Rural Shangri-La

Fab-India Socialists, we called them. Fancy ladies and gents in expensive designer khadi, talking about villages in India. The Great Rural.

I’d thought college would be the last I’d see them, up close. It turns out I was wrong. I see more of them all the time. Forever coming out of the woodwork.

There’s nothing inherently wrong about them. They’re good people. Mostly. Besides, it’s not a trait that consumes the entirety of their occupation. Unless they work in higher educational institutions and then the strain has the potential to take over their whole personalities. Expensive hand-woven pure cotton and silk attires, sometimes even a monochromatic pashmina draped loosely and stylishly around their necks, standing in front of people and hating capitalism. It’s a truly engaging aesthetic.

Ned Stark in The Game of Thrones famously and arrestingly said: Anything that comes after a but is bullshit. I concur.

In that vein, the issue I find with Fab-India socialists is that more often than not, they romanticize village life while never partaking of it. It is an idyllic dream they sell and market. In this little utopia, everything is rustic and golden, clean and organic, tradition and history finding their places in the modern. Perhaps manifested in a charming juxtaposition of a Macbook resting on a handwoven jute rug. Rural Elysium, indeed.

The harsh truth of the matter is that in 2024, rural life is shit. 

Life is hard in a village. There’s never enough of anything. If you’re fat, you have a paunch belly; if you’re thin, you’re scrawny and sickly. In both cases, it’s usually a result of malnutrition. And no matter if you’re thin or if you’re fat, you’re fighting diabetes and high blood pressure somehow. There’s not enough water, not enough food, not enough medicine, not enough gas and not enough electricity. The internet connection is slow and tenuous. The schools are less than exemplary. The government reach is insubstantial. The sun somehow wants to burn your skin to a crisp and dull your glow. Why doesn’t the Aizawl sun do that to you but the village sun does? What is this solar discrimination? The road is 90% bumpy, metaphorically and literally.

Rural life makes you wish for anything but.

This is not to say rural life is all strenuous. For a spell, it can be pleasant. Fishing trips and river picnics are part and parcel of village life, for one. Of course, a clumsy city girl’s idea of a river day out is hardly the same as a village belle’s day by the river. It is one thing to derive pleasure out of babbling brooks, forest sounds and bamboo canopies, but a whole other matter if you are foraging for food, either for yourself or to sell in the bigger towns.

Like I said, it is a hard life. Hard.

Which is why my brain finds it so irritating when a city folk or a big town mouse start to rhapsodize about how wonderful the village is. It is not. And no, the dream is not to freeze these villages in time warps for weekend getaways and rich people’s test drives for the newest 4x4s. Or if that is the case, let the activity raise the per capita income of the villagers. Let the village benefit. If Fab India Socialists want to engage in poverty porn for a while, or play at country cowboys, at the expense of people whose whole lives are wrapped up in this hard life, let it contribute to the monetary well-being of its residents. Otherwise, it is foul.

At the risk of contracting Umbridgitis, development for development’s sake might need to be discouraged. Sometimes there is no point in interventions in villages that only lead to maintenance of status quo and a harsher dependence on the hand that feeds villages scraps. Perhaps we need much harsher socio-economic and socio-political measures to truly bring development and progress to rural life.

For the moment, perhaps capitalism is what rural life needs. A free market and capitalistic ideals might increase production and might lessen dependence on the government which has the potential to raise greater political awareness. As Albert Einstein put it: a hungry stomach is not a good political advisor. We could have a political awakening where the Big Man does not control us with about 20,000 rupees a year. I will drink to that!

As for ecology, and environmentalism, and all that jazz, as the men in Sailam would say: It is easy to preserve nature; you just have to do nothing to it.

French and AV

Mlle. Sasha Rose, my French teacher, one time begged our Principal and Headmaster to screen a movie in French for us so as to improve our listening skills. They allowed it, for some reason. And so we sat and watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s. In French but with English subtitles and we were supposed to remember at least 10 dialogues from it. Remember and note down, I think.

Which is how Audrey Hepburn’s face/voice saying, “Quelle nuit!” is burned in my memory. It means “What a night!” and this is nice because I don’t remember any other French at all from my one year haphazard French lessons with Miss Sasha. I lie. I remember like three (ish) other phrases: Je m’appelle Esther, Comment ça va? (Ça va bien!), and C’est la vie. Maybe we can add Tres bien! to the list. Ooh. Also that it is spelled Lion but pronounced Leo. Like the zodiac sign.

Miss Rose’s idea was something practiced where she was from. I never bothered to ask. She was white and she was American is all I ever knew. She’d tell us how she once spent a year in France where everyone told her how atrocious her French accent was. She said: they’re not very forgiving if you mispronounce French and act like you know French. I find that interesting. 

I think Indians in general are much more accepting if you butcher their language as long as you can communicate, however broken. Very appreciative, too, which is nice. Atithi Devo Bhava and all that, maybe. Mizo again, however, are not accepting. But we don’t get mad. We just laugh mercilessly at people who butcher the language. And then mockingly mimic them. Not very nice but it is what it is.

In my old school Sacred Heart School in Lunglei, we had these classes too. AV Class, it was called. For Audio-Visual. This was how I watched The Lion King, Dunstone Checks In, Home Alone and some other kid friendly movies. The teachers would give us few questions. Easy ones. Maybe something like: what is the name of the monkey? Or the lion? Or what is the name of the director? Something easy. Something a kid could get. We watched the movie and kept an ear out for these details. 

It is a very effective teaching method, especially in the listening part because English is not our first language and they were teaching us in English, however different the accents were. Also this listening of dialogues teach kids colloquial usage which, I find, is never redundant. It trained me to listen and pay attention to details. I don’t know if other schools currently are doing this but they should. It is entertaining and useful, both.

AV Classes are over now, my French lesson way more over. Any French these days is much less AV than it is somatic, to be sure. C’est la vie, indeed.

Nuns

I don’t know if it was typical of all Catholic schools in Mizoram to have Music Classes but the ones I attended certainly did. And the nuns were our teachers. And they were never strong or even particularly good singers. Some of our music teachers couldn’t even hold notes at all. A lot more Sister Act nuns than Maria von Trapp.

Speaking of, maybe my old nun teachers were fans of The Sound of Music and liked to romanticise their fellow nun Maria at least insofar as the music lessons teaching unruly children how to behave via music goes, if not the Captain von Trapp part. But as they taught us the Doh A Deer, A Female Deer… song, they also taught us songs like “If you want something say please for something, good manners are never out of style…” I forget the name of the song; it might be Two Little Magic Words. I don’t even know.

Also while we’re at it, all our schools mandated for us to purchase a School Hymnal. Buying it I have no issues but why was it called a hymnal? Isn’t a hymnal supposed to contain songs of praise? In what world is Brown Girl In A Ring by Boney M a song of praise? Or for that matter, Glen Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy? Or The Beatles’ Una Paloma Blanca? Or The Carpenters’ Yesterday Once More? Or ABBA’s I Have A Dream? Ooh also Fernando? So it’s like: why not just call it a School Songbook? 

Invariably, one of the nuns would fancy herself as a composer. I remember when we were in Primary School, my sister in Middle School and her friends were taught a song composed by Sister Rita called Oh Mizoram! which we all thought was so fancy and awesome at the time but now… ya. No. We have a photo of them doing a choreography dance on it in blue jeans and white tees, tassels hanging off their hands. One of the other girls was Tetei, today an MIS officer and editor of Mean Pepper Vine. IDK about her but my sister is no longer very fond of the photo but we like it. It’s nostalgic and amusing to us.

In Sacred Heart School, they took it one step further. When the Mizo comedian Mastea released Khawngaih Takin Min Ban Suh Aw my sisters and I thought this was very familiar. We used Siri on it and it directed us to an old timey Hindi song. But that was not it. After humming it for several days, something clicked. The school song of SHS – I don’t know if it’s still their school song now – was just set to the tune of Ajib Dastan Hai Yeh. Titled Round The Sacred Heart School, note for note, it was Ajib Dastan Hai Yeh. I bet whoever it was who composed it thought it was a truly nifty idea.

I never even knew these pop songs were what they were. In fact, Red River Valley, 500 Miles, Nobody’s Child, We Are The World (USA For Africa) and others I didn’t even learn their proper tunes because the people who taught it to me did not carry the tunes properly! It is always a shock to discover what the songs were supposed to actually sound like as I realise when I listen to their studio recordings!

But, good memories, all the same! Next time, we’ll discuss AV Classes in Sacred Heart School. For now, this is Oh Mizoram! which we thought was such a cool song. I wonder how many other SHS alumni remember it as clearly as I do.

From the borders of Burma 

To the plains of Assam

From the hills of Manipur

To the rocky mountains of Tripura

Lies a land we love so dear

It’s a land where we belong

It’s a land just made for you and me

Oh Mizoram! I give my life my all to you

There’s just one life to live and offer you

Oh Mizoram! Help me live a life worth your name

Oh my sweet land, help me true to be to you

Lands where rivers never run dry

Lands where mountains are evergreen

Lands where we feel like in heaven

It’s a land just made for you and me

Dumb

At 9 PM, Cartoon Network exploded and TNT began. It was also the signal to us kids that we were up past our bedtime, which was 8PM. If we stayed up till 9PM, it was scandalous.

As was TNT. To this day, I don’t know what kind of TV Channel TNT was. But I firmly believe it was a grown-up channel. Mostly because it came after the children channel Cartoon Network, but also because it was on only at nighttime. I could Google or Wiki it, but why, tho? It’s not like I’d go back and watch TNT now as an adult. I have my smartphone.

I do remember one time we watched the old-timey Titanic movie (the one before the Leo-Kate one) on TNT. So I also associate TNT with ancient beige movies. Maybe they showed technicolor but it probably was all beige. Not Black & White, you understand. Just not a lot of pop. I mean, Titanic was set in the ocean. Which should ideally be blue or white or black. But I remember the movie as beige. I don’t think I stayed up to the end of it. Or maybe it was also because I was up way past my bedtime.

There’s nothing that really sets children and grown-up channels apart anymore these days. Parents often tell me they put up parental blocks on their phones so their kids can stick to only those irritating, high-pitched, loudly-coloured sing-alongs on YouTube. But I also know from Twitter that there’s a lot of hentai and cartoon porn that parental blocks don’t often get. A lot of pervs out there. So supervision of online content is incredibly difficult.

My friend Goldie’s kid used to like PBK-a on YouTube who was this man dressed like a pastor and dancing clumsily along to his really traditional Mizo gospel beats. Very tame. Very safe. If only more kids liked that, it might be easier on parents. As it stands, content is extremely hard to control. Even Aubrey has moved on to shinier videos and artists like Young Fella and Mary Dawngi. As all of us do. Sawisel Bo, us.

So much of online content is sus anyway. Even cartoons need to be realistic these days. People even get angry over races of half-fishes. During the CN/TNT days, cartoons were just a whole lot of mindfuck. Or at least something someone extraordinarily high dreamed up and then coloured in and then delivered in primary colours. Cartoon logic defied physics and it was awesome. And so much adult jokes inserted in innocent cartoons. Why? Because the people who made them were sus. But innuendo flies past kids’ heads so we were more or less OK as far as preventing naivete was concerned. Today? Everything in the media? Very woke. Very in the lines. Lowkey boring. And somehow the end result is even the littlest of kids knows what coitus is. Very disturbing. What did I know aged 9? Nothing! And I seem to regress every day recently.

Or maybe my generation was (is?) just dumb.

The Oldest I Have Ever Been

I was eleven/twelve when I studied in the seventh grade. I was a little Hermione Granger, sticking to two close friends, a big time know-it-all and a teacher’s pet. And usually the class topper. Not many people liked me. Perhaps that has not changed overmuch but that’s a different muse altogether. It is very little wonder that I identified very strongly to Granger when I first came across Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets the following year aged thirteen.

In any case, I was in Mary Mount School, Tlangnuam at the time. I am ancient so the school infrastructure was nothing like it is today. But imagine, if you will, a place where Boss Kids aka Seventh Graders stood menacingly and intimidatingly while the smaller kids played around them. That was where Baby Zothansiami and Lalnunpuii and I were one day at recess. 

(It is customary in middle school and lower to know your friends' full names. You habitually call them by it, as well. A habit we lose in later years. Something about formative years and absorbing all the knowledge you can? Followed by a period when you just sort of give up, of course. I should check into this.)

I had two younger siblings in MMS. However, we never interacted during school hours. It was standard practice to pretend that we alone were representing our Family in this lawless land of middle school.

That fateful day, my little sister approached the three of us chilling in our spot. She was in tears. She told us a boy in her class had been mean to her. His name was H Vanlalchhanhima. We had the name. So we went to teach the mean boy a lesson. I don’t remember exactly what we did but in the Serengeti of prepubescent children where we were the lions and the littler kids were the zebras, I’m sure we weren’t nice.

But I was a Big Sister. So I did what I felt I had to do. Plus, at that time, I was the best and worst version of myself. At eleven, I knew everything. I was everything. I could do everything. Insufferable beanstalk of a human, yes, but I got shit done. 

I’ve never been that confident again. I mean I did learn to faff again in LSR and got into the whole Kardashian vibe of seeming like you knew shit when in reality, there’s not a lot of substance to you at all. I attended JNU, too; call it a booster shot. But those are all learned so they’re often slower than reflex. My Go-To these days is: I don’t know shit.

If Eleven YO Me could interact with me, she’d be so disappointed.

CQ? Dot Dot Dash!

At dusk, HC Opr. Thangpuii of the MPRO would sit down in front of an awe-inspiring set of radio tech and call out, “CQ! CQ!” My siblings and I were always suitably impressed. We’d gather round her and listen as she rattled off some letters and words and sometimes got news and sometimes took attendance, I think? I don’t really know. All I knew is she would listen on her earpiece then courtly and diligently note down things maybe grown-ups understood.

Dad encouraged this behaviour of ours because he wanted us to understand and memorise the NATO Alphabet. Sometimes he’d quiz us on them. My dad has always been big on quizzes. Very annoying behaviour if he calls you up at 6AM in Delhi and ask: Who among you can tell me when the last Mautam was? (It was in 2007, if you care. If you know this one novelty song Zo Sport, you would remember it from the lyrics that go thusly: Sanghnih pasarih Mautam Zosport! Why I cram my head with useless trivia, I don’t know.) But as far the phonetic alphabet goes, I have to grudgingly say, his method was effective.

Things you memorise as an impressionable kid is retained somewhere in the recess of your brain. If you want to know the scientific explanation of this, watch the excellent documentary called Inside Out by Pixar. This is how my mother can recite all the Post Offices from Silchar to Tlabung in order. This is how I also, less impressively, can still sing the ketchup song Asereje at the drop of a hat. In Spanglish, no less. Or the NATO alphabet. You can quiz me on this. I’d welcome the challenge to show off my rather useless talent.

All of this was back in the 90s. The setting was Luangmual, Lunglei at the Sentry House near the Commandant, 2nd Bn MAP Residence Quarters. Mike. Alpha. Papa. If you can understand that. NATO Alphabets are very useful, actually. If more people knew this set, there’d be less communication gaps. I mean over a bad reception, I could say Mike. Golf. November. Romeo. Echo. Golf. Sierra., for example, and the other person would understand and correctly note down MGNREGS. And not have to resort to say M for Mango, Mmmango, MANGO, MAN-GO! Theihai! No, it doesn’t work.

I don’t know why dad wanted us to know it. But he also was – still is, actually – always excited about these communication devices. For example, if you give him a flashlight, he’d grin and flash it three times and go: dot dot dash! Dot dot dot dash is the Morse Code for V. For Victory. The only other code I know is dot dot dot - dash dash dash - dot dot dot which is the international distress signal SOS. My dad only says dot dot dash so I don’t think anyone would understand him if he tried to communicate in Morse Code. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

CQ, by the way, is just the radio call. The MPRO used it as a way to deliver news and take attendance. Still do, I guess. We used it again during General Elections 2018 in Champhai for some network shadow areas; that brought back fond memories. These days, internet has more or less rendered it redundant but as a back-up, still solid!

One of the reasons dad wanted us to learn CQ and NATO alphabet and all that is also because he brought work home. Often we’d sit in front of typewriters (yes, the bulky ones from days of yore!) and he’d dictate his piece and we’d type for him. So he wanted us to be familiar with his lingo. As in when he said Greetings STOP It is the 7th of March 2024 STOP… he wanted us to be able to understand STOP just means a period signalling the end of a sentence. And when we didn’t understand each other’s pronunciations, it was easy to resort to India Delta India Oscar Tango! Very effective. I kid. I don’t think he ever learned A for Apple, B for Boy as a kid, so maybe NATO Alphabet was It for him and he just wanted us to know.

I don’t really know. I just have fun with it.

UGLY

I judge ugly rich people. Very much. I feel like if you are rich, the least you should do is be good looking. Or at least make yourself look good. A little bit more than presentable. In this day and age, HOW can you be so stupid to still be ugly?! Like fine don’t give to charity and what not but wealth and looks are things everyone tries to get. And if you have wealth, looks is easy to get. So get it.

Even in Mizoram, no one wants to be ugly anymore. People are into rhinoplasty, lasik, permanent beauty tattoos, micro-bladings, micro-shadings, fillers, botox, transplants, maybe not tanning but more like fairness treatments, and so much makeup. It’s dazzling. And enchanting. The end result is aesthetically pleasing. As it should be. Cavemen were ugly. By 2024, there should be a lot more beauty around. 

Or at least have a USP. Even if you do not aim to be or want to be conventionally attractive, get a team to style you. Look eclectic maybe. I mean I am OK with Mark Zuckerberg because his whole thing is NERD. Or maybe Android Nerd, IDK. Maybe. Point is, he owns the look. So I let him off the hook. He looks like a creepy android but we’ll give him a pass. 

Mukesh Ambani, for another, is from an older generation. Maybe it's too late for him to be looking good. Ah but you have to hand it to Mukesh that he looks scary. Like he would fuck you up if you cross him vibes. That’s a definite USP. Also the man has so much money what does it matter? I mean this man has a Snow Room in Antilia, just in case Mumbai’s temperature soars and he has no time to retreat to the Swiss Alps or wherever. Or conversely, for when he has no time to go out in the sun to get Vitamin-D, the building simply provides it for him via the walls. Special materials, or something. Private rooftop helipad? Three in Antilia, thank yew. I mean, he can afford to be ugly.

Beauty is also very much in the eyes of the beholder. I love how Dolly Parton always laughs off any criticisms to her dedication to looking like the town trollop. Quite aside from the quick-witted, hilarious replies she flirtily delivers whenever people question her on her whorish look, like how she drawls: it takes a lot of time and money to look this cheap, honey, I think this is also a calculated move. In a celebrity-worshipping culture as inherent as in the US, this OTT look would always ensure she can go incognito whenever she likes. She just has to not be Dolly. The ultimate Superman/Clark Kent IRL. She created herself an Image. In which she has built an escape for when she needs it. Smart. Like she says: I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde.

So no. I’m not talking about a specific ideal of beauty. Just don’t be ugly. We expect it of people. Standards, basically. No matter how hard some people may push for it, total egalitarianism is never something that is remotely desirable. We are different. It is what pushes civilizations forwards. Difference. Symbiosis. Each doing their parts. The limbs, the hearts, the brains, the kidneys, you get the idea. Like how we expect pastors and elders to have better functioning homes and better behaved children; it’s just in the job description. If you’re going to be telling other people to be better, demonstrate. We know you’re only human. But if you’re going to give, be prepared to get as well.

And so rich people need to be better at it. Stop being ugly. Do more. Be more. Live more. We will all judge each other constantly on how we look. Stop expecting people to be equally nice and deferent to everyone. It just does not work. Better yet, stop judging people when they do not defer to you when you show up at their places looking like a mildly bankrupt farmer just home from IDK pig rearing. Show people a little respect and look your part. That way, everything is easier on all of us. You’re rich, you can afford shoes that do not pinch. Because of course no one will treat the Queen of England the same way they treat a random chai-wallah. It is just what it is. 

Also in these the days of the Gram, a lot of us live vicariously through you. Be better. Step up.

Rethinking Failure

Our neighbor kid Jesse came 2nd in class because he forgot T-E-N Ten. He is not happy about it and has decided that he will start making effort when he reaches Class I. He is in Class KG right now. We celebrated by throwing exploding crackers.

Nobody is mad at him because there’s not much difference between coming 1st and 2nd in class. But it brings back to mind the times when Feli would come in close to last in class. I don’t think she ever really flunked as such but definitely she was never close to the toppers.

Feli has always been the apple of my dad’s eyes so even when she didn’t make the Top Ten, he always just laughed. This always felt like high level of betrayal in my eyes because if I didn’t top the class, he’d ask me: why, tho. Feli? She spent 5 years completing her 3-year BA course. Dad’s comment? Your sister is so dedicated to Political Science she’s taking her own sweet time graduating. Followed by a hearty chuckle.

Feli is brilliant with music, cars, her vkil work and general wit. Try not to get caught insulting her. If she gets angry enough, she will decimate you. Academia has never been her friend. This just goes to show how different strengths we have just increases our collective strengths. There is a joke that says if everyone becomes MCS, who will sell zarda paan? Crude, but true.

I remember as kids, Feli never liked to study or even read overmuch. In fact, the only time she ever begged for tuitions personally was the time after her ninth grade Maths exam. Which dad thought about and then he decided: ya, ok. So that was how right after her exams, Feli started attending what in Potterverse they would refer to as remedial classes. Very effective. Not.

I got my lightning-quick temper from my dad. Dad has always been famous in his circles for having a temper. And even with the Apple of his Eyes, the evening of her results, the house would be on edge. Dad’s staff at the time – Pa Ngura, Pa Sangzuala, U Tharpuia and U Thupuana, especially – would be on edgier edges. For her. All tensed and anxious. And of course, Feli never disappointed. She would get nervous and jittery, seeing other people around her so strained on her behalf. The time during her agitated and uneasy walk up the school stairs to collect her results would be unfailingly the hardest effort she ever puts in to get good results. Does it work? Of course it does not. But it is what it is.

After her Political Science stint, during which she appeared twice in Hindustan Times Page 3 for her Western Music engagement, in Delhi University’s Janki Devi Memorial, she discovered Law. She sat for the exams and sailed through the law course at Delhi’s Law Faculty. I guess when you find something interesting for you, you don’t need additional years.

All of this just to say: there is no one right path. I know that a lot of people in these backwaters consider her as unemployed because she does not work for the government. As far as Mizoram is concerned, unless you are employed by the Sorkar, you don’t have a job! They tell her bracingly: don’t worry, you too will some day get a job. She does. She practices in High Court, Aizawl bench. She makes her own money and does her own paperwork. She’s not half bad. I am very proud of her.

I suppose we still have ways to go before things change. Cultural lag, we call it in Sociology. Something like a mandatory temporal delay for the mode of thinking of the general public to catch up on technological advances. And the advance is very fast paced today and picking up tempo all the time. We will always have people who refuse to change and judge others severely for daring to change. I just wish they were less loud.

It is Monday. The start of a new week. I hope we can be a bit kinder to each other, even if we are on different paths. Nevertheless, I am reading up on voodoo because honestly some people sometimes? Yup.