Musings on My Culture: Food

I love potatoes. If chicken is the most versatile of meat, potatoes are surely that of veggies. Potatoes are where we get fries, vodka and so many dishes. As Nisai says, if you can mess up potatoes, you truly cannot cook.

During Covid days, on one of our rounds visiting VLTFs on duty, they were about to eat boiled baby potatoes for lunch. We were just about to join them when they took away the potatoes and scoured around for cake and somehow procured a Myanmar product dry cake that had seen better days. They said boiled potatoes were too humble, please eat cake. I told them I love potatoes. They thought I was trying to assuage. I do enjoy good cake but I am also very picky over bakery items which means I don't like most cakes. I 95% like potatoes.

But they made me eat cake.

Dry cake.

And they ate baby boiled potatoes.

This incident keeps coming back to me because I believe it is a good illustration of how we think of our culture. In this instance, food. I don’t know if it is a colonial hangover and maybe a tiny bit of safed pujari, but very often, we trash our Truth in favour of Beautiful Lies.

There are not many food I point blank say I won’t eat. But there exists the century egg. There is very little possibility of anyone offering me it insistently, but this one I don’t think I will be able to handle. Not even if I have an affidavit from God saying I won't die from it, not even then! Actually it is not even a fear of death that prevents me from it; just… the ick factor. I don’t know if I can say that in today’s world but that. Even so, the Chinese celebrate it, even though I am so sure a lot of foreigners would have told them this was icky. I am pretty sure they just kept celebrating it and now the world thinks very highly of it. One of the food on food adventurer’s bucket lists!

In Mizoram, my main problem is with sachek. Mostly because some people like to not clean the intestines or gut lining very much for the added umami flavor, apparently. A lot of places serve it with internal poop. So ya, little hard to swallow. That and the meat of animals I’ve ever had as a pet – dog, cat, duck, turtle, the usual.

I believe that when we learn to appreciate our own, (as we are learning to, I think!), our culture will be appreciated by others as well. Because it is very unlikely that anyone else will appreciate it for us. Or above us. Be more hygienic, definitely, but bring on the Mizo food. It might be nice if we don’t reduce Mizo cuisine to ‘plain boil’ while we’re at it, by the by. 

Next topic, for sure!

Apu and Mizo Maths

Apu said, “Chhiarkawp kan thiam theih loh nachhan chu kan number chhiar dan hi a diklo,” which is a very definite statement. As someone who doesn’t exactly count in Mizo often, it is something that does not naturally enter my head. His pet peeve was: Our counting system is faulty and even news reporters make this same mistake over and over again. ‘Sing’ and ‘maktaduai’ do not exist in the Indian numerical system. So when you say things like ‘sing nga’ or ‘maktaduai nga’, you are already communicating in a rather faulty dialogue.

I never quite followed because it didn’t seem to be erroneous. It was not something I was very interested in. But when he repeated it again in his gruff annoyed voice on August 11, 2011, I stopped and counted in my head the ‘Indian way’ as he put it. Or the decimal way, as I understand. He was right. It was not wrong. Per se. It just did not translate well. Hence faulty.

Take a pencil and paper and write down zeroes and count.

Not Sang Sawm or Nuai Sawm corresponding to Ten Thousand and Ten Lakh. That's Sing and Maktaduai.

Funny word, Maktaduai. It’s like: Hold on, too much moneys!

Of course, whether we say ‘sing’ or ‘sang sawm’, we’re still counting correctly. Still four zeros. It is simply that ‘sing’ exists in a system that is not accounted for in the Indian decimal system. It is purely Mizo and Mizo numbers are not compatible with the Market or the kind of numbers we deal with today. I doubt the old Mizo had to count to a billion? We already thought 10 Lakh a bit much.

Apu taught Arithmetic in Primary School. He thought language and terminology were points of contention. He always believed if we were taught numbers in Mizo at least till Middle school, we’d find Mathematics easier. That and we should change our numerical terminology. What do you think?

For Love

He told me the sex happens at page 50. In Mills & Boon novels. The ones that have sex scenes in them. Either it happens at page 50, he said, or it never happens throughout the book.

It did not pique my curiosity so I did not research it for proof. It could probably be true. I don’t know. Maybe someone could check and report back. Basic statistics. If it happens in X number of M&B novels (and doesn’t in Y, as well, I suppose), maybe we could make a hypothesis of it?

I grew out of M&B novels at a young age. Maybe I started too early. But I was jaded quite early. It is a different level of fantasy world building, isn’t it, the world of M&B romances? Not very dissimilar to fairy-tales and romcoms/chick flicks so popular in the 90s movie scene. Just as ridiculous. Just as operating on the similar suspension of belief. Just as feel good, too.

There used to be someone named Matluangi who translated M&B romances in Mizo and published these works in cyclostyle books in the 90s. Who was that woman with such dedication to the genre? Very admirable. Maybe it lost audience, though, because I don’t see those anymore these days. Or maybe I don’t see them because I stopped reading Mizo novels. Mizo novels are always the same. High juxtapositions of morals. Black and white absolutes. Lofty dialogues. And almost unfailingly, central to the story would be a romance. After some time, you get tired of the formula.

Some romances indeed are done right in Mizo stories. Sialton Official comes to mind. Now that was unrequited love done right. Well, not unrequited, exactly. More like ill-fated. But S.O. is a rarity. Most other novels are very formulaic. And humour-less. They be boring.

That was also my biggest issue with M&B stories. They were all the same. You read ten M&B books and you’ve read them all. All.

But consider Hamlet’s love for Ophelia, then Edmond Dantes’ for Mercedes and later Haylie, then The Little Prince and the Rose Red, and speaking of roses – The Doctor’s for Rose Tyler and later River Song, then Mondler’s evolution from Monica/Richard, or HIMYM’s Ted and Robin. Different ways to love different people. What is the right way to fall in love? What is the right way to stay in love? I doubt even Pablo Neruda could rhapsodise in its entirety.

Maybe the sex happens at page 50. Maybe it doesn’t. Does it matter?

It Is What It Is

I wrote about murder for my first Creative Writing class. Ms Anita, my English teacher, gave me an A. Then she said she had not expected such a grim tale from a simple picture of a sad young boy looking back over his shoulders. I didn’t understand it then but maybe now in retrospect, the undertone might have been: ‘Are you OK, child?’ Ms Anita was a nice, kind, gentle soul. I was thirteen. She might have been concerned.

But it was not like I dwelt in dark thoughts. The boy in the picture just looked guilty to me and Ms Anita had said: Be imaginative. So I got to imagining. It was just what it was.

I don’t know if my love for fiction fuelled my interest in Sociology but I strongly suspect it. Sociology likes to think it fills up blanks left by fiction by science-ing things up: pick up an ideal, tear it apart, put it back together again but this time, propose a hypothesis. But fiction does this too in a similar but different way: pick up an idea, create a scenario around it, tear the idea apart and then put it back together to resolve it. I love both. It is interesting to me that Sociology dealing with real life is vague but fiction dealing with imagined life is definitive. Strong juxtaposition. I learned that word from Sociology.

Both have taught me this: it is what it is.

I it-is-what-it-is my way through life. What’s the point hurting over something you can’t control? Grieve for what you lost; then heal. Be angry if you must; then get over it. Laugh, but remember it can’t last. It is little mystique that my favourite book in the Bible is Ecclesiastes.

In adult life, you find so many things that make you want to maim some people just a tiny bit. I can honestly say I don’t have murderous thoughts but a little laceration and emotional damage thoughts? Those I have plenty. People are fake. It is what humans learn to do to get along with society. Some people overdo it, though, and other people judge them. I judge a lot of people. I hope when people judge me and find me wanting, they call me egotistic than cowardly. Vice for vice, I’d hate to be called spineless more than most negative judgments. Call me a Leo!

Here’s my parting observation: when children get caught red-handed doing wrong, they often try to save themselves by saying they ‘didn’t do it’. Some adults never grow out of this habit except in adult life, people don’t often get accused directly of wrong-doings. So just listen to what a lot of people brag (and humble-brag) about the things they don’t do, and you might see that that it is exactly what it is they do do.

You may disagree. I say: it is what it is.

Red Flags

Chhura said you should beware the colour red. Perhaps he was talking about red flags. Red is a beautiful, vibrant colour, full of vitality and life. It also screams at you and if it does, it would serve you well to pause and pay attention to it. It could be warning you about a world of disappointment you could fall trap to. Big disappointments.

It’s like when you receive a bouquet and it’s all anthurium, the vegetable looking flower, I am disgusted. Speaking of which, this is not a flower I have ever felt deserved its attention and fame in Mizoram.

I mean it looks like baibing and aside from the mild allergy it induces, baibing is very tasty, alone or as an herb accompaniment to some other dish. I’d actually thought when I first heard the name that it was some sort of roselle because anthur in Mizo is roselle. But noooooo, a roselle has very pretty flowers and it is good to eat. What point then to give to anthuriums, the penile-shaped poisonous-to-ingest plant? Honestly, no love lost for anthuriums.

I don’t even know where they smuggled it in from but wherever they got it from, I bet it was some land lost to time somewhere in a swampland and some rich gentleman brought his lady along with him boating and she thought, Hey roses are passé I need to convince the other ladies something else is the new black, and she saw red leaf-like plants and she just ordered the servants to go get it, and that’s how anthuriums came to be in the eyes of polite society. The emperor’s new clothes, that’s what anthuriums are.

Which is also what red flags tend to be, come to think of it. It’s amazing how many times red flags can wave about right in front of your eyes but you either completely ignore it or dismiss them as pink-adjacent! But the red bleeds out. And once it does, you wonder how you could ever have not noticed them and then you can no longer un-see them.

Roses have thorns and for that, I think a rose is honest. It is beautiful but it can prick you and bleed you. You are on your guard. If you do allow it to hurt you, you know what you were in for when you went in. Anthuriums are thornless and mild-looking, nothing fancy, humble to behold and unassuming. They tend to throw off your survival instincts. But if you ingest it, you will suffer for it. Ugly can be a very good disguise, I find.

Be like Chhura. He knew to beware the colour red.

Chengkawl Policy

I was thinking about how Jesus taught us to give to God what belongs to God. Seems easy enough. Who would dare to steal from God? The counterpart is where it gets tricky: to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. And Caesar has so much! And Caesar demands so much! I don’t know who came up with the analogy but it is a very popular saying with the cynical Mizo Christian that a person who wouldn’t dream of taking one paise from the church would not have the same qualms when it came to taking money from others or the government. Would that it were not true!

Nothing is ever truly black and white because the world is blue.

Jokes aside, in adult life, one of the saddest things I find is that you just have to, by necessity, learn to lie. And you get to be so good at it – toeing the line, stopping at white lies and gossamer cover-ups, never fully hot, never fully cold; exactly what the Bible teaches people not to be. Be hot or be cold, it says. (Deep sigh) The Bible is a very difficult book to live by.

Unless you want to be a rather unpopular celebrity, sooner or later, you learn to keep mum. You start to selectively choose the ears you pour your tea into. Otherwise you keep mum. And because no matter how much someone revolts you, you might one day need their help, you learn to look the other way. And keep mum. The Stepford husbands got one cynical thing right – if you want things to run perfectly smooth at all times, you have to sacrifice your ethics along the way and lobotomize (or robotize?) everyone who stands in the way. Life just isn’t designed to be perfect.

And, as always, you keep mum.

Like snails. Snails do not indulge in auditory communication. It’s a very solid policy to abide by, given how much the tongue can land one in trouble. The Bible would concur. Do like chengkawl. It’s a good policy.

Acclimatizing

When we first started driving, my sister Feli and I would take turns sitting on the passenger seat, capturing the Big Driving Moments of the other on camera, both stills and videos.

It has been a long time since we’ve done that.

In one of the stories I’ve read about a witch, she was asked whether she needed to remember a lot of spells. She thought about it and replied that it was like making a pot of tea. When you started, you had to think of all the steps and maybe even talk yourself through the steps: take a kettle, put water in, place kettle on the fire… that sort of thing. But once you master the art, you just do it as part of muscle memory or something. It just comes to you naturally.

I really like this analogy.

I can blind type on keyboards I am familiar with. This has come about after years of assisting my father as he brought work home with him and insisted I helped him on the typewriter, and thankfully, later, the computer. People think it is a nifty skill. I rather like it, too. My thumbs are pretty fast on the QWERTY keypads as well, when they came about. But then again, my thumbs were also pretty fast on the pre-QWERTY keypads, when you had to press 2 three times to get a c, for example; remember?

Things become commonplace. We get used to things eventually. The dust settles. Time closes wounds; actually sometimes events cauterize wounds; hurts like a MF but effective. Even heartbreaks end. Neither happiness nor tears last forever. That way lies madness.

And you know what? It is a good thing.