Thlasik Mumang

What is it they say about winter dreams?

Tacky beads on my neck turn cool

Mingled with the chill of night.

You gave nervous, disapproving glares

When ghosts of Christmases past

Knocked on the thick wooden door-

Wreathed.

Your memories have become mine.

And so, I felt the fascination

The excitement, the fear,

The disgust.

I felt in me

Your exquisite helplessness,

So addictive.

I saw you from a distance,

Torn. A fragment of a moment

In painful slow motion

Enacted on your face,

Stretched to infinity.

But I was mute,

Equally helpless.

I saw you rooted

Unable to move

And then you retreated

Into yourself.

Unreachable.

I shall put away the wreath soon

And pack it in a box labeled

‘Ghosts’.

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Birthday Ramblings

Birthdays have always been important to me - especially mine :) For as long as I can remember, I have celebrated the 27th day of April in some form or another with those closest to me. For the past five years in particular, I have spent it with a person who has meant a great deal to me. This year, I was all set to spend a quiet, low-key birthday because of several reasons - age-wise, it seemed to be getting a little ridiculous for me to get all worked up anymore; further, I am away from home, in a VERY FAR OFF LAND, with none of my long-time friends nearby, and some significant chapters of my life closing with an inevitable finality. So, there I was, feeling alone, bereft, and not a little sorry for myself (which is an archaic English way of saying "very sorry for myself", for the uninitiated. I swear the influence of all those Victorian novels make their presence felt at the most inconvenient times!)

Anyhow, this was not to be. Probably because those who know me well knew how much fuss I usually make on my birthday, they made an extra effort to wish me and make me feel loved. This has been the most unusual birthday for me. The one time that I wished to forget that it was my birthday turned out to be the longest one ever thanks to the different timezones that I and my near and dear ones live in. Starting with cousins in Australian time who started wishing me more than a full day in advance, and then moving on to those in IST who began calling me from the morning of OUR 26th (the first call came at 6 Am on the 26th to be precise - I love you all but you gotta learn to calculate the time differences!!) , and then friends in the East Coast who are ahead of us by three hours. When people in PST finally began wishing me, it was beginning to feel anticlimactic! Apart from the many, many wishes on my facebook wall, I had friends and family remembering me and sending their blessings via whatsapp, and texts, not to mention the calls I received from assorted locations. Including the one person I thought I would not be hearing from.

Without naming names, among other things I also received this

and this

. A dear friend sent me a Starbucks gift card, so I went and got myself a birthday treat of coffee and cake, and thoroughly enjoyed it too:

I am also told that I have a gift arriving soon in the mail from a very special person, and I'll upload that when I get it.
I also had one person play "happy birthday" on the violin and send it to me. Someone in a different timezone stayed up all night to usher in the day with me at midnight, my time. Despite my protests. Between all the attention I got from so many nice people, I had a very busy two-day birthday via my electronic devices. Who says social media is ruining our lives?!

The point of this whole blog post is not to brag in any way, but to put on record how immensely blessed I feel and how grateful I am to every one who made an effort to make me, the laziest person when it comes to these social niceties, feel like a million bucks. Contrary to my intentions, nobody was willing to let me forget that it was my birthday, and in hindsight, I am thankful for the way God has gently reminded me - in the nicest way possible - that I have nothing to regret or be sad about. Getting older is one way of looking at it, and that can be depressing when you're single. But it takes a very slight adjustment in perspective and choose to see it as a milestone, a blessing, and to realize that not one day of life can be taken for granted when we cannot prolong our time here on earth for even a single minute. I am in awe of the greatness of He who can.

Cliches are cliches for a reason, and it is true that when one door closes, another opens. Some people and traditions will have to be relegated to memory, but then, new friends, new loves, and new memories are also made in the process. C'est la vie.

As for me, unlike any other year, I had a very low-key, mellow day just as I had expected, but unexpectedly, I loved it. Thank you, all!

Oh, and as we like to say it, do leave your paw prints in the comments section below if you're reading this :)

Teachers' Day

I refuse to be cynical about Teachers' Day. So here is me wishing a happy Teachers' Day to -

Miss Mabel, my class teacher when I was in classes 2 and 3, who wore tailored pencil skirts that reached to just below her knees and always put her hair up in a loose bun that never came undone. Boy, was she pretty. She was sweet, dedicated, and never got angry, but always managed to have perfect discipline inside her classroom. That woman had class. Most importantly for me, she gave me certificates for things like "cleanliness" and good marks; when I topped the class at the final class 3 exams, she presented to me a hardbound copy of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, out of her own pocket. She hooked me on Victorian fiction for life. What an amazing lady - I hope she's been blessed, wherever she is.

Miss Helen, the statuesque Hindi teacher who spoke her own unique brand of Mizo.When none of us displayed the slightest interest in learning Hindi, she was able to motivate us. If none of us were very fluent in Hindi, it was our fault, not hers. If nothing else, we all wrote flawless Devanagari script, beautiful, precise, and neat. Not that we understood half of what we wrote.

Sr. Christita at Mary Mount school, who made me go back to school after I had decided to 'drop out' in class 7 because of the school bully. I refused to attend school for an entire month, but she made numerous trips to my home, talking to me, my parents, cajoling, hugging, and finally persuading me to return with the assurance that the bully would be dealt with. Last I heard, he was in prison for some juvenile crime, but that's another story.

The Revd. Presley Lyngdoh. Princi, as he was fondly called. What a character. Always formal, always polite, always scary. A stickler for decorum. Sir Wasan Elwin, son of celebrated anthropologist Verrier Elwin, whose razor-sharp mind always delighted, terrified, and instructed.

Miss Tuni Gill at St. Mary's College, who made us stage Pygmallion, or more precisely, My Fair Lady. I managed to hide in the wings (literally) but her enthusiasm was contagious. Miss Dincola, who played the piano and spoke English with an impeccable British intonation.

Prof. Esther Syiem, who always treats students with courtesy and respect. She shows that being a teacher isn't all about scaring people and imposing rules. Always refined, always down-to-earth. She is also a little absentminded. She once told somebody that she had two children, two lovely girls, when the third child tugged at her hand and whispered, "but Mei (mother), you have THREE! You forgot me." She hopes her poor son will not be traumatized for life by that event.

Also, I would acknowledge all those who taught outside the classroom, too numerous to mention. The good and the bad. Life gives you these little lessons through people that cross your path. The ones that love, the ones that leave, the ones that provide strength and support, the ones that make you stronger by their absence. I have laughed, cried, yelled, ranted, waxed eloquent, pondered, raged... and through it all I have learnt. And I still learn. Thank you, teachers; thank you, Life.

Valentine's Blues

Tell me, tell me,
What makes love such an ache and pain?
Tell me what makes
Love such an ache and pain?
It takes you and it breaks you -
But you got to love again

- Langston Hughes, "Love Again Blues"


It's that time of year again, when the whole world suddenly seems to be infected with a disease of the heart - and I'm not talking about angina. Yes, February 14 is just a few days away, and suddenly folks are in a frenzy wondering what would be the ultimate romantic gesture to assure their loved ones of the depths of their feelings. For teens, it becomes imperative that they buy that box of chocolates, that red rose, that bottle of perfume, for their beaus. You are made to feel like a pariah if you don't have anybody to exchange valentines with. Of course, it's beside the point that the entire tradition of Valentine's Day is an imported concept, part of the hegemony of the West. The merchants make sure that you don't forget this all-important day by displaying enough red balloons, hearts, and roses to make you sick.

That sounds like a decidedly grouchy attitude. Don't get me wrong - I have enjoyed and celebrated Valentine's over the years with full gusto. However, this year, I thought I would give it a rest and let other people make all the fuss. Love, after all, can be celebrated throughout the year, right? And anyway, with all the little disagreements and nitpicking moments that a relationship inevitably goes through, I felt love itself was perhaps a wee bit overrated. Or so I thought.

Then something happened a few days ago.On one of those aforementioned, unaccountable, inexplicable, nitpicking moments, I lost my temper over something so insignificant that I can't even remember what it was all about now. As an experienced player in the sparring department (with expertise in such methods as hitting-below-the-belt-when-feeling-particularly-vindictive)I was bringing it on in full force. And my sparring partner just dodged the blows, with no idea why we were suddenly in the midst of a full-blown fight. Before we knew it, we weren't even on speaking terms.

The next day, wallowing in my self-induced misery but too proud to do anything about it, I was fretting and fuming when I received a text message. It asked me to forgive him. He had done nothing, didn't even know why I was being such a pain, but he begged to be forgiven so that peace could be restored. And he's not without his fair share of pride. That's perhaps the nicest thing anybody has ever done for me. Maybe love does exist.


Just because I loves you -
That's de reason why
My soul is full of color
Like de wings of a butterfly
(-Langston Hughes, "Reasons Why")

Happy Valentine's Day, all the Romeos out there... especially mine :)

Feliz Navidad

It's that time of year again. 'Tis the season to be jolly, tra-la-la-la-la and all that. This year, I'm not as apathetic as I was last year. With a miraculous lightening of my workload comes a corresponding lightening of the heart. Sure, there are things to worry about, mistakes I have made, wounds I have inflicted, loved ones I have lost. And this year has certainly been chaotic, with me trying to make sense of what seemed to be losing sense each passing day. And for some reason, I always seemed to be two paces behind whatever was happening; I felt I was constantly running a race where the moment I finally reached a pit stop, the next hurdle loomed large, a hurdle I should have jumped over days ago. There were days when I literally sat down and asked myself, "is it worth it?" and moments of despair, when I was so dog-tired and frustrated that I threw my hands up in the air and cried, "I can't do this anymore!" Yet, somehow, with the approach of year's end, things have fallen into place. There is a sense of harmony, a unity, an imperceptible click that miraculously restores everything to order. In other words, Peace.

Maybe that's what the season is all about. I've always marveled that Christmas should coincide with year's end.How very fitting. We rush through our jobs and our lives and all the inconsequential but necessary activities that make up our existence. And then, it's the end of the year, there is sense of closure, a promise of new beginnings. Christ's birth is a symbol of that promise. After all the chaos, the madness, the rushing around... Peace on Earth.

On to lighter things, Peace is not the word that comes to mind when one looks at the markets in the city of Aizawl at Christmastime. It's positively bustling with activity, and one begins to wonder where all these people came from! And where were they throughout the rest of the year?! You don't even have to make an effort to walk, you get pushed from behind anyway. You literally 'go with the flow'. And the wares are interesting. While more upmarket stores display overcoats 'imported' from 'foreign' at three thousand and four thousand rupees, the second-hand shops, not to be deterred, also display overcoats, also imported and equally fashionable, at less than half that price. And while some shoes set you back by four thousand and five hundred rupees, mom went to a sale today and came home extremely satisfied, having bought a decent pair of pumps for three hundred rupees. See? Nobody gets left out.


What is forever associated with Christmas in the Mizo sensibility is the good ol' Boney M Christmas Album. Scores of new artists, Mizo and otherwise, record Christmas songs every year; yet, the ultimate Christmas songs will always be those sung by Boney M. I ventured up to bara bazar today, and true to the spirit of the season, Boney M was blaring from shops everywhere I went. Personally I've overdosed on it because when we were growing up in Dawrpui, Aizawl, there was this store downstairs that sold music systems, and the day the sun rose on December 1, they would start playing that blessed record. Over and over and over again, the whole day, everyday, until Christmas Eve. Nothing else. I kid you not. So, I guess you understand the mixed feelings I have about that particular album. I wonder if Boney M will ever realize the impact they've made on Mizo culture. Probably not. Oh, well.

Easter Sunday

They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. "Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven."

Easter does funny things to me. Perhaps because it is less commercialized than Christmas, it brings a lump to my throat. I am totally overcome by its message of victory and the hope it epitomizes. Imagine how Mary and the disciples, overcome with grief and their hopes waning, must have felt when they saw the empty tomb! Perhaps indignation and disbelief at first, but then what joy, what immense comfort, what hope for the future, what blessed assurance that their faith had not been in vain!


For many years, I maintained a personal tradition of inviting my best friend (now married and a proud papa) for breakfast on Easter Sunday after sunrise services. Yep! Yours truly, despite her well-known love for sleeping in late, always made it a point to attend the simple but moving sunrise services at the crack of dawn. Well, maybe not exactly the crack, but early enough. I made allowances for the gimmicks associated with religious festivals, and painted Easter Eggs with glee. I even helped with children's choir practices in church.

Sadly, because of many things, circumstances as well as laziness, I no longer do these things, but Easter still retains that special place in my heart. After all, it's the basis of all that we believe in as Christians.

Here's wishing a very blessed and meaningful Easter Sunday to all my friends on the Net. Don't let it be just another day!

Valentine's Day

Well...this Valentine's Day brought its share of pleasant surprises. There I was, all prepared to be gloomy and miserable, doomed to spending the day in bed because of this persistent pain in my back. Besides, I thought my Valentino-celebrating days were over. And then..you know what I got? Turns out I'm not too over-the-hill yet to enjoy some red roses!

Despite my misgvings about what I tend to feel is an over-hyped, alien, commercialised concept, I must confess that there's something that feels very good about celebrating love. After all, love, as they say, makes the world go round!

In Dreams.
In dreams, I hold your hand
Without apologizing;
In dreams, the sun’s gentle warmth
Bathes my face as I look up into yours;
In dreams, we spread a blanket
And float away with clouds;
In dreams our carefree laughter
Rings out clear and pure;
In dreams, we sway together, softly,
A prelude to another dance;
In dreams, I exult in being yours
While you open up your heart to me;
In dreams, I love you
As though love were not a sin.

New Beginnings.

With the arrival of a New Year, I thought I would celebrate with a new blog for myself, primarily because I found it a little difficult to manage the one that I used earlier. Having made that ambitious resolution, I realised I was pretty much hopeless when it came to creating a blog, preparing the layout and the designs, etc etc. And, as a New year gift, along came a long-lost friend, who just happened to be a whiz at such things, and offered to take up the challenge. Oh, happy day! So here it is, the all-new, improved and updated blog…I get by with a little help from my friends…. Mucho kudos to Malsawma for creating and designing this. Let’s hope the contents are worthy of his praiseworthy efforts.

New Year

Happy New Year, friends! With my new, improved attitude, I was determined to make the best of the New Year celebrations. I figured if I start off the year with a grumpy face, I would look that way for the rest of the year, and at my age, believe me, I do not need new wrinkles.

Well, we had a good time, friends dropped by and we watched the fireworks. I firmly refused to get all down at the amount of money people spent on crackers when there are places where people don’t have enough food to eat. And that is not to mention the noise and air pollution.

That’s what we were inhaling on New Year’s Night. The Pollution Control Board says that when the crackers were lighted, the pollution level went up to twice the level deemed safe by experts.

Well, enough food for thought.



Have a great 2008, everyone!

Christmas

Someone in one of the online communities I belong to started a forum where we had to list our favourite thing(s) about Christmas. The seemingly simple question had me stumped. I could not think of a single thing to contribute to the list, and I was not amused. In fact I was rather annoyed and disappointed at myself…had I become so hardened that the simple joys of Christmas had ceased to bring out any reaction from me?

I realised that I was appalled at the amount of money people blew away on Christmas shopping sprees, the shops and markets so obscenely overcrowded that your elbows became lethal weapons used to shove people out of the way to get to the items you wanted. Here was a demonstration of the well-known theory of Darwin’s survival of the fittest…and since I am not the fit, neither physically nor economically, I eschewed going to the shopping centres and cocooned myself in the warmth of the house. The thought of dragging myself out of the bed to participate in the church’s Christmas feast nearly drove me crazy, especially when the words of my animal rights activist friend (who relentlessly hammered home the plight of animals during our festivities) kept ringing in my ears. And, since I had been too lazy and broke to go shopping, I didn’t have anything to wear…after all, I’m still a girl!

In short, I was becoming a regular Ebenezer Scrooge, which, when I think about it, is not that weird. In one of the bizarre coincidences that life hands out, I had been given a hard-bound foreign edition of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol when I was in class two by my teacher as a prize for being the cleanest student in class. She bought it out of her own pocket, and with that one gesture, drove me into the wonderful world of books, converting me into a bespectacled bookworm for life. Ah, what a good teacher can do to shape your life! But that’s another story. The point is, I acted and felt like that Scrooge guy, and just stopped short of saying, “Bah! Hambug!”

It wasn’t always like that when I was younger. Santa Claus (or Christmas Father, as we called him) was a much loved and anticipated visitor. My sisters and I would literally hop with excitement on Christmas Eve, trying to sleep as early as possible so that we would wake early on Christmas morning and dive into the bags that we had hung, seeking the treasures and squealing with excitement.

One thing that I will forever associate with Christmas is the Boney M Christmas songs, not so much because I like them, but because they were played incessantly by the shop downstairs, which sold stereos and loudspeakers and the whole paraphernalia. By December 1, they would start playing the Boney M record, and I swear I am not exaggerating, they played the album over and over again the entire day, everyday, till Christmas. Depending on what mood we were in, it either set our teeth on edge or made us feel upbeat and Christmassy. Anyhow, now it is too deeply ingrained in my memory to be ever uprooted. Of course, Christmas also meant mom’s cakes and pot roast (thankfully, those smells are still with us), new clothes and midnight services in church when we got a little older.

Well, to get back to my “How I Spent Christmas” essay, the magic of Christmas finally did visit me, even if a little late. On an impulse, we decided to go for a quick drive around the city and although I cannot honestly recall anything that particularly touched me, I suddenly realised I shouldn’t be wasting time thinking about what was wrong with how we celebrated Christmas, or I would be engulfed in wave upon wave of disappointment. Rather, I should meditate upon why this particular day is celebrated, which, when I did, miraculously threw the whole night in a different light, a warm, tender glow that enveloped me, reminding me that I was in good health, that my family and friends were around, warts and all, and that is was good to share this night with people you love and who love you back. Peace on earth. It starts with you.