philonisma

winding up for year ahead

2012-01-07T13:42:00.000-08:00

The trees and lights in our place have been shelved to be remounted only after the mandatory eleven-month quarantine in some dark corner of the garage. Resolutions have been made and broken even before one is done with the first week of some delusional ascetic impulse. Why not! That cheesecake came with my name on it.

Christmas was surreal. Much like the observances I grew up with, we had a very Mizo-style krismas with arsa sawhchiar to round-off our urlawk zan. Friends from a distant past were in town to join our festivities; very warm reminders that as Californian as we wannabe, we’re still Mizo deep down, albeit of a BMA or DMWA extract (if these acronyms make any sense)!. The only dampener was a nagging flu I caught on the 23rd evening. I am still nursing traces of the cough that refuses to ease up. While I’m sure the krismas and new year’s celebrations were memorable, my congestion muddled much of my recollections such much so that the last two weeks register as a vague white-out.

We were able to catch up with the latest cinema over the holidays. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows picked up where the 2009 edition left off. The screenplay took liberties to embellish Conan Doyle’s ambivalent end in “The Final Problem” and weave a very engaging adventure for a slick and ninja-footed Holmes. If the ambiguity of the fall off Reichenbach Falls intrigues you, try Jamyang Norbu’s The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes. The second movie on our list was The Adventures of Tintin. Having grown up on the illustrated comics, I think the cgi-d format did justice to what we had come to identify as the person and world of Tintin; can't wait for Red Rackham's Treasure. On its fourth outing, MI: Ghost Protocol might have been over-hyped especially as BMW, cashing in on their product placement, milked the run up to the premiere with a barrage of MI clips adorning a BMW narrative. The movie itself was engaging in fits and starts. Paula Patton was hhhhot! Some of the less glitzy fare included Stalingrad (1993)-deeply engaging and reflective, and The Debt (2010)-highly provocative and suggests the slippages of modern myth-making.

The Christmas tableau in my previous post was in the news. This time because two of the slides—the ones depicting gay couples—were found face down. It could have been a strong wind or some discontent wielding his or her muscles to make a statement. Whatever the reason, perceptions of vandalism caught on fast. But in a moment of political art, the seemingly vandalized tableau was tagged with “choose love”. The cumulative effect was a dunk!

I didn’t realize how congested I was until one evening, my wife—also down with a flu—was craving pizzas. To finalize our order, the staff at our local pizzeria asked me for my name. The receipt was then pasted on a box into which our order would be placed. Fifteen minutes later, we picked our order and just to double-check, I read the receipt on the box. The order was for a “Kiba”!!

Much peace to you this new year.

this season of love

2011-12-12T18:50:00.000-08:00

The local Methodist Church has a tradition of putting up tableaus during the Christmas season. The twist they never fail to provide is that the visuals are always themed to vexing and contemporary issues. Methodist or otherwise, the effect is usually troubling, affirming, destabilizing, and heart-warming—all in one breath.

Keeping in line with the partisan divides in California around the issue of homosexual rights, the tableau this time has three slides each showing variations of cohabitation: (l-r) a man and woman, two men, and two women.

The California Marriage Protection Act, or what is now in common parlance Proposition/Prop 8, bars homosexual couples from rights enjoyed by heterosexual couples. For instance, because marriage is legally defined as a heterosexual union, heterosexual couples can claim each other as dependents when filing their income taxes. Prop 8 bars homosexual couples from doing so. Prop 8 has done the rounds at the annual ballots. Repealing the Act still lingers in a hazy future.

The tableau is apparently an affirmation of solidarity with homosexuals and the efforts to repeal the Act. I am yet to articulate my own investments on the issue. May be it’s because I still haven’t weaned from my own hetero-normative socialization. May be it’s because of personal issues whose scars have taken too long to heal. But I do veer towards affirming the co-equality of all human beings irrespective of gender, race, class, or sexual orientation. Which is why I found myself drawn to the tableau in quite a profound manner. Even as our thoughts merge during this season around the Jesus of Nazareth and his endearing message, I am reminded, as the caption in the tableau-front suggests, “to love those who are different” and toward whom my least reaction would be respect and acknowledgement.

On a more personal note,

for what it's worth

2011-11-27T12:47:00.001-08:00

This Thanksgiving was back to the traditional fare. After having tried out alternatives to the usual turkey-centric meals over the last two years, my wife and I were with neighbors last Thursday over servings of turkey, mashed potatoes, string beans, pumpkin pie, and so on. While the spread was salivating, the combinations were rather confusing to the tribal palate of mine. Bland turkey with dashes of sweet raspberry slices set-off by savory broccoli au gratin tripped me at quite a few levels. But then again, this is repeated every year and we were mere encroachers in what has been observed for decades as something worthwhile.

Over table, one attendee was busy swirling his glass of wine. I had already downed mine while he went on with the swirling. Curious, I asked him what all that was about. He went on to give me his spiel about texture, viscosity, color, and yadi yada! Slightly irked by what I thought was a tad snooty talk, I retorted that I just drank mine without any pretensions. Why is wine worth all the conjurations of finesse? It is still controlled-rotting grape juice. Hnahlan wine tastes quite like any generic Moscato but the difference seems to be the damage to one’s wallet either does.

Value has many moderators. Use value, aesthetics, rarity, durability, and other similar parameters determine what is worthwhile. But they are all ideas of what has value; things don’t have value in themselves but we impute their value according to various preferences. Hence value is a social idea.

Value can be rather twisted in the current market economy. In a recent essay, Zones of Seduction, Martin Lindstrom dices what makes people pick up or ignore products on a market aisle. Rather than slaughter his acute perception with a summary, let me just post his final analysis: “The next time you go grocery shopping, take a look at the signs, the type of floor, and even the carts. Everything has been designed with an eye towards getting you to grab those three cans of something that was not on your list. The more attention you pay to the details, the more aware you’ll become of how you’re being manipulated. One thing is for certain; whoever made those three cans will be watching you just as closely.”

Easy to manipulate, value is hard to pin down. Reams of paper have been expended to try and capture what about it fascinates and enslaves us. What I find worthwhile however is to learn why people hold something valuable because by doing so, I am invited into a deeper matrix of social orientations, insecurities, and aspirations. So while I will half-heartedly indulge someone’s spiel on the finer aspects of wine-tasting, I will also uphold the relishing discovery of hnahlan wine in a dry corner of Mizoram, “A va tui e!”

trolls, pacquiao, and a tragedy

2011-11-14T19:18:00.001-08:00

I came back to my blog after a long hiatus and found a whole lot of nonsensical comments attached to my posts. Given the sparse traffic i get on my posts, i thought I would just do away with all the security procedures. Insáne! I now have links to innovative engineering designs, and blonde and oral porn. Darn cyber-squatters!

On to boxing. Last week's third edition of the Pacquiao-Marquez saga was rather disappointing. We had gone to Hooter's hoping to get a seat but it turned out we were not the only ones looking for a spot to watch the fight. Turned away from the joint SRO, our friends decided to chip in and buy the pay-per-view option. So, we got to watch the fight night in the comfort of a private living room. The main event, the Pacquiao-Marquez punchup, was more tentative than I expected. Both boxers seemed to wait for the other to commit first paling the fight in contrast with the previous two meetings where both came out hammer and tongs from the get-go. My first thought at the closing bell was that Pacquiao's lost it. The eventual decision to give it to Pacquiao didn't go well with many, and topped a controversial series with even more doubt than resolution. Come to think of it, the pre-fight between Breidis Prescott and Mike Alvarado was more engaging and intensely contested (and bloodier) than the main event. Here's hoping for a Mayweather-Pacquiao match-up.

On a sombre note, I just learnt about the tragic life of Rebecca Zahau, a Chin-Mizo-American, partly because her family took the story to primetime tv...on the Dr. Phil Show. I had heard about it when it happened but never followed it through. It took a reportage on the Dr. Phil episode to get me concerned. For late entrants to the story as I, Rebecca was found hanging in the nude with her hands and legs tied. This was just following the tragic death of her live-in partner's son. The partner has been exonerated by investigations that ruled the death as a case of suicide. Rebecca's family, including her ex-husband, cry foul. There is a wiki entrywith more details and links related to the case. Condolences to Rebecca's family.
ps: If Rebecca's story extracts more than an "aww" from you, her family has put up a website for you to participate.

putting it out there

2011-11-09T09:17:00.000-08:00

I had responded to a forum posting on the sensitive issue of religion. Someone read my response and asked me to explain my position further. In responding, i found myself struggling to articulate my investments without being tentative and hopelessly avoiding the strings of alliterations I so easily get into. So here goes...

My apologies for leaving your query buried for so long. I use this email add to fill up the mandatory "email" online sign ups and it understandably gets choked with spam, alongside legit ones that come through--such as yours. My more active email is the gmail one with the same name, just in case.

My response to Anish was that religion is a problematic category/subject/phenomenon. I made this judgement not as a practitioner of a religious faith but as a student of religion. As a practitioner, I have set lenses through which to see what I term as religion--creed, theology, sacraments--all very integral elements to what I practice. But as a student of religion, i see it more a broader human phenomena and activity...we humans make religion happen! When we cloak that which we do with a sense of "heavenly" (or transcendent) certitude, i think i see religion happening. Im sure you've come across someone totally convinced that his/her action was because "The lord told me!" A fellow student in seminary suddenly dropped out in his third semester and did so by giving the dean the same reason. The dean replied rather tongue-in-cheek that if the lord had told him to do so, then that he was in no position to stop him. In a slanted manner, i found this incident also bringing some measure of levity to what we were brought up as a very serious matter.

Multiply that from an individual case to a macro scale and you have very well-minded people doing very good and praiseworthy deeds--and also some kooky stuff. As a student of religion, I look at these through lenses that are informed by history, politics, cultural dynamics and other critical tools. So when I took on Anish's instance of Jews and the land, I hinted at the political rhetoric concerning land/territory, origins, and how Zionism (a covenant with YHWH no doubt) has a troubled history with the inhabitants of the land. Indeed, the good Lord had told Abraham, we read in our sacred text; but there were the Hittites, Amorites, and so on already there. It wasn't an empty land. Which is why I find Zionism problematic. A key clincher for such claims is "scripture"--I have a broader view on this than it as merely text, but may be for another email.

I am a practitioner but also a student of religion; two dimensions that are at many points incompatible but have inevitably informed each other over the years. I do not junk religion but i don't find it personally compelling as it used to earlier. I find religion problematic in the sense that it is not self-evident, natural or fell-from-above but creative. When I hold what I have believed at this tension, I find it pushes me to think in new ways, to see the world differently and hope we don't annihilate ourselves with our religious fervour.

Having said that, I hope i was able to address some of your concerns in a more accessible manner. If not...let me try a second time to do so. Hope you have a wonderful time of Christmas and much peace in the new year.

provincializing europe

2010-06-23T17:01:00.001-07:00

With most of the group-stage matches of the current World Cup underway, a standout hard-to-miss is the resurgence of the Americas, Asia, and the Africas. While my circle of viewers that enliven each match inevitably puts me in a the seat of an "expert," I can claim none of its trappings as such. Nevertheless, we have all observed how the final round in this World Cup has really seen a levelling of the playing field. Previous pushovers have upped their game and now have to be counted as formidable rivals that could knock one out: Australia, South Africa, New Zealand,...even Korea DPR showed some flair against Brazil despite the eventual 7-0 thrashing at the hands of Portugal.

But more hard-to-miss were the traditional European powerhouses that fell really short of their mark. Last World Cup's finalists Italy and France lacked the creativity and skill to raise their game above their very pedestrian display of vapid football. France's in-house problems did not help their game either. England squeezed through to the knockout round but did it in fashionably English-football style with dollops of scrappy passes and unimaginative moves...YAWWWNNN! Slovenia, Serbia, and Greece have also fallen by the wayside.

Going by the trend, I am rooting for a winner from South America or Africa. Remniscent of Dipesh Chakrabarty's book with the same title as this post, europe no longer seems to define the standards of football in the sense that the global forum--such as is the World Cup--has to be thought of in terms of the peripheries rather than the center dominated by the West (the US team has improved but i don't think will move beyond the next stage). Hopefully India will be in one of the next editions of this global tamasha and significantly represented by its diversity [read: players from Mizoram--now that the 2006 XBox edition of the World Cup features Jerry Zirsanga].

Go Brazil!!

stet!!

2010-06-08T12:39:00.000-07:00

Just put in the final piece of the jigsaw. Bated breath––hope the pieces stick together but more importantly, hope the jigsaw sells! This collection of essays should soon be in print by the end of this year. Our publishers have already made the announcement, which seems to say that dye has been cast.

Here's the skinny on the book. Christianity came to India in the 1st, 4th or 18th century CE, depending on which tradition you take up. The bulk of its recipients were the no-bodies of "Indian" society hoping to reinvent themselves as the some-bodies. Not so! The no-bodies remained as such for the next two centuries and more. Over the last thirty years, the no-bodies came back with a literary vengeance. Flinging their pens with aplomb, they asserted their place in religious and social discourse in a move to dismantle the societal strait-jackets imposed on them. Since this initial surge, insiders and outsiders have looked back in critical retrospect; new vocabularies, emergent investments, and discursive trajectories are being explored to map out where this assertive stance might address itself in the twentyfirst century. Some of these arrogative explorations are catalogued in this collection of essays.

To toot my horn, my contribution to the collection was as a tribal. I also took the lead on the copy editing, proofreading, and compiling the index. But readers, especially my folks, might sense a slight tokenism in my inclusion as the sole other no-body. But then again, the focus of the book--and the conference from which this collection of essays is drawn--might not have much space to be more encompassing.

If you got the dosh and the curiosity...buy!

zomi nge zomia

2010-04-25T16:50:00.000-07:00

For those with the time to indulge and the inclination to ideate, this lecture might be one that interests you and, more importantly, worth your time. In this lecture (runtime: 1hr, 17mins), James C. Scott, a professor at Yale U, previews his book, The Art of Not Being Governed (2009). The focus of his lecture is the idea of "Zomia," which accounts for hill folk that inhabit the upper elevations from northeast India down east to the coast of Vietnam. Drawing on Willem van Schendel's work on the subject, Zomia is theorized as the last few bastions of resistance in the shatter-zones of modern nation states.

James Scott's proposal for theorizing "Zomia" is informative in that it valorizes our folks's difference and helps make sense of some of what we observe as mundane. More importantly, it suggests a lateral vantage point from where particulars may be viewed. Hence, what we might percieve as an issue as peculiar to say a Mizo situation, Zomia suggests broad cultural parallels for that issue. Two instances might be helpful to sell this point.

*Commenting on religion, Scott observes, "Where, as occasionally happens, they do come to embrace the 'world religion' of their valley neighbors, they are likely to do so with a degree of heterodoxy and millenarian fervor that valley elites find more threatening than assuring(Art of Not Being Governed, 21)." With a missionary Christianity that was "foreseen" (Darphawka) and the popular currency of "last-days" religious and ethical templates, the wide frames of reference that Zomia provides might be worth a second thought. Could Mizo Christianity and its idiosyncrasies suggest the tensions of coming to terms with modernity of a colonial extract? Vanlalchhuanawma's recent Christianity and Subaltern Culture (2007) suggested so.

**Regarding oral histories of writing, Zomia stories share a striking parallel: the hill folks at one time had writing but lost it through their own improvidence or treachery (Art of Not Being Governed, 221). Our oral tradition notes that we did have alphabets on a parchment. We couldn't care less for it. A dog eventually ate the parchment and, in doing so, deprived the Mizo of a script. This theme is not so unique and recurs through many oral tradtions of other hill folk (Akha, Karen, etc.). Seen, however, through Zomia lenses, these oral traditions underscore post-literacy (rather than illiteracy) in that, "the absence of writing and texts provides the freedom to maneuver in history, genealogy, and legibility that frustrates state routines (220)."

The only preliminary caution is that the notion is, at face value, too large a metanarrative that more work will definitely be needed to highlight the variations and peculiarities of the Zomia folk. This is not so much a scraping down of theoretical structures as it is to take what resources we have and to push them further with our own work.

Postscript: what are we to make of the recent deplorable racial boycott? This is neither to condone a "crime" with verbal gymnastics nor to exonerate the tawdry response to an incident that is equally deplorable. Rather, insights from the notion of zomia are informative as they push us to rewrite our own stories not in blissful exclusion but with templates that are problematically inclusive (for instance "of-half-breeds-and-aliens"). Inarticulate xenophobia takes little to peer through façades of religion or modern sophistication.

healthcare...and then some!

2010-03-23T11:46:00.000-07:00

The U.S finally pulled through a landmark bill that addresses its much pressing healthcare issues. I don’t understand the minute details of the bill but what I do glean from reports and news bytes is that the bill would place the government as a decisive guarantor and executor of basic health care. The bill itself has a long and polarizing history; previous attempts on reform were scuttled still-born by crafty maneuvers from healthcare industry lobbyist. But a determined President finally came through on his promise of change!

And change, one hopes, it will be.

One cannot help compare.

Out here, other than over-the-counter generic types, all meds are purchased only with a valid prescription signed off by registered doctor. To acquire the prescription, one needs to be evaluated by the doctor; the appointment itself could easily cost a cool $50. The only way to offset this cost would be to have health insurance for which one pays an annual premium. Even with this insurance, one would still pay something like $20 and the agency would cover the rest. Now this one is for the most basic check-up and prescription facility. Multiply the dynamics if one needed hospitalization or even surgery. For reference, a friend's son was hospitalized for a night and the charges rounded off to about $13000.00. Insurance kicked in to offset the cost.

Back home, an average family can, more or less, have access to these facilities. Quality may be abegging, waiting lines at the OPD may be long, but the basic healthcare needs are accessible. Doctors are integral components of the wider community (I still hope) rather than line-personnel in a healthcare industrial factory. Margins, I hope again, are determined by accessible and effective health services rather than corporate profits.

While not to suggest easy stereotypes in my comparison, I remember once when I fell short on my attendance in college. The only way I could enroll for the examinations that year was if I produced a medical report to validate the 30+ days I was absent. A very resourceful friend, in the same situation as I was in, took me to a rundown kiosk (!!!) near SRCC. On entering, we noticed the only thing without dust on it was the old doctor himself. Aged to a shriveled grey, he seemed to not have plied his trade for the better part of the last few decades.

“Ha beta, kya chahiye?” he asked.

“We need a medical report to make up for our attendance.”

“Achha, how much money do you have?”

We dug into our pockets and took out a few crumpled notes. “Sir, we have eighty rupees.”

“Achha, what sickness shall I give you?”

Both my friend and I did make it through the examinations that year!!

why only a fly on the wheel?

2010-02-25T22:46:00.000-08:00

T.H. Lewin recently got extended bytes on a web forum and what was intriguing about the discussion was the currency he commands more than a century after he left the Chittagong Hill Tracts in 1873. Rather than focus on the questions raised in that discussion, this posting briefly looks at what seems to be among the more accessible of his writings, A Fly on the Wheel, or How to Helped Govern India (1884). Written and published after Lewin's return to England, like Wild Races, this book was drawn from diary notes and personal letters from his time in the Chittagong Hill tracts.

FoW opens with Lewin as an eighteen year-old cadet in the service of the British East India Company’s expeditionary force sent to quell the Mutiny of 1857 and closes with his departure from those Chittagong Hill tracts about sixteen years later. Within this short period he moved from a Company officer to the Queen’s 104th regiment. Climbing the bureaucratic ladder rather effortlessly, he was appointed Superintendent of Hill tribes of the Chittagong Hill tracts in 1866, and this appointment was augmented within a few months to that of a Deputy Commissioner and Political Agent of the Hill Tracts of Chittagong and was moved from the 104th to the Bengal Staff Corps (191). The narrative details this progression and more importantly, how Lewin's maverick service to the British government went abegging. Most Mizo readers will identify with the terrain, landmarks, and events that embellish the narrative—more importantly how Lewin negotiated the release of Mary Winchester from the Howlong chiefs through his trusted friend Rutton Puia (var. Rothangpuia).

Why “Fly on the Wheel”? The book's title draws on the opening sections of Francis Bacon’s essay “Of vain-glory,” “It was prettily devised of Aesop; ‘the fly sat upon the axle tree of the chariot wheel, and said, What dust do I raise!’” A preliminary reading would suggest Lewin’s self-effacing insertion into a larger narrative of how Britain came to rule India and its “frontier” regions in particular. However, by the end of the book one gets the feeling that FoW is an attempt to air out some dirty laundry for having been denied the recognition that, in Lewin’s estimation, he deserved. “What is wanted here is not measures but a man. Place over them an officer gifted with the power of rule; not a mere cog in the great wheel of Government, but one tolerant of the failings of his fellow-creatures…Under a guidance like this, let the people by slow degrees civilize themselves. (Wild Races, 351)” Lewin seems to entitle himself as having fulfilled this standard without receiving the acknowledgement it deserved.

What is the value of “Fly on the Wheel”? On Feb 12, 1885, John Ruskin responded to the publication of the book by writing to Lewin, “I am beyond everything I can say interested in your book and in you, but I have a feeling that you have lowered the tone of it by making it…a hunting story book.” In a second response dated 10 March 1885, Ruskin writes, “Again, those cursed publishers are the pestilence of literature. They have made you destroy the dignity and simplicity of your book and robbed it of half its historical value.” Implicitly, one can read in these letters that the publishers had touched up the details for a wider audience. Does this compromise the integrity of FoW? What do we make of his first diplomatic venture to gain the trust of Rutton Puia, which he did by means “not quite regular” (FoW, 203, 204)? We have no way to prove which parts were spiced up and must leave that investigative project to any textual critic/analyst with the time and investment to decipher. Until such a time, we might as well let FoWstand on its own merit.

If one were interested in the issues broached above, Whitehead's Thangliena would be strongly recommended. Some interesting titbits I gleaned from it were:
- Lewin apparently had a child with Dari (var. Darthuami, Darthluangi). This child died soon after birth. In 1915, H. Lorrain even wrote to Lewin-now married and almost on his last breath- about Dari living in Lungsen village. Had Lewin become a White Mizo as the other inculturated "white Mughals"(Dalrymple) had?
- Lewin met up with Mary Winchester (Zoluti) much later in England. She was now Mary Innes Howie (nee Winchester)but Lewin didn't think much of her because she was "a stuck-up conceited little half-caste woman..." One wonders what Mary did to instigate her one-time liberator to such libelous estimates?

Some references:
T. H. Lewin, Wild Races of Southeastern India. London: Wm. H. Allen & Co., 1870.
John Whitehead, Far Frontiers: People and Events in North-Eastern India 1857—1947. Putney, London: BASCA, 1989.
John Whitehead, Thangliena: A Life of T.H. Lewin. Gartmore, Sterlingshire: Kiscadale Publications, 1992.

parrying the other

2010-02-18T12:55:00.000-08:00

Parry's account builds on previous works such as that of Shakespear (see previous post). Without doubt, these accounts preserve for us data that is informative and accessible where other such written sources were unavailable. Nonetheless, critical restrospection must delve beyond their face values to attempt—speculative, no doubt—at conjuring backgrounds that are broader, synchronistic, and analytical in order to account for the discursive regimes underlying their narrative constructions. Though sounding more esperanto than plainly communicative, such projects might inform and instruct the stories and narratives we make about both ourselves and our proximate "Others."

N. E. Parry, A Monograph on Lushai Customs and Ceremonies. Shillong: The Assam Government Press, 1928.

This 130-paged account of customs and cultural procedures dealing with folk in the Lushai district along with a glossary of colloquial terms replays the western knower-native as object binary. Parry is clear on why he undertakes this compilation: it will be of use to officers and chiefs engaged in the administration of justice in the district (Introduction). Precolonial social configurations were altered to accommodate allies in the Lushai wars. “Vacant” lands were allotted to such allies who then constituted a new set of landed chiefs in addition to the chiefs from precolonial times. Texted and readily accessible knowledge seemed necessary because of the reshuffling of land related practices and chieftaincy, their attendant privileges and also modes of restitution in cases of infractions on these privileges.

Although the title of the book suggests a compilation of the Lushais’s modes of social organization and structure, colonial agency is privileged and inscribed as the final arbitrator in the execution of administrative procedures. For instance, in describing the position and role of the chief, his authorization of a new hamlet requires ratification by the Superintendent (4), and also the prior requirement of the Superintendent’s permission when compelled to shift village sites owing to the exigencies of cultivation (5). Other customs and ceremonies documented include marriage customs, divorce, inheritance, sacrifices and feasts. In writing such varied and previously un-documented practices, the resultant written history is privileged with an ontological power to provide assumptions on how the real social and natural worlds are constituted; and hence may also be administered.

Reminiscent of what Bernard Cohn identified as the “historiographic modality”[Colonialism and It’s Forms of Knowledge, 5] in the colonial mode of knowledge production, the collection of data in Lushai Customs codifies and reinstitutes the ruling practices and customs of previously non-literate community. Effectively, the knowledge of the history and practices of the Lushai community provided the resources for building the colonial state.

refracting "Tarmita's" vision

2010-02-02T11:16:00.000-08:00

The second edition of “writings on writing” focuses on Col. Shakespear's (also called "Tarmita") wellknown work because it registers as an authoritative source text for kan pi pute len lai. Rev. Zairema credits the book as being the first, “chanchin kimchang…Kristian rin danin a pawlh viau hma thu a ni a, a ngaihnawm bik hle (Pi Pute Biak Hi. 2009, 2).” Amidst contemporary negotiations on what it means to be Mizo—blogsites, media, and academia providing some of the most heated debates—one often notices the invocation of kan pi pute hunlai both as an emotional anchor and/or rhetorical speaking point for what a Mizo “essence” might be. Despite increasing awareness of identity and cultural essence being highly negotiated and contested categories, Shakespear’s work continues to register as an important source material among others. So even as its reading is recommended, a reading against the grain would be more helpful to make sense of the constructions and contemporary implications of the linguistic baggage we inherited.

Lt. Colonel J. Shakespear, The Lushei Kuki Clans. London: MacMillan and Co., Limited, 1912.

Published after his transfer from the Lushai Hills, Col. Shakespear’s Lushei Kuki Clans provides one of the earliest writings about the inhabitants of the Chittagong Hill Tracts with sustained attention to parsing the cultural and linguistic intricacies of a formerly “unknown” people. The minute details and the intent of the book echo the emerging attempts in anthropological constructions of mythobars as was most famously outlined in J. G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890). While noting affinities and also variations between Lushei and Kuki clans-the subjects of his monograph, he notes wider similarities with other Hill Tribes, for instance, in Major Playfair’s account of the Garos and Sir Charles Lyall’s account of the Mikir (xiv, xv). Colonial expansion was gradually opening up strange and inaccessible frontier worlds, and new forms of knowledge were being collected and meticulously recorded by colonial agents such as Shakespear. Discursive connections were strung across distant and often disparate landscapes in this effort to rein in these frontier parts. Seen through this geo-political lens, Lushei Kuki Clans thus lends itself to the problematic inscription of a people-their ways of life and thought-as objects of knowledge and rhetorical validations for colonial intervention.

The book is divided into two main sections. Section one is devoted to the Lushei clans and is richly embellished with details ranging from general observations on domestic life and structure to detailed descriptions of their cultural components including their religion, folklore, and encoding the various clan members. Section two details what Shakespear calls the “non-Lushei clans,” peoples he encountered when he transferred further north to Manipur. He expends much ink in tracing the genealogical histories of the various clans via clan etymologies, folklore, and cultural practices. The last chapter and the appendix present an interesting triglot to account for the linguistic morphology and genealogical connections between the various Lushei and non-Lushei clans. Additional information provided include a glossary, maps, and photographs (unlike lithographs employed in earlier publications).

While many commentators note the silence of the observed, Shakespear acknowledges the voice of his subjects (e.g. 13, 62, 66, 58). However, despite Shakespear’s acknowledgment, these native voices emerge only on terms dictated by the speaking western subject. For instance, “An old lushai once asked me why I was troubling myself about family and branch names, on my explaining that hoped to make a complete list of them he muttered, ‘Can you count the grains in that basket of rice?’ and turned from me to the zu-pot. (42)” The native voice ridicules the elaborate surveys and censuses undertaken by the white administrators as if to talk back at the new forms of knowledge being collated and constructed about it's self. Note how the ridicule is rendered innocuous by immediately relegating the speaking voice to the zu-pot (rice beer), zu being a trope that reinforces the discursive construction of lethargic and enervated natives. The issue of the speaking voice underscores the problem of observing, writing, as they are situated in power-knowledge frames of a colonial dispensation.

writings on writing

2010-01-27T13:30:00.000-08:00

These next few posts are summaries of some of the earliest extant texts on the modern state of Mizoram. Rummage through contemporary (read: academic) works on the same geo-political area attempting to erect some historical perspective to their narratives and you’ll see these titles crop up constantly. There seems to be the instinctive accordance of privilege to written/texted narratives as stable histories—histories that seem to unlock how peoples are constituted and made to tick. Yet these very texts are culturally located within wider geo-political templates of particular time periods. Hopefully, these summaries will instantiate more critical responses on why we prize such texts. The selection is not entirely fastidious and there will definitely be others that should have been covered. Give me some time…or better still, link me to your own take on your own list.

The first on my list is one of the earliest works by one who we favorably remember as "Thangliena" (var. Thangliana)

T. H. Lewin, Wild Races of the South-Eastern India. London: Wm. H. Allen & Co., 1870.

Written in the style of the emerging ethnographical accounts that bridged the gap between the metropolitan center and the frontiers of the Empire, Wild Races sets out to introduce to its readers (Europeans/British) the “races of people of whom but little is known, and whose habits and customs have never been described. (1)” The accounts are drawn from daily entries “simply noted down” as Lewin heard “tales, traditions, or striking customs that fell under my observation in the course of my wanderings among them. (3)” As to why he compiled his notes in order to highlight these erstwhile “unknown” peoples, Lewin’s reasons may be summarized in what he later refers to as a true “Liberal,” whose cardinal dogma is the belief in the perfectibility of the human race (Fly on the Wheel 144; Wild Races 3, 4). In style, the three hundred and fifty pages of Wild Races follow what David Spurr theorized as “rhetorical modes” of colonial writing about other people as objects of knowledge.

Of the three sections of the book, part one surveys the land and the description is peppered with topographical details including climate, soil conditions, produce, rivers, cultivation, and so on. Section two starts as an exercise in sorting, classifying, and describing the ethnographical observations into neat and accessible categories. The hill tribes are categorized as “Khyoungtha” or dwellers on the river banks who are predominantly of Buddhist persuasion, and “Toungtha” or dwellers of the hills who are, “more purely savages than the Khyoungtha (72).” The section continues to describe the Khyougtha: their social habits, religion, dress, origins, and so on. In section three of the book, the Toungtha category is further subdivided as subject tribes under British administration (the Tipperah and Kumi tribes), tribes paying no revenue but subject to British influence (the Bungee and Pankho tribes), and entirely independent tribes (the Looshai and Shendu tribes). The description of the Toungtha that follows employs the categories employed in the description of the Khyoungtha, and are often employed to contrast the two. In contrast, the Toungtha are best captured in their independence and savagery, tropes that are employed and constantly reinforced in the descriptive exercise to provide a reasonable cause for the introduction of British mediated “civilization.” The closing quarter of the section accounts the unsuccessful expedition into Shendu territory and Lewin’s near death encounter.

In the concluding section of the book, Lewin assesses the stakes in further contact and cultural transactions with these "wild" races. “Civilization” seems to be a catch phrase he employs in this assessment. However, he is also informed by Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution, A History (1837) whose dictum—ubi homines sunt, modi sunt (347)—seems to inflect Lewin’s assessment. Imposed civilization as was practiced in other parts of the Empire would not improve but only exterminate these wild races (344). Favoring a more conscious but nevertheless paternalistic tack, Lewin suggests that further interactions be geared towards administration of the hill tracts for the, “well-being and happiness of the people dwelling therein,” adding that “Civilization is the result and not the cause of civilization. (351)” Part of Lewin’s vision is that the people will gradually civilize themselves. One leaves the pages with what the socio-political implications might be in naming a phenomenon as "civilization" and the power relations instigating the urge to civilize.

Funeral TBD!

2010-01-14T16:23:00.000-08:00

It’s been a rather somber week. A phone call from my brother roused me as I was about to segue into my second REM sleep phase for that night. Dreamily aware of the ominous odd-hour phone call, I hesitated as I grudgingly answered the call. A close family friend had just passed away after an unsuccessful surgery to treat a cancerous stomach already in its terminal phase. To add to the pall creeping in, a cousin’s grandson also did not make it through what I gathered was a freak but fatal accident while playing with some friends. A five-year old life nipped in the bud.

Another short burst of activity on the phone. This time a text message. It read, “Thanks for your prayers. Mom passed away. Funeral TBD.” My colleague had left a voicemail saying that he had to leave on an emergency to be with his mom. I managed to catch him while in transit on his way home. He gave me no details but the tone of his voice spoke more than an elaborate run-down of the situation. His text message came in the day after this brief conversation on the phone. I was busy dispatching the news to our circle when I thought I’d find some distraction on the television—maybe a sappy reality show or a dose of celeb-gossip pulp on TMZ. Flicking randomly through the channels, I found myself stuck on a news channel flashing computer generated maps interspersed with hazy handy-cam images; some of the first images emerging from earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Being far removed from the immediate scenes of loss, we might have been padded from the raw pathos of encountering the irretrievable presence of a loved one. We dust up memories to try and re-animate that blank spaces left behind. Remembrances only conjure up fleeting apparitions that merely dissipate like the trace of breath on a mirror. What audacity to ask of death, “where is thy sting?”

a time to cast away

2010-01-04T11:41:00.001-08:00

Two-in-ones, VHS players, pagers, OHP-s…these are a few of my favorite things that, unlike raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, no longer figure on my must-have list. With the turn of a new decade and its ever expanding list of new gadgets and gizmos out in the market, one gets to look back and see the left behind-s as we chug along this train of progress. The Huffington Post put up an interesting photo-essay on “12 Things that Became Obsolete this Decade” with a plug for readers to vote on the list of obsoletes. I thought I’d chime in on a few.

Calling: Text messages, sexting (graphic picture messages), twitter, facebook, and the list goes on. Communication by way of electronically generated words seems to have replaced orally enunciated expressions, OMG! Text message numbers in the US doubled over in 2008. Texters have evolved. I remember some of the hrat lutuks in Bangalore who could even thumb in a complete and coherent message blind! And then the text lingo that I don’t think I will ever master: LOL, LMAO, LSHITIPAL (laughing so hard I think I peed a little)—I think a hearty mutual laugh would be better. Texting is definitely instant and convenient but I’ll stick to calls. Hearing the live voice of the person I want to communicate with just makes it a lot more human. So, call me:(800)768-HUNK!!

Dial-up: Yup this is definitely obsolete. I’m glad we transitioned quickly to DSL, broadband, wifi, and other more efficient accesses to the web. Those crackles and buzzes before you finally hooked up online only to have your patience tested once again as the “this page cannot be displayed” slowly evolved on your screen—uh, uh!

Encyclopedias: Students in classroom settings seem to have all the subject info down pat. One need only look closely to their laptop screens to see a wiki page feeding their pretensions of knowledgeablity! With the amount of information easily and freely available on the internet, the printed encyclopedias are definitely on their way out. Their only sustained currency would be libraries and old fogies such as I who still prefer to leaf through time worn pages of printed material. Moreover, because of the anyone-and-everyone-add-content set up on sites such as wiki, I'd rather take my chances with peer-reviewed editions.

CDs: I have never bought music online (amazon, itunes, etc) but have quite a music collection; thanks to a friend who has broadband and frequents the bittorrent website! Paaji ‘s Pyramid store in Palika Bazar was my regular go-to for recorded cassettes and videos. Since the webble burst, he’s also switched to selling cell phones and other more current gadgets and gizmos. I was told that music in Mizoram now premieres directly via music videos on local channels. The underlying idea seems to be copyrights and royalties, which I’m all for. My point though: running with a clunky cd-player in hand is so 2000 and late!!

Landline phones: Collateral damage of dial-up’s exit!!

Handwritten letters: these have definitely been replaced by emails, text messages, phones, skype, and other modes of communication. I do not recall the last time I wrote or received a handwritten letter but the excitement while eagerly waiting for the postman to bring one was worth it.

Film/film cameras: Load roll, shoot all 36 shots, print, scan, convert to jpeg, upload as profile pic...really? The digital camera made photography and all its applications so much easier and convenient. It also democratized what purists would call an art form so that every Thanga, Kungi, and Remi can now wax eloquent about aperture, composition, angle, and ISO.

The list could go on. One also notices that the common denominator in this list is technology and the rapid advances it makes/effects- instant, convenient, and efficient being their USP. I reread this post and realize that some of the categories/terms I use could themselves be outdated. So even as i hats off to y'all who bring out these innovations, please dumb them down a little so that tech-challenged folk such as I, can be more up-to-date than have to evolve only in time to be obsolete all over again.

2009 Wrap up

2009-12-28T11:32:00.000-08:00

I have no fancy excuse(s) for my long hiatus from blogworld, only one word—laziness! No, this is not a confession out of self-entitlement to a fan base clamoring for my pathetically sporadic ramblings I would like to sell as blog updates. Rather, I noticed my writing side ebbs and flows with the frequency of my postings and I figured if I were to step up on one, the other would pick up too. So, with the confession booth in the back and to catch up, much has transpired since my musings on the “ring” with an equal amount of shoulda-woulda-coulda-s! Most notably, my friend and now-brother finally got hired. With the economic situation here in the doldrums a job, that too at a not-so-mundane place, is always welcome. At work, we were able to bring a three-year project to closure (whew!) and are on the verge with another one. Another personal and larger project needs to pick up steam and I need all the drive I can rally for this one. Oh, and the wife is finally on the shores of the US of A.

On the shifts of note, I can scarcely recall the last time I went to the cinemas. There was a time when new cinemas were a regular on my weekend to-do lists. Lately, I remember only District 9 (a must see) and Inglorious Basterds (one of the more watchable Tarantino fare) but that would be it. Are my cinematic tastes deadening or is it that cinematic productions are just no longer compelling? Avatar seems to be raking in the millions but then again there’s only so much CGI I can take for even a very human story as Avatar. Documentaries have been my regular go-to these days…and there are plenty online at google videos and youtube.

Christmas brought out the creative best in a local church I’ve followed over the years. This particular church puts out a Christmas tableau every year and I’ve followed it because the scenes they conjure up are a little off your regular nativity scenes. This year, the tableau featured a barbed-wired wall with graffiti in Spanish splashed all over, which I thought was reminiscent of the Berlin Wall. Sensing the anachronism, I took a closer look. It turned out to be a model of the border walls that dot the US-Mexico border with “No Room in the Inn” spray-painted on the top. The tableau was a poignant commentary on the “illegal-aliens” issue that continues to animate and polarize US politics. If one were to ponder over its implications, it unsettled many presumptions about the modern state, human communities, rights, histories, and so on. I would have added a picture of the tableau for its graphic-ness were it not for the mild squall that toppled the wall before I could photograph it! Winds of change? While these thoughts lingered, my wife and I got to spend Christmas with the few Mizo folks around the area. To add some of the seasonal flavors from home to the gathering, we had chhang ban and sa um bai! The singing and sharing would pale in fervor compared to that which we are used to back home but then again, even the casual setting around Christmas clutter and chatter was a reminder that we were at home while not quite there.

Would I have spent my last few months differently? Im not sure. I don’t know. All I know is that the sense of doubt will set me up for the new year even without the usual list of resolutions. Hope you have a good one.

Fellowship of the Ring

2009-05-25T15:22:00.002-07:00

Seeing me twiddle my fingers rather aimlessly at a gathering of Burmese American dentists, my host must have caught sight of what might have looked like the onset of an OCD induced twitch. Momentarily out of sight, he reappeared with a copy of Time magazine and a solicitous suggestion that reading might help calm down my frenzied digits. After all, neither could I make sense of the conversations around me nor did I recognize any of the faces. But then again, a lone head slouched over a magazine amidst a reception hall abuzz with activity would do little to alleviate the sense of standing out in a crowd.

One article in particular got my attention primarily because I felt connected to the issue it addressed. Lisa Selin Davis’s “All but the Ring” is a very balanced overview of the emerging trend on this shore of the Atlantic, where couples and partners are increasingly opting to cohabit without getting married. Reasons given for this option are informative: legal, personal, political (solidarity with gay/lesbian couples), financial, popular trend (à la Brangelina), and so on. These were informative—I thought so—because they were more telling of the layers of human configurations that underlie a contract such as marriage. The underlying argument seemed to be the notion of mutual commitment and how “committed unmarrieds” seemed a more practicable and integral option than what might be inferred as “married un-committeds.”

Structured performances of marriage are written into our cultural canons. We embellish them with gender, legal, and religious overtones and then over time come to accept them as self evident components of our culture. Despite their normative-ness, these are not hermetically sealed canons that have never been breached. I can think of the Ladakhi Skus-te-Khyong-ches where marriages, primarily among the poorer sections, involve “stealing” partners to avoid the extravagant expenses of marriage ceremonies; or the unplanned pregnancies among friends that forced either an alternate church wedding or single-parenthood. With the increasing visibility of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual) community the world over, the resilience of these cultural canons on marriage/cohabitation is going to be stretched to its seams.

Lisa Davis’s article gripped me primarily because it stretched my own unarticulated sense of what it means to commit myself to cohabit with another person. On breaking the news of my decision on how I would chose to perform this commitment, my advisor asked whether my decision was driven by a Victorian impulse. Despite his veiled reference to Foucault, I chose to get married in church with friends and family as witnesses. Wryly compliant with Beyonce’s crooning: “If you like it, then you should have put a ring on it,” Kimi and I exchanged rings. Strangely enough, I developed a rash on my finger and had to take off the ring within a week. Even as I struggle to come to terms with acquaintances who desire to cohabit in non-normative arrangements, I hope to remain committed and married, with my ring-less finger to speak for it.

had someone else been first to the tomb...

2009-04-12T14:48:00.000-07:00

Had it been men, they’d have first blamed their missing womenfolk for the apparent theft. “Weren’t they the last ones in doing what they do best, pssh…manicuring the dead?” On spotting the “gardener,” they’d have thrashed him on a mere hunch and then proceeded to ask him whether he knew what was going on.
Had it been Steve Jobs, we’d probably have an I-Tomb for the perpetually mobile-no-time-to-die. Or maybe a Funeral-App that would take care of the many logistical details associated with such events that one increasingly finds less time to attend to, for instance, thlanthut in-absentia.
Had it been a poststructuralist, the tomb would signify the lingering trace of the Other, its linguistic valence persisting as a symbolic Freudian orifice.
Had it been immediately after 9/11, we’d be told by excited news-crews covering the scene that a WMD silo had finally been found. The war machine would be primed to pulverize the area into a valley of skulls.
Had it been a realtor, she’d be at a loss to put her books together. What with the current state of the economy, even the dead are not spared the dire consequences of foreclosure.
Had it been a politician, a press conference would have been hurriedly put together. We’d be told that the body had to be re-interred elsewhere, the tomb of another only-trustworthy family member, because of a three-day rule set by the cemetery committee. Not to worry, the body would be returned after three days. Ah! Resurrection...in the next round of elections!
Had it been Lara Croft...no, she wouldn't have raided it! C'mon, raiding an empty tomb?

I for one would have missed the bus entirely as I was still recovering from a heady gig the previous night at Tone Merchants featuring Scott Henderson .

Sounds almost Jeff Beck-on-Extacy!

I did make it to a very packed service. Though not late but it being a well-attended service, all I got was a balcony seat that got me close enough to participate in the celebrations and yet distant enough to ruminate over the possibilities of other people in that Easter story.

Rat Attack

2009-04-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a quality PBS documentary on the effects of the mautam. "Rat Attack" rehashes what most of us would already know about the mautam but it also provides more information on details that, if further researched, would be helpful in preparing the next time around. Yup, there is no explicit "AHA" moment but some of the insights that Aplin (biologist/primary researcher) provides are worth a follow up. On a lighter note, Ratatouille or even Mickey Mouse does not seem so cute anymore.

The QuickTime video is split into 6 segments, and each frame comes with a transcript, links, and other informative material. Personally, rats creep the hell out of me and I wouldn't have watched the documentary had it not been set in Mizoram. Post-viewing, the overall production quality is very good and the post-production work, in particular, gives it a very tight narrative. The B-roll inserts are also breathtaking. What if "Rat Attack" were a template for more documentaries on Mizoram? Or are there some already in circulation? Any leads or links?

[ps: Dang it! I just got a message that the online viewing is only within the US. However, I'm sure a copy will be available in India. James Lalsiamliana (biologist and co-researcher) should have more details on access]

Mind your Language

2009-03-30T11:49:00.005-07:00

“If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to “normalize” formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality.”

This selection from Homi Bhabha’s Location of Culture earned him the dubious runner-up position in the 1998 edition of a "Bad Writing Contest" organized by the journal Philosophy and Literature. (He lost me after the string of predicated nouns). Curiously enough, Bhabha is a professor of English at a not-so-mundane school. Language in its written form, in the hands of its so-called experts, seems to have taken a nosedive into inaccessible depths —or elitist heights for lesser minds as I.

To insert a personal angle, my unschooled and default mother-tongue has, of late, been shown wanting in many departments: vocabulary, precision, conformity to parameters shared by the larger community. My wife’s been unrelenting in pointing the many mistakes I had earlier reasoned away as my version of Mizo. To my credit, we have managed to restrict our communication to Mizo, a choice that comes with the proverbial “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” Neither did I sound like Bhabha. However, in light of the many unintended verbal slights, I always wondered if we could mutually agree to meet halfway to defuse the verbal slips. Obviously, the subscript states that I refuse to comply and that she moderates her linguistic canon!!

In defense of Bhabha and their ilk, Rey Chow recently argued that their verbiage is warranted by their investments in language. A bulleted version of her argument would run something like this:
•Focus on language not as a tool of communication but on the modes of production and reception of meaning prior to the establishment of meaning itself.
•Hence, the establishment of meaning is problematic.
•Emphasis is on the ideological manipulations of meaning. Language—as much as we’d like it to be transparent—no longer functions unproblematically.
•The problem is with myth, and myth-making.
•Myths interface multiple domains of signification. Fluid and shifting easily, myths offer multiple possibilities for duplicity, ambiguity, and ideological manipulation. These manipulations over time project a factual system.
•Some of the modernist myths hinted, I assume, are fact, truth, the static self, etc.
•To fend off mythic corruptions of language, specialized languages such as E=MC² or that of modern poetry are deliberately obscure, exclusive, and impenetrable. At least they try to.
•Verbiage as that of Bhabha and Chow emerge from such resistant positions on language.

However, that E=MC² itself has taken the semblance of a fact belies the effectiveness of resistance to language. Who hasn’t rattled off the obscure formula, or name-dropped a towering figure in their field as if to cloak oneself as sophisticated and erudite- as if sophistication and erudition were self evident facts merely by reference. Besides my own complicity, I now also have to explain this to my wife in Mizo!

Against the grain

2009-03-20T22:13:00.000-07:00

If Slumdog Millionaire deserved the global recognition it got, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas should be accorded no less. Unlike the graphic templates we are used to with films set in and around Nazi Germany, Striped Pyjamas provides us a vantage point unlike most in its genre. Its explorations of human vicissitudes amidst crises open us to possibilities of orientation to human situations without overt reference to violence –despite violence's palpable imprint.

Seen through the eyes of Bruno, the eight year old son of a German officer in-charge of a concentration camp, Striped Pyjamas is an exploration; in a profound sense of the term. Bruno’s love for adventure books inspires him to explore, a childlike instinct which leads him through questions that push him beyond his circumscribed limits. The answers do not seem critical to the screenplay. Rather, Bruno takes you along in his playful yet profound adventure: you skip along eagerly through the woods of discovery, playfully eavesdrop on an adults-only screening, long for atonement after slighting a friend, and even find out that a shower is never always just ‘another’ shower. Pushing one beyond the familiar modernist urge for a neat and structured end, Striped Pyjamas’s motions unsettle popular notions. The resulting ambivalences pry through the in-between spaces that, according to one cultural critic, bear the burden of how we grapple with notions of ourselves and/in culture.

While both movies were released around the same time –Slumdog in January 09 and Striped Pyjamas in November 08 (source: IMDb)– Striped Pyjamas went under the radar. Maybe the current economic climate helped Slumdog sell its rags-to-riches story better.

Chin Day Celebration

2009-03-02T15:28:00.000-08:00

Chin-Mizo and other hyphenated people group expats in SoCal met to celebrate the 61st anniversary of the Chin Day.

I'm sure the organizers had their best intentions to line up a talk on "Chin Migrants in India." A very gracious Dr. Hrangkhuma tactfully deflected the title's problematic implications to suggest the underlying commonalities that should/could be better celebrated. All in all, a great evening of fun food and reconnecting with like folk in the area.

"I am a 'Decider'"

2009-02-28T10:48:00.001-08:00

The Obama dispensation has fueled much postmortem dissections of the preceding Bush idiocracy. Stand-up fare almost misses Bush for all the ready-made fodder he never failed to deliver. Not that I am particularly invested in such an indulgence but rather that the much publicized Bushisms seemed, in a wry manner, to put some of my thoughts in perspective- here's my shot at a systematized reflection.

Having fended for myself over the last three decades, I almost got to consider my solitude as a conclusive self-definition. A psychiatrist friend once sized me as overtly gregarious and yet innately introverted. I seemed to have passively internalized his evaluation while always conscious that another part of me wanted to break the mold. Recent run-ins to make longterm connections fell flat with each failed connection seeming to thicken the mold.

While on a teaching stint at a theological college in Aizawl, a rather unassuming Kimi walked into our faculty meeting. Nothing significant transpired beyond the perfunctory student-teacher interactions. But images from that first encounter remain as fresh as ever. There was that one time when a student's mother passed away and we had to rush to the hospital. It being an emergency, Kimi jumped behind me on my bike. I admit I was tempted to apply that strategically timed brake; but resisted. Kimi was always that forbidden allure. Academic protocol would just not let me step beyond our bounds. (As a disclaimer, these details should never crop up on my résumé!)

I moved across continents and solitude could not have been more palpable. That’s when I called Kimi to greet her on a Christmas in 2006, well, also to reconnect with someone who had once made me skip a few heartbeats. Over a few tri-monthly calls, I popped the question where angels feared to tread. Protocol, academic and/or societal, always limited full expression of the innermost longings. My phone bills though were a little more telling. An invitation to participate in a symposium at Kolkatta provided me much needed funds and all the legit excuses to make a trans-Pacific detour to Aizawl to meet Kimi for the first time, now no longer a student, as my partner. The phone calls intensified in frequency, length, and tenor.

One year down the line, we decided to make public our mutual commitment before friends and family through marriage. Though not as neatly contrived as a syllogism should be, the structure of these memories I gather seem to fit in neatly with Bush’s sill(y)ogism. Long term commitments are decisive moves that one grapples with and hopefully perseveres to see through. I, for one, am a decided-er!!

I Did

2009-02-11T17:43:00.000-08:00

Kimi finally agreed!

Colours of Fall

2009-01-03T11:33:00.000-08:00

Fall falls late here! While leaves in most other parts of the country are snugly covered by layers of snow, the leaves here are still on branches half undecided—should I fall or just brave it through to spring?

Those that hang on burst out in resplendent fiery colors. Those that fall off cushion the ground as crackling covers waiting for the next grounds personnel to pick them up.

With this sudden fixation on the arboreal, the Christmas-New Year’s break provided me the motivation to explore the botanical gardens just across our walls. I was surprised at how oblivious I had been to a resource right at my doorstep.

This garden is particularly interesting as it houses endemic and indigenous flora, and preserves their associations with the indigenous Tongva Indians in the area. Unlike the palm lined boulevards on the silver screen, all contrivances of a rapidly impatient urbanizing drive, these gardens preserve glimpses of what SoCal might have been had it not been for the 49ers and their colonizing successors.

A Green Slumdog and a Ring

2008-12-23T09:52:00.000-08:00

A few years back, some friends had recommended Vikas Swarup’s Q&A to be added to my reading list. Vikas had been their colleague but besides their personal acquaintance with the author, my friends had found the book a very interesting read. I remember reviewing the book then as overly predictable although the narrative had a very pleasant lilt and warmth in its motions. A few weeks ago, a friend was raving about a movie she had recently seen. As she went through the plot, it struck me as being rather familiar. On further connecting the dots, I found out that Q&A was now on serious film production –though by another title. Slumdog Millionaire! I came out of the theater quite satisfied that the screenplay proved my earlier review of the book quite wrong. The movie itself is well written and shot. Set largely in Bombay through three phases in the life of the protagonist, the camera was honest in capturing the depraved yet resilient and colorful spirit of wresting oneself from the alleys and backwaters of an Indian metropolis. The casting could have been a tad tighter though. Rather than spill all, a plug for the movie would be a lot more appreciable. So, if you were waiting for that one movie worth your investment, Slumdog Millionaire could be it.

(Click on pix for a fuller view)

Given that one has internalized much of the normative ways of being and parameters of reference, December tends to inflect our senses of not only ourselves but also that of the world around us in ways that remain dormant for much of the rest of the year. Giving takes on a whole new sense of urgency as we plan out our list of stuff to send out from our resources. Beyond the confines of our selves and those within its ambit, we are acutely aware of those beyond who are less privileged than us. A heightened sense of urgency to intervene or “make a difference” for unnamable faces takes on priority levels that upset the balances we plan with. Decorations and cooking bring out our creative best. These photos of a Christmas tableau in our locality exemplify just that dash of ingenuity inflected by sensitivity to world conditions. Hope rings poignantly this year. With a radically new president for the US, and a change in the leadership in Mizoram –a rehash of sorts for some –there is a measure of hope for alternate governance in the coming days. Amidst all these flashes of self consciousness, I happened to mull over the waste we produce as a byproduct of our festivities. The disposable cups, plates, and spoons, leave alone the rather sinful leftovers we eyewash with quixotic senses of abundance and nonchalance, and the toll our foods imply –they all impact us, though not immediately. Beyond our human-centered considerations in planning for the season, I am dreaming of a green Christmas!

Planning for my nuptials has been a little hairier than I bargained for, especially when done remotely by phone or email. There are more black-holes than I could ever throw light on. Minute details become headliners. For instance, my decision to plan the venue at my partner’s place rather than mine provided much fodder for the rumor-mill. The many angles this decision blew up into really tweaked my learning curve. With humility, I have learned to gracefully take their umbrage as sincere familial concern for me. So if you will be in Lunglei around the ides of January, let me know. As a gracious reader who has painfully ploughed through this posting, I can, in the least, invite you.

So what?

2008-11-18T12:56:00.000-08:00

With communications technology breaking new grounds at a frenetic pace, mobility and portability seem to underline what makes or breaks. Of late, my inbox shows a number of emails which, when opened, have additional taglines such as, "Sent from my IPhone," and "Sent from Blackberry." We've been sending emails and messages all this while and suddenly we need to notate the technology that facilitated the communication. I guess these tags are generated by the service providers and not by the end users. Anyhoo, the tags themselves seem to feed on our human need for self-constitution, with corporatized technology being an all too willing facilitator. That one is not too averse to the tech-enabled image building only seems to underscore the reciprocated complicity. "Sent from my IPhone!" So what?

On a more positive note, autumn-winter transitions remind of beauty around us that often go unnoticed.

Winter lines never fail to transport me back to the days of approaching winters in the Himalayan foothills. With the year's work done and going home just a few weeks away, visual registers of those longing gazes into the evening's horizon remain clearly etched. As I scan the horizons at a place far removed from then, these images re-emerge to let me wander through terrain that seem to transcend time and space, to where the past and present merge in a burst of colour.

Scraps from the bin

2008-10-30T11:25:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, I end up running through mental images that have been lodged in the recesses of my mind. These images have been lodged there for a while, and more often than not, for the simple reason that they were embarrassing moments. Interiorizing them then only let the flushed-face-inducing memories fester, waiting for that moment to surface as surreal re-enactments so that even in the most private of moments, I still cringe down to my marrow.

◙ While the events of an athletic day were in progress, I found myself setting the bar at a high jump pit to vault over it. Back in the day I had done reasonably well in pole vault. Eight years later then, I was trying to relive those glory days. Only this time, it was at a high jump pit—that too a sand pit! I remember there was some significant someone I wanted to impress and could think of nothing better than a lousy vault to do that. My run up was passable. My body arced surprisingly well as I cleared the bar. Then, my hands just froze on to pole, more like a pole dancer than a vaulter. I came crashing down with the horizontal bar sandwiched by the pole still firmly in my hands. A butt landing on sand could not be harder than when compacted by poles and bars collapsing on to a man’s jewels! And she was not even around to see it were I to have gracefully executed the vault. Dang it!

◙ Some younger folk had arranged an evening of music to raise funds. I had excused myself from any participation with the vaguest of excuses, “I’ll be too busy.” I eventually showed up at the event. Well intentioned though they were, their music was floundering with every other line. “Kids,” I thought to myself. I went backstage and told them in a pep-talk manner that we would try something cool. Very filmi indeed! My supposedly cool idea was to rap-out a very common song. I would be on drums and rapping. The others would follow my lead on whatever instrument they were playing. On stage, I got the experiment going and rapped through the first stanza. It was pathetic. And then I forgot the lines to the second verse and adlibbed my way by repeating the first stanza. Even as we ploughed through the motions, every next second being more painful than the previous, it already dawned on me that I had made quite an ass of myself!

◙ A friend felt compelled to introduce his sermon with a joke. Not the natural comic, he had to cook up a scene to fit his material: a boy had his eyes on a girl but was never sure she felt the same way for him. In class, he scribbled on a piece of paper and passed it to the girl. She opened and saw a cryptic formula: 1+4+3= 3 or 2. Instinctively, the girl ticked the 3. As she was threw it back to the boy, the teacher caught eye of the ball of paper on its trajectory. Pulling up the boy, the teacher asked him to explain what was scribbled on the paper. The boy explained the formula as “I+love+you = yes or no.” The girl had, unawares, reciprocated. My friend then put his introductory piece in perspective. “You can never conceal love if your love is real.” He then went on to wax sermonic on love by excising material in 1 Corinthians 13. Come on!

The cringe in this last one is more vicarious. There are many more of such moments that occasionally re-emerge to remind me that life allows one to sidestep the lines of propriety and make occasional asses of ourselves. Personally, I will have become a little wiser while still nursing my humpty dumpties!

Thus spake the raven…

"...the music of the night"

2008-10-20T12:57:00.000-07:00

What is it that music addresses so that we are drawn to it? Consider the variety and genres of music that are out there and it only thickens the speculative layers that one needs to wade through in order to conjure up an answer with even the remotest of persuasiveness. There seems to be something more visceral within us and in our perceptions/constructions of our selves that, somehow, music provides appropriate bridges. Within a wider symbolic world, we perceive ourselves through a detour into an other, and refine that perception in terms of desire for the object that is possessed by the other. This desire for an absent object creates longing, taste, and radical discontent. Maybe, music provides a reference for that which our selves lack, and also the medium by which we quest for a finer redefinition of our selves.

Sometime back, a friend and I went to watch Symphony X in concert. This band is a technically dextrous unit that paces its movements through multiple time-signatures; a treat for the prog-rock connoisseur. Personally, I thought Sym-X’s act was a disappointment. They raced through their set and the guitars drowned the rest of the band. The guitarist and singer hogged the entire limelight. The guitarist had his bottle of bourbon by his side and as the act progressed, he kept racing through the bourbon-induced intro-s so frenetically that, by the time we walked out, it was just noise!

A highlight for me that evening was not the headliner but the relatively unknown opening act. Not very familiar with the European genre of metal (gothic, black, Scandinavian, et al.), it was a learning experience to sit through Epica’s set. Back home, one hears of Nightwish and others often by default, but Epica caught my attention rather markedly. Part of it had to do with the lead singer. Rather well built and tightly packed in a corset top, images of her hair swaying in unison with the chunky riffs of their songs remain visibly etched in my mind. Was it a subliminal clamouring for a white other or was it a Freudian undertow? The songs were syncopated in ways quite unlike standard rock arrangements. Minor modes and alternate scales made the compositions seem to lead me through a detour into a world quite different from the three-chord rock riffs, which I realized had become a default self-position. Additionally, the lyrics were intended to cast surgical strikes on to politics and its underside. Although I never did quite catch the lyrics, I gathered this strain from a rather “aainch” intro to a song: “This song is about extremism; because extremism is not good, whether it is left or right!” “Aainch” in the sense that I thought it was trying to say too much by saying too little; almost pretentiously profound. Or were my own political sensibilities kicking in? Come to think of it, the occasional growls by one of the male guitarists were rather “aainch.” A lot of the younger people will identify with these growls, and label me an oldie for my views on it. And yet, the growls seemed to re-inscribe what Descartes had set as the modern agenda. I exist because I think, even though my thoughts come out in growls. The neglected but rational and unitary self extricates itself from societal repressions and silences to assert its existence. Breaking set meters of lyrical articulations, the growls came across as a politically charged device or gesture. Nonetheless, a discursively embedded gesture such as a growl—that even the entire Epica-package is a product of language, a system of signs—belies, contrary to the Cartesian chutzpah, the potential for self articulation it is perceived to have.

Although I adamantly refuse to growl, the trace of the night lingered. I later found out that the Epica singer who has so captured my imagination was only a fill-in. The original singer was ill and could not continue the tour. I youtubed around and came up with this clip. It was a bonus of sorts because it has both singers on it; the original singer and the fill-in singer. The fill-in singer is the blonde back-up singer (00:17) and I read that she has been long associated with the band.

Epica is just one instance that, for me, outlined the self’s desire for an objective other. I would not risk dissecting musical tastes anymore as some aesthetics in life just lose their soul if we were to blanket them with the finality of a theoretical reference. Yup, we do categorize them for easy reference. Just step into any music store and guffaw at locating your music in a rather inappropriate category. And yet, music persists beyond such flat categorizations. So does the desire.

"Until the sun comes up over..."

2008-10-01T16:37:00.000-07:00

I finally got my first experience of working on a collaborative film project. My participation on the project also finally got me to the beach. Personally I prefer the mountains and have never made an effort to hit the ever-so-romanticized beaches that dot these parts. I never quite understood Sheryl Crow's now classic musings on this particular haunt. Given all these caveats, and my low expectations, the day turned out to be quite a pleasant surprise; the experience was even more engaging.

The event that got our project to the beach was an event tagged as a Sacred Music Festival. Religious expressions from groups that are generally considered outside the “mainstream” converged to celebrate their diversity from the fault lines of the religious triage that underscores metropolises like LA.

The groups marched to the beachhead in a procession and then broke off into their own performative spaces, which seemed to comment on their particularities amidst the seeming uniformity of a “religious” expression. The day’s celebration culminated in ritual signifying on the setting sun.

Working with the film crew was more demanding than I had expected. On reaching the site, my friend and I were given a highly condensed form of something close to a “film crew for dummies.” We were to be the boom operators. I could already imagine my name flashing as the credits rolled, sandwiched by the “Dolly grip” or something! By the end of the day, my shoulders were sore in places I never knew I had meat.

We had to extend the boom mic strategically above what the camera was shooting. The placement had to be close enough to pick the sound but high enough and away from the camera’s vision. Even though the mic is rather light, extend it out on a ten feet pole and the weight can multiply exponentially. Add all these and one could be taxing those shoulders rather heavily. But why should I complain. My friend’s take on his experience was that it had been quite a power trip. People moved as if the waters at Moses’ command. Even the mere sight of our equipment had this effect. We got the best ringside-like seats at all the events. We shuffled or stood at will when others were constantly asked not to do so. People also took notice of us. A man inquired whether we were a Filipino TV crew! Ass. All in all, a good day at the beach.

As an afterthought, religion does funny things. Among others, it elevates the mundane aspects and objects to the profound. Hence, even a sunset can evoke heightened emotions and drive people to tears. As the gathering roared in unison to the setting sun, my friend’s comment on this crescendo could not have been more definitively iconoclastic (see clip). And yet, our perfunctory pragmatism could also miss out on the compelling significations of the mundane that the practitioner may have accessed.

Medium is the Message

2008-06-10T13:22:00.000-07:00

When Simon ‘says,’ everyone toes his line. Between the lines of what is said, the one who plays Simon maintains a center that decides what the rest do. Invariably, there are the occasional funny ones lagging behind who do not follow what Simon says and as a result get shoved out of the game, away from the center. It is interesting how children’s games such as ‘Simon says’ capture what the not-so-childish often indulge in when it comes to, “Scripture says”. A mode of thought, action or way of being takes on an inflection of authority when introduced by “Scripture says.” More often than not, our embedded-ness in a scriptured world makes us react accordingly.

Scriptures invariably evoke images of written texts along with notions of sanctity and reverence. However, on noting that Jews and Christians shared a common written text but had different scriptures, a keen observant concluded that scriptures are not texts. Rather, scriptures are relational in that they express a subjective perception of one’s relation with an ‘other’ realm—often, this ‘other’ is qualified as transcendent, God, or even the self. If one were to move beyond the written texts, scriptures may include other modes of expressing that relationality. Oral traditions, traditions, performative arts, songs and even iconography could replace the written text as ‘scripture.’ One often hears prescriptions dished out with, “This is the way it has been done” which suggests a paraphrased ‘Simon says.’

Additionally, our investments in the construction and maintenance of order at the center activate these various media to function as scripture. Without this investment, Simon could go on issuing empty commands but his relevance lies in the order that the commands construct around the figure of Simon—the center. Ordered and structured, the center determines the uniformity and conformity of its constituent members, which explains why the few who lag behind get shoved away from the center; them ‘funny’ people. In complying with what Simon says, those who do conform invariably consolidate the center. On the other hand, the ‘funny’ people often languish at the margins or occasionally attempt to destabilize the center or even prop up alternate centers. Remember the occasional ‘spoilsport’ who, when eliminated from the game, would try all means to slyly inch her way back or gather a few friends and try to start another game on her terms.

As dissonant as an oil rig is when one thinks about scriptures, a wholly new window opens up when one sees scripture not so much in its contents but in its form. It is one among many other windows into what makes us tick as individuals and as a collective. That we often collapse it into concretized ‘books’ and then re-designate these ‘books’ by the shorthand ‘scriptures’ only sophisticates our fixation with a very human phenomenon. On a stretch, when oil producing bodies sneeze, that the entire world coughs is more intriguing because of the highly scriptured textures of these bodies whether they be located in Texas or the Arabian peninsula. Such sweeping observations definitely need qualification but the point should not be lost. Broadening our understanding of scripture might help us understand ourselves a little more.

Conspicuous Consumption

2008-06-01T15:25:00.000-07:00

An evening of enjoyable music is, for me, good enough to make my weekend. We had signed up to watch a current favorite, Ohm, in session and weren’t too dazzled by the slated opening act—a one-man show by someone who for us was till then an unknown. On stage, he looked the reinventing one-time-rocker with hair tied up and goatee still intact but once he got playing, I found myself enrapt in his fret-board gymnastics. Little did I know that a variety of alternate tunings in dexterous hands could produce such intricate syncopations which he deftly interlaced with rhythm patterns tapped out on various sections of his guitar. Tone-wise and in addition to the main piezzo pickup, he had a magnetic pickup and a mic on the bridge position for added texture. The overall effect was that by the end of the act, I still didn’t know nor did it matter who this person was. I did eventually get to speak with him over the break. He was Thomas Leeb.

The main act for the evening was Ohm with Chris Poland (ex-Megadeth) on guitars, Rob Pagliari on bass and Frank Briggs on drums. As Rob had introduced the act, the trio planned to make some noise for a little over an hour. Decibel levels were high but so also were the technical and virtuosity levels. I still haven’t got descriptions down pat but the adjectives I can think of are Jazz, fusion, and rock.

Usually scrupulous about what I buy, I came back to realize that I had got myself two of Thomas Leeb’s albums.

Funny Indians

2008-05-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

While checking out at a store, we noticed the cashier's name on her tag was an Indian name. We were speculating out loud the vedic-metric connotations of the name when she caught on and asked how we knew about her name. "We're from India," I explained our familiarity. Still unable to home in on a location, she accommodated us with puzzled, "You're different."

Yup. We're different. Apparently, we have also gone underground just to make it evident. On the other hand and beyond discrete progressive spaces, it packages our strangeness and fixes our subjectivity. Somewhere between the claim and the packaging, the self is aware of the other.

ps: Check out the rants of the other in the 'we' at http://myunrest.blogspot.com/

Bench-warmers

2008-04-28T13:11:00.000-07:00

I’ve never been much of a singer. At best, I mimic tunes that I have either internalized over the years or memorized because I simply liked the tunes. The choir director at the church I attend had more fingers on the piano than members and was always on the lookout for another voice. Sitting in the last row, I was simply bellowing my way through “Holy, Holy, Holy” when apparently my Welsh-riffed, un-modulated throaty mimicry transfigured into the stuff of cherubic choirs. From that day on, I would get weekly invitations to join the choir and I would invariably smile a polite declination. It was not that the sudden turn of attention had gotten to my head but rather a quirky angst. A choir was the last place I’d want to stand in when facing people. Part of my hesitance had to do with my limited repertoire (the choir sang a new song practically every week) and also my being musically illiterate. The symbols on the score still remind me of tadpoles that I chase across the octaves.

The invitations never flagged. At risk of becoming a pricey ‘star’, I decided to give it a shot. We met a half-hour before we were to actually sing. When the music sheet for that day was handed to me, I instinctively ‘O hell-ed’ on reading a title I had never seen before. Everyone else rehearsed the notes in their heads while I kicked myself for the discomfort zone I had signed up for. The director then got the accompaniment going, the choir harmonized while I improvised rather unsuccessfully. An extra sustain never fails to draw attention. To skip over self-evident details, I let it be known that part of my struggle was primarily because I did not read music. Even though the invitations have stopped since, I continue to enjoy contemplative moments with others in the pews or even the occasional bellow from the last row.

On a side note for those who grew up on the cult kung fu classics, The Forbidden Kingdom is a must watch. Jet Li and Jackie Chan provide action where the drunken master shines in the monkey’s shadow. Except for the opening and penultimate scenes that were densely CGI-d, expect to lose yourself in some of the most breathtaking locations in a movie. The plot is simple without any dense twists. No connecting of contrived dots. Crouching gave us kung fu with strings attached. Forbidden ups the ante by spiking Jackie’s innovation with Jet’s speed. It could get better only if you threw in a Michelle Yeoh or Chow Yun Fat.

More Between Lines

2008-04-16T11:27:00.000-07:00

This is to continue conversation, post-reading, on the previous post.

Hillel had been consolidating his rhetorical position all along. The final thesis of the book is that the Chhinlung Israel theory is "107%" tenable but the details are a little more nuanced than meets the eye. The key to the thesis is a proto-Kuki mi lui which fellow Lusei readers will recognize as mi hlui or 'old people'. The mi lui were somehow linked to the Samarian populace ousted/exiled in 722 BCE by Shalamaneser. This was when Samaria was the northern kingdom in the line of Saul, David, Solomon and before the infamy Samaria came to be associated with in Judeo-Christian mindsets. The mi lui moved eastward as far as Mongolia and then turned southwest to finally settle down on the edges of Imphal, Manipur. Later migration of the Hmar from the southwest (Mizoram, Burma) led to the melding of traditions and practices but the semitic legacy had been preserved in the exclusive chants and practices of the thempu priests. The thempu tradition in turn informs the seemingly random claims of Jewish ancestry that one hears around the hills; Kuki-Chin groups have Manmasi as an ancestor figure which resonates with Manasseh, one of the northern kingdom tribes exiled by Shalamaneser.

Pivotal to the thesis is the work of Dr. Khuplam who documents the oral traditions and observed practices in The Wonderful Genealogical Tales of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo based on which, along with some subtle linguistic gymnastics, Hillel connects the Chhinlung Israel mipuite to the lost-tribe group. Dr. Khuplam's effort is commendable and yet Hillel seems to uncritically allow too little to over-determine too much. Negotiating the oral-written binaries of recording data and cognizant of truth regimes implied in such epistemic projections, the subject poses a vibrant potential for more research and with the added bonus of a decent preliminary work done in Across the Sabbath River. If one were to consider findings like those of the Genographic project, rather than Israel we should all be clamoring for visas to Ethiopia or one of the countries inhabited by the San people. That one choses however to stop at Israel poses larger psycho-social questions and how people signify some basic existential issues on larger projects such as 'origins'.

Oh yes, my cousin Zohminga showed up again toward the end, this time as a fill in translator in place of a George Lawma whose antics just didn't fly with Hillel. These Hillel-George Lawma parleys were a subplot worth a serious side-read. To taper off what seems like an overdone blog post, Across the Sabbath River should make for an informed reading if not an engaged one.

Between Lines

2008-04-11T09:17:00.000-07:00

I recently picked up Hillel Halkin’s Across the Sabbath River, an account of his engagement with the 'lost tribes of Israel' phenomenon, partly because his position as outsider on the subject of the Chhinlung Israel mipuite and partly because of my own investment in the topic. The Chhinlung Israel mipuite in its most lay sense refers to the Israel lost-tribe claims of contiguous communities in Mizoram, Manipur and Myanmar. The read has been very educating as I was able to thread the constituent strands in a much more detailed manner than before. It has also been very engaging because of the mental commentaries I am able to conjure up as he builds his narrative. For instance, on page 169, he narrates a visit by Zohminga who, “worked for the ministry of tourism which meant he had a lot of free time. He spent part of it riding around Aizawl on a motorcycle with Israeli flags. He wished to know how he might acquire some Israeli army fatigues.” Hillel’s caricature of my cousin was eerily spot on and yet ambiguous because of the many subtexts that lend themselves to ambivalent inferences. The ethnographic details projected an objective innocence and yet underscored a subtle chutzpah that suggested implied binaries in their descriptive constructions. Hence, to take note of ‘free time’ or an inquiry regarding the procurement of army fatigues does not just figure as a value free predicate but rather seems to indicate a rhetorical position that Hillel progressively sets up for himself.

Hillel does not hide his own investment in the ‘hunt’ for the lost tribes. On the part of lost-tribe hunters, he finds an innocence in their obsession and futility. This attitude in turn seemed to inform what he perceives as a mimetic impulse in the Chhinlung Israel mipuite and also engenders an overflow of facetious additions that constantly color the otherwise keen observations he records. Two of them that caught my attention were, “In the back, a thin, pretty woman listened intently while rocking back and forth with a nursing baby. It was imbibing a taste for hermeneutics with its mother’s milk.” (168) and, “As we spoke, the house filled up with several generations of Pu Liankeuva’s family. The older offspring occupied the chairs and floor and the younger ones crowded outside the open window and stuck their heads through its bars. Even the children in Mizoram were keen to know their true identity. (164) Then again, without such colorful flags, one might just have bulleted the evidence and relegated the read to nothing more than the perfunctory.

Minor quibbles aside, the Chhinlung Israel mipuite issue finds an ably measured treatment in Across the Sabbath River and as I knock off each page, the engagement forces me to speculate that Hillel might execute a volte-face toward the end. Another part of me thinks he will not.

On a Fool's Day

2008-04-02T10:01:00.000-07:00

A local radio station momentarily pulled out their regular fare and replaced it with Mexican mariachi music for the next half an hour. Unsuspecting listeners who were more attuned to the classic rock package that the station is associated with were furious. Their calls to the station were hilarious ranging from near-racial tones on music choices amply splattered with bleeped out expletives to the more resigned 'where have you moved'. Besides the fun of the day in fooling around, it was rather interesting how such candid moments seemed to prise out some of the deeper but also quirkier insecurities that one takes on but sublimates so effortlessly. Needless to say, I had already dialed the radio station and then hung up.

William Dalrymple was in the area later in the evening and I had marked the event as a must-do. I have been following his work over the years but never got to see him in person. Like his prose, his presentation, an engaging one hour summary of his Last Mughal, was erudite, articulate, well-resourced, witty...my adjectives fail me...he was just brilliant. At the book signing, I mentioned having met a Bruce Wannell in Ladakh. Bruce and I were lodging at the same guest house and I had even chipped in my bit for a Ladakhi musical soiree he had organized. Over the course of our interaction, Bruce mentioned his work with Simon Digby on some 17th century Urdu manuscripts for a Dalrymple work. I brought out this byte with Dalrymple hoping to segue into a conversation but was taken aback by his rather brusque pshaw on that bit of translation work. Apparently, Bruce and Simon 'were not good influences on each other' and the translation work had to be done by someone else. Nonetheless, Bruce is acknowledged in Last Mughal and Simon remains an expert of 17th and 18th century urdu poetry. I got my copy of Last Mughal signed. Besides this unabashed exercise in name-dropping along with a picture to consign my paw-shaking with Dalrymple to posterity, I joked with my colleague, "When I grow up, I want to be a Dalrymple!" and got pshawed myself.

(Pic 1) Simon Digby, seated at left
(pic2) Bruce Wannell, seated at left

Yet Another Fable

2008-03-30T21:37:00.000-07:00

I am a Mizo. Who cares

Garth Hewitt on my Mind

2008-03-19T11:11:00.000-07:00

Southern California has much for the adventure seeker or nature lover. From where I live, it is an hour's drive to the beach. A short drive up north, the San Andreas range opens up many other possibilities for the adrenalinized risk taker or even the faint hearted ease-rider. Seasonal skiing, trekking, trail biking and rock climbing are popular although I haven't yet tried any of them. I'll line them up for another time.

Yesterday's hike through the Claremont trail was planned to be the ease-rider option but it turned out a little more tasking than was planned. Aches aside, being away from concrete and steel for those six hours couldn't have been more refreshing. The spatially removed mind seems to hike through regions below those otherwise saturated with externalities and to open up recesses that delight surprisingly. In one such introspective frame, I was running this song by Garth Hewitt through my head but kept stumbling over the lines. Verses have never been my forte and melodic progressions register better than the deftly crafted word configurations. But for some instinctive reason, the lines rolled on as if rehearsed along with the occasional plugs for gaps that tripped the flow.

My best friends are all poets
and they're livin on the dole,
Where they learn to pay the penalty
of trying to feed the soul.
Observers on a highway
where it doesnt know its rhyme
Wielding words like a weapon
as they walk through space and time.

Water into wine
can be pearls before the swine
In a world that prefers
violence to verse.

A Fable

2008-03-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

And the ruling party was. Re-instated by a resounding majority.

THE CALL: Part Two

2007-12-04T22:09:00.000-08:00

..."I got my call."
Was it the magi-noodles or the raw apricots that I had pigged on? I really couldn’t care less to investigate. I knew I had to answer my call. My churning bowels would not negotiate with me. My brains, being oxygen-depleted already, had no will to fight back. I had to answer!

I asked my friends to go ahead as privacy is ever at a high premium on these barren slopes. As they accommodatingly vanished from my sight, solitude set in for me to make my move. I had to improvise a balance for my lumbering body on a near vertical rock face. The winds were still determined to dislodge me. I could hug the mountain and let the wind face the problem. Or, I could face the wind and dig in my fingers like pitons into the rock-face. I chose the second. Till this point, it was all an idea and now I have to execute the plan. The wind was relentless. The rush of cold air was intimidating. With a deep breath and focused concentration, I slowly moved in to strike a pose, carefully placing my feet on the surest footing. I didn’t want to tempt a free fall or an embarrassing slide on my back. A contortionist would marvel at how my muscles locked in to keep a steady position. Just when you think you have everything in order, Murphy slams you with one of his laws. The purification rites that would inevitably follow struck me before I could answer my call. The mountains around here could not be more barren especially when you are desperate. Where was the shrub that comes as a last resort? Even a stinging nettle wouldnt hurt but then again, this was above the tree line. We had just a bottle of water and I reckoned we would need it at the summit before our descent. Leaves were out of the equation. So was water. I had already started eyeing the pebbles with their raspy edges that were strewn around when ‘aha.’ Never one to carry a handkerchief, I found one in my pocket. Minor problems though; this was a gift with my initials woven on to it. How could I desecrate someone’s remembrance? Improvisation being the need of the hour, I ripped the monogrammed half putting it back into pocket hoping my benefactor would not take it personally. I did not have time to gauge the odds.

Like the Matrix-ian Trinity poised in suspended animation, I was splayed across the mountain face. I had firmly moved into position. My purification rite was in place. I was ready to answer my call.

There I was, perched on an unknown mountain somewhere in interior Ladakh, wind beating up my you-know-what, my muscles locked in without which I’d be free-falling. Though not to belittle the sacrosanct inclinations generally associated with a ‘call’, I see a Moses ascending Mt. Sinai or an Abraham heading out to Moriah, out there on that precarious ledge I was whistling a tune, oblivious to the strained muscles but acutely cognizant of the fine line between relief and a free-fall. I had answered my call.

THE CALL: Part One

2007-11-22T09:56:00.000-08:00

Driving through the Zanskar Valley in Ladakh, one cannot but be overwhelmed by the imposing range of mountains that dwarf your puny Sumo jeep as it winds its way through the circuitous rock-hewn dust tracks. Our journey to Padum would have to be halved at Panikhar because, well, we had the time and luxury to lap up the breath-taking scenes that unraveled as we progressed. The first leg from Kargil to Panikhar was shorter than we expected and by noon, we were able to check into a decrepit tourist lodge that, for obvious reasons, didn’t seem to be listed on any tourist catalogue. The rather scruffy attendant was at his solicitous best even as he washed his rather grimy hands. Our request for food was promptly met with bowls of steaming maggi-noodles garnished with strands of frond-like green. It being a welcome filler, none of us even dared to ask why the noodles had turned deep saffron. The overall effect of the food was patriotically Indian!

As we were gorging on the entrée along the apple tree-strewn banks of the Suru river, we were suddenly aware of the twin peaks of the Nun and the Kun rising, phoenix-esque, before us. The fabled ‘lure of the mountains’ struck but there was no way we’d ever be able to summit it, we reckoned. What, with no gear, training, conditioning or the vital acclimatisation? Come to think of it, we had to humbly accede that we were just a bunch of fanciful and amateur tourists on a passive drive to Padum that would ask no more than patience as we jarred along the unpaved track. So much for the one shot at etching our names in the mountaineering hall of fame. “Wait, what about this hillock across the river...piece of cake, right?” The fabled ‘lure of the mountains’ refused to shoo off! Only later would we find out that the ‘lure’ came with strings attached. For starters, mountains look closer and easier to climb from a distance. Before we could untangle the ‘strings’, we were already at the base of the mountain unaware of the arduous trek that lay ahead. We were high in spirit but low on gear. One bottle of water for three people cannot but be a sign of ineptitude and foreboding disaster.

Our climb started off rather effortlessly. An occasional sheep would pass by staring at us as if to ask what we were up to without the conventional shepherd’s crook! A spring gurgled out a limpid flow of water with a mossy turf growing along the edges of its stream. Our pace soon became irregular with every step needing more effort. The mountain now, at over twelve thousand feet, was downright bare. The surface was pebbled and every step had to be carefully measured to secure a footing. Living organisms of any genus would have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving on the rocky and windblown surface. The near vertical cliff-faces seemed to pull one in for a kiss as if to rub in the ‘strings’ we should have accounted for before we ever thought of climbing. Every step had to be preceded by huge gasps of breath in order to catch every wisp of oxygen in the rarefied air. To make matters worse, the post-noon anabatic winds were determined to dislodge our already precarious footing. This was no place for an acrophobic. “Hey mountain, give us a break,” I thought with fists gesticulating in the air when...I got my call!

...to be continued.

Unwritten Scriptures

2007-10-29T12:07:00.000-07:00

The tendency to reify the twin concepts of ‘scriptures’ and ‘race’ over-simplifies the freighted history of how both concepts are invoked as human collectives configure themselves. Substantiating the concepts with concretized objects makes for a convenient reference but, in the process, blurring the dynamics at play in the concretizing processes. For instance, to objectify ‘scripture’ as a the sacred written text of a particular faith community does make for a helpful reference point but on probing further, one is lead to the question of how the text is accepted in its decisive and normative capacity. The idea of ‘race’ again makes ‘sense’ when one refers to color or geopolitical location and yet, to collapse ‘race’ into such ‘visible’ difference is to ignore how such perceived differences were constructed through complex social and political dynamics into hierarchical positions so that ‘race’ becomes a power signifier for superiority and also inferiority. Put the two concepts together and one finds oneself faced with a whole new set of questions. How does one capture the perceived differences and make sense of it with the available knowledge bank of a particular epoch so that the differences can fit in within the known limits of the known world? With knowledge more expansive than ever before, how do scriptures inform and shape our 'others' or what new scriptures do we forge to make sense of the differences that so often overwhelm us?

While on the topic of scriptures, I came across a post that reported on a certain Mizo clergyman's writings going to be the focus of the adult sunday school for the coming year. For those not in the know, he died recently under rather dubious circumstances and thereby upping the ante on how Mizos in particular come to terms with it. (http://misual.com/2007/10/27/nakumah-revchanchinmawia-ziak-zir-dawn/#more-3554) With the posthumous valorization of his writings, one may speculate his person itself being scripturalized as an exemplar for how things should and could be. And yet beneath the smoothened projections of the church, the scripturalizing process flattens a whole lot of issues and questions that unsettle many but are left unsaid because they, the issues and questions, will have been 'canonized' in our collective memory, or literally 'cannonized.'

Chuck This...India!

2007-10-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

A friend recently suggested I watch "ChakDe India" . The idea was tempting because we had a Mary Ralte and a Molly Zimik (Tangkhul Naga, i think) on the cast and I was curious to see how they'd be scripted alongside Shah Rukh Khan. This also would probably be the first time a Mizo has been a sustained part of the script in a Bollywood movie (there have been the odd Mizos popping up on screen).
Here's the plot: X misses a crucial penalty stroke-labelled a traitor-'exiled'-comes back to coach the women's team-teaches them a few lessons in life along the way-win the championship-restored. This was how I replied to my friend:

"First, it was a pirated screen print so the viewing wasnt a great experience. Then again, the movie just failed to capture my imagination, too many holes in the plot and as many have already noticed, too many simplistic reductions riddling the screenplay. I had read some previews and so was relishing the possibility of something commendably different. A bollywood production without song and dance sequences, a non-glamorous topos, no item-number (what!!), a cast with the majority being first-timers; elements that seemed to infuse freshness. And yet all these novel potentials got subscripted under a glamorized male narrative. The uneasy dynamics of a multi-regional team getting to live and play together is always underscored by the 'disgraced' coach's attempt to see his present in light of his past failure. That his penalty was for missing a crucial penalty stroke etches the performative angst only to be rectified decades later and vicariously by his team. Hence, even the fantastic euphoria of a championship victory is eventually a subscript of the male coach's road to redemption while his team members are back to the harsh mundanity of haggling with an autorickshaw driver. This grand narrative seems to be unable to function without the metonymic assistance of trite reductions: the Pakistani other (how else does one rouse patriotism in the subcontinent?), the easy 'chinky', the silently compliant to-be-bahu, the incomprehensibility/barbaricity of the 'tribal',--all which serve to etch out the indispensable brilliance of the coach.

I thought the text could be done without Mary, Molly and the 'others' serving as mere props...who though not running around trees were just running around on astro-turf at the command of the coach's whistle. The most problematic scene however would be when they go for lunch to McDonalds (really, which sports team goes to gorge on junk...or was it a MacDonalds, im a little confused) and again, my NE sisters are singled out for harrasment. The team gets together to thrash the eve-teasers while the coach smiles with an epiphanic nod. The women have spoken through their collaborative thrashing and yet as the scene fades, one wonders if they were heard? Like all the subscripts in the movie, one really wonders how subjectivities are contructed to perpetuate a marginalisation that eerily over time becomes 'acceptable'...Bollywood being one such pervasive media. Mary gets no lines, Molly has three forgetable ones but both immediately, and for no fault of theirs, feed the repressed fetish for gori/fair-chinky flesh!! Het Saaalaa! Sorry.

As you see, i doubt whether my views are going to be helpful for a write up cause they are so partisan. Cinematically, it just pushed my patience and then the subscripts were rather apalling. "

Postscript: Nehru's vision of 'unity in diversity,' that has become a free-for-all site, will be flattened by such reductionist projects like ChakDe India. U-i-D as a process serves us better than U-i-D as an event because differences will perpetuate and should. As a process, U-i-D would serve better in setting up negotiations across the diversity while being open to shifts as differences are nuanced and mulitplied. Sadly, Shah Rukh's moment of victory and redemption set us back a few steps; and maybe one needs to emphasize that at the completion of a game or in packaging a bollywood productions, "winning isn't everything" because the winners seemingly always need the losers. http://www.yashrajfilms.com/microsites/cdi/cdi.html

Feeding the Non-Resident Fetish!

2007-09-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

Of late, one is rather familiar with calls to bring in change to current situations in light of perceived deteriorations in one’s immediate surroundings. A friend from Aizawl, in a recent e-rant, vented out his frustrations over the current government’s ineptitude and corruption. His rant did not spare the church which, at such perceived dire times, could only muster vague statistics on its missionary reach. Underlining his impassioned email was a desire to see a change for the better specified in terms of electoral politics—a new government that would bring healing.

At the risk of over-simplifying a list of ideas that need more definition, modernity engages all of us irrespectively whenever we consider where we are at present in light of where we were and where we want to be. This is because modernity implies a break from something earlier and that this break could be in terms of structure, institution, and culture. Structurally a once communitarian people defined by tlawmngaihna and the zawlbuk (I reify the most obvious for convenience) have urbanized and been differentiated in the process. Institutionally, our sense of being an indefinite ‘people of the hills’ has now been closed in with imagined but very real boundaries that are controlled by elected representatives and the bureaucracy which are still limited within a larger nation—India. With these breaks come very real cultural shifts so that individuality seemingly trumps over communality and relations are gradually determined by their economic value. The church, in spite of its spiritualized vision, often functions to maintain what was lost in the modernizing. That thorny MLTP act with its polyvalent political and social angles is a constant reminder of the mobilization of religion to achieve ends that are more secular than ‘spiritual.’ Let me not smudge the point that all these breaks from a traditional way of being and knowing came with the promise and potential for development and efficiency albeit with evident contradictions.

These observations, one must be cautioned, are generalizations. Yet, when further broadened to frame my friend’s rant, some questions (the list could go on) need to be answered: Will a change in government, hence political moves, be enough? Is World Bank a viable answer with its baggage of compliance expected? Can an overblown and pampered bureaucracy deliver the goods when it fails its subject people, even those concentrated around one city-Aizawl? Why is perceived development so concentrated around Aizawl alone and what does it say about us becoming modern? An interlocutor on my previous post points a perceptive finger at human want for ‘more’—is this what modernity feeds on? How does the role of religion change with changing times and hopefully for the better?

Although instant prescriptive answers are what buy you space in a microwave world, there just seems to be more questions than answers. And yet, the process of asking itself engages one beyond just attractive but empty rhetoric and to think of modernity beyond just its façade of technological and commercial promises. Hopefully, such an engaged reflection can also widen our resources for answers—in the traditional that we are losing and the modern that we are taking on—and also constructively channel my friend’s rant.

Jazzing it a bit

2007-09-06T10:00:00.000-07:00

To take a break from the seemingly heady stuff, let me digress to a story not too unfamiliar: we grew up during the hairy-metal days when spandex and split-ends were credible replacements for musical talent. The music industry in India was still awaiting Manmohan Singh's green signal so one had to make do with pirated stuff from across the border or the tacky 'copies' peddled by Pyramid at Palika Bazar (Delhi). One defiend music by the guitar work and implicitly deeming for any self-respecting metallized ego that the only way to go was to make the guitar scream with all the fancy licks available. Paa'ji at Pyramid was more than willing to facilitate that with his copies of instructional tapes: Arlen Roth, Steve Lynch, and a whole lot of others. Alongside macroecon theories, one was soon learning fancy modes: the Myxolydian, Phrygian, Aeolian along with smooth pentatonic and diachromatic scales. Somewhere between these lines was also that unwritten promise that once the guitar started screaming in all the fancy scales, chicks would find it hard to resist.

Its been decades now. Hairy-metal is now a part of nostalgia and i couldn't care less whether I use a Phrygian scale or a simple C-chord-the chicks seem to have caught on quick and haven't been forthcoming! (Aw!) I've moved on from rockstar-wannabe to fawning spectator. Music has changed and so have my tastes. Which brings me to my intended spot.

The Baked Potato

There's a really neat jazz club called the Baked Potato where the music is great; primarily jazz but more Jazz-fusion. One wouldnt have suspected a more hole-in-the-wallish club to be the site for running into relics of a metal-past and yet the eventuality couldn't have been more exciting. From among the heap of hairy-metal talent, one re-definition was Chris Poland from Megadeth. His band name no longer implied massive doom but rather a profound "OHM". No more shampoo-ed locks and the music spoke for itself. On drums was Kofi Baker, the son of Cream's Ginger Baker and Rob Pagilari on the bass.

On another evening, Frank Gambale came on with his band. Like Chris Poland, Frank no longer wore his hair long, in fact he was bald. On bass was Ric Fierabracci whose lines couldnt have been smoother. If you've watched Kasauti on the LPS network, you'd be familiar with the Yanni piece that plays on and on. That's from the Live at the Acropolis concert where the bassist goes off on a blistering solo. That bassist was Ric. As a band, their vituosity was palpable...check out the video clip.

I definitely remember a Frank Gambale with long mulletish locks sweeping through arpeggios on his instructional tape that i bought from Pyramid; also Chris Poland shredding with Megadeth alongside Mustaine or even Ric's hair swaying in-sync with Yanni's at the acropolis. The guitar-centric music sensibility has given way to a more rounded appreciation for the parts as they contribute to the whole while the Baked Potato has replaced the dusty parking lots at Delhi University.

Ps: The video clips were taken on a digicam and hence arent as clear as one would want them to be.

Two Random Shots

2007-08-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

Horsing Around

There was a surge in human consciousness around a certain age that spawned great civilizations: the Mesopotamian, Chinese and Indus civilizations. How they happened as near-simultaneous occurrences is anybody’s educated guess. The more current view was of an Indo-European nation of horsemen that reached Europe, China and India so that similar and near simultaneous surges could be observed. The revisionist view—based on re-reading a bull-inscribed artifact as that of a horse—is that the horsemen started from the Indus valley and went to the other areas. Whichever way you take it, both versions are linked to horses. A more intriguing angle would be to ask what is at stake in all this horseplay that potentially links great civilizations to living groups of people. If one were to generalize it, our definitions of what/who we are and are not, if done without a constant self-reminder of our imaginations of the 'other' on whom we rebound our defintions of ourselves, could easily slip into seemingly definitive and yet trite ethnophobic horseplay.

Ancient Futures: A Parable on modernity

There was once a brush-dappled hill with water-lined clefts sourced by perennial springs. The river at its foot would wax and wane with the seasons. Life abounded lacking only human presence. We then, on moving in and in needing to do so, tapped into its beat-the hill provided our essentials-so that life was synchronous in its diversity. Over time, the human population grew exponentially--after all, we don’t just hunt and gather-which in turn imperiled the precarious synchronicity because the hill refused to reciprocate. Our ingenuity conjured up attitudes and ways of being that would hopefully minimize the human demands on the hill. And then something almost irreversible happened.

Yards of barbed-wire crisscrossed the hill's face marking off my land from your land. Concrete structures were needed to house comfort and utility. In a word, life was different but nonetheless a lot easier and convenient. I just felt this urge to better my lot and so had to widen my network--got wired, got mobile, got miles, got plastic--effectively raising the bar for keeping up with the Chhakchhuaks. The race was on but beneath its din, the hill-clefts had become lined with a lifeless trickle of excesses. Peeping out of the slush and among an occasional Zepdyl bottle, I noticed a crumpled piece of paper with the picture of a bald and bespectacled man.

In the footsteps of one I consider an exponent of the 'parable', let me also expand: 'Ancient Futures' is the title of a rather readable book...nothing original about it. I also think this exponent used his parables to say things differently while spanning the intended range of his ideas. He was eliciting the engaged response of his listeners...remember his famous question, "Which of these three was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" Moreover, the symbols are used suggestively rather than prescriptively so as tease out creative interpretations hopefully to make meaning-making more democratic and dynamic.

Having listed my caveats, modernity's promises of a 'better' life hold water to an extent but at many points are delusional because that life is based on homogenized commodifications that prey on the human instinct for want. 'Ancient Futures' does not romanticize an irretrievable past but suggests future possibilities within that which has been erased in our rush to modernise or chide others for not being a 'changkang' people.

Considering Value

2007-08-09T18:22:00.001-07:00

These pics taken at various places are strung to serve, hopefully, as appetizers for a possible snorer on some IMMEDIATE reactions to recent discussions on a rather popular Mizo blogsite. .

How does one calibrate 'value'? The world of ‘objective’ science and commerce proffers fastidious scales notched with fancy Greek symbols so that, for instance, when I pump air into a set of tires, the numbers qualified by the Greek 'Psi' symbol helps determine my satisfaction for the work done. And yet our human world is a little more complicated and (only) less innocent than the quantifiable world of science and commerce. On flashing one’s symbols of value, it is often unsettling to realize that the significations resonate rather ambiguously leaving one to either doubt or attempt to steamroll one’s calibration over the nay-sayers. Still yet, the dust kicked up as one reacts to the ambiguity seems to refract one’s attention to a divergent tangent of power because it underlines who does the calibration and according to whose subjectivity the calibration is done. This is power not in its concretized occurrence as brute force but rather in terms of the definitive ability to control the actions and reactions of another that, in so many ways, underlines much of human activity and configuration. In calibrating something as being of value, one taps into a discourse of power that would help project one’s choices, actions and ideals as having a definitive grip on others, if not one’s own self. The jostling for value, in a way, then caricaturizes one’s own subjective standing in a discourse of power and how one chooses to define that standing.
Power is abstracted so that if one were to discuss value, ‘power’ itself would never surface in the course of the negotiation. When protesting student-groups are lathi-charged by policeman who for all their brutality could by all means deeply empathize with the students, it is a clash of values—a value for which the students protest and a value which the policemen want to protect. Snuggled somewhere subliminally is power that rarely surfaces or is ever culled out. If one were to move beyond the lathi-charge, the list is endless: who’s the insider and the outsider, whose knowledge is more efficient and relevant, etc.
With power being so pervasive, one might also see that in the jostling for ‘value’-able space, one would be just replacing x for y while innocently oblivious of one's impulse to influence or control (as altruistic and well-intentioned as they may be).
Also, a dilettante embracing of the ‘obvious’ without a careful handle on its ‘intrinsic’ could inadvertently lead to robbing Peter to pay Paul. Point in case is that our projections of options almost never are flat. With all these red flags up, values do help orient our sense of worth and direction and I would still hold on to the things I hold valuable. And yet, the problematic of the innocent and universal ‘value’ does continue to prompt me to caution-that values, if they are to be definitive beyond my own self, are negotiated rather than confrontational.

Some other possible after-thoughts:

-Power and knowledge

-Anonymity and power (those e-aliases and nix are telling)

-The finer art of chopping vegetables so that they cook evenly...just thought it might help my indigestion!!

Of awe and laughter!

2007-07-29T15:06:00.000-07:00

Rummaging through a file of pictures that I had taken on a serendipitous trip through the northern Himalayas and then standing that reminiscing alongside an article I came across the National Geographic on how mountains come to be, the latter put in place the dynamics/mechanics of the former, of that which had caught the attention of my camera. The aesthetics, my short-hand for what I think got me glued to the mountains, was a delightful experience worth lodging into timeless memory. The mechanics, my short hand for the causal scrutiny of the aesthetics, explain the how-s, when-s and why-s but for some reason sobered off the sense of amazement that had initially enraptured me. Some ‘things-as-they-are’ flavored by their contexts in time and space are best appreciated as and how they hit one’s immediate perceptions. As an afterthought, I recall a friend who thought that the words of that much-sung hymn, “O Lord My God” were intentional. Hum it along as you are reminded,
O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds thy hands have made
I see the stars…
Did you catch that! This friend thought that on considering creation and just the wonder of it, he saw stars…in both their literal and metaphorical sense. O that un-problematized sense of awe and wonder at creation!

On a totally different though connected tangent, meet Le Petomane-the Flatulist, an actual performer during the Moulin Rouge’s heydays I’m told. Sitting more like a fish-out-of-water among theatre buffs watching the production of “Can-Can” I was rather tickled on observing that among the moments that got the more uproarious response was Le Petomane’s solo. As a ‘Fartist’ (which was how he was introduced), he had a cup to his bum-hole that amplified his syncopated farts to the tune being played by the orchestra. Even as I write, I smile and I wonder why? Freud’s patent suggestion was a repression of the olfactory senses by the domination of the visual as homo-sapiens started walking erect. But notice that a private fart is never funny. It becomes funny only when it’s let out in public space. Flatullent humor must be social but before I dissect the dynamics any further, I want to preserve my instinct to laugh when one is let off.

Ps: I must acknowledge a certain blogger's constant nudging encouragement in getting this out.

Verbalised Orality!

2007-07-20T15:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a thought. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced and impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him..."super callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis"

In case you havent watched Mary Poppins, here's a forwarded piece i received on the trivial pursuits in the politics of language.

European English
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improve ment and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English". In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where! more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

Lost in Translation.

2007-07-04T12:43:00.000-07:00

One cannot but be helpless though passive indulgers of the barrage of messages that scream at us when on the road between Aizawl and Lengpui. It's like the BRO/Pushpak marks its exploits by raising a hindleg at every turn. Dogs! Are we to be constantly reminded of the imposed indebtedness on our part? For the record, roads have helped us move on and definitely an occasional warning or two rather than at every third turn maybe helpful.

Crossing the Tlawng bridge, I noticed the first signboard said 'Isua ni se' (dont know if it's still there) and wondered what purpose it was envisioned to serve and does serve. Does it tell the visitor landing in from Calcutta what to expect or does it remind the returning Mizo of what may have been 'left behind' in the recent transitions made through the airport? Come to think of it, does the fact that the sign is in Mizo say anything of who the message is intended for and more importantly, how does one unpack that message in light of the situation we return to from the brief flight?

This particular 'stele' in the pic hit my humerus and i couldnt resist the opportunity to strike my humble and gratuitous pose with it. I wonder if it is still there but frankly, it seemed more like a hideous expendable.

Ps: personally, BRO needs a more efficient translator.

moo (mu:) {n, adj., Bovinese dialect, meaning %$#@}

2007-06-28T14:51:00.002-07:00

Air! Air! I gasped as it dawned on me that the hands on my neck were not meant to pet but to throttle me. The flaccid digits tightened to form a band around my neck. Once taut, they would stifle the breath out of me.

My birth was unheralded. The stars shone diffusedly without ever auspiciously settling directly over the stable which was to become my home. The guest list wasn’t all that impressive. In fact, there existed none which in turn implied that you could count out the gifts for me. Without the angelic hosts and the adoring herdsmen, without the lone hovering star and the sages congregating for no apparent reason, how less routine could the throes in that nondescript stable be? No, stars don’t speculate the mundane. We, born of a ‘lower’ kind, have to live with our lot accepting the ways of those who deem it be so. The best part is that even as we live out our lot, we don’t complain and yet find life meaningful...well, until someone else’s whims and fancies step on our toes. See how I have digressed? Let me get back to my story.

The description of the night of my birth may sound bleak but my mother was constantly beside me cleaning me up with a dab here and a sweep there ever so lovingly. She was visibly weak from the stress I had put her through and yet she did not flag in her care for me. My legs, being weak, were of no practical use but I reveled in cuddling up to my mother. She was all that mattered and, in turn, defined all that mattered for my still secure world.

As days turned to weeks, I became aware of my mother pushing me away and over time, I realized she didn’t mean to reject me but meant to wean me away. Just the contrast in her attitude made me realize that the world out there would not be as safe and caring as the world she had made for me. I was scared because of the untold perils in wait for me while ironically excited at being able to step out on my own feet. The world was there for me to latch on to. Even though the reception at my birth a few months earlier had been merely incidental, the world outside would now have to acknowledge that I was around. Deep down, my mother’s weaning nudges could not have teased out a more timid set of limbs to the world I was claiming as my own.

My world was within the confines of a large estate. My master, I reckoned, was a wealthy man. I really never figured out what was it that he did but his opulent lifestyle made his wealth palpable. It even overflowed onto his sons. The gold rings on their well-manicured hands were a dead giveaway. The absence of calluses on their hands told me that the only hard work they had done was anything but manual labour. The older of the sons was good to me. He often came and spoke to me and would proffer a treat if I reciprocated. His ubiquitous benevolence was what enriched my world. In an unpleasant contrast, the younger of the sons was not someone you could easily get close to or even begin to like. He was downright rude. He was someone you’d never look forward to see and he, seemingly intuitive of me, complied by making himself rare. His occasional appearances, though brief, seemed painfully long. In retrospect, I wonder where the younger brother would bide his time while the older brother was always around the estate and it really did not hit me when I didn’t see the younger brother for a long time.

The younger brother’s absence seemed to have cast a pall on the entire estate. Activity had settled to a painful crawl. The only occasional noise was my own and my mother immediately reprimanded me. Being the wiser one amongst us, she chose to be lost in contemplation and pace up and down the open grounds without uttering even a whisper. I’d run up to her just to get shoved aside. This ritual became the only activity for me. As no one else would acknowledge my presence and my mother did, even the chiding nudges became a game for me. The deathly silence that had settled in got me worried and my mother’s uneasy poise just made matters worse. The only silence I had gotten to know was the minutes after my birth when it was just my mother and me with no one around to celebrate my entry into the world. Was there to be another birth?

The change in seasons was as abrupt as the pall that had set in. On that fateful day, there was a jarring commotion within the compound. Life had returned to the estate. I coaxed my mother to run along with me to the front so that we could see what was behind this revival. The younger son had renounced his prodigal ways and decided to come back. I nudged my way through the crowd that had gathered at the front-yard and arched my neck to get a glimpse of the celebrations. Come to think of it, even though his disappearance did not mean much to me, I was glad he was back. His father was visibly relieved and could not stop hugging the once lost but now found. Caught up in the euphoria of the moment, I was tempted to go and greet the son myself when, it happened. The noise fell silent as suddenly as it had erupted. The crowd parted as if the sea at Moses’s command. All eyes fell on me as if to plunk me into the spotlight. The father’s hand moved away from his son’s shoulders and shifted in my direction. Beneath the sleeves of his cloak, an intimidating finger materialized out of nowhere and pointed right between my eyes.

The next few minutes were so rapid that I barely had time to make sense of what was happening. It was only when I realized a whole lot hands on me that I had this desperate need to breathe. I was being forcefully taken where I had no intention to go. I called out to my mother to help me. All she did was to gently push me aside like the first time she did to wean me away. Was this what she had been preparing me for? I protested. It is fine that the lost son is back. Though I never did like him much, I was happy that he was back. “I endorse your celebration but why pick on me to add to it? Honest, I liked your son and mother can tell you how excited I was to see him back. Mother, please say something! Please my master, why do you have to pick on me? I have never chewed on the flowers you so carefully tend. Neither have I been obtrusive. Your elder son is my friend...sir, I just want some more air.” I looked back to my mother. I noticed a tear roll down her cheek. She remorsefully chided me to stop ranting in Bovinese. It is ironic. The moment I finally made sense of the world, I gave in. After all, what more can you do if you are just another fatted calf?

Stepping Gingerly

2007-06-28T14:51:00.001-07:00

As averse as I was to starting this blog, my being technologically-challenged and e-handicapped not helping much either, I decided otherwise to air out some of the synaptic fluxes that have accumulated over the past few years primarily because i needed to free space to churn out, hopefully, fresher cud! I'm guessing you'd chew along and to digress with that metaphor, my first offering is a take on your PATIENCE to ruminate with me. Look forward to your raves and rants but more so, the opportunity to be in conversation and learn with you.