Poems - Jesleen Lalmuanawmi

Clouds Large

Clouds large, looms larger,
You have no idea what you saved.
Larger, looms larger,
How do you tie a knot?

A bird flies out, out the barred window,
From her heart, from behind the bars,
Into the horizon, beyond the clouds
And at home, the clouds loomed larger.

You spent a day with her,
Sweet words, she hadn't heard for long,
And for that day, the clouds stopped looming,
You have no idea what you saved.

  ~~~~~


Bangalore Guesthouse

Hours, sketches and Dylan
Laces, petals, roses, vase blue.
Vase blue on woodwork.
Gone, gone to country foreign

Snow and no internet
Gone. Gone, gone to your peer group.
Tea and a life mundane.
Coffee mug, used coffee mug on wood work.

Despair, 2.51 AM, Silence.
Morose, resounding, ear splitting silence.
Sleep, let it come sleep,
Eyes closed, let it come.

  ~~~~


Stark, dark, grey

He sits alone at his desk,
A pencil, a sheet as blank as his stares,
A stark picture in black and grey,
Alone in room grey, as he battles his longings.

She sits alone and jots down furiously
Her pain, her loneliness, her longings,
She pauses awhile and tries to muster anger,
Yet all she feels is an understanding.

She knows why the sudden departure,
She knows why the complete silence,
She knows why the snuffed out longings,
This was the only way to get it done.

The stark room in black and grey, where she stayed,
Dashes of colours added by the lyrics of songs carefully chosen
Of life, of love, of sun-filled days,
Of long talks, of kisses of yesterdays.

So the stark rooms in black and grey
Where both battled longings, their whims and fancies,
They peeked into each other`s windows into rooms grey,
And they both knew why and snuffed out longings.



Jesleen Lalmuanawmi loves life...the rain on her face...sand between her toes....black coffee and a good book. She is presently living in New Delhi with her husband and three children.

We Were Supposed To Meet Today - David L. Hmar

We were

Supposed 

To meet today

Get up close

And personal

Chat over

A double scoop

Of ice cream

And relive

The past week

With relish

And seal it

With a kiss

(Or two…)

We were 

Supposed 

To walk today 

So I could 

Propose 

My undying 

Desire
For you 

And then brush 

Past your hand 

And delicately 

Only touch you 

Because 

Anything else 

Would 

Land us both 

In a deep deep soup… 

We were 

Supposed 

To hear 

Our hearts 

Beat 

In the 

Silence 

Today, 

Look 

And stare 

At each 

Other 

Make love 

With our 

Eyes

But

When I awoke today

To tell you I love you,

I found

You were

Nowhere to

Be found

And everything

Including

The dream

Came crumbling

Down…

David L. Hmar is presently based in Kolkota, pursuing his studies, and dreams of "winning the Booker and Nobel Prize for the Mizos, and counts Hemingway as his chief inspiration as the 'the writer who made me want to live a writer's life even it meant being poor.' The aspiring author writes because he has lived these moments and wishes that others too, in reading his works, would experience the zest for life and love."

Thangchhawli

Retold by C. Lalnunchanga
Translated by A. Hmangaihzuali Poonte

Long ago there once lived a poor widow. She had a beautiful daughter named Thangchhawli and their house was always filled with young men coming to court her. One day, mother and daughter went out to work on their farming. Their farming land that year was very far away and had not been very well cultivated. Around noon, Thangchhawli became very thirsty so her mother said, “Chemte¹, go down to the little stream at the end of the farm and see if there is any water.”

So Thangchawli went to fetch the water. But the stream was completely dry and seeing some water in the hollow of a tree, she quenched her thirst. Quite unknown to her, however, the water belonged to a tiger-person². When she went back to her mother, she said, “Mother, the stream was dry but since I was so thirsty I drank the water I saw in a tree hollow.”

Soon, Thangchhawli’s face began to change: her skin became striped, long, sharp talons grew out of her hands and a thick tail sprouted behind her. Her mother lamented, “Chemte, what a terrible disaster, the water you drank must have belonged to a tiger-person!” After a while, Thangchhawli turned back into a human being. But her mother advised her, “You must keep this a secret.”

For a certain length of time, they managed to hide the secret from everyone. But one night, as Thangchhawli was being courted as usual by several young men who were lounging on the floor as she and her mother tended to the fire, and she was certain they were all fast asleep, she said to her mother, “Mother, I am hungry.”

Her mother said, “Go eat the leftover rice on the shelf there.”
“I’m not hungry for rice.”

“Go eat the goat that’s tied outside the front door.”
“I’m not hungry for goat meat.”
“Go eat the sow below the house.”
“I’m not hungry for pig meat.”
“All right, go out to the edge of the forest and feed on the cow we keep there.”
But Thangchhawli refused again, saying, “I’m not hungry for cow meat.”
Her mother looked around at the young men fast asleep on the floor and seeing one of the youngest suitors sleeping by the furthest wall, told her daughter, “All right, go to the youngest boy over there and feed on him.”

However the young man was not asleep, and had been listening to the conversation between mother and daughter. He was filled with great fear and woke his companions, saying, “Get up, get up, I have a terrible stomach ache,” and pretended to be racked with abdominal pain.

So his friends carried him to the Zawlbuk³ and there, he told them the truth. “I was only pretending to be in pain because while you were all fast asleep, I heard the girl we were courting tell her mother how hungry she was. But to everything that her mother told her to eat, she would say she was not hungry for it. Finally, the mother told her, “Go feed on the youngest boy,” and I was so frightened, I woke up all of you.”

The eldest young men among them said, “Tomorrow night, we shall court her again and find out the truth. We must all secretly carry a rock and a stick of firewood.”

So the next evening, the young men all went to Thangchhawli’s house again. Unnoticed by the girl and her mother, they dropped their rocks into the pot of pig swill cooking over the fire, and hiding their firewood sticks under their puan, stretched out on the floor and pretended to fall asleep.

After a while, the pig swill was cooked and Thangchhawli prepared to remove the pot from the fire. But the rocks the young men had secretly dropped into the pot made it very heavy and she was unable to move it. As she drew all her strength together, her supernatural tiger powers emerged and she was able to easily pick up the heavy pot and remove it from the fire.  

At this, all the young men jumped up and cried, “This is a tiger-person. No ordinary woman could have moved that pot!” Arming themselves with their sticks of firewood, they got ready to beat Thangchhawli to death.

But the mother exclaimed, “Alas, we can hide our secret no longer. Forgive us!” She then told the young men the sad story of how the misfortune had befallen her daughter. But the young men said, “However sorry we feel for you about this situation, your daughter can no longer continue living in this village.”

And so the poor widow and her daughter had to part ways. Being no longer allowed to live with human beings, Thangchhawli left to live in the jungle and her mother watched her leave, weeping bitterly.

Because of her reluctance to leave her mother, Thangchhawli stayed on for many days in the outskirts of the village. She often brought choice pieces of wild animals she had caught and left them at her mother’s doorstep.

One night she brought the hind leg of domestic cattle and her mother told her, “Chemte, you know I’ve told you not to prey on domestic animals. If you keep doing it, huntsmen will soon shoot you dead. Go far away from here for your own safety.” Thangchhawli said sadly, “Mother, it breaks my heart to leave you forever.” Her mother told her, “You must go. But be careful wherever you go.”

So Thangchhawli went away deep into the jungle where she later married a tiger and had children with him. When she left her home, she had been wearing a thihna (a traditional Mizo necklace) and it is said that her offspring could be identified by their necks. Whenever the old Mizo elders came across tigers with white markings on their necks, they would always refer to them as Thangchhawli’s descendants.

¹ A term of endearment for a young child
² Keimi. Creatures believed to be part-human, part-tiger. Perhaps the Mizo equivalent of the European werewolf
³ Traditionally a dormitory for young Mizo bachelors


Translated from Ka Pi Thawnthu Min Hrilh Chu (Stories My Grandmother Told Me), a collection of short stories written and compiled by C. Lalnunchanga, one of the most prolific contemporary writers in Mizo literature.

Giants (for Pupu) - Lalnunsanga

It wasn't long ago that I learnt Giants walked among us. They were not 30 feet tall and physically imposing nor were they frightful or terrifying. They didn't conquer you with their muscles nor mock your weakness. They did not walk above us. They look just like you and me and for the most part didn't even know they were giants and neither would you; until they leave. No matter how frail they look on their death bed, no matter how fragile their bones, you feel the weight of their history, their enormity and you are humbled. The spaces they leave can never be filled for we are we and they, Giants.


Lalnunsanga currently lives in Shillong and is pursuing his doctorate at NEHU.

Picture: Rollick Lalnuntluanga

The Undiscarded Image: Love in C.Thuamluaia’s Sialton Official

- Dr.R.Thangvunga

The story  -  A government official at Sialton in eastern Mizoram proceeds to his new post in southern Mizoram with his family, breaking journey at the parachronistic Hotel Odyana in Zolawn, where an old discarded Shillong Times brings back memories of a buried romance which perhaps all happily married men would have shrugged off. What he reads there is an echo of lovers’ familiar heart-to-heart communiqué plus news about an ill-fated marriage of the girl he loved once. But the Sialton Official (thus known), like Pandora, must open the safely locked past with this key, and bring about ruin and death. His indulgence with memories of a romance with a tea-girl in Shillong leads to another indulgence to cure the first indulgence, and bury his loved ones in the other love. From his drunken torpor he is rudely awakened by cries of “Hotel Odyana is burning! Your family….”  He loses everything except remorse and, Oedipus-like, wanders Cainfully bearing his sin and punishment, while to all men he becomes the very sainthood of Penitence. His forgiveness finally comes where he had sinned, in Zolawn, to which his daughter’s voice has been driving him relentlessly, to find peace and self-forgiveness. With his salvation the whole community comes alive to worship and hear his testimony of the Miracle of Love.

Some early novels familiar to Mizo readers are romantic love stories with tragic endings. As in Hardy’s Return of the Native, a young man returning from civilized world to his native village in the hills typically becomes ‘the eye’ in society, winning favour and love, and rivalry: a perfect stereotype setting for a sentimental plot. But Sialton Official is different in that the romance and sentimental elements take a back seat, and practical life is foregrounded, at least in the setting. Shillong was a conventional name for education till recently, and an occasional tale of romance with a local beauty is not unconventional, for it does not seem as romantic to go gallivanting with one of the same tribe; and marriage was hardly ever the goal of such relationships – there being an unspoken taboo-like consensus against inter-tribal marriages. Any such inter-tribal amatory relationships came under a cloud of displeasure from both the communities. But it is the memory of a romance that we are dealing with, not the actual event, which had been sealed fast in Time’s sepulchre, incapable of meddling with the present life. Or is it? 

To compare such a happy memory with a Dracula or a raised Mummy and the unspeakable fear they evoke may seem farfetched. But the catastrophe attending on it is no less horrible than such visitation from the nether world.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. [1]

And Dorothy may yet be living in St. Mary’s Convent with her daughter after the death by drinking of her husband, when her SOS reached her old lover. It is no evil hand reaching out from the grave in a fit of jealousy of his good fortune in love that bewitched the Sialton Official. Nor can we blame Dorothy for putting that bleeding message, knowing she has no hope of her distant fiancé riding against the wind to rescue her. The message may just be a ‘heavy weight of hours’ sighed out for relief – a shy, unadmitted ‘if’ betraying her need of comfort in her solitude  - an undiscarded image.

Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast,

To feel forever its soft fall and swell,

Awake forever in a sweet unrest.[2]

What kind of love is this that can cut across a happily concluded marriage? Is there a different kind of love outside the marriage institution? In Medieval Europe the amatory aspect of love was institutionalized in ‘courtly love’, with the effect of relegating married love to the status of domestic order. The majority of Medieval poems celebrate love within a religious framework by which the lady is an ideal of beauty and chastity to whom devotion is due as prove of an ideal knightly character. Marriage is not the end of this holy quest, for an ideal possessed loses its value as an ideal. The beautiful lady is an ideal inspiring love and devotion till she becomes a possession. Love idealized thus is an intangible vision that illuminates the object. And when the Sialton Official cryptically remarks, “I reached for the star without climbing whereas she looked in vain for a bridge where there was none,” there can hardly be a better way of stating the situation of such relationship, showing that love is a two-way glass, man and woman having different concepts about love. According to this, man idealizes love, whereas woman sees it as a means. Man needs woman to light his life, but woman demands his very life. He loved, not Dorothy, but what he saw in her - a very Desdemona. And to Dorothy, he is a daydream, a mirage, the handsome knight who never stays. Both went separate ways to marry and kept their love alive, but closely, so closely they both thought they had buried it under marriage vows. The dead never rise, but the undead.

For Othello, Desdemona incarnates his concept of Beauty and Love. It is not Desdemona dead but the dead in Desdemona that raised the chaos in him. Man as husband and father plays his role smoothly when the undiscarded image of love lies dormant. The loss of husband, albeit a drunken one opened the chest that had confined love in Dorothy, and like Pandora, let loose the winged scion of Love whose arrow pierced the once wounded heart of  the Sialton Official on that ill-fated evening in Odyana Hotel, with catastrophic consequences.

Once Dorothy, ideal love incarnate in “Queen of the days I loved,” lives again, the other love incarnate in his wife (the ideal wife) must die. And husband too. But not necessarily in the flesh. Thus the pain of physical death is not felt by his wife and children but him alone; that is, the text saved them the horror, the fear, the burning heat and the suffocating breathless smoke. It is him so rudely called from another world that bore the full painful consciousness of death.  They are the sacrifices at the altar of the goddess of love. But the cost, so dearly paid by the penitent – of what worth is it made to serve?

The answer to this has to be the conclusion of our brief critical adventure. But there is yet an unvisited but familiar spot in love’s empire: the hill of Platonic love where true devotees of love find fulfillment. For Plato the object of love is perpetual possession of and union with the good.[3]  In literature woman more often as not objectifies the good “in her self-possessed, witty, modest and circumspect nature, ready to face life on her own.”  [4]“. . . love of a particular person leads to the discovery that beauty of soul is more valuable than beauty of body." [5]

Such beauty engendering love in man is observed in most of Shakespeare’s heroines who possess a kind of beauty that can turn cold the heat of lust. Marina of Pericles, Imogen of Cymbeline, Portia of The Merchant of Venice, among others, are the quintessence of beauty that does not rust in marriage.The seemingly wasted goodness of a Cordelia, an Ophelia, or a Desdemona constitutes an honest admission of the insignificance of human virtue in the context of an impersonal, apathetic and consciousless cosmic order. In such a universe, man is the only ‘measure of all things, of those that are that they are, that are not that they are not.’[6] Man must make his virtue meaningful in himself in order to save himself the pain of existence, or perish in the limbo of his own agnosticism, or hang precariously in the swing of ontological relativism. The Sialton Official chooses to live, to go on, and ‘BE,’ to make the sacrifice of his loved ones meaningful, for himself and for humanity, and leave an unforgettable legacy of Love.

[1]  John Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk. I (ll. 254-255).
[2] John Keats, Bright Star.
[3] R.Thangvunga, Shakespeare and Donne: Themes of Love, Time and Mutability, 2010,  Atlantic Publishers, New Delhi, p. 76.
[4]  ibid., p. 26.
[5]   ibid., p.77
[6]  Protagoras.

Dr. R. Thangvunga is an Associate Professor in the Mizo Department at Mizoram University. This seminar paper which examines this short fiction was presented at the National Seminar on Mizo Fiction  organized by the  Department of Mizo, Mizoram University, at Aizawl, in 2011.