both in a manner almost suggestive of Samuel Beckett’s absurd tramps. Several questions crop up: Is she senile, or too tired of an idiot? How could a mother go cool over her son’s death? Why does the idiot choose the graveyard with “a precise cross” to hang himself? How to know the idiot’s inner psyche to die on the cross?  No answers are likely. But the poem subtly enforces this that any deed perfectly done is its own sufficient meaning, which requires no religion to certify or condemn. Therefore, a life of action is superior to that of inaction. Mona’s radical thinking quite early in her creative career does speak here.

 Her Home Going (2008) is relatively a less accessible but excellent love poem, marked by an intertwining of intellectual and sensual images; sensually provocative phrases are scattered around such as “folding the accordion of my selves”, “menstrual sun”, “lightning sew the purses of the sky”, “taking tea with a minotaur.” The images of Knossos (Crete/ Greek) and Ma’rib (Yemen/Sheba), pointing at prehistoric times, would suggest love issuing out of the unknown sources and making a landfall just at the shore of life. It seems to be a diagnosis of love experience involving uncommon figures of a menstrual sun (uncontrollable youth) and a blindfolded (under control) girl. In this tightly woven artifact of modern images, the image of the male lover who resembles a menstrual sun of the yesteryears is suggestively a minotaur and who enjoys breaking the “harp” across his knees, ie. breaking the female partner down in love. 

The poem suggests that love’s intimations may build up its vertigo, but soon it is realized that the human body is a “paper boat,” too frail to contain the whirl of love.  Thus, the love’s accordion (singing of intimations) folds up at the “landfall” (touching the reality –shore of life) rather than singing its full blast like a storm.  The poem unfolds that in the process of love act, the person is ‘seen’, known, and not from his ‘reputed wisdom’ as of the Minotaur’s austere world (part-animal and part- human). With this knowledge gained, it is time for the woman to go home; ‘home going’ is a growing maturity of life with insightful, perhaps calming, knowledge. This poem, like a locked box of sweet surprises, opens up a feminist face of the woman persona being cynically, yet silently, watchful of the masculinist control of the other gender even in matters of love as it in knowledge. The landfall is indeed of the woman’s fall into reality as well as man’s fall off the age-old self-estimation.

These two poems, to my mind, lack the adequately signifying markers by which they would claim the status of ‘Mizo poetry’ in English. The first poem may be claimed by any Christian the world over to have expressed his ‘idiotic’ passion, if at all; whereas the second one will be readily claimed by the Greek to be his/her. Reflexively, if the poems are situated in the Mizo contexts, one will be surprised at the suppressed meanings getting suddenly resonant and accord appreciation.

Well, one cannot deny the universal appeal of the either poem in the process of articulating love exceptionally or dying exceptionally. Mona’s poetry always expresses a passionate pursuit, which is substantiated by her other poems. To me, a poem is a cultural artifact, without ever denying its potential of universality. In love poetry, usually poets work out images that are culture-free, as Mona’s poem here appears. But to be called a Mizo poem, Home Going will have to evolve through images and symbols that are ethnically or experientially Mizo. As I have come across a slowly burgeoning tuft of poetry in English written by Mizo men and women, I find no self-convinced confidence in using Mizo symbols or places. This scenario points up two things: one, the Mizo poet in English does not want to identify with the land or social order where he/she belongs for special reasons; secondly, the poet may target an intelligent readership outside her immediate environment. But in both cases, the fact lies that the immediate surrounding has impacted on the creative spirit, though to an indirection. Therefore, our tie with our ethnic roots does not die, though it may seem dry on the surface. Thus, I feel, the poet’s exercise may better unfold the self- alienation, self-exile or the social neglect by means of culture’s images. This is nevertheless to acknowledge that other poems of Mona Zote are characteristically and subversively Mizo poems. 

Prof. S.D. Baral is presently the Head of the Department of English, Mizoram University. We appreciate his interest and scholarly study and assessment of the writings on this blog, especially in the two mentioned in the article.

Poems - Somte Ralte

A Cole Park Afternoon 

Remember how the golden rays seeped through the leaves
To touch our young skins with soft radiance
As we sat side by side on the grassy carpet
The gentle breeze tenderly brushing our faces

It was perfect, just you and i
With  no care in the world
There was that look in your eyes
That  something only i could see

And as we watched the old couple
Walking down the marbled pavement
You told me that would be us
Someday in the distant future.

Perhaps that perfect afternoon
Could not hold two hearts together
Since all that we have now
Is just the memory of a Cole Park afternoon.



The Crossing

Moses only had to raise his staff
For  the word  of  the Lord was upon the waters
And the sea parted for the chosen to cross.

When our land was in turmoil
Father crossed the mountains to join village grouping
Who knew settling there he would meet Mother?

Tonight I am crossing the spiritual Jordan
Those that do not,  will not understand
For who knows what awaits once we have crossed?


Somte (Lalmalsawmi) Ralte is presently pursuing her Ph.D in English literature at Mizoram University.  I see a definite growth and maturity in her poetry since the last couple of poems that she sent me in 2010.  Good going, Somte, keep it up!

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.

The Lost Parchment* - Mafaa Hauhnar

The parchment is gone -
lost in the abyss of time and space;
Some mongrel dog ran off with it.

The parchment of leather
in which were recorded -
the valour and valiance
of our lionhearted lads;
the boundless beauty
of our luscious ladies.
the voices and visions
of our poets and prophets;
the wit and wisdom
of our saints and sages.

The scroll of time
in which were scripted
the time when
the steadfast spirit of Tlawmngaihna **-
the flower of life*** -
burst into full bloom
under the cerulean Mizoram skies;

The time when
women and children,
faces flushed with freedom,
stood stalwart and tall
like the mighty Mount Phawngpui****
casting vast shadows
across the plains.

The parchment in which
words like
gallantry and chivalry
altruism and heroism
trustworthiness and selflessness
were used
as the lynchpin of society.

But now that parchment of ours is gone
and our vocabulary
is dying like embers
in the deep folds of our heart.

Streams of our lexicon
word by wondrous word
tumble;
fall out
by bits
and jots
and pieces.

Fingers can no longer feel
the pen mark or ink spot anymore.

Deluded by the canopy
of pitch-black dark,
we are tossed
like a tiny boat on an open sea.

How can we survive
in an ark that seems
sinking?

If only we could cling
to our parchment
like a lifebelt
to keep us afloat.

Now I sit myself down
despairing
desperate
despondent
among my own wreckage,
staring out into
the retreating horizon
of its presence.

28.07.2014




Notes:

*According to the Mizo legend, the legendary Thlanrawkpa gifted the Mizo with a leather parchment saying, “Treasure this with great care for within it is nourishment and riches and all the knowledge to quench your thirst.” The Mizo carelessly left his gift in a front porch, from where a hungry dog picked it up and took it away.

**Tlawmngaihna = The Mizo highest code of morals, the spirit of self-sacrifice and self-denial.

***the flower of life = an epithet coined by the famous Mizo songwriter Rokunga in his song “Aw tlawmngaihna hlu, Aw nunna par” (O Precious tlawmngaihna, O flower of life)

****Phawngpui =  The highest mountain peak in Mizoram, considered to be the abode of the gods.



Mafaa Hauhnar is one of contemporary Mizo literature's most well-known names, having published several volumes of poetry, critical essays and creative prose works. His publications are invariably bestsellers, trademarked by quirkily witty turns of phrases and puns, as well as a healthy infusion of humour which often neutralizes the sometimes acerbic social satire.  He regularly makes appearances at seminars and writers' meets across the country, and on Mizo television reality shows as celebrity judge. While most of his work is in Mizo, unlike most of his contemporaries he also occasionally writes in English. He is presently editor executive at ZOlife, a well established monthly magazine based in Aizawl.

If this is January - Zualteii Poonte

January is the slow, quiet time of year
when we sit back and relax
after the rush of the Christmas season
and bask in the sun, warming our backs
and eating sweet oranges.

Not a time when crime explodes in our faces:
when young men go missing
and their bloated, blackened corpses are found
and skinny young dark men arrested
and charged nine long days later¹.
When carnage runs wild, free as blood
as crazed men burst into houses
and slash you to death with
a butcher's knife,
when in a family of six,
five coffins are lined up
the next day².
And on the streets and social media,
church-going people bay
for vengeance and retribution
and taking the law into their own hands.

If this is January
slow, quiet January
I dread what summer will bring.




¹ On the night of the 31st December 2014, a young man was reported missing with his two-wheeler. After wide searches by the YMA, his dead body was found eight days later. The next evening, his vehicle was found and its supposed owner admitted to the theft and killing.

² Around 7.30 pm of the 9th January 2015, a family of six were confronted in their own home by a knife-wielding man. Five died instantly in the horrific assault that rocked Mizoram. The assailant was believed to be on meth.