What Are You Eating?

“Children don’t want puakzo, they want popcorn,” someone said and smirked.

To understand the joke, you need to know both Mizo and English. And also a general understanding of colonialism or at least a functional, practical comprehension of what White Man Culture has come to manifest as in an ex-colony. In JNU, whenever she’d encounter these little details in everyday life, one of my friends would sneer and say: Tchah, safed pujari. White worship, you could say.

It is a strange concept but very widely accepted. Anything white is better than anything tribal. Sometimes you can substitute white for Korean these days. But the basic foundation remains.

Puakzo is the Mizo word for popcorn, for those that don’t speak Mizo. And it is true about the joke. Children really don’t want puakzo. They want popcorn. Especially the kinds that come in brightly coloured paper bags. Or maybe microwaved in a fancy glass bowl. Or flavoured, although that’s more about taste than safed pujari.

But even as we give children grief over this, they’re not isolated. Children do have to learn this from somewhere. And that somewhere is the society at large and the family in specific. Mostly.

There is a good chance that among the people who think it beneath them to eat sa kawchhung/ pumpui because it is disgusting, that they might not feel the same about tripe. Very UK sounding dish. I’m sure I’ve read it mentioned in Harry Potter. Or by Enid Blyton, somewhere.

Or, say, pork rind. AKA chicaronnes, as I learned recently from Young Sheldon. It’s just your basic vawk vun kan puah. A very nice snack especially if you’re having a cold brew. Or in this same vein, chicken crisps – ar vun kan puah. And I don’t know how algorithms work but I’ve recently seen a lot of different pork trotters dishes recently, even in fancy restaurants; again, just your basic vawk ke.

I’m not judging, just exercising my sociological curiosity. Because you can’t tell people to value something and expect them to just obey you. Like how we hear this constant refrain that “tHe yOuTh” needs to start respecting Kut Hnathawktu and not just worship money and the moneyed. Simply on the basis of “Correct Heroes To Worship”. I very firmly believe that when we find a Kut Hnathawktu whose success has translated financially, “tHe yOuTh” will give him that respect. You can’t expect people to strive for poverty. It doesn’t work that way. People value who they value. It is what it is.

For now, we may not always value Thingsemim but we might like Hazelnuts. Ooh, side bar: I knew Thing Sia and Thingsemim separately and it was not until I went to (I want to say) Vanzau that it clicked that the latter was the seed of the former; felt amazingly stupid that day. It was in the name!

Or we might enjoy cinnamon sticks and not give much thought to Thakthing. Or be a Tea Lover but would resolutely describe ourselves as precisely in that term and not as a Thingpui Heh, although the Mizo term has a weirdly negative connotation related to greed so maybe that’s part of the deal. I don’t know. Maybe the foreign words are just that much cooler. And we want to be fancy. It’s just human.

And I know it’s already February but this is my first blog of the year, so Happy New Year 2024.