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.

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.

Acclimatizing

When we first started driving, my sister Feli and I would take turns sitting on the passenger seat, capturing the Big Driving Moments of the other on camera, both stills and videos.

It has been a long time since we’ve done that.

In one of the stories I’ve read about a witch, she was asked whether she needed to remember a lot of spells. She thought about it and replied that it was like making a pot of tea. When you started, you had to think of all the steps and maybe even talk yourself through the steps: take a kettle, put water in, place kettle on the fire… that sort of thing. But once you master the art, you just do it as part of muscle memory or something. It just comes to you naturally.

I really like this analogy.

I can blind type on keyboards I am familiar with. This has come about after years of assisting my father as he brought work home with him and insisted I helped him on the typewriter, and thankfully, later, the computer. People think it is a nifty skill. I rather like it, too. My thumbs are pretty fast on the QWERTY keypads as well, when they came about. But then again, my thumbs were also pretty fast on the pre-QWERTY keypads, when you had to press 2 three times to get a c, for example; remember?

Things become commonplace. We get used to things eventually. The dust settles. Time closes wounds; actually sometimes events cauterize wounds; hurts like a MF but effective. Even heartbreaks end. Neither happiness nor tears last forever. That way lies madness.

And you know what? It is a good thing.