Going Places with "Of Butterflies and Lullabies & Unfinished Conversations"

It was a proud moment on Wednesday the 10th February when our very own Dawngi Chawngthu formally released her first collection of poetry, "Of Butterflies and Lullabies & Unfinished Conversations." Containing 55 poems, spanning 86 pages and costing 200 Indian rupees, it is a slim, hardbound volume published by Writers Workshop, Kolkota. This is only the third collection of poetry published by a Mizo writer in English - the other two being Laldinkima Sailo's Spectrum: A Plethora of Rhapsody, published 2002, Imprint, and Tinkim Dawn by Malsawmi Jacob, a collection of poems written in English as well as in Mizo, published 2003, Mizoram Publication Board. Mizo writing in English is so niched, so specialised that few actively pursue it, and fewer still publish it. But for the few that are involved in it, it is our chosen mode of creative articulation, and one we are fiercely loyal to despite little to no public acknowledgment or recognition.

A little clarification first: in May 2014, Malsawmi Jacob published Zorami, a novel dealing with Mizo history and more specifically the Insurgency Movement of 1966. While most of us had believed it then to be the first ever novel published by a Mizo in English, two books popped out of the woodwork - Facebook Phantom, pub. 2013, Duckbill, by Suzanne Sangi, and Jo's Journal, pub. 2014, Notion Press, by Sarah Aineh, both young Mizo women (and coincidentally both only 17 when they wrote their books). While I have not read either, I gather from reviews that both are classified as young adult fiction and make for light, easy reading. They are entitled honourable mention in any discussion of book publications of Mizo writings in English.  Zorami, however, stands a class apart and must hold indubitable place of pride as being yet the only fictional prose work in English by a Mizo writer to painstakingly sculpt a plot within the Mizo ethos and present to a worldwide readership a novel that is uniquely, unquestionably and comprehensively Mizo in context.

To get back to Ms. Chawngthu's volume of poetry, the 55 poems are divided into two sections - "Unfinished Conversations" contain poems written for her late mother, some directly addressed to her and some written around her. The other section "Of Butterflies and Lullabies" are a fusion of love poems, personal poems, poems that explore the challenges of women and poems that raise questions on a number of social issues. I remember Dawngi at university, forever scribbling on her notebooks snatches of song lyrics, bits of poetry she found somewhere that resonated with her or that she wrote herself. Then we lost touch. It was only in late 2007 that I found something on a friend's blog that Dawngi had written in Mizo, which caught me by surprise because I didn't remember her writing in anything other than in English, and had certainly never known her to write on social issues. Butterflies has the English version, Lucky Zo Lanu, translated by Dawngi herself, where she cleverly turns the incessant social conditioning of young Mizo girls on its head by pointing out that Mama, the young Mizo boy, needs all the advice and teaching far more since he is the keeper and future torchbearer of the tribe.

What I have always loved about Dawngi's writing is that she writes so simply and effortlessly. No superfluity, no theatrics, no showing off of vocab or forcing on of vague, shadowy allusions. It's so clean and simple, you think, "Oh, I could write stuff like this too" but uh, not really. The apparent artlessness and easy flow of words and thought are skills not everyone is born with, and most definitely not the adept way she rounds off a poem. I tend to never quite know how to phase out a poem to a nice uncontrived ending but Dawngi does it time and again in a way that has me thinking, "Wow, that was smooth" in genuine admiration.

Over the years, through the privilege of being an old friend, I have had the opportunity to put up on this blog a number of her poems. The first time was in July 2008.  Of the two posted then, both of which are included in Butterflies, The Mask, so vulnerable, wistful, and uncertain, yet tentatively hopeful, remains my favourite. Another favourite, also in the book, is Dead Butterfly - dark, brooding and so desperately, hopelessly sad.


throw away my memory
throw them into
unknown areas of your mind

unlit
dark 
grey…areas

your haloed moments
your sane and conscious moments
will never find you here

your back is turned
your mind is closed
your love is gone

but someday
a quiet and lonely evening
may catch you off guard

taking a stroll
through the wastelands
of your mind

you will find me
sitting in a darkened corner
a dead butterfly in my hand.


To Dawngi, and to Mizo writers in English, may our tribe increase!

Year End - Zualteii Poonte

December,
and they come in droves -
some for Christmas shopping
with money they've saved all year,
some to see the big city
they've heard of all their lives,
some persuaded finally to see the doctors
for that nagging stomach discomfort
they've been putting on hold
through the long, hard months
of slash and burn, sowing and weeding
and finally the harvest,
all under the burning sun
and pouring rains.

Some are easy to tell -
lean, skeletal almost,
sunbrowned, clothed in sombre colours,
together in groups of threes or fours,
clearly not at ease
in the jostling throng on the streets.
Others, while also from the provinces,
but spared perhaps the more brutal agrarian labour,
blend in more easily with the city crowd
of smooth faced young girls strolling in pairs,
identical in fur lined boots and slim fit clothing,
sweet-smelling young boys,
jackets zipped up to the chin,
swinging bike helmets in leather gloved hands,
children clutching plastic toys from China,
licking ice cream, as weary parents in tow
pause at mounds of secondhand winterwear
piled high on each corner of every street,
patient women fruit sellers
with neat stacks of sweet, juicy oranges,
Red Kettle volunteers grouped
at strategic intersections,
breaking into loud, brassy snatches
of well-loved carols.

It's Christmas time in the city,
fast paced and frenetic.
Soon they'll rattle back to the villages
on roads baked passable in the dry season,
and exhaustedly, they will exclaim,
"How crowded Aizawl is,
how can anyone even stand to live there!"

A Little Love Poem in the Form of Economics Literature - Lalrinkima Ralte

An Investment

So this is how it starts -
life is a market,
an exchange of goods and services,
for me on my part,
my money is love,
and when I first saw you,
I realized that
you were a social overhead capital,
an indispensable source,
an injection into my life,
a stock upon my heart,
a demand for my soul.

A perfect competition,
yet imperfect market,
for I have to compete with other firms
and then supply to you
the best final product.
When others spread moral hazards,
let us apply our market signaling,
asymmetric information,
is all that others will receive,
for you have already monopolized
my market,
my firm.

Together let us try
to internalize our externalities,
so that the spill-over effect will be positive,
and such free riders will gain from ours,
that there are no trade-offs in love,
that in fact a multiplier effect takes place
like a fixed-deposit getting higher and higher
in value each day,
your love, my love,
will climb higher and higher,
even in recession,
and in depression also.

While I have the absolute advantage,
and our love in equilibrium,
in the ideal state of Pareto optimality,
I want you to know
you are an asset,
while I,
a mere liability.



Lalrinkima Ralte, as may be quickly deduced, is an Economics University student with a passion for literature. He lives in Aizawl Venglai and enjoys writing in English though he's the first to admit his grammar needs brushing up. His religious views are that of a "free seeker," while his politics are "left wing, revolutionary."

Sunday, Aizawl - Cherrie Lalnunziri Chhangte

Church bells intrude into my musings.
Musings? Pretentious me. Thoughts.
I am not the type to muse.
But the bells – it is 6:00 pm
and I count three so far,
of varying tones and volumes
calling to worship the same God
in different voices.
Up the hill is the Big Church
their bells seem more imperious;
down the valley, a little muted
but insistent nonetheless.
I am unsure if the church
that meets in that apartment
across my bedroom window
has bells.
Downstairs I know for sure
they don’t need one.
Their flock are too scattered
to hear them anyway.

Soon there will be singing
and we will decide
which church is more spiritual
by the way they sing.
The congregation downstairs
don’t stand a chance –
they are too small,
and a few straggly voices
struggle to carry high notes
accompanied by a lone  khuang,
easily drowned by the electronic
euphoria of surrounding churches.

Aizawl.
So many churches.
Such dedication to dedication.


Dr. Cherrie Lalnunziri Chhangte is on the teaching  faculty of the English dept at Mizoram University. She writes poetry in English and also does translations from Mizo to English.

Photo credit: Henry de Ccorn

Re-Package 'Mizo' - Lal Khiangte

I have been born a Mizo and  I have always felt like a Mizo (whatever that is). Nowadays, every one is talking about ‘going back to one’s roots’ and ‘loving one’s own culture’ and so on. This led me to thinking - how Mizo do you have to be to be a Mizo? Are there levels?  What is being a Mizo any way? All my life I thought I was just as Mizo as the person next to me, my neighbour, my best friend and my dog. With a pair of jeans and a hair colour that changes every six months, I felt like a Mizo just as any other Mizo person out there. I didn’t know wearing a traditional dress was the only way to become a real Mizo!

I understand that the older generation wants to preach to the new ones about the importance of wearing one’s own traditional dress. They are only trying to make us more Mizo! I am a little confused as to what constitutes a Mizo in the first place. Blood-tribe-location-facial prominence-dress? Which is it? Personally, I associate being a Mizo with Tlawmngaihna first and foremost. I think that is the only thing that really sets us apart from other cultures. That selfless act of pure sacrifice for others - nothing can beat that. I don’t really care about how you look as long as you have a good heart! Right? Apparently not.  It seems we need to play ‘dress up’ in order to show that we belong to a certain tribe.

‘Image is everything’ says the Kardashian clan. If you don’t know who they are, then you do not really care about "image." If image is what we aim for, we  Mizos are pretty good at creating the Mizo Brand. Sunday-Christian Mizo image, puan-wearing-virginal-looking Mizo women, formal shirt-wearing-church-going men, you get the drift. I do not have a problem with the way we want to dress. I think it's classy and smart. It becomes my problem when the way we dress is not backed up by substance. It’s all style and no substance. I care more about the inner workings of a person’s heart rather than the way a person appears to be. Yes, I enjoy watching ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’ but I also know it’s not ‘real’. So which image do we want others to see in us? The fake or the real?

Young Mizo kids today are enamoured by Korean styles and everything Korean. There is a strong reason for it. Korea is cool. Korea is hip. Korea sells and it sells big time. Now I don’t ever recall Korea forcing its culture down our throats, we gladly welcomed it with open arms. There’s something we can actually learn from them before we brand them as bad influence to our society. You see, we need to re-package Mizo culture! In order to do this we first need to re-define what Mizo is. With all due respect and no offence to our forefathers,  maybe its time to change our perceptions with the changing times. Let us be accommodating. A Mizo can be a traditional-dress-wearing man,  a Mizo can be a young kid with green spiked hair. The sooner we accept this, the more comfortable we will be. Instead of focusing on the way we dress, why don’t we teach the true values to our younger generation? True values like honesty, hard work, self-sufficiency, and of course being true to one self more than anything else. We do not have to force any one to buy the Mizo culture. They will when they see something they like. Our job here is to re-package it.

For instance, you can’t force anyone to wear a traditional dress on their wedding day. Instead show them how good it feels to be a Mizo. Re-wrap the Mizo dress and sell it to them (metaphorically). If we see what we like, we buy it. Simple as that. People may flinch and say, "You can’t sell culture, its absurd!"  Well, let me burst your bubble, culture has been commoditized since paper became money. We have been buying the western culture for years, haven’t we? What about Mizo culture? Do we have anything worth selling? Can we sell? The answer is Yes. We can sell our family values, our never ending allegiance to God, our humility, our smiles.. the list can go on forever. The important thing here is to re-package our cultural products. How do we do that? I do not have all the answers but I will give one example.

Repackage Tlawmngaihna. I think this is by far the most prominent value that Mizo people have. If we can sell this to us, we can sell it to the world. You may have heard of the word ubuntu which has its origin in an African saying which goes, ‘I am because we are.’ In short, it talks about being a good human being to each other. Now this word/value has been repeatedly discussed by world famous people like Nelson Mandela and Oprah. They are repackaging Ubuntu and selling it to the world. I know we have also taken pride in our Tlawmngaihna but in recent times, it has taken a back seat. Maybe we need to put it in a nice bottle and gift wrap it with a sweet note.

Be creative and sell me my Mizo and I shall buy it willingly. You don’t need to force it down my throat. Sometimes all you need is to serve it with a spoonful of sugar.

P.S. I am a Mizo as much as you!



Lal aka Lalremruati Khiangte is an Assistant Professor in the department of Mass Communication at Mizoram University. She wrote this feisty assertion of the young, educated, urban, contemporary Mizo in April 2013 for her blog https://gkhiangte.wordpress.com.  I am grateful to her for allowing me to repost it here.