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.

Food

In my college days, I ate like a full grown man. Not a proper sit down rice meal, though. Anything but that and I was golden. 

I remember in U Rinpuii’s house, I’d eat a quarter of my weight in rice, sausage, alu and daal, with some chutney or the other. She taught me how to make sausages in a way I continue to this day. There has never been anyone who’s ever eaten it that didn’t like it. She also taught me how to make bastenga pork and though now I prefer it the Atula Way, that was where I first ate it. Always a cracker dish. Atula learned her way from her dad. And we enjoyed it so much one time we bought three kilos of pork and ate it all in one sitting with rice – her, me and Tenzin. Pigs we were.

Defence Colony where U Rinpuii lived was also where I ate Opera Pastry any time my pocket money allowed me to. Opera Pastry, for the uninitiated, is a six-layered (or seven?) cake that is too delicious to be allowed. That was Defence Bakery. Defence Bakery also had the best and moistest Blackforest cakes with proper cherries. There was also Angels In My Kitchen who had the best rainbow/red-velvet cake in existence. Cakes are funny business. I’ve noticed that people can decorate cake very well but only very few can make really good tasting cake. Maybe it’s the Instagram age we live in where image is more important but honestly, that is BS.

In Mizoram, Sangsangi of Champhai (now Higis Bake, Aizawl) makes amazing cheesecake and vanilla/blueberry cake. U Mary (of KT Bakery, Lunglei) makes divine snowballs and chocolate brownies. Cookie Jar in Aizawl makes incredible rum balls. There was the twisted sisters in Aizawl who made heavenly bombolinis with cream fillings; why did they stop?! Someone promised me “orgasmic” sandwiches in Aizawl; I’m yet to be convinced.

In college, I ate so much momos from Lajpat Nagar’s Central Market. My dose was usually 12 to 16 fat chicken momos for one sitting, usually with chow and fruit beer. I was also a humongous fan of LSR Residence Hall’s peeli daal/kaale chana lunch; I’d fight for that. Keema Samosa from LSR Café too. Ooh. If you’re ever in Jama Masjid, please try chicken biryani the way it’s been prepared since history book days; thank you Kavya for introducing me to it, you beautiful soul. I’m yet to tire of Mc Donald’s Filet-o-fish. In University, I was addicted to Crispy Dry Lamb and chilli potato combo lunch from JNU’s Keichha’s. In these years, I’d frequented the Tibetan Colony Majnu Ka Tila for dinner for which my usual order was: 2 honey garlic ginger lemon teas, 1 plate chilly chicken chowmein, 1 or 2 plates fried gyuma, and 1 bowl of mokthuk/thenthuk optional. I also went to Srinagar one time and ate fire roasted lamb slices wrapped in rumali roti with radish pickles. Heaven will have food like that. I am so sure.

I have never eaten so much in my life as those five years in higher educational institutions. At one point, at a dinner party I was invited to, someone remarked that inviting me and my friends was like inviting a bunch of men for dinner. We never stopped eating, although we snapped at him saying we were mortified. I spent close to 80% of my pocket money on food. The rest on cheap transportation and chor bazar books. Good thing LSR and JNU prided themselves on low budget fashion. I wouldn’t have made it otherwise.

I was never fat during all these. Curves I had none. People always marveled at it. I blame it on the death-defying journeys to all these eateries because Delhi is an amazingly unsafe city. If you ever ride the Tivra Mudrika, for example, you flirt with death quite literally. The bus wants to see people die. I started going everywhere with SAKs. Buy a Victorinox one; it’s the best. I also blame NSO and Aerobics. LSR wouldn’t let you graduate unless you filled in requisite hours for either NSO, NSS or NCC. Mamu and I first chose NSS but the bitch of a woman i/c of NSS never credited us our hours. So we switched to NSO and the only thing we could realistically do was Aerobics. Which was how every single weekday morning at 7, we were at a little gym enclosure, kicking it to the beat of Get Down by the Backstreet Boys, usually. For one entire hour. The weekend after the first full week, our legs did not work. Aerobics is an amazingly full-bodied workout. The muscle overwork and fatigue resulted in magnificent cramps. I fell off my bed, walked like a cowboy after a full week’s horse ride, and descended stairs like a giraffe trying to drink water. I still prefer it to yoga, the fake ass posing drama. I think yoga is fake, except for maybe the cat-cow pose; I think that helps.

These days, I have about maybe 10% of my former appetite. I think maybe I burnt myself out. It might be from years of living alone I just sort of gave up. I still have binging tendencies. At one point, I ate so much Nabati cheese wafers that the wholesaler I bought it from asked me: How do you sell so much? I couldn’t bear to tell her I ate it all myself. I also ate sunflower seeds like the world was running out on them; they’re not good for your poop. At one point recently, I consumed those pre-cooked, vacuum-packed, oily, chilly-flaked, MSG slathered sausages all day whole day. I can’t even look at them right now. I think that’s what happens to me: I overeat.

These days, I just nod and say: ya, I don’t eat much. People don’t usually believe I once was a walking human garbage disposal anyway. I think also that maybe once you get introduced to really good food, Not Entirely Really Good Food just does not cut it. Which is not to say that I refuse food when it is bad. I think it bad manners to not eat something that was served to me. If I finish a dish or not, whether it is food I like or not, I try to consume at least a few bites, just to show respect to the hands that prepared it. That’s just being a half-decent human, IMO; not much, at all.

I’ve been cooking for the whole day today for a nurse’s meeting is why I’m writing this long ass piece. Such depth.

LAYGA

Some people peaked in high school and would never quite fully recover.

 

However, in today’s materialistic culture, unless they occupy some sort of a substantial post, they are more a nuisance than real hazard. It is the people who topped their high school classes, graduated and got the good jobs and now can’t understand a world in which they are not the only smart people that you have to watch out for. Now these are hazards.

Most of us grew up in college and came to the realization that we don’t know jackshit. In fact, the more we kept learning, the more we realized there was even more we didn’t know. It was the shit that kept shatting. We of course do our best to what I call LAYGA – Learn As You Go Along. But that is not a 100% foolproof plan. Some of us have learned better to quietly LAYGA when we are faced with challenges and new adventure. Every adult is just adulting the best way we know how because none of us really know what anyone of us are really doing.

But there are just some people who will always think of themselves as above the hoi polloi. And many people would thoughtlessly agree (because we don’t have time to reflect on things and we mostly just accept Image at face value; that, or to avoid confrontation) even as they sneer at them behind their backs and thank their good fortune they don’t have to be in constant touch with them. Meanwhile, these delulu populace will think about how they did well in school, and earned respectable degrees, and got good jobs that pay well and earned them social status, you know the drill. They will pat themselves on the back for having done everything right.

After a point, all the praise and adulation go in their heads. Somehow they can’t seem to get down from Cloud No. 9. They start thinking of themselves as mini-rajahs and minor-maharanis. Distinguished from the great unwashed. The Elite, as it were.

I think this line of thought is extremely worrisome in a small social and economic backwater of a hill region as Mizoram. I think it also could be a symptom of Insecurity. If I have this Image, people will think it is real. I must work on The Image. It becomes all consuming. And then no one benefits. Because literally no one can know everything and no one person or group can be the best at everything. We have to realise some people know things we don't, so we have to team up and learn from each other. But that is a pipedream. Because with zero self awareness, there is zero growth.

Damn that’s some cynical thoughts so early on a Friday morning! Maybe all of this is just me.

Happy weekend, everyone!

Kardashian Vibe Club

We weren’t always called this. We once called ourselves something a lot more serious, a name that carried a lot more gravitas. But now, we have settled on Kardashian Vibe Club.

The Kardashians are famous people. They belong to two sects – the Kardashians and the Jenners, although all subscribe to the umbrella term: Kardashians. They look similar which could be a result of both genetics and plastics. Attractive to an obscene degree, they command a staggering power over social media. If you don’t know the Kardashians, you don’t know pop culture of the 2000s as well as you might think you do.

Now, vibes. Vibes is just a feeling, something you channel.

What do the Kardashians channel? Confidence. Mega-confidence. That is incredibly admirable. I’ve seen grown ass men and senior officers tremble in the presence of dignitaries of this small state, shaking like I imagine Queen Gertrude did when Prince Hamlet accosted her. I cannot imagine any of the Kardashians ever quivering out of shame or fear. In deference to anyone. I have to respect that.

We are four people in this club. Let’s go alphabetical order even though I am not giving out names. The Masons don’t know anything about secret clubs compared to The KVC. One, tiny little Sucker-Punch you never see coming; will recoil at dirty jokes and then immediately proceed to add two more lines to make it dirtier. Two, my fellow Anxiety-Pickle; will joke about mass genocide and then muse on the Karma being released into the Universe. Three, the Paradox; looks one way, acts another way, forever blunt, forever loyal. Four, me.

Why did we choose The KVC over the genteel name we’d settled on before? I believe it had something to do with one day discussing how the best thing we ever learnt from young adult life was to faff. If college life never taught you to lie, or to evade the truth just enough, or to project a false image, or to improv the ever living f*ck out of life, you did not have a good education. We at The KVC believe we had a good education.

We have used education every single day of our lives since.

The KVC ultimately is about goals. The amazing and perfect name we had before was about who we were. But we as humans should always grow and develop. We need aspirations. Mega-Confidence is the aspiration. Or failing that, a projection of it.

You might think this was a Membership Drive. But no. This is just me informing you of this super exclusive club. Form your own, by all means. But of course, The Kardashian Vibe Club is taken.