Pedal Stools

You only know what you know. Beyond that, you cannot know. And sometimes, knowing can be dangerous, so even if you know a little, maybe you don’t want to know very much.

Ignorance is bliss, they say. How well I understand this! Even more so as a technically functioning adult working a 9-to-5. Used to be there was a time I wanted to know everything but everything is the very thing I cannot know. Maybe the very thing I should not know. In any case, I no longer wish this.

Today, older, wiser, I wish for calm. But then again, not much wiser and duplicitously youngish, I can’t always control my recklessness. Or my curiosity. More often than not, that is the root cause to my life’s problems. One day if I ever learn to control my seemingly insatiable thirst for stories, I might truly start to live under the radar and be at peace. Sounds boring, though.

Drama I am not a part of is something I can’t seem to chill with. I revel in it. Incurable gossip, you might call me. Which is not nice and I am very selective about the people I share gossip with, but the ones I do gossip with… whoo! Zero limits.

One thing I have actually learned finally is to consider people’s feelings and their lives. I have learned to appreciate that people were not brought up the same as me. I have come to understand that even twins could have a vastly differing POV and act in diametrically opposite ways. How much more so your everyday Joes and Jills, your Rahuls and Anjalis, I don’t know a Mizo equivalent – maybe Lianas and Mawiis (those are my parents’ names, by the way!).

It is so easy to judge. And judge away, all you like. But when you do recount your judgments, exercise caution. You don’t know who you hurt. You don’t know how karma can (and will!) bitch-slap you for what you did. You just don’t know who is good and who is bad. Or in fact, are we good or bad really? Even Jesus didn’t answer that question.

Someone wonderful to you can be absolutely loathsome to someone else. So don’t hype people up and put them on pedal stools. Pedal… stools… pedastools? Pedestals? It’s probably pedestals, yes.

People don’t belong on pedestals. They belong in lives. In all its rich complexity.

I Might Be A Little Drunk

A peg of single malt whiskey in the evening is what Khushwant Singh is said to have indulged in for the greater part of his life, up till he died, aged 99. He has always been my favourite Indian author. Mr Singh invited you liberally into his own life and I imagine he gets a kick out of being known as a dirty old man who is addicted to Scotch. Got, I suppose. It’s hard to think him gone, even now. I wish I’d met him in real life.

Ernest Hemingway is another person known for both his drinking and writing prowess. I’ve only read The Old Man And The Sea because we studied it in school. He’s not my favourite author but if he wrote that book drunk, he has my respect. It seems to be a very layered book with multiple meanings and many things to be read between the lines. Although, to be fair, it could just be English Literature teachers who think everything is a metaphor for something else. Mostly nihilism and great human sorrow.

Being drunk, in and of itself, is not the end of the world. Far from it, in fact. Most of the best stories from Uni invariably started out with, “This one time I was so drunk…” Not just Uni, actually. Even life post-Uni. Of course, to be fair, some of the worst stories also come with the “…was so drunk” theme but these are usually in the 3rd person retellings. Most people don’t want to remember the truly awful things they did when drunk, much less recount them personally.

Drunk is a state of mind. Very often, I’ve noticed, people don’t need alcohol to be drunk. Some people are just very off. Billie Piper, of Because We Want To fame, mused in her autobiography that the two most empowering things you can give anyone are a clipboard and a badge. I understand this so well. I remember an ugly biat*h back in high school boarding myself who was study hall monitor and she had faaaaaaarrrrr too much power in her hands. Or even in adult life, smarmy men and women with well-oiled tongues practised in the art of sycophancy and a**-kissing, all the people who live in between the lines that regular law-abiding people live by. Drunk. With illegitimate power.

They say the pen is mightier than the sword. But I don’t know. Shakespeare lives on well after his death, yes, but so does Ghenghis Khan. Or Cain, you know, from Genesis, although I think he might have used a stone and not a sword. But I guess neither Cain nor Ghenghis Khan are as beloved in memory as say, Jane Austen. And then again, you have Adolf Hitler who committed genocide but also wrote a book.

The world is a funny little place where it’s hard to make blanket statements! Even so, I’d say words are magic. This is why I like writing. This is why I blog. In the vain and narcissistic hope that some fragment of my soul gets through someone else’s soul (the eyes are the windows of the soul, they say; have you heard?) and takes root there. Or as plebeians might say, connect.

And in all honestly, I fear I might be a little drunk on the power of words right now.

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.

Not As Much As Lord Voldemort

I made my dad stand in line for the sixth Harry Potter book. It was from a bookstore in Sarojini Nagar market in Delhi, before it was all swanky and shit. It was my first completely new Harry Potter book; all my first five copies had been bought second-hand. I don’t remember but I wouldn’t be surprised if dad had bought me the book as a reward for having gotten good grades; that had always been our way.

My parents have never understood my fascination for fiction. My dad lives in a world of responsibility, always taking it just a little bit too seriously. My mum has not a superstitious bone in her body, despite being deeply spiritual, which is a paradox (which she doesn’t find to be so). Neither of them takes time out of their hands to indulge in fiction and imagination and the fanciful world of paranormal fiction. Except for a couple of ghost stories, of course – my dad with his ‘I once gave a ride to an Old Lady Ghost’ and my mum’s ‘I once saw a chhawihfa when I was working in Durtlang hospital but it was probably methane’ stories.

Be that as it may, they’ve always said: If she is reading, it is better than not reading. There has never been a ban on any material. My mum did show signs of concern back when people said Harry Potter promoted witchcraft or some such bull. But even then, she never banned it. I read whatever fiction I could find. My first full-blown novel was The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas which might explain my fascination for gruff men who are far too brilliant for their own good. I might have been ten; I’d say that was a bit young for The Count but like I said, there were no rules. As long as I was reading, it was A-OK.

I read Enid Blyton after Sidney Sheldon, Doctor Faustus and Mills & Boon novels! That was not right. But it still worked. I liked the stories. Whatever I didn’t understand, I simply glossed over.

I never thought I’d be done with comics because I devoured any I could lay my hands on: Archies, Asterix, Biker Mice From Mars, Cartoon Network comics, Chacha Chaodhury, DC, Marvel, Phantom, Photoromances, Richie Rich, Tinkle, Tintin... any and everything. But lately, I can’t seem to bring myself to be engaged in them. Maybe I am getting old. This is new.

In 2011, my mum mused aloud that I read so many books yet never seemed to finish reading the Bible. That got me thinking. I said I’d give it a go. She bought me a small, pocket-friendly, leather-bound NIV Bible and I read it everywhere. It starts out nice with magical stories, gets a bit slow going after a point, but then with the songs and poems in the middle, it finds its ground again, ending with a bang. I’ve been re-reading it annually ever since. I am partial to some parts; not a big fan of some parts.

There are a few other books I continually re-read; January is for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. I have re-read a lot of my old books; I consider it catching up with old, dear friends.

And every September, without fail, I return to Hogwarts, as we Potterheads say; via re-reading the books, basically. I remember my first time reading Philosopher’s Stone. It was in the girls’ hostel of SDA Inter-College Roorkee. My friend Meenu got sent the first two books by her grandfather (I think?) and she lent them to me. I was hooked from the line, “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” Yes, thank you very much.

I snuck out of the Lady Shri Ram Residence Hall for the seventh book with a few friends from college who I remain friends with to this day. There was that whole Midnight Release which because it was simultaneous across the globe, meant about 6:30AM for us in India. Actually, Harry Potter helped me make my first friends in college. We were a group of Freshers standing outside the LSR Auditorium and someone mentioned Harry Potter and a bunch of us just gravitated toward each other. These were the peeps I broke hostel rules with and standing in line with at that bookshop in GK-II that morning. Thanks, Potter.

Addiction is not always a good thing. But as Daniel Radcliffe said, it could be drugs. So I’m still doing OK, I guess. There’s just something so comforting about books, especially fiction.

I’m not the biggest fan of non-fiction but I’m trying out memoirs, biographies, travel and science books. They can be fun. I’d like to one day brag about some heavy literature I can quote offhand as a party trick. For now, I don’t really gravitate to literature that teaches you things. I’ve always preferred something ‘to enjoy’ rather than ‘to accumulate’, as in knowledge. Any wisdom I gain from my reading is ever only incidental.

Fiction works for me because in fiction, things make sense. Which is not always the case in real life. It is an escape, yes. But it can also be a way to learn many of life’s lessons without having to personally make many mistakes. Of course, some mistakes in life you make on your own because they are delicious. Wink wink.

I’ve always been interested in fiction. Some might even call it an obsession. I do not deny it. I’ve made my peace with it and I think it is okay. It is not as much as Lord Voldemort with Harry Potter anyway.

Memories of a 90s Childhood

In the mid 90s, I was a young kid growing up in a remote police battalion area. School was 30-minutes-on-an-old-blue-jeep-ride-with-no-traffic-anywhere away. Church was a Sunday only activity. TV was only enjoyable for two hours in the evening when Star Plus rolled out kid-friendly shows, your Disney cartoons or sitcoms like Small Wonder, The Wonder Years, and Doogie Howser M.D. I forget what channel played Timeless Tales on Sundays. It was a world in a bubble, in a time before the internet. There was nothing to do on holidays.

Okay I lie. There were a lot of things to do. We climbed hills and giant water towers. We played house atop a giant replica of a table and chair set. We played The Future on a giant broken weighing machine. We swung around on giant swings. (Okay why did we have so many sets of giant things? Hmm.) We biked around the battalion compound with nothing on us but BB guns, pocket knives, water bottles and, if we were lucky, candies. Sometimes people fed us DIY treats in the form of roselle flowers and sugar in little bamboo containers; that was good then and they remain good memories now. Sometimes we had money for Ruffles chips; these would be Ruffles Lays and then simply Lays later. We ran around playing hide and seek with grasshoppers and the family dog. We messed up our stomachs eating stolen fruits aka unripe figs and passion fruits that grown-ups specifically told us to wait for till they properly ripened . On good days, we cooked random food on empty cans of tinned fish and enjoyed half-cooked vegetables out in the sun.

When there was electricity, we listened to and bloody memorized few audio tapes – Preeti Sagar’s Nursery Rhymes, and choice Mizo audio dramas: Hamlet, Genevieve (which was pronounced Jen-eh-veev by the team; who cared about French names?!), Teantisnery and about four comedy skits by the Mizo comic Thangkura drama party. If by good fortune we had broken video or audio cassette tapes in the house, we unwound and threaded the ribbons all over trees just to get that ghostly melody as the strung magnetic tapes hummed in the wind.

It was on New Year’s Day that the little town bustled and came alive. The air still bristled with Christmas cheer and the festivities really began in full swing, Christmas being largely a Christian affair that non-Christians didn’t fully engage in. (Plus there’s a lot of church during Christmas; not a lot of fun time.) Large, colourful shamianas get set up on the parade ground. A host of carnival activities begin taking shape – cotton candy parlours, tombola tables for grown-ups, a range of games and activities for kids, cheap toys to be won and given away.

The evening prior, we would have all met and waved Old Man Of The Old Year away, hoping he takes with him all our old year issues so we can make a fresh start tomorrow, hence the good feeling on New Year’s Day. [Side note: I say Old Man Of The Old Year in the hopes of making it sound cute but really we just called him Kumhlui i.e. Old Year, and he was a man dressed in dirty rags and we all heaved abuses at him and cheered for him to go away already. No one wanted to play him in later years, saying it was a cursed role. I wonder why.] Father Christmas, however, had apparently hung around for this fete and he came with a sack of little toys wrapped up in shining paper which he distributed to people; sometimes, he threw candy up in the air and we all scrambled for them. In the evening, we feasted communally in traditional Mizo style on large banana leaves.

My family moved around a lot, following dad as he got transferred. But childhood for me will always be cocooned in that little faraway, forgotten era in a tiny campus with airs of either a large village or a small town. Luangmual, Lunglei is no longer like this. I am told it is modern and technological and stuff now. A lot of the places I knew then have been altered. I don’t want to go back. But three years. Three years we were in that place. Considering I never really grew up even with all the years I have accumulated since, it is amazing how three years stretched out and defined a whole childhood for me!

All of this, by the way, being my very roundabout way of saying I am feeling rather nostalgic today.

The Infinite Terror that is Folktales

I often find myself thinking the concept terrifying that a Creature-You-Think-Is-Your-Aunt is sucking up your sister’s brains at night and you’re asking her what the noise of slurping was and your sister is crying with pain but the Creature says it was just a mouse scuttling across the floor. Yes, that’s the exact same sound as knocking back someone’s brain.

Folktales are often unapologetically horrifying.

Sociology says that folktales are mediums of orally enforcing societal laws. Customs. Traditions. If you don’t want to be either one of the sisters in that dreadful tale, you should listen to your mother tell you which path to go. Also possibly look for family resemblances.

But I don’t know. The sisters in the above tale did follow their mother’s instructions. But the Creature just decided to waylay them anyway. Well, what else is a cannibal to do, right? I say ‘cannibal’ and it is disturbing that a cannibal should unassumingly enter the world of children’s stories but the real messed up part is that the creature does not even seem to be human. So… maybe not “technically” a cannibal if she’s not the same manner of being as the sisters. But the bigger question arises here: how do you figure that two human girls un-problematically accept a strange Creature as their aunt when clearly they are human and she – this brain-sucking creature – is not? Are non-human relatives that common?

But that is the craziness that is the world of folktales. You very un-problematically accept things that go far beyond the rules of nature: the uncomplicated manner in which a human child would think a Forest Creature and she are family relations, the easy way you welcome travel between the moon and earth via a ladder or a tall tree/bamboo, the simple manner you assume proper conversations happen between entirely different species, the forthright manner you accept that a man could be friends with a tiger…

And bear in mind: in tribal folktales, these are not anthropomorphized beings. No. They’re out and out undiluted versions of their own realities in our world. The moon is still the moon; still as far, still as distant. A shrimp is still a shrimp as a tiger is still a tiger as a goblin is still a goblin as a human is still a human. And these different species apparently coexist in this strange world that is so fluid that a human could be slave to a cat, goblins (or nymphs?) and humans regularly intermarry, the thumb of a deceased could become a bird and speak in words understandable to a human, skeletons in a grave could move at the sound of melodies…

In addition, apart from not being anthropomorphized, these beings do not even seem to conform to human moralities or sensibilities. The goblins would still operate as they do in their – I imagine – spectral world. Your little witness-to-murder thumb bird is still a thumb as it is a bird. (How does that even work?)

Not to mention that you may converse all you like with your tiger best friend but he is still a tiger and it does not matter how close you are, your tiger friend would still kill and eat your family. Or you, actually, if it comes to a fight. To be fair, you would also still eat the shrimp or the bird that you talk to. Because of course you do.

So I have to wonder what the purpose to these stories is. Metaphors are very well and fine. I enjoy good metaphors and immensely appreciate clever puns. Even Jesus taught in parables. But folktales fascinate me in ways other stories often do not. The parameters that weave fiction around reality in the construction of folktales are riveting because of how extremely fluid they are in parts and suddenly how conforming too!

I consider myself a structural-functionalist. I always think things and ideas have their places in society – good or bad – otherwise they’d be obsolete and replaced.

Folktales… big time head-scratchers!! Perhaps art? Art is as you do. Art is as special as you think. Art is an abstraction of society through an artist’s lens. As a form of art, what are folktales? A representation of society, only exaggerated for drama by the storyteller? Very possible. Or maybe more? Maybe I should rethink this again. It sounds promising.

Mizoram

The third best thing about Mizoram is how intensely beautiful the scenery is. It is not ideal for a great number of things – the road, for example. Travelling is a pain because sometimes you see your destination straight ahead but it will take you an hour to reach it because you have to go round the fat portions of a hill, or two – or three! – to get there. Anyone who has ever travelled to Siaha from Lawngtlai will testify – three hours to travel 10kms as the crow flies; not a funny joke.

Building on this, it is not ideal for development. Anywhere that roads aren’t ideal cannot presume to have it easy with development projects. It is not ideal for fun escapades either, especially when monsoon lasts and lasts until the earth is pregnant with rainwater and always threatening to leak water and heavy chunks of clay all over the roads for close to a majority of the year. It is definitely not ideal for agriculture and for nearly half the year, the hills look like they’ve been through hellfire; probably not that far off, to be honest. Huge scars left behind bald hills and black soot raining down every March? Magnificent blemish on the beauty of the hills.

But on the whole, beautiful scenery. It soothes the soul to see green hills rolling over each other. Even cliffs are gorgeous, except you do not overmuch want to be close to them or god forbid, hanging off of them. It is lovely to see the hills change colour as they grow more distant from you – different shades of green that taper off to blue until they merge with the blue of the horizon or stopped by fluffy white clouds in impossibly blue skies. Any walk in the woods is blessed by the sounds of the forest and the melodies of the birds, the insects, the animals, the water and the wind. Just be careful not to walk into a snake or leeches and you’re golden.

Full moon nights are magical. I’ve watched the moon burn bright orange one October night in 2010 driving back from Lunglei to Aizawl. You should not experiment with this probably, but we could travel by moonlight, which is to say even with our headlights switched off, we could see the earth illuminated in the golden glow of the October full moon. I’ve sat outside in cold December nights in Champhai counting stars and admiring the only three heavenly objects I can identify – Orion’s Belt, Sirius and Betelgeuse.

Sunsets are majestic; I’ve stopped my engines on my evening drives multiple times just to watch the explosion of colour on the sky behind black hills. It is a spiritual experience, like you are observing the face of the Creator in front of you.

Of course, in the age of the curated happiness of social media – your Instagrams, Facebooks and WhatsApps – people would often care more about Digital Likes than basking in the glory of the Now. Phones are whipped out at every glorious moment, in the hopes of capturing happiness which inspirational quotes have already taught us was like trying to capture a butterfly in flight; rest and let the butterfly come to you, right? But I’ve noticed sceneries are notoriously hard to capture in all their magnificence. Ultimately, you are subjected to tons of pictures on your Wall of unfocused and confused angles of the sky, flowers, hills, what-have-you. Nature photography is a precise, artsy skill; not possessed by many.

In fact, I’d even suggest this is akin to amazing singers singing songs and making it look so easy that everybody starts thinking they could also do it and then suddenly, cacophony all around! I knew this for a fact when back in November 2022, Michael Learns To Rock came to play in Aizawl and thankfully, my DC and SDO(S) smiled indulgently and said I could go see them and gave me a bunch of official Aizawl errands to run while I was home. I was in the crowd that night, “belting” out their songs along with them, which is to say I was screaming the lyrics out instead of matching the tune because obviously, I am not the best singer in Aizawl. Not even in my family, if I’m honest. But Jascha Richter on stage could make the notes seem so effortless. Incredible. In any case, it was alright because although my throat was hoarse from the singing and the sore throat that I was deliberately ignoring, and although I skinned my knees because I fell down and had a shiny bruise as a souvenir for the night, I sang with MLTR and Jascha Richter liked my IG post the following day. Any chance to tell this story. Carefully curated happiness indeed!

Nature aside, what is wonderful about Mizoram is the sense of society and belongingness, however real or pretend it may be. It is enough that the society is big in Mizoram. There is a lot to be said about it but as one of my JNU seniors put it, there is no other society I’d rather die in than the Mizo one. I suppose that makes Community the second best thing about Mizoram.

I cannot say for any other group outside of my own, but for the people inside this group, Mizoram and the Mizo community is amazing. Socialism is alive in Mizoram even when as a political theory it is rejected by many in favour of the more shiny ones like Capitalism. Not all facets of Socialism, obviously, but the idea of equality and egalitarianism, very definitely, even when it is denied its name. It is true that unfettered equality/egalitarianism is impossible to maintain, or truly, not to be actively desired, but an element of it is certainly to be applauded.

It is often said that the real measure of bonds are found in trying times – it is not the people who make it to your celebratory days; it is the people who are there when your world is crumbling down. Mizoram and Mizo society have their flaws and their extreme shortcomings, but in our deepest moments of grief, there is nothing like people putting aside their own chores and coming to grief with you, the community making arrangements for you that are difficult for you when you’re shrouded in loss and feeling disoriented; and friends, family and neighbours acting as solid anchors when you’re floundering in the sea of sorrow. All this, despite who you are as a person. Because the society was always bigger than the sum of its parts.

Society being what it is and we being who we are, a valid question that often arise is how much is too much? How much of society do we want or need in our lives? How far should society dictate our lives? Death is very final and hence cannot be the only measure of a society. It is indeed true that hard times test you and your relationships, but it is also equally true that many people will find it easier to commiserate with you than to celebrate with you wholeheartedly. Every time there is an accident, a mob arises that is often uncontrollable, in a matter of seemingly seconds, like something out of a Stephen King story. People with a morbid fascination for the gruesome, indulging in tragedy porn. That aside, even when no gore is involved, how often have we felt like people have been waiting for us to make even a single mistake? Not that alien a feeling, is it? So in the grand scheme of things, how much society is too much society?

In the winter of 2022, a man unfortunately drowned in Keilungliah dam in Champhai at around 1:30 in the afternoon. By 3PM, the place was filled with spectators. It wouldn’t be farfetched to assume that 99% of those gathered could not swim. Yet there they were, even as the evening wore on into the night, curiously hanging around the 40-50 feet deep body of water, excitedly chattering away, from gossip and the cold. Shit, if anyone of them fell in, there’d be multiple casualties and possibly even more loss of life. When I asked the spectators to go home for the night and not cause more troubles for police, rescue ops, divers and the society leaders, one man snapped at me intoning that that was inadvisable because those gathered there were volunteers and if we refused them their place here, we would kill the spirit of altruism in the soul of the Mizo – the sacred tlawmngaihna – and we’d not find any more volunteers later on in other incidents. I cannot say I was right and he was wrong, but as a magistrate and a sociologist, but more importantly, the hoper of far flung hopes and dreamer of impossibly optimistic dreams, I replied that Mizo tlawmngaihna was not so fragile that it would die if a government-cum-non-government-organisation’s Search & Rescue op that required specialization (in this case, swimming and in particular, diving) would request they gave them space. Indeed, this graceful stepping back is a lesson in tlawmngaihna we need to learn in the society; sometimes, our good hearts and our curious heads really do hamper certain jobs – controlling fire outbreaks, for example, is sometimes made difficult by spectators jamming up traffic or using up water; it’s weird.

People often make the mistake of looking at society through myopic lenses. You cannot pick and choose one ideal standard to measure anything in its entirety, leave alone an entity as great as a society. You have to try to look at the Big Picture or succumb to inevitable toxic environments myopic, narrow thinking leads to. Mizoram is wonderful in many ways, it is sorely lacking in others; so are the Mizo. So is everybody else, too. Besides, Mizoram is very young. Someone born in the 80s went through a very dramatic time when a phone was a solid green box in the living room to Now where your watch can look for your phone! And why would it do that? Because the world is in your phone, just a click away. Doctors today can implant plastic in your eyes to help cure your myopia; we can allow for some leeway in the way we look at Mizoram and the Mizo and try to be less myopic. If Mizoram has a lot to learn, let her learn. In about a century, she has undergone such changes as to witness head-hunting rituals to technology at her fingertips!

Which brings me to the best thing about Mizoram which obviously is that it attained statehood in 1987 which is the same year I was born which makes Mizoram as old as I am which is cool.