Ex-BDO Girl

Dear Reader, 

Of the life experiences I was exposed to during my tenure as BDO Aibawk, there were few things that have stood out that I want to share with you.

One, I used one gas cylinder for 13 months straight and it is still heavy. Once while I was in Champhai, one cylinder had lasted me 7 months and everyone who knew laughed at me for it. But this one lasted even longer.

Two, I participated in not one, not two but three elections while I held office; they took me away from office a bit longer than I’d have liked.

Three, we got two awards that I’m not sure how we got because we weren’t working towards any criteria. Perhaps a remnant of my predecessor’s. One was a little weird but we’ll take it. We got two.

Four, Cyclone Remal claimed five lives, several livestock, multiple houses and countless landslides, destroying crops and roads in its wake. If we were in pre-Christian days, we’d probably be sacrificing some large animal – a bovine or a swine probably – to appease some deity we didn’t know. I’d probably be heading the rituals. It really looked like Fury personified unleashed their anger on our hill range. Damn.

Five, in Samlukhai, I learned how to locate and check for aiawt, those bamboo thatched crab traps. Also found out in the process that it is illegal in Mizo customs to check someone’s aiawt. So don’t do as I did.

Six, again in Samlukhai, I learned how to identify and harvest bamboo shoots. This activity once more brought home to me how fortunate I am to be a salaried govt. employee because no way I am clever or strong or hard-working enough to survive on my skills and tenacity. I’d starve.

Seven, I learned how to make kurtai in Phulpui. This was very interesting because I had no idea how quickly and completely hmawngsawi turns into kurtai! If I may slip in a general advice here, if anyone asks you to make kurtai, turn up early. People work early to make kurtai!

Eight, I walked through the Sunflower fields of Sailam and my absolute faith in the majesty of sunflowers was redoubled.

Nine, I hoisted the National Flag twice in Aibawk. And received the salute in Sateek during Republic Day from the St Francis school contingents. That was a big deal. For me.

Ten, I attended Lo Zawh in Tachhip. That was a lot of fun.

Eleven, Sh. Kamlesh Pashwan, the Union Minister of State, Rural Development, Govt. of India was the last and most distinguished guest of the office during my tenure. He said the office and the area was really clean and tidy. He told me my staff was well-disciplined. He said our work was good. 

Twelve, I can’t remember the last time I’ve properly eaten roasted fresh butta with some syrupy sweet tea in the rain. I did that in the chayote gardens of Lamchhip. It was grand. 

Thirteen, some unseen being knocked on my door at 4AM one morning waking me up from my slumber. Spooky.

Fourteen, there were three births (all daughters) and two deaths (both men) among my staff during my tenure. Rather poignant.

Fifteen, a random man one day walked up to my quarters one day and asked me for glasses. As in spectacles. I was very confused. He said he’d lost his and asked if I had one for him. Quite aside from the optometrical issue, I remain confused if he was a bit mental or just drunk off his ass. This is quite aside from the fact too that he called me “ka pu”. Vanity took a nosedive! I was just happy I wasn’t wearing my glasses at the time or he might have asked me for it. And what could I have done? Give up the gift of sight? I don’t know.

Sixteen, come to think of it, I don’t know what it is about Aibawk RD Block but in the time I was here, I got deliberately called Sir, as in short for Officer by the VCP of Lungsei. This has both amused and delighted me and my staff. I don’t mind it. I rather like it. 

Seventeen, Aibawk has never had a female BDO so I guess there’s something there in as far as the gender confusion I faced.

Anyhoo. I joined office on May 26th, 2023 and left on August 12th, 2024. It was not a long stay. But it was a lot. Some good, some bad. As always, there are people who I have come to count as good friends, and perhaps even as non-blood family. There have also been people who have been excited and happy to see the back of me. It’s all right. I am warmed by the kind people who get outraged on my behalf. It’s like I always say: you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. You have to learn to appreciate the good and accept the bad. You just have to let the good outweigh the bad.

So Long, Aibawk. Till we meet again.

A Little Wednesday Existentialism

A policeman’s daughter, my designation plate at the moment being RD green gets my father smiling. He’d always wanted me to be in Civils.

I travel in a beat-up old Gypsy with the license plate MZ 01 F 6377 which is younger than my dad’s Maruti 800 which is MZ 01 E, but is in much worse shape than the latter. Public vehicles. There’s a lot to be said about this. But probably for another day. 

In any case, I see people reading my designation plate sometimes. Some of them look up and read my face. I don’t know if they can see my face, and I don't know what they think. What I know is how different we all are. Sometimes I see recognition in their eyes but I don’t know what to make of it. What is a BDO? When I was little, I certainly didn’t know who a BDO was, much less what a BDO did. I am a policeman’s daughter. All I knew was what policemen did. Different people, different lives, I guess.

If we make it work, we make it work. And we should be thankful for it. A lot of people don’t. A lot of times, we don’t. People are fighting battles we know nothing about. I think the only real thing we can take away from any situation is to be kind. Very difficult to do, of course. I know for a fact that sometimes I make up my mind to make things as difficult as I possibly can for some people. And I have, too. Because when you meet with rude disrespect, all the little metaphorical warrior cells get activated in your system and they strike hard. I am happy that this impulse is lessening with age. But some days… ya.

Some days it is hard to accept where I am in life. Is this what was always going to happen? Could things have gone a different way? 

Most days, it is hard to guess what goes on in people’s lives. Sometimes I meet people I’d met once in some duty or event and spent time with. I smile or wave if they seem to recognise me too. It feels nice. Like an acknowledgment that I’m alive in someone else’s lives. Because some dark existential days, it feels like I am the centre of the universe and people solely exist because I do.

Of course, this narcissism is fueled up by the prevalence of social media these days. We all have our platforms that boost up our perceived importance. We feel important. We feel seen and observed. It is like an IV feed right into our vanity. And unfortunately, our self-worth. 

It is becoming so hard to differentiate between what is real and what is not, AI not making anything easier at all. It is harder and harder to tell who is fake and who is not. We collect receipts like memories will fail us if we don’t; pics or it didn’t happen!

And to think, if I were in Arthur Dent’s world, I could hitchhike my way to Betelgeuse! For now, I’ll wait for December to watch for it in the night sky.

The Madness of Hamlet

The job of an MCS was not something I had the faintest clue of as an oblivious kid growing up. I was lost in fantasy world and spent my days playing make believe in a world that contained magic and princesses. This was when I was not at a desk pretending to study because my mum was monitoring me. I aimed for good grades because it was easier than listening to chastising and a good grade got me new toys.

The power I knew was of policemen's. I grew up in battalion areas. I understood that discipline. My dad said I should aim to be an IAS officer and he said: it’d be nice if you were DC one day. I took it at face value because my dad said so that IAS people became DC. I didn’t even know MCS people also got to be DC sometimes.

Me being MCS was not because I wanted to be one overmuch. I became one because it was my easy way out being able to engage in the things I enjoy with people tolerating my outlandish quirks. The things I truly enjoy are not often considered adult-like or dignified. But me liking what I like while being MCS renders me some sort of respectability, if a bit eccentric. This is sometimes the biggest perk of me being MCS.

I have always assumed I would be a productive member of society. I have always taken for granted I would work and earn a living. I have always accepted that I would have to do my best whatever my job was and contributed to the economy however I could. When I was looking for employment fresh out of Uni, I applied for several jobs that I thought could give me a decent pay. This includes me giving NET exam which I hoped I shall never have to use because I have never thought I’d be a good teacher and certainly not a good role model. It never hurts to have a Back Up Plan though. My NET exam was at Jamia Uni campus and someone stole my sister’s apple. As in one solitary fruit from her backpack which was her ‘healthy snack’ instead of her wallet. That was amusing.

I still really had not much clue when I jumped ship from MFAS to MCS what MCS people did. Mostly it was because my dad said: how about you become MCS? I was tired of sitting in a Treasury Office passing the same salary bills month after month is really the best explanation I can offer for me applying.

Today, I have a better clue what MCS people do. Mostly because I do them. I still don’t know more than I have experienced because my intellectual curiosity really does not stretch out to the real world. I could spend hours and days sitting alone or discussing with like-minded people sci-fi or fantasy fiction, theorizing about possibilities and explanations, engaging in heated debates about logic and illogic in fiction, even pretend whole-heartedly to be an ant in an online ant colony. But it was not until I assumed charge as BDO, for example, that I asked: what does a BDO do? Which was because I had to now do them.

I realise therefore that I would never be the good officer I might have the potential to be. I am not afraid of hard work so I will always give my job my best. But I will never have that drive, I fear, that motivates some of my colleagues and peers to forge ahead and achieve distinction. Any sort of awards I have ever gotten have all been incidental. No one is ever more surprised than I whenever any office I hold gets recognition. I never aim for any. My main goal is to maintain status quo and fly under the radar. My only criteria and absolute discipline have been to never let standards slip. I like to think I share an affinity with Hamlet when he said he was only mad north-north-west; that when the wind blew southerly, I would always know a hawk from a handsaw.

I take quiet pride in being MCS because it has become my life intertwined. I do not fool myself, however, into thinking it makes me anything more or less than what I essentially am. When I am off-duty and sit down to watch an episode of Doctor Who or re-read the Hitchhiker’s Guide or engage in an online discussion of Harry Potter or some other similar engagement, I am simply Esther Leihang, something of a ridiculous gremlin.

Gypsy Horns

1:30AM is not the time for Gypsy horns to blare and never stop. Which is what happened last Friday night. Woke me up like the feckin’ end of the world.

I remember on the way to Mualvum one evening, before the year 2000 (so basically primitive), my dad’s then-driver Pa Hmaa, a man with an incredible sense of humour, boasted jokingly over how everything in his Gypsy made noise all the time save for the horn.

As though offended, all hell broke loose at that precise moment sort of like a punctuation, or a stage cue, and the horn blared and wouldn’t stop. He got out of the Gypsy and searched under his seat. Meanwhile, all of us had our hands cover our ears, silently pleading with the Universe to just stop the cacophony. Pa Hmaa fished out a machete and opened the hood. We heard a dull thud and the horn went quiet. I still don’t know the exact wire for the horn in my car or in a Gypsy. How remiss of me. I should maybe learn this.

Cars are wonderful inventions. I don’t know much about them and even less about the fancy ones. I was driving one time and the accelerator just stopped pumping. I had always feared that the brakes would just refuse to work and I would die; it is a recurring fear, to be honest. But I had never imagined a situation where the accelerator would not work. I somehow managed to find someone to help and he realised the wire had popped off. He reattached it and tightened the screw and the car was alright again. So now I know the wire attached to the accelerator; I still don’t know the one attached to the horn.

Which is what I supposed happened last week. I believe someone was trying to hotwire our neighbour’s Gypsy in the dead of the night. But they somehow touched upon the horn one and not the accelerator one. And then there was pain.

1:30AM is very quiet, you guys. And if a gd Maruti Suzuki Gypsy horn just starts blaring out without a single pause, it drives you half insane! And in the hills, with our nice acoustics, it is hard to figure out where from it originates. Of course, we have two Gypsies in our immediate locality – the white government one with me and the red one belonging to our neighbour. My first thought was the sound was a Gypsy horn! Because dear lawd, it has been years upon years since the police one Pa Hmaa drove blared out, but I realise you don’t forget such a blessedly ugly sound! It’s just there in the recess of your brain. Or something. And that one had been during the day. This was the dead of the night and yet no mercy. The only question was whether it was my Gypsy or not. I fumbled around in the house looking for the key. But the caterwauling stopped. So I returned to bed.

A silent night is a blessed night, my friends. I’m not even kidding.