Hlimsang

I attend Presbyterian church which I believe likes to consider itself more composed, more rational and more solemn than a lot of other churches. Of course, in Mizoram, song-and-dance is an inherent part of worship and can’t be divorced from it. And where there is song-and-dance, a little illogic and a little collective effervescence, as Emile Durkheim would put it, are bound to sneak in. Cheeky little devils. Maybe not devils per se, but cheeky nonetheless.

I’ve never been a fan of all this effervescence. 

All the time I was growing up and there was a revival in church, or people get effervesced around the big holidays like Christmas or Good Friday, I got super nervous. Because of one simple recurrent action – hlimsang. I guess it just means they get Over-Excited? Over-Effervesced? Overly filled with the spirit, I think. Then they can’t control themselves. They start dancing in random, jerky motions and speak in tongues. I truly enjoyed this spectacle as a curious child. However, I also felt inordinately worried and anxious that they would jerk me out of my seat in the pew and drag me out and I would either have to dance like them or be paralysed there on the spot. None of them ever did that to me. But to this day, it remains a worry with me.

I feel like the Hlimsang people would be able to see through me, being as filled with the spirit as they are. And that one of them would just point at me and scream at me: REPENT! I would, definitely. Instantly. Whatever they accused me of. Or worse, they point and scream: CONFESS! I know for sure I would start confessing to sins I didn’t even commit. And I have a wild, active imagination. It is a constant worry.

I worry still.

Little Miss Distinguished

Last year, she rounded up the boys. This year, because they had to go to church, she picked me.

As ever, she – my sister, Feli – was practically squealing the moment she heard the Distinguished Gentlemen were riding again. Taylor Swift! she exclaimed. Only half-listening, I asked: Taylor Swift what?

She had meant that Taylor Swift had worn a really bright, dazzling red tailcoat jacket for the Red promotional videos (or tour?). I said it was more Ringmaster than Dapper, more Britney Spears’ Circus than Robin Scherbatsky at the cigar bar. She said: true, but instead of the short shorts and fishnet stockings, I’ll be wearing pants and heels so it’ll be smart. I said: fine, will we be visiting Eros Tailoring again? We had visited them a few years back the time she decided that we’d look really dapper in fitting waistcoats. This was before DGR so you can tell she’s always loved the dapper. The Eros people made us really fun waistcoats so that was not a bad investment. She came to my place of work one day this year and we went to see them again but they said they weren’t sure how to stitch the Taylor Swift jacket. So we left.

She was slightly dejected. So I said: it’s alright, Mizo seamstresses can stitch anything. That cheered her up to an alarming degree and the next thing I knew, she was in Armed Veng and asking our cousin to stitch her a Taylor Swift jacket! Bright red and trimmed with gold. Our cousin said she was not sure she would cut it right but if she could find someone to cut it, she would definitely sew it for her. She did find one. And she made her the jacket. You should have seen her the night the jacket came home.

She made plans and told me I had to go with her. I said, sure. When she was not convinced that I was looking for dapper clothes to wear, she started looking into my wardrobe and measuring them out. I think she was slightly disappointed that she didn’t find very dapper things there. You could come dressed as Philemona Cunk, she finally said, I know where we can borrow the jacket and you already have her boots and pants. Nice. She gave me Philomena Cunk. Very nice.

The day of the ride, I realized who she reminded me of. If you’ve seen the excellent 2006 Fox picture Little Miss Sunshine starring Abigail Breslin, you’d understand. I am not big on festival recommendations but this was a winner. I found out about it from the Sundance Film Festival press and loved it so much I have re-watched it multiple times over. Excellent, charming and grapping, every bit of the movie is simply marvelous.

Of course I mention it because my sister being this excited for DGR 2024 was about the same level of excited as little Olive for the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. And although no one else from her family understood or even supported the idea of the pageant, they all supported her. Which was about the same for us, her and DGR. Her sisters and brother have patiently listened to her chatter about DGR; two of us accompanied her while one did her week’s laundry for her in our absence. Our parents have no idea what goes on in DGR and why she won her award for the night, but they’re happy about it and the trophy is proudly displayed now in our living room. Oh yes, she won the Most Distinguished Lady for DGR 2024, did I not mention? And she looked like little Olive there on the stage, next to the statuesque silhouette of Miss Asawmi. Lots of fun.

Of course, this cast me in the role of Olive’s grandpa, played by Alan Arkin. Heroine sniffing, foul-mouthed, striptease-loving, burlesque-teaching, porn magazine aficionado who dies in the middle of the movie, by the way. Overdosed on heroine in a motel. Nice. Sort of made poetic justice though, because I was there on this nice Sunday afternoon at a bike ride primarily because the usual suspects were in church. Very nice.

He was very supportive of his granddaughter though. And Alan Arkin won an Academy Award for this role. I can live with that.

My Two Cents: Exam Results

In days long past, where poplar trees lined the backyard and bread was baked in the campus itself, with home-grown peanut butter served with it within the walls of a brick-layered dining hall… I once watched a lot of Hindi movies. 

I haven’t watched many more since. I watched those movies also because on Saturday nights, the school would show it to us on open air theaters. I didn’t have a choice. Very uncomfortable seats because the seats were basically rock cubes and cement in a mini-arena. But spending summer nights outside was nice, save for mosquitoes but we had Odomos for that. And anything on the big screen was – still is – doubly nice, even when you didn’t understand a majority of the movie. Language problems.

Anyhoo. I only remembered Roorkee movie nights because one child actor Harshaali from a movie called Bajrangi Bhaijaan apparently scored 83% in her CBSE Xth Standard Boards. I saw it on IG on the TOI page. She made a little video thanking her haters on this occasion. The comment section was brutal. It was all basic information every Indian kid knows by heart, that 83% is below average, that people score 100% routinely, that you should stop dancing and study harder, and that unless you get 90% and above, you have nothing to say.

It is a rather dull comfort to know nothing really ever changes. Comfort in the sense of knowing what’s coming, even if you can’t change it. Of course, things do get worse, but you get the idea. I don’t know how many lives will be ruined in an endless cycle of chasing the 100% score dream. In Mizoram context, we don’t push for 100% but dear lord, Letter marks! Top Ten! Topper! Good kid, bravo, now pick up more books and become an IAS or a doctor. Endless cycle.

I hope the new generation of parents would do better than the last in this regard. Common courtesy, basic etiquette, common sense, logical reasoning and empathy can take people far in life in terms of success and/or happiness and you don’t always achieve it with high scores in tests. I wouldn’t advocate dropping studies because I’ve been deeply conditioned to believe in education but I’ve started to re-think even this. My new stand, albeit still shaky, is that vocational skills coupled with basic education, especially financial literacy, is what is important and possibly more productive and attainable for the majority of people. You don’t need to be a Topper for that. You certainly don’t need a cent per cent score.

I really have no clue about the peanut butter though, and you can’t quote me on the bread either, possibly should not take my word as gospel truth about my new stand in education thirdly, but the poplar trees had really been there, in nice straight lines. Very pretty. Roorkee could be incredibly gorgeous in the right light. Unless I imagined the whole thing.

Hmanlai Film Dangdai: A Commentary

I consider it unnecessary for a story to have meaning. This is why I love anecdotes and random narration as much as full-fledged chronicles. In fact, I have never particularly enjoyed ‘moral of the story’ type tales. I like for morals and romances to be incidental to stories, not have them be central, overarching, all-encompassing themes. As in life. Most of life indeed is random and chance-like. This is why I have not been a big fan of Mizo literature overmuch, much less Mizo films. 

Then came Hmanlai Film Dangdai. Anyone who has ever watched HFD would know how very random the narration is and how arbitrary the picture has been captured. There is seemingly no rhyme or reason to the film, just the story and how it is told however it has to be told. Whatever the plot demands, the cast provides, reason be damned.

It is comedy gold reminiscent of Monty Python. I doubt I could give them a higher compliment than that. They also often answer real world queries in their films off-handedly, like how people thought the protagonist's name was Cheu-a but he was actually Tleu-a, as though that was an in-world misnomer. Never shying off of any topic, even mostly taboo topics like sex, HFD presents slices of life in a way that is novel to Mizo films in short bursts.

The dialogue is hardly ever stinted, although you can tell it has been thoroughly worked on because the punch line nearly always lands. The delivery by the actors is on point and sounds more natural than the majority of Mizo films; the conversations have a relaxed, between-friends sort of a vibe that is very often missing in Mizo cinema.

However, it was the costume that captured my attention first and foremost because there was a relaxation in it that was hilariously inconsistent. You’d have characters dressed in ‘proper’ ‘old-timey’ Mizo clothes and barefooted. Then you could erratically have one of those wear proper modern shoes. How? No explanation. Even more unpredictably, a character, most notably Hauchhumi, would appear in proper modern clothes – in her red flannel shirt, black jeans and shoes – with no clarification.

The characters themselves are another ambiguous ballgame. Sometimes they talk about characters from folktales like they were neighbours or at least living in the same time as them. Sometimes they casually go to the side of the road and enter ‘the deep forest’ and call out a Lasi who has magical powers and bestows upon the humans boons. These magical creatures exist side by side with them with zero impact on the humans unless they actively interact with them which is such a matter-of-fact story-telling which I deeply appreciate. They even whip out smartphones and if I remember correctly, talk about folktale characters being part of group chats or something similar. Possibly Japanese-esque in this regard. Or in the vein of retelling of stories where fairy tale creatures are in the modern world. Like Once Upon A Time, perhaps. 

I like the demonstration of relationship between the characters as well and how easy their bonds are accepted without making anything into a complicated love triangle. We all have those friends. We know them. We understand them easily enough. Of course, since there is only one major male character, he is often paired as the love interest of many of them ladies without it ever coming off as complex and intricate. They’re truly literally just playing parts. And simply playing off of each other as friends, like we do in real life. I cannot express just how deeply I respect this.

I have enjoyed many Mizo films. I have done my part watching the cringe fests with interest, even rented their CDs/DVDs from movie rentals. I can recite a few Mizo film dialogues with my sister. I sometimes howl with laughter over some comedy acts. Also over non-comedy acts too, in all honesty. YouTube is a relatively new venture and there are a ton of acts there that are refreshing. Not all of them films though. Not all of them brilliant.

One of the biggest problems I have with Mizo films is with direction and editing. There are simply too many unnecessary, empty screen times and scenes that drag out longer than they need to. Add to that moralizing and forced dialogues. HFD is novel again in that they do not waste screen time and utilize mostly all their scenes, often covering with overlaid voice-overs or dialogues. I truly admire this. It cannot be easy.

In the end, a good movie is about how well it tells a story and how engagingly it tells it. A good HD camera or good casting alone cannot be enough. HFD is good at it. I am a fan.

On Killing Men

I listen to country music. Someone once theorized that male country songs are about cheatin’ and lovin’ women. In the plural. And female country songs are about lovin’ yet killin’ the men who do the multiple lovin’ and cheatin’. I was very amused at the theory but also I can’t dispute it. Broken hearts and crimes of passion and all that.

I do not consider myself a violent person although I do enjoy vicarious violence. I have stopped whatever it was I was doing just to watch people fight. I don’t know. Perhaps it is something lacking in my life that I like to see somewhere else on display. It happens. I am sure there is a psychological name for it too.

Not for nothing therefore that I like violent songs sometimes but mostly lyrical violence wrapped up in sweet melody. Which is why Kill Bill by SZA really resonated with me. Such a sweet melody singing “I might kill my ex. Not the best idea. His new girlfriend’s next. How’d I get here?” The first time my sister played this song in my vicinity, it gave me pause. I stopped what I was doing and listened and said: what is she singing?

I laughed and have returned for multiple re-plays. It feels to me like an updated version of Olivia Newton-John’s excellent psychotic and honey-voiced narration of how she asked her lover to take a walk by the Banks of the Ohio and then sweetly crooning, “I held a knife against his breast, as into my arms he pressed. He cried, ‘My love, don’t you murder me; I’m not prepared for eternity.” which then went on to, “I walked on home between twelve and one. I cried, ‘My God, what have I done?’ I’ve killed the only man I loved. He would not take me for his bride.” 

My favourite country stars have often sung of violence and even murder. Sometimes they even make it a joyful dance number. Like the most excellent Goodbye Earl by the Dixie Chicks (The Chicks, now). The story telling remains fantastic. “Earl walked right through that restraining order and put her in intensive care. Right away Mary-Anne flew in from Atlanta on a Red Eye midnight flight. She held Wanda’s hand and they worked out a plan and it didn’t take them long to decide: That Earl had to die.” So that was the Why. What about the How? “Those black-eyed peas, they tasted all right to me, Earl. You feelin’ weak? Why don’t you lay down and sleep, Earl?” where they couldn’t help taunting their erstwhile-abuser-now-a-corpse with the line, “Ain’t it dark wrapped up in that tarp, Earl?” The girls would later admit to not losing any sleep at all over this because Earl had to die. There is a haunting line in this upbeat number: “It turns out he was a missing person who nobody missed at all”. It's like those Bible verses where they write about bad kings and go: he passed away, to no one's regret. Haunting. Makes you wonder who would miss you if you were gone.

Taylor Swift also joined this bandwagon with the matter-of-fact narration of Dexter-esque vengeance in No Body, No Crime where her friend Este went missing. But there was no body, so no crime, no prosecution. She was sure the husband did it though because he’d been acting differently, drinking merlot with someone else, and buying jewelry from Este and his joint account that was not for her. And when Este went missing, his truck got some brand new tires, he brought home his mistress who slept in Este’s bed and everything. And for Taylor, it was a “good thing my daddy made me get a boating license when I was fifteen, and I’ve cleaned enough houses to know how to cover up a scene; good thing Este’s sister’s gonna swear she was with me.” Luckily for Taylor, the mistress took out a big life insurance policy so everyone thought she did it. And again, as with Este, there was no body, so no crime. Taylor ended her narration with a satisfying, “I wasn’t letting up until the day he died.”

Such charm. Entire murder stories in 4-5-minute songs. And told in such entrancing, enchanting ways that you just start to, if not sympathise with, at least understand the murderer. Genius.

Cell Block Tango by the six merry murderesses of the Cook County Jail from Chicago is possibly where I first started being captivated by this genre of women murdering men because they wronged them. Ooh, this probably deserves its own blog.

Meanwhile on the flip side, I’d read once that judges who pass a death sentence break the pen they use to sign the papers. One, to show how heavy this sentence is and how they are themselves broken over it, and two, to ensure the pen that has killed a person would never be used again. Symbolic. Of course sometimes when it’s really high profile, they have also been known to retire the pen but keep it as a souvenir. Psycho-alert, anyone?

What Kind of Dog Jumps Higher Than a Building?

Taylor Swift says if you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. I think she’s been to carnivals. 

To paraphrase her, I think also that if you ask stupid questions, you get stupid answers. Ignore all the teachers who ever told you there were no stupid questions. There are.

Recently, there have been Questions raised in the Mizo Christian world that has upset church members. I don’t think I would call them stupid questions at all but I know also that a lot of people call them things close to blasphemy. Which I don’t think they are, at all.

Religion should ideally be able to answer questions of the Faith but often religion hates when hands are raised.

It is in the questions you ask.

I know a lot of people for whom faith is not a difficult task. They simply say they believe, no questions asked. But there are others who need more. It’s not a failure on anyone’s parts. It’s just the degree of inquisitiveness of a mind, the inclination of how a mind is exercised. I would lean more to the curious side myself, I think. 

For me, personally, reason is important and I do look for reason in almost everything I do. Even at work, even when we deviate from norms, I need to know what the reason is and how we deviate from it. It makes sense to me to look for reason. But I accept also that it is not enough that reason for something exists, because sometimes those reasons are not good reasons. Logical consistency is not the answer to everything. At work, or in Faith.

That being said, my Faith gives me solace, and comfort, and hope. And that is precious to me. Sometimes it is everything to me. So however the human-organised church fails or doesn’t match the mark, it is not enough to shake my faith. Also I have been indoctrinated enough to have the fear of the Lord instilled in me, so good luck shaking that. However much I sin, I shall never shake that fear off.

There are age-old questions raised about God. Mostly, how does an all-powerful, all-loving God not stop natural calamities and all the cancers and all the fuck ups of this world? Because things like wars, we can reason out and say man inflicted these shits on mankind. An ever growing cancer from the Garden of Eden. But to take just one example, what of the babies who died in the neonatal units of hospitals when Gaza was bombed in 2023? Where was God then?

The get out of jail card for theism is always Free Will. God can’t get rid of the evil without also ridding the world of Free Will embedded in the system. God cannot get rid of much of the evil and suffering in the world without also getting rid of morally significant free will. 

The question of whether God’s omnipotence is compatible with the claim that God cannot do the logically impossible is another concern. If God can make 2 + 2 = 5, then what would 2 + 3 equal? If God can make a rock so big that he can’t lift it, exactly how big would that rock be? What people who ask these questions want is something that is no longer itself. Each of these things seems to be absolutely, positively impossible. What they want is magic, probably. Transfiguration, perhaps. And in the vein of McGonagall turning into a cat and less of Jesus becoming radiant in the mountain top. 

There is also the question of whether us free willed creatures could have perfect lives in Heaven in the great Afterlife. Or whether to ensure perfect society, if free will would be removed from us then. Or perhaps in Heaven, the free willed creatures (angels? souls of believers?) always and unfailingly choose right. So there’s free will that can be compatible with perfect living. Technically, possible. But I guess if we get turned into that, we would not be the same as we are now anyway.

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. Or perhaps I’m not asking the right questions. Deep Thought said the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything was 42. The only problem was no one ever asked the Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe and Everything. Perhaps the Answer is there. We just don’t know it yet. As for me, I’m OK for now with the Answers I have, and the comfort my Faith gives me.

The answer to the titular question, by the way, being all of them, of course, because buildings can’t jump.

Nang A Thu, Kei A Thluk?

Music is beyond all the magic they do at Hogwarts. 

A long time ago, I heard, quite by chance, a song by a blind opera singer that I understood not a single word of. But it made me feel things I did not understand. Google has taught me since what the song was about but it didn’t really matter. I loved it before I understood it. The song being Con Te Partiro by Andrea Bocelli. My favourite version is the Anglo-Italian version, the English part rendered by Sarah Brightman. I can listen to this song at any point in time. I never get tired of it. I still don’t fully understand all the feels it makes me feel but I love it. That has not changed.

Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore discussed the superiority between tune and words in Music & Lyrics. I don’t remember what they agreed on, but I think probably a marriage of both. A tune without the lyrics is still music, but lyrics without the tune becomes poetry. There’s still a gentle melody in poetry, though, so I’m not sure why I made the distinction. 

There are a ton of Mizo songs that have used western (or otherwise) music for the words. Kan Zotlang Ram Nuam by Rokunga is also a lift of an old country (or folk?) song by Bob Willis and his Texas Playboys called Faded Love. When I visited Pi Sailovi one time I asked her about Matehawngi which was written for her, and she said she thinks they just used the tune of some western pop song but she no longer remembered what song. People do this all the time. Even Kya Kehna is a direct lift of Oh Carol. It is how we enjoy different arrangements and aside from copyright infringements and all that, I think it is nice. I don’t really think gatekeeping music is all that necessary. Art is art and art is designed to be shared. No? I don’t know.

In April this year, one woman forced me to buy at least one item from her second-hand pile. I don’t usually buy thrift these days but I purchased one T-shirt because I liked the colour and the French words in the front. In an idle moment, I Googled what the phrase meant and was pleasantly surprised to find out it was a song lyric. Quelques mots d’amour by Michel Berger, if you want to Spotify it. If you’re anything like me, you won’t regret it.

Around the same time, I also watched a lot of food reels on YouTube and Instagram. Very often they’d play this one sweet song I didn’t really know what language it even was. One day, on the comment section, I saw someone say they loved this song as well. It occurred to me then to look for this and I did and found it was called Mori no Chiisana Restaurant by Aoi Tashima. Japanese, if you couldn’t tell. Such a sweet song. I’ve been playing it on loop for ages now.

These are by no means isolated incidents or novelty experiences for me. I’ve always had a tendency to love songs I didn’t understand. When Shakira came out with Laundry Service, she had a song in it called Te Dejo Madrid. I fell in love at first listen. I never bothered to learn what it meant but I memorized the entire song from intense and continuous replays. I can still sing the entire song. I can’t sing her other Spanish songs but I love some of them all the same – like Gitana (over Gypsy), or Suerte (over Whenever, Wherever mostly) or the newest diss track BZRP Music Session #53. Aside from the ones where she does the same song in both languages, I have no idea what the lyrics mean. Especially Te Dejo Madrid. I have never even bothered Googling it. It doesn’t matter.

Sometimes they are silly. Like Aseraje by Las Ketchup. I know all the words. No idea what it means. Doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

Or that one Khasi song Uff Ka Jingied. The one by the four girls in formation choreograph in the café. I don’t know the ladies but what a beautiful song! I know I’m not alone in saying this because everyone in Mizoram who grew up in the 90s know “that Khasi song”. Music really does transcend languages and I know this for a fact because when I was studying in Delhi, I don’t think there was a single Naga owned laptop that did not have a Michael M Sailo song in it. Sometimes people asked me to write down lyrics for them. This was how I learnt some Mizo songs like Damlai Par by Mami Varte and of course, Pari Zun by Michael M Sailo. I think also Hmeltha Sensiar by him and SP-i.

I’ve often wondered if the true test of music is how a song is still beautiful if arranged differently or without music, in a symphony. Taylor Swift’s music has often been criticized for being stuck in a teenage angst by people who don’t bother to listen to her. If you give her music a try, it works without the lyrics too, a lot of times. Although to be honest, sometimes the words are what we feel the most, too. Even people like Shania Twain. She did a duet of Still The One with Paula Fernandes, a Brazilian singer who sang her part in Portugese. Chills. Gorgeous. Or remember the time Il Divo did Unbreak My Heart in Spanish, retitling it Regresa a Mi? Lovely.

I’m not very good at music so I don’t recognize a lot of world famous compositions. I mean, I know Beethoven’s Für Elise and Symphony No 5, or Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, mostly from movies, mostly all from Bugs Bunny, to be honest. Bizet’s Carmen especially. Looney Tunes has always been good at this. I just sort of listened to them properly after I grew up but I also always have Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig in mind whenever I listen to these pieces. Image association, possibly. Funny how the mind works. Doctor Who is very good at music, to me. One of my favourite ever piece is Clara’s Theme from somewhere in Eleven’s run. Beautiful.

I guess my takeaway in all of this is that Dumbledore was indeed right when he said music was beyond all the magic they did at Hogwarts. Beyond.