Ye Olde Lunglei

I recently spent two consecutive weekends in Lunglei. Both were unplanned. Which kind of takes me back because I once spent three years in Lunglei.

Not Lunglei town, per se. I was in Luangmual which was where my father was posted, in 2nd Bn MAP. Our family stationed in the compound. We went to school in Sacred Heart School in Venglai so that was a fuck-all of a commute. The officers’ kids all went there so they arranged for a beat-up old sky-blue Jeep to ferry us to and fro. The designated driver was Pa Zokhuma. His mother was Pi Tialdini and she was a proper Hlimsang and I admired her like no one else. I wanted to be her when I grew up. That and a DC, but that was more like an afterthought.

I learned a lot in SHS and one that has stuck with me till today is the poem Ozymandias by PB Shelley. Kids recited poetry at the School Assembly and that was supposed to teach us public speaking, and I think that was a really good exercise. But also, for some reason, Ozymandias got stuck in my head. The poem really resounded with me. Ozymandias was in the 9th or 10th Grade English Lit. class (or maybe it was called English-I? I don’t remember). I only went to SHS for 3rd to 5th Standard but I learned Ozymandias through this School Assembly. And I have loved it since. I can still recite it from memory even today at the drop of a hat.

I also learned to sketch basic human female figures in SHS. There was this kid in my class – Muanpuii. She was this skinny little girl with short hair that was sticking out and wouldn’t really behave. She was an artist. She’d tear out pages from her notebook and sketch hundreds of pictures of girls in various poses on them. Mostly Betty and Veronica-esque. I learned to sketch basic figures from imitating her. I never really developed further than what I learned from her. She had a nice little economic ring going on. The girls in our class would “buy” these sketches from her with more torn out empty pages from our own notebooks which gave her more material to produce more sketches and so on and so forth. 

Classroom entrepreneurship was all the rage. My own forte was writing little short stories in these torn out pages. The pages would be halved and then folded to quarter them. Using my dad’s staplers to clip them together, I’d create mini-books to come up with perhaps four or six pages long story-books. Girls would borrow them with their own torn out notebook pages. That gave me my own next raw material. My little sister was my best fan. She still remembers some of those stories. I don’t.

Lunglei remains unchanged in so many ways. I am hopelessly directionally challenged. But even I could still find my way around. Which means either that my Lunglei memories are super strong. Or that Lunglei hasn’t grown very much and the markers have remained more or less the same. I don’t know. 

I saw Uncle Shoppe where my mother bought us toys, either for birthdays or when we topped our classes. There was the stationery store where we got school supplies. The little shop that we bought Tinkle and Archies from was no longer there; the building itself was gone. The old video rental place was not there anymore either; I had not expected it to be there. VCR Days are long gone. The days when my dad would drive the family over from Luangmual to Ramthar and my uncle in Ramthar, as the Host, would borrow Tom & Jerry VCRs for us are just very old stories that sound nostalgic and out of place today.

Much like me. I feel old today. Ancient, even.

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

Public Speaking in English

*Disclaimer: You won’t learn anything about public speaking in English from this blog.

Public Speaking is an art that can be learned. I definitely have improved over the years although I am by no means good at it. But every step is another step and it’s all good so I’m not complaining.

I learned public speaking at school. My first experience of it was back in Sacred Heart School Lunglei where they always made students handle Morning Assembly – a poem, bible reading, praying, etc. It taught us how to address an audience. It also taught me Ozymandias by P B Shelley which I still can recite to this day. Neat.

I never volunteered but over the course of my school life, there were multiple occasions where I stood in front of a bunch of people and spoke. A lot of it was gospel. As bad in public speaking as I was, I was chapel-in-charge at one point and I even played guitar in public then. The cringe. Or as church members would say, the Lord is never short of instruments (will make do if He can’t find one!).

I was extremely nervous the first time I spoke in Mizo in public. And it was a lecture, of all things. I was championing New Pension Scheme at the time and Bernie, Sawmtea and I had divided the course into three parts. I was hilariously bad at it but I was also leader so I couldn’t exactly not perform. Sometimes I’d start a sentence and not know how to end it and would just stand silently, heart thundering. I was bad at it in English and I had training in it; I had zero training in Mizo. Ugh. That was a bad experience. But I grew from it and I suppose I am grateful for it.

More opportunities developed for Mizo public speaking for me in time. I even publicly translated for my old DC Dr Aggarwal sometimes which was always a challenge because as a science guy, he often used science-y words. And we have very few science words in Mizo. You talk about photosynthesis and Mizo is stumped. We came up with a system where he prepared his speech beforehand or he told me the general gist and I’d mentally search for appropriate Mizo words. Anyhoo. I guess it worked. No one complained. Either that, or nobody listened.

As I was gaining confidence in Mizo public speaking, suddenly this week I found myself thrust into English public speech again. I rolled my eyes and my sleeves and performed. Because as much as it disconcerted me to speak in English after years of Mizo speaking again, I came into an epiphany which was that it didn’t matter all that much. Possibly 90% of the time, if people do comment on you, they’d comment on your accent. Not your grammar, not your material. And comments on accent I can deal with.

English is not my native language. I can only imitate what I’ve heard. And what I’ve heard and mimicked is a hotpot of choice accents – Kerala nuns, North Indians, UK and US films and of course, my own mother tongue. So yes, it was always going to be a jumble of all of these swirled together. And I won’t pronounce some words properly which is still okay because I’ve learned words in books – like quay. Not until the 2012 Doctor Who ep. The Angels Take Manhattan did I realise it was pronounced more like Key than Kway! Or that yatch does not require the ch to be pronounced because it’s not sounded out anyway. And that’s English words; in Irish, it becomes even more complicated like how in the world is Eoghan pronounced Owen, or Siobhan pronounced as She-von? I learned all these pronunciations from the screen, mind. So however and in whatever context I use them have to be influenced by what I’ve heard. My accent is therefore the least of my concerns and least cause of anxiety.

I always say you should not be too worried about English and how good or bad you are at it. It is good to improve because it very much is the medium through which a lot of us have experienced the wider world. Any gain in traction can only lead to better understanding and appreciation of literature, the arts and the sciences. Possibly commerce too. But otherwise, it is still a colonial hangover to judge people on how well they know the language.

Bottom line is people probably aren’t paying that much attention to you very much anyway so it’s OK!