Joshua

Did you know that Joshua and Jesus are the same names? Yeshua, both of them. But somehow one is Jesus and the other is Joshua.

I feel like if they’d been consistent with translations, and kept both names the same, the story of Moses stopping at the borders of Canaan, the promised land, would have been so much clearer. I mean I know the one about how God was being petty and because Moses said "We give you water" and not "God gives you water" is why God was all like ya no you can't go in the promised land. Lesson in obedience yada yada.

I mean, of course, no one said "petty" but it is implied, right? Like you have to be careful with your words types because the Lord takes notes. 

The names though. Moses was leading the Israelites. He was the great Law Giver, the Hebrew Manu, so to speak. But ultimately, the one who led the Israelites through to the promised land was Joshua.

In a re-enactment of this tag-team, Mosaic Law will take you as far as possible but then it will be Jesus/The Second Joshua/New Testament Joshua that will take you into heaven. 

So it was basically Moses and Joshua physically portraying a prophecy rather than making a verbal prophecy, which will be fulfilled with Christ.

P.S.: There is a really nice The Office style mockumentary on YouTube called The Promised Land series. Do check it out. It’s grand fun. In Bible comics and/or Bible films, they add tints to the scene, give it atmosphere, make it ultra dramatic and all that so it never registered how extremely odd it is that the only thing Moses was doing while they were fighting the Amalekites was raise his staff. Go out on a random day with your walking stick, stand somewhere on a busy street, and just raise your staff. You’ll see how very, very odd that command was. The ultimate message being, of course, implicitly trust God and God will do right by you. But how it plays out? Very random, very weird.

Black

I don’t really listen to heavy metal. I know very little of it. It overwhelms my senses and I tune out more than tune in. But I do know heavy metal people tend to be elitist in terms of music manifestation – technique, lyrics, performance, arrangement… A song by Don Williams on a six-string feels too simple for them. 

But to each their own. 

I know for myself that if my heart were to break over a song, chances are exponentially higher that it would be over a country song on a hollow guitar than it would be over a Superman-strong rhythm blasted out of a thorny electric guitar, a bass guitar, a fancy keyboard, and a set of loud drums.

I do listen to a few rock songs. Not usually of my own volition but lowkey forced on me by older cousins, older boyfriends and good old millennial culture of trying to fit in. A good lesson that good music is good music. I did grow to love a lot of them. Queen, for example. Or Eagles. Even pop rock like Bon Jovi.

On a tangent, I learned to give a lot of genres and languages a chance. This is how I love songs today of languages I do not speak. 

Good music is good music.

Continuing on, my younger siblings listened to punk and I shared music system with them growing up so I learned to love some punk and emo songs as well. Not regrettable. There are some very good ones out there.

I list out these genres because of black, the colour. It is a unifying factor between them. Different genres although not entirely strangers to each other, I suppose. Perhaps you can lay them out in a spectrum. Whatever that spectrum is, black goes hard with them. It is their visual identifier.

There is something about black, the colour. So many layers to it. Mystery, elegance, rebellion, minimal and yet pregnant with meaning, darkness, depth. No wonder the at-times politically charged genre like punk and heavy metal should lean into it so much. Tormented souls – the romantic tragics, the political despondents, the angry rebels – all immerse themselves in the colour.

Black is very accepting. Formalities would even demand it of people at times. But tear up the elegance and you have a sub-culture, the colour of vampires, of demons, and all the creatures of the dark

Black is promising. It is the colour of the life-giving alluvial soil and the night sky that promises you the stars and the moon, even of the nothingness that is peace and calm. 

Music genres that associate themselves with black the colour tend to go hard on their lyrics. I think sometimes that this is also one of the reasons of the elitism. The arrangements and the technicalities aside, these songs tend to reflect poetry at the level of the tortured artist. The sorrow and pain is real, the anger palpable. 

Little wonder such depth would scorn at the sweet little almost-jingle-esque formulaic pop songs characterised by bubble gum pink and/or bright primary colours if not outright neon altogether. Or find the sepia tones and blue jeans of folk and country simple. Or consider the satin and velvet vibes of blues, jazz, orchestras and operas too conforming. Confining, maybe. 

Black is freeing. A blank canvas. A fertile ground.

Plus, everybody looks good in black. You can’t go wrong with it. I mean an Eva Longoria would look better in red than black but you can’t say that of many people at all. That’s really neither here nor there, my apologies. I digress.

Not sure how to end. Maybe here.

Luxury Bags

In college, an IRS boy once looked at me across the table and remarked: “I think you are the kind of girl who prefers momos to designer bags.”

In his defence, I was hungry and devouring chicken momos, the dumplings practically flying in my mouth, washed down by cold stinging soda water. It was heaven but I was probably not a pretty sight. Also Delhi momos have a very definite smell that people who aren’t used to it find off-putting. All in all, I don’t suppose the whole sight was very attractive.

In my defence, however, and I reiterate again, I was hungry. And you can’t eat designer bags. And at the time, I had a man-sized appetite coupled with golden metabolism so I was good.

That being said, I appreciate pretty things. And I might not have the necessary interest or the intellectual enlightenment to recognize an expensive bag when I see it. But I do recognize pretty things for what they are. Thing of beauty, joy forever, yada yada.

My office bag is a brown leather Hidesign bag and I will have to replace it soon because it’s getting old and a little worn. But I have not got around to it. And I suspect I will procrastinate for a good long while. I like what I like and I find it hard to replace anything semi-permanent in my life. Even something as functional fashion as an office bag. The bag contains what it contains. I have the memory of Dory and the day I alternate bags is the day I forget one thing or the other. So I have to have something like brown leather that can be forgiven with most attires. It is what it is. I do not look forward to the day I will need to change it.

I have never had an eye for ladies bags. But sometimes social media and celebrity culture expose you to fancy things you are voyeur to, if not partaker. And so have I, too, fallen for the scam art of designer bags that cost small fortunes that I find slightly revolting in their opulence. Eagerly consuming the culture of excessive abundance, that be me!

Beautiful things do deserve their place on the mantle. And rich things serve a purpose beyond their beauty. Think the soap-esque giant emerald locket of Nita Ambani, I mean, come on. They announce you before you speak. Like the boy whose reputation preceded him. Was it Ed Sheeran who said he had a “reputation that don’t precede me”? What does that line mean?

I digress.

Luxury bags. I went down a rabbit hole the other day. I can’t believe the prices some of those can command! Man, talk about poverty in a third world country! Some bags are prettier than others, some are definitely more upscale than others, some boast of craftsmanship and product material. I appreciate it. Also all the more so because I cannot imagine the kind of a life where I work with bags all my life, identifying design, procuring material, arranging accompanying clothes, organise designated events. It sounds a little ostentatious to me.

Even the concept of looking at someone and noticing their bag for its rarity, or price tag, is weird to me. I don’t even remember how much I paid for my bag. 

I do suppose it’s at the level of people asking how much I paid for my car, which I do value, and which I do know, and when I see other people in their Jimnys, I do randomly find myself guessing how much they paid for their car, and the little accompanying accessories, and I check the plate and see the number… I do make little guesses. Neither here nor there. What does that say about anything anyway? But I do. So I guess I understand the brand recognition and obsession.

I suppose the IRS boy was not so far off. I would love to own a designer bag for the art of it all, for the bragging rights of it all, for the luxury of it all. But he had me pegged; it’s still not very high on my priority list at all, even this side of thirty.

Different worlds!

The Fig Tree and the Anger of a Good Man

Heavy rain days make me think of God. Maybe because they remind me of mortality. In Mizoram, with thunder and lightning, and in Durtlang the whooshing of wind, it becomes reflex to say little prayers. And relax.

This Tuesday, my mind travels to Jesus cursing a lone fruitless fig tree. Why, I’ve always wondered. I suppose if you’re hangry and you have the power to instantly wither off a tree full of leaves, you would, too. But you’d think God would be different. 

Something nagged me about the timeline and fortunately somebody in office had a Bible so I didn’t have to quite freak out with unresolved theories in my head and I could just quickly check it out. And there it was. 

Two major things happened, as per this discussion.

One, Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphantly but has little altercation with the temple leaders and one massive freak out at the temple. 

Two, Jesus curses the fig tree for not bearing fruit while he was hungry, and it withers. 

A long time ago, someone said in a sermon that in the Bible, when things repeat, it is to show confirmation. Which is how you have four Gospels that tell, by and large, the same account with only minor differences here and there, or The Ten Commandments repeated in Exodus and then in Deuteronomy, or how Kings and Chronicles are basically the same books, or parables of the Lost Coin, Lost Sheep and Lost Son… they serve to emphasize a message.

For this muse, I’ve always taken the fig tree in isolation. I thought maybe it just stood out and people noticed. Or maybe it showed the humane side of Jesus, the man that could and did get angry. Something. 

However, if you take it into context with what happened at the Temple and with the religious leaders there, things start to fall into place. What was Jesus’ altercation with the temple leaders about? That the children recognized him for who he was as the Messiah but the leaders, who should recognise him, more so than anyone else, them being familiar with the Scriptures, could not. Why did Jesus freak out at the Temple? He did not care that the Temple grounds were being used for exploiting the poor worshippers. So in essence, his issue with the Temple and the leaders? They had the Right Image of worship and righteousness but were corrupt within and bore no fruit that the ones who needed it could consume.

This then was Jesus’ issue with the fig tree. The fig tree looked like it bore fruit, what with its multitude of leaves. But when a hungry Jesus approached it for food, he found it had none.

Repetition. And live demo.

Interestingly, Jesus has been saying this earlier as well, when he told his followers that they will know people by the fruits they bear. Point to note: not the clothes they wear, because some will be ravenous wolves that approach you in sheep’s clothing. Be careful, he had already warned.

So you know, more repetition.

I think the pitfall is the word “good”. Jesus once asked a young guy why he called him good because only God is good. I think he meant it like if you call me good, then you recognize me as God. I think in that instance it was less about humility, than it was about the young man not recognizing him as God, and Jesus just telling him he sees through him and into his soul. Or beliefs.

We call people good all the time and sometimes I think it is a plea for reciprocation. Please see me as good too, you know. It is easy to fall into this pit because once you think you are good, then it is easy to play you. I could play you. Imagine how much more so the Devil. All that we’d need to do is tell you you’re good, and therefore this or that. The real harm is when you think you’re so good that (a) other people are bad, and that (b) you could save them. Who is good?

Even Doctor Who debated this. Am I good, he kept asking himself. Clara and Twelve went into philosophy debating goodness. This was after Eleven went on a destruction spree banking on his goodness and all the people who owed him for his goodness, prompting River Song to recite a haunting poem of what happens when a good man goes to war. Am I a good man? he childishly asked of Clara. Clara thought about it and would eventually tell him she didn’t know, but that he tried to be, and maybe that was the whole point. Glum. The poem is really nice, though.

Jesus, though. He was a good man. Because He was God. And only God is good. And God in his judgement decided to be angry because Appearance was all that some people – and trees – had to offer him. 

The lesson is harsh. How can anyone be good, when only God is good? Maybe if we try, it will be enough. More precisely, if we don’t pretend to be good while rotting inside, we can begin to walk on the road to goodness. Maybe. Or maybe only God is good and we can take refuge in that. But still stop pretending to be good. They say the Devil tempts you; maybe that’s true. I suppose if I were the Devil, I wouldn’t tempt a religious man with drugs and alcohol or even sexy sex, but perhaps I’d tempt them with a boastful heart, pride, ego, the certainty of knowing oneself to be “good”.

Almost 1000 words. I guess my bottom line is: fear the anger of the good man. Or risk instant withering.

Near Death

1. If someone asks if you want to go fishing in the dead of the night and you said yes, and suddenly it’s 11PM and you’re “fishing” in places you’re not allowed to fish which means you have no light, and it’s nine grown people on a small wooden boat, calculate your best chances of surviving the night namely, where both sides of the banks of the river are, pray. Text your sister where you are, then put your phone in your jacket, zip up your pocket (wear a jacket that has zippers on its pocket), and pray.

2. If your sense of responsibility finds you wading through a mudslide in a drizzle with promise of more thunder and lightning, when everyone else is at home, cozying up with family, and chatting with friends (and arguing with foes) online, and discussing climate and government roles and duties, pray. Text your sister where you are because that shit is time stamped, then wear sensible footwear, light jacket that doesn’t get too heavy in the rain (because even wool is just a burden if it gets wet, because then it’s no use, it gets really heavy and very very cold), pants with pockets where you have an SAK, a ORS powder pack, a small bottle of water, a hanky, and of course one waterproof pocket with zippers where your phone can stay dry, and pray.

3. If your call of duty demands you’re in the middle of a rainstorm, neck deep in the middle of nowhere, bang in the midst of a16-wheeled trucks traffic jam, transporting god-knows-what, and it gets dark, and you have no light but the light in your Samsung mobile, your vehicle and driver about 27 trucks away, slightly drunk and irate truck drivers calling you to ‘babe, calm down’, and they’re not listening to your logic, pray. Text your sister where you are, in case you die, or worse, then put your phone inside your jacket pocket, zip it up (ensure your waterproof jacket has zippered pockets), bad-mouth the truckers and order them – and the policemen – to listen up, and pray.  

4. If your journey takes you to the top of a mountain which you’ve reached on the back of a pick-up truck, and your driver is talented but you’re not sure if he is wholly in his senses, because you know for damn sure your companions aren’t anymore this side of 5PM, and the nearest village is way nearly 90 degrees downhill, and the cute boy you know has told you last night that he had scaled that peak on foot and not on a pick-up, and you’re wondering if that was smarter than being on a mechanical cart, driven by someone you never met once in your life until 10AM that day, and you’re wondering if you just make very random bad choices in your life, take a deep swipe of your favourite beverage, text your sister (zippered pocket or not, makes no difference), then pray. 

5. Bottom line is tell your sister, and then pray. She knows enough to delete your phone history and what you have inside your locked trunk in your locked closet. That bitch knows what to do. You’ve never talked about it, but she knows. Then you make nice with Jesus and surrender.

C’est la vie. Such is life. And it never stops.

The Pope

I had a good night's rest so I was thinking of adult-like important things this morning. Namely how the Catholic Church is so good at politics.

I’d say they read the winds and see the signs coming. 

When a pope dies and they choose the next one, they make it into such a big spectacle, no? Like it was divinely ordained, the whole black smoke, white smoke thing. I mean it worked in the days pre-science & tech, but they continue so as to keep up tradition and also make it into this grand symbolic shit. And I think it works. 

But also I was thinking last time they chose a pope, they must have known they’d probably need an American pope. Seeing how the US is behaving; more importantly, how it was behaving by the time 2025 rolled around.

When my screen showed me Trump being Trumpy about Pope Leo, I was thinking: damn the Cats have survived 2000 years, seen regimes and monarchs and governments fall and yet they persevere and now I know why. They know their politics, man! 

Religion and god, sure, but also yk, POLITICS! We can talk of God-ordained priesthood all day long, and I appreciate how much the symbolism stands, and also I can even acknowledge divine intervention in giving wisdom to the Conclave that ultimately selects (elects?) the Bishop of Rome. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that however a Bishop becomes a Pope, other men are involved; it’s like arguing Bible is not written by God because it was literally technically written by men. Sometimes, inspiration is god-breathed.

It got me thinking that this is why when you put people who deserve their spots in governance and not based on their pedigree, you get good collective wisdom!! On a tangent, this is of course what democracy wants, but that falls flat on its face because people are dumb.

Meanwhile, the Cats have smart people in governance, who've spent their lives in the game – and only the game – not worrying about salary and family, their logic and calculations tempered by religion... this is why The Vatican survives. And thrives quietly.

Regardless of their politics and religious takes, these men spend their whole lives primarily thinking about how to make the Catholic religion go on. They have their prayers and meditation to calm them down, they regularly make confessions so they are less burdened with guilt and shit – I mean this religion comes with its own built-in therapist sessions, how can it fail? – and they're unbothered with fashion trends and luxurious living and shit and they have their hands in every single space on human-occupied earth so their intel, when they want, is impressive.

All due respects to Catholics and the church, of course. I am just exercising a little political sociology here!

Blood and Water

Blood is thicker than water, they say. Recently though, if you’re on certain parts of the internet, you’d know this phrasing is a misrepresentation of the entire phrase. Curiously, it is the opposite. I wonder who corrupted it. It might have been a good wit who switched the old to turn it into a new Aha! moment. Except it was too good an Aha! moment that it overshadowed and outlived its original source.

Which turned out to be this: The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

I thought about this saying today because it was literally last week that I had this very nonchalant but enlightening conversation with my mother,

My mother, ladies and gentlemen, is a woman who turned to me one day and said: "Hey do you remember So-and-so?" To which I replied, "No that doesn’t ring a bell". She thought about it and said: "huh, must have been before you were born."

I mean… ya.

And so it was that we were cooking and I recalled one time when I was very little that my elder sister and I travelled from Aizawl to Rahsi Veng, Lunglei with Nu Nuseni, her brother and his new bride. No parents. No one else. None of us – not my mother, not my sister texting on her phone nearby, certainly not me – could remember why we travelled without mum and dad. My mother said: "we often let you kids travel alone; in retrospect, that was not very smart; good thing the world was safer then."

Ya, duh.

"Well, at least they were relatives", I said.

My mother looked startled. Ladies and gents, I say startled! The woman looked startled at this statement and she turned to my sister. 

My sister (again, my dear readers, my sister is the woman who when she was a kid was singularly observant and noticed that my parents were trying to save money by adulerating Frooti which my sister loved at the time. The costs of the mango was apparently hurting the purse. So the counterfeiting couple would save up her empty Frooti tetrapacks and inject regular watered down Kissan squash into them and present it to the kid. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, this singularly observant kid was also extremely gullible. To the point that she would point to the empty tetrapacks and cheerfully tell guests and visitors: “those empty packs are there so that my parents can fool me!” Which they still did. It’s never knowledge alone is it? It’s how you use your knowledge!)

So my mother looked startled and my sister looked entirely nonplussed. “But surely you know we are not related by blood!” my mother finally said.

Which is how in the second week of March, 2026, I learned that the woman I had been calling Nu, as an extended Mother in the kinship terminology of the Mizo, all my loving life, was not related to me at all. Blood of the covenant, the kind of friendship that endures, like the one evidently between my mother and her dear friend, is apparently thicker than the water of the womb. Because, and I shall not name names here, there are closer blood ties and people I do call Nu, who I am not half or even a quarter as close to as I am to Nu Nuseni.

This is, by the way, the moment my sister chose to laugh at me and say: "You probably think Nu Thartei is a relative too!"

Yes, my dear audience, I had indeed, all my life upto the second week of March 2026, thought that Nu Thartei was a blood aunt. Since I don’t really know the specifics of how I am related to many people, I had just counted it off as one of those. When during my Foundational Training as an MCS, we were in Vairengte for a week, I had invited all 13 or so of my batchmates to Nu Thartei’s house for dinner, she had hosted us a lovely one. I had no idea I was inviting multiple friends over to dinner to my mother’s old, good friend. No idea at all. How lovely is that! I don’t even mean it sarcastically. I have thought about it since and I realise that I love the friendship ties that have become so strong they’ve transcended traditional kinship.

In contrast, I remember one day my dad decided to traumatize me and said something about my “Ni”, my paternal aunt, of a woman I had no knowledge of. Then he said: "oh ya, your grandfather had a pre-marital daughter; we were quite close once but then we moved from the village. I thought you knew." Heh?! I’d never heard her mentioned!

Or how on my mother’s side (this I have always known but also, sort of in the abstract way you know that an imaginary number 1 added to an imaginary number 1 is an imaginary number 2, or in the helpless, resigned way my dog looks at me when he sees a bucket of warm water and his shampoo bottle; there is nothing to be done except know it and bear with it), I have a Maybe Relative in Nagaland’s Mokokchung. 

This is because at one point, my maternal grandfather who was at the time in the Assam Police, was posted there and had a girlfriend who got pregnant. However, in his words, “it was time for me to leave so I told her to just name someone else and I left for Mizoram”. The ass, honestly. In college, I had asked Atu if there had ever been this scandal in her village. She tried to ask around but if that baby was ever carried to term, or if there is a Naga kid going around unknowingly being half-Mizo, we’d never know!

I am starting to think I might do well to construct a family tree. My family seems sus. Or the sitcom version of a Santa Barbara or The Bold and The Beautiful drama.