Of Course, I Remember Those Days

Circa 2006: Freshly out of University having slogged for two prodigal years to earn a Master Degree in Shakespeare, sorry, English; was a little more than confused about what to do next. Hostel food sucks but the thought of not getting food cheaper anywhere troubled me the torturous final semester. Lately I doubt I might have leaked this survival anxiety in my term papers cos, my score was scarish. The only option to get food and a cosy room that cheap @ Rs. 500/month was to continue studying, which I was not so keen considering my laziness.

I hate having read 'The Treasure Island' in high school. I started dreaming of finding sacks and sacks of treasure or winning a lottery that would let me live a luxurious life without working. Not that I bought lottery tickets or go out with shovel and spade to dig places to gamble with the wild dreams. I wanted to just go home spend time the way I would want to, build my own house and create my own furniture. Heck it didn't happen.

Circa same 2006 August: I landed in Hyderabad, eyeballs rolling from utter confusion not knowing what I am upto or are going to be upto. Thanks to my teachers and friends for practically leading me around to acclimatized a village boy to city life. It must have been tough for them and lately I doubt I must have glared at anything that I haven't seen in the Northeast part of India. Yes, I stared like an unthinking goat at many things.

Almost two months slipped by frantically job hunting. My tribal north easterner accent and my super-fast snail-pace typing speed must have simply pissed off all prospective recruiters I vouch. I was on the verge of exploding thinking of how useless I have become even with all the degrees and certificates I have collected in my personal file over the years of my existence. Gosh, I won't deny that I tortured the computer keyboard almost in the same manner I'd hammer a nail into the wall. That must have been loud and people have the right to be scared even by hearing the torturous key hammering. Who would hire a carpenter to do the work of a writer?

Circa same 2006 September: My buddy, our teacher and me, we found a supposed two bedroom house and moved in to start a life which people call as corporate life. The owners were cool, but the house wasn't and the location nearly eat my brain dry in a matter of two months. An interstate railway track was just a stone throw away from the house and a station was just some more stone throw away. Day times were bearable but as night descends I can feel my a** shaking when trains pass by. The most maddening time is when those iron wagons came before the break of dawn, when sleep universally is mysteriously sweet.

Despite my horrible accent and un-commendable typing speed, I got a job when finally I confessed right away that my typing speed and computer knowledge was darn poor. The recruiter, maybe was impressed with my honesty, which was for me a make or break strategy. Much to my own amazement my typing speed increased considerably within weeks of joining. I fell in love with Google quicker than I thought, because my first job involved lots and loads of googling.

We decided to move out to a quiter place away from the railway tracks. A quiter place but a smaller one. We cooked anything that look like food and sleep like tired hunting dogs. Time just came and rolled on faster than a killer tornado. I picked up the habit of coming home at ungodly hours without anyone teaching me. Learning to party even during weekdays was some mischevous fun I discovered too.

Circa 2006-2011: 5 Years in the city, living in the 9th rented house and clinging on to my 3rd job; wow, I should say I am not a very bad gypsy country man..

Steve Jobs Immortalized with Apples

Post Steve Jobs' demise, the world virtually exploded and the web-planet was filled with poems, obituaries, images, RIP comments and posts about his views and life . It was somewhat awkward for me to post anything as I don't know this iconic personality in person, though I never missed any of his keynotes, lectures and even films made about this great man.

People who never had written poems in their lives came out with touching goodbye poems. Even arch rivals have only good things to say about this man only when he is gone and won't hear or care anymore. Well, it is human nature to acknowledge greatness when it is too late. And all those emptying of emotion is part of a farcical cycle.

Here is something, which I think don't fit into that predictable mourning or paying tribute tradition.

A Montreal-based artist Olivier Lefebvre, making a portrait of Steve Jobs out of 3,750 apples is some sort of an out of the box tribute to the departed former Apple Chief and genius. Though the creation is very much temporary, it is like a heartbreaking love letter written on the sand. Life after all is like a letter written on the sand which gets washed away by the sea no matter what.

The downside of the creation is that the apples used for this artwork were rotten implying there was no waste. It would have been a more touching goodbye creation if the apples were fresh. Steve Jobs at least deserve 3,750 fresh apples if not more for his contribution to technology.

On a second thought; is Olivier Lefebvre suggesting life is like rotten apples???

Goodbye my Dearest Friend. I'll Miss You Every Day.

You were shy when we first met and I remember staring at you from head to toe. I never told you why I stared at you the way I did; I was trying to peep into the future to determine whether we'll become true friends and to know whether you'd be a great friend. I doubted you, I regretted for this when you became more true to me than I ever imagined.

You were with me day and night and make sure you were there when I needed you most. I learned the value of true friendship from you. Now that you are gone, you have made me realize that life indeed is unpredictable. I feared that you may die by drowning considering how obsessed you were with water and swimming. But, of all creation you died due to unnatural aging trauma, you aged before the time was ripe and right. Your going away has shaken my weak heart into half and I know not whether I'll be meeting you again in the next life that religions promise?

You never deserted me even when the whole world went against me; what truer companion can a man dream or ask for? You were too selfless. Life indeed is a mirage and friendship some sort of a bubble that burst into thin air on days you least expect.

Today, I regret most for not being able to tell you I like you so much when you were so much around me. Now that you are gone, these words which I meant to write out as obituary sound so hollow, empty and useless. Nevertheless, I'll write on even if you are not here to listen nor would care. I miss you so much, mucher than you can ever imagine.

After you were gone, I went kind of paranoid. I roamed and roamed like a lunatic hoping in the hopeless hope that I'd find you in some corner waiting for me.

Yes, I searched for you at every mall and showrooms in the city. I was not able to find you nor any of your brothers in those malls and shopping centers. Oh, how foolish of me to forget the truth that you were made in Thailand and sneaked into the Northeast of India through Moreh International Market.

You were a unique checked shirt that I won't be able find again in this world. I liked you and you were with me for more than ten years making sure that I study and graduate and earn my master degree too. Yes, you even sat with me when I wrote about W. Shakespeare, John Donne, Austen Jane, George Bernard Shaw, etc. etc.

You guided me even when I started earning my first coins. As for your remains, I've chosen to use you as a dirt wiper instead of cremating or burying for I am sure you'd want me to make good use of you whatever comes. My good friend rest in peace, oh, my dear checked shirt...

Building Traditional Tangkhul Houses in Olden Days

This would without doubt will be my toughest post to understand and probably the most boring one as I am going to flung us all back to the times when there were no iron nails, saw, and other carpentry tools to build houses. This is when the axe and iron chisel were the only tools Tangkhuls used for building their houses. We are glaring at early nineteenth century, the pre-Christian era in the Tangkhul hills.

I can understand a bit of what mammoth effort it would have been to build a house with only an axe and a chisel in the hands of the carpenter. I am a part time carpenter and I vouch it would take me a decade at least to complete a house with an axe and a chisel.

Traditional Tangkhul houses are unique in every way. The front portion consists of huge carved pillars with the gaps filled by wooden planks. The back and sides are covered with horizontally placed wooden planks which are joined by ropes.The roof is slanted and covered with thatch.

The wooden planks were chipped out from huge trees, which are split in the middle first and then the two sides made into single planks. Thus, a huge tree which could build a whole house if modern tools were used were just made into two planks. Some of the wooden planks measure 3/4 meters. Depending on the length of the tree, the planks are cut into multiple pieces to fit the height of the walls.

The huge carved pillars for the front side are made from single woods, which are chipped and shaped with axe and crude chisels. It is said that 90% of carving on the pillars are done with axe, which is sort of unimaginable.

The interior of the house is partitioned into two sections separated by wooden planks and carved pillars.The front side which forms major part of the house is reserved as the cooking area and the smaller portion is kept as the bedroom.

The front door and the bedroom doors were usually made of single wood planks and are heavily carved. One side of the doors have pointed ends which are slightly longer than the main frame. These pointed ends are fixed to hollowed out wooden frames on one side of the door that makes closing and opening of the doors possible. Hinges were something unheard of then.

The Building Process:

The whole village in some ways or the other is involved when a house is built. Men are responsible for felling trees and cutting them into planks and to carry them home from the forest. Craftsmen and carpenters in the village are responsible for carving the pillars and the doors. Women and children help in collecting the thatch of house.

The owner of the house feeds the workers until the house is completed. People who are rich build more magnificent houses to showcase their social standings. The house of the rich apart from being larger has more carved pillars. The workers do their duties voluntarily, with the understanding that they are just helping each other. Rich people host a grand feast for the whole village when the building is completed, this is in addition to feeding the workers throughout the building period.

It is said that building a house take months. After the advent of Christianity and introduction of modern carpentry tools the traditional way of house building got replaced by simpler and less time consuming strategy. Pure traditional houses are hard to find today even in the most interior Tangkhul villages.

After moving into the new house, the heads of animals slaughtered at the time of building it are hung on wall of the cooking area as decoration. The front wall of the house used to be adorned with wild animal heads killed by the head of the family. It is said that during the days of head hunting, the heads of the victims are hung at the front wall of the house between the carved pillars.

The carved pillars and doors too have vanished. Some of the pillars and doors were looted away by antique collectors which most of the villagers gave away at throwaway price not knowing their value. It is a shame that we have lost almost everything that can remind us of our glorious past. In some villages, the wood totems were cut down to use as fuel which otherwise has withstood for centuries.

Author's Note: A writeup based on memory from stories I heard from old people by the hearth.

Things I like about India!!!

I am an Indian, and there are some things I really like about my India and my fellow Indians.

Honking unnecessarily

Have you ever imagined what use would a vehicle be without a honk? Thanks to the inventor and the inventor should be grateful to Indians as we feel we are the only nation that make good use of it. We have the liberty to honk at anyone and any place we feel like. In India there is no penalty for honking even in restricted places. Well, we don't even know what are the places where we shouldn't honk. This is what we call real freedom. Here, your vehicle will never be towed away, at least for honking.

Peeing anywhere Just Do It style

This is sort of an addiction and you need not be surprised nor be shocked if you see someone peeing wherever you think isn't appropriate. Roadside, railway platforms, railway tracks are some places that mysteriously inspire us to relax and relieve. Is there a logic at all in spending a coin to use the public toilet? Moreover, public toilets are hard to find and are maintained so well that the stench in most of them kill even flies.

Scratching crotches

This is one of our favorite pastimes scratching away, like the way primates do. It is not in the least related to habits, for your kind information. It is more of a hobby to scratch our crotches in public places to draw attention. Whose attention do we get if this is done in private? We call this sport as "Mission Show Off."

Conversing while mo-biking

We Indians are super duper hard working. We don't have time to spend even with our wives. So, it is an implied fact that we have no time to talk to our closest friends and neighbors for years. The only chance to spare time for our dearest friends and pour out our emotions is while mo-biking on our way to and from work. Don't ever think it is odd when you see friends biking side by side and conversing making the narrow roads filled. There is no use objecting to this wonderful moments of emotion sharing as even our police finds it touching. We also use biking time for texting, sexting and chatting to stay in touch with our near and dear ones.

Perching on Railway Tracks

You know what morning hours are for, don't you? The best place to welcome the rising sun is on the railway tracks. The surroundings are clear except for the occasional trains that whizzed by. You would probably think we are relieving perched on the iron fish plates. Do not be mistaken friends, we call it as sun bathing though in most cases we end up emptying our bowels. It is the sun bathing part that is more important than the relieving.

Garbage Disposal
Do not preach us about cleanliness and civic sense as it won't make sense at all. We are just happy to take care of ourselves. Life is short and where in the world do you think we'll have time for others. So, we feel it is absolutely justified to throw waste wherever we feel as long as our houses and compounds are clean. We can bear with the stench of rotting garbage outside our houses, actually we are used to it now. It is our birth right to throw waste wherever we want. Where else on earth do people exercise that insane liberty except India? I love my India!!!

Yoghurt addiction

Being a cow country, we have plenty and plenty of cows and milk flows even from walls. Whatever, we are not able to drink we make it into butter, ghee and yoghurt. We have some ethics not to eat anything without yoghurt. So, we mix rice, yoghurt, salt and water thoroughly until the mixture oozes out from between our fingers; then we finally slurp aloud and eat wholeheartedly. Licking our hand and fingers to make justice to the well mixed food is a sequential natural ritual.

I was Born Brilliant, Google Spoiled Me

How Useless has Google Made us?

Google's mission statement "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," has in many ways rendered our memory power useless.

While Google as a company climbs the success ladder higher with its knowledge repository becoming bulkier by the day, our brains are getting lazier at an alarming rate.

Google is the undeclared universal knowledge opium. Once you are on it, you sure have signed the satanic contract not to store anything in your brain and to Shift+Delete your temporary memory folder as frequently as you pee.

I won't find it so offensive if Google were meant just to augment our knowledge, but it is not doomed to be so according to Eric Schmidt who without blinking declared the war cry "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?"

Is Eric Schmidt hinting that we all should consider Google as god and that we place the Google logo in our homes and burn incense and do puja every day?

Likely!!! Yes, let us all start worshiping this giant search engine logo for spoiling our brains. Will someone refresh my memory regarding how knowledge was amassed inside human brains before the blooming of Google? Will someone also tell me who earn the revenue that Google ads is earning now?

Tell me only one example that we don't need to Google for without Googling? Are you too dependent on Google like me? If the answer is positive, you too need to change your Gmail signature to something similar to mine; "Sent via Google Mail service (gmail); if there are any grammatical mistakes or typos complain Eric Schmidt & Google."

Thanks to Microsoft for providing spell check feature in MS Word, else I'd be Googling all the words written in this post to proof read... including even the simple words such as was, is, the, of, so, etc.......

No thanks Google for making my brain latent but, I won't stop using you as you won't stop spoiling me no matter what!!!!

Are you Googled too???

Raitha Mihao Atamna:

Matun ngaireo tunhaowa Zimik

Makum khangai kazingla kumluiura

Atamna kasing mikumo shongzala

Manarsingpai karphalung-nga shingashong.

Somkhangai apamwui eina khangthuishap

Paropngaiching kachi ning-ngaila shimanmi,

Khamana atamla ngahunmihai

Khipakhana makhayui atam pangthem.

Ngapak khavai rasamkaphang pheikar

Phaningching kapai otsak sakrumhai

Mahanung mara atambing chi vaolala

Khanishi mawon kapai mirin riyan.

Raitha mihao Imangli ajava atamna,

Mazangta khangai yur katei luiramli

Ringkapha khi leira kahao kapam;

Ngashanla makhamalan kaphung zingshoram.

Ngasotnao, ramnao, shimkhur phaningungching

Ningtha sangmi kahaiwui kachot sarisak

Malairekda malai kapaiva maning

Kar-rum zatrum kahai ringkapha pheikarbing.

Nganuingaishon, yaron ngala sangaichingnga

Makar ngaireo karda thuihai rasai pheikar

Kashi maphenpai khangachei hupta

Kapar ngavai khamarar mari ngalungla.

Mangshong ngasa kahai aya kaho

Makot kapai wuklungli ngayinsai

Mapingasakpai ringpha khangasak kachihan

“Atamlungli zakmai zingkumna ngacheihailala,

Samphang luira leishikhamatai Iyarnaobingli

Makhangachei zingsho kaphungram chili.”

*** A tribute to all the members of Timrumshon Yar, and Tangkhul alumni of D.M College of Arts Imphal.