The Day We Danced the Streets into History

Friday, March 12th, 2010. What a day it was. And you had to be there in person to savour the euphoria, exuberance and carnival atmosphere of it all. Chapchar Kut it was, traditionally an agricultural festival during a short layoff period in the heavily laboured lives of our ancestors and always celebrated with a work hard, party harder attitude. Considered a heathen custom with the advent of Christianity, and ousted from practice. Also no longer applicable in today's largely desk-bound Mizoram, especially in the urban areas, except as a governmental cultural holiday. This year, the powers that be decided to take a leaf out of neighbouring state Meghalaya's flirtations with Guinness records and arrange the world's biggest and largest ever gathering of the traditional Mizo dance, the cheraw.

When Mizos get high on something, we don't do things by halves. Everyone gets into the mood, young, old, rich, poor. We tend to all want a piece of the action and have our say, whether positive or negative, helpful or completely irrelevant. Friday was Christmas, New Year's Eve and FIFA World Cup final day all rolled into one. From 9.30 am, the AR Grounds where the main function was held, began to bring in participants for the dance. By 12 noon, on the streets, where the dancing was to spill over out onto, vehicles disappeared: traffic was closed and rerouted. People took over. Endless processions of dancers in traditional gear and excited revellers in everyday wear walking towards the Lammual.

We had been informed the dancing would stretch from Sikulpuikawn in southern Aizawl to Chanmari kawn where I live. I had thought I'd just walk up the couple of yards to our locality's buzz point and take in the action from there. But then my neighbour whose teenaged son was to beat the bamboo staves said the dancing was supposed to begin a lot further away. Disappointedly I decided to watch from my brother-in-law's place bang in the middle of the bazar area. I also took my much maligned camera along.

By the time I left the house, all the dancers were arrayed on the streets with bamboo staves in place ready for on the spot rehearsals. There were bull horns tacked on high posts all along the way for the music feed. The sound was tinny and unimpressive though. And the crowds. Oh, the crowds. They filled the sides of the roads so you had to jostle your way through. Some watched from rooftops and high-rise windows. There were waves of them walking south. Waves walking north. Incredibly, even during the actual official Guinness performance, there were still waves moving north or south!

I squeezed southwards too, thoroughly enjoying the ambience. Everyone smiling, excited, expectant, animated. The dancers took breaks in between rehearsals, eating hurried lunches, prepacked soft drinks, ice lollies. Most were school children who'd been practising since the beginning of the school year. Many of them looked of pre-pubescent age. Under the bright March sun, they sportingly swayed and skipped and weaved in and out of the bamboo in tandem. Hundreds of photographers, some with sophisticated expensive equipment, some with rather rudimentary cellphone cams, snapped pictures and shot videos by the truckload. Carpe diem.

And what a day. Certainly the poor will remain poor, the rich will stay rich. Life will go on much as before. But we created history and gave ourselves an unforgettable experience on a beautiful, sunny day when our hearts were collectively one. The day we took colour and movement and music to the streets in the name of culture and a place in Guinness. And most importantly, I was right there in the middle of it all, wooohooo!!!

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Shutterbug, Chef!

At my age, I probably already have a pretty good idea about things I can do and can't do at all. But the great thing is I can afford to try out things and not have to moan years later awwww I never got to try this or that.

Which explains the SLR camera I got myself over Christmas. I've always been fascinated by cameras since childhood especially the tiny so-called spy cameras I'd see advertised on the backs of American comic books. The ones they promised they'd send you free if you sold 100 or 150 kits of some useless this or that. In hindsight, spy cams you could hold in the palm of your hand in the 70s can't have been all that techno-sophisticated and I certainly don't recall ever coming across any photograph taken with one of those. To get back to my cam, I hadn't actually wanted an SLR. All I wanted was to upgrade to a better zoom digicam that I could slip in and out of my handbag whenever wherever. But it turned out the particular model I'd set my sights on had just recently been launched in India and was still steeply priced while the SLR had undergone hugely slashed prices so I allowed myself to be persuaded into going for the SLR.

And so I tried to work the thing out. I figured it had taken me some time to feel comfortable working with my little Sony digicam when I first bought it a few years ago. In fact back then, I'd often felt I was producing better pictures with my phonecam than with the actual digicam. With the new SLR, it was deja vu all over again. And this time, there are so many things I'm supposed to remember - the shutter speed, the ISO, all the million and one manual settings that you're supposed to make use of if you're using a good quality cam. Well, I give up. I just want to point and shoot. And all that pointing and shooting I'd prefer to do very unobtrusively. It's just not in my blood to lug around a pro-looking cam in public. So when I went to this family wedding a few weeks ago, there were all these young, teenaged-type shutterbugs with big, clunky, expensive-looking cameras taking shots and expertly tweaking their settings in between, and getting in the way of the pastor and the crowds. Me I took along my little Sony digicam and was happy taking a few sneak shots during low-key moments. So I think I'll lay my pro-photographer dreams to rest and exchange the SLR for something much much smaller and far less ambitious.

But I think I'll stick with the microwave I also bought recently. Not that I've ever had any great interest or talent for cooking. I cook if absolutely necessary and manage a passable meal but I suppose there beats in every modern woman's heart the hankering for a microwave. My first attempt to make something was appropriately ambitious. I youtubed a video for butter cookies (this one here) and happily mixed flour, butter, sugar and vanilla essence. While it all baked in the oven, the aroma all over the house was divinely mouthwatering. When I took them out though, the cookies were squishy and underdone, and when they had cooled down, rivalled Veronica Lodge's jawbusters! I haven't tried butter cookies again but I've popped corn, grilled cheese sandwiches, reheated and defrosted things so I still think I have the makings of a great chef yet!

My Peri-Women-O-Pause

(I wasn’t completely sure whether to blog this, not sure whether readers, especially those of my own somewhat conservative community, are mature enough to deal with an issue like this. But it’s helped me feel so much better putting things down so while I know many of my female readers may still be several years away from my experience, I have a feeling they might thank me for this one day)

Years ago I remember reading a funny article in the Readers Digest written by a man whose 12 year old know-it-all daughter once stumped him by asking, “Daddy, when did you start your menopause?” When he replied something to the effect that men don’t have menopauses, she triumphantly shut him up with, “Oh yes, they do. That’s why it’s called the men-o-pause!” Semantics apart, it’s a word that applies more commonly to the female of the species of which I’m proud to call myself one and whose life process I cannot escape.

Yes, I’m in perimenopause. Which explains the general tone of my first post of the year – dispirited, beaten, defeated, and then the tone of the second post – silly, giddy, frivolous. In those two wildly vacillating moods you get an idea of what I’m going through – see saw, Marjorie Daw, up and down and down and up.

Actual menopause starts on the 12th month anniversary of your last monthly menstrual period – in other words, a full year of no periods at all. It happens gradually since the ovaries don’t abruptly stop but slow down. That transition period is called perimenopause during which you can still get pregnant because your childbearing years are simply winding down, not stopped, and although your periods may become unpredictable, your ovaries are still functioning, and you may still ovulate though not necessarily on a monthly basis. While the average age for menopause is the early to mid 50s, it has been noted that it tends to happen earlier to women who begin menstruating early in life (such as at age 9/10/11) and to women who have never been pregnant. Perimenopause can last anything from a couple of months to ten years. It affects every woman differently so symptoms and their intensity vary, with the more common symptoms being mood swings, hot flashes, insomnia, forgetfulness, osteoporosis, incontinence and depression.

While I have no problem (touch wood) with things like insomnia or hot flashes, suddenly all my common-sense and self-confidence seem to have flown out the window and I find myself secondguessing everything people do or say. Was there a hidden meaning in that? Did they really mean this or that? Was it because of this or that? My self-esteem is shot and so are my nerves.

A good friend and colleague once told me about the problems she’d had during her perimeno. She said she often felt isolated, that she’d come to work and feel like nobody wanted to talk to her. As she mentioned that, I remembered a time when she’d just morosely sit all by herself and never join in all the staff room chatter. Well, I feel exactly like that often now. While before I might have casually joined in any conversation, now I think umm no no, I don’t think they want to talk to me, don’t want to be with me, and just can’t summon up the confidence to approach anyone unless they come and actually sit and talk to me.

My friend tells me it’s all in the mind and it probably is, but when you’re hardgripped by hormonal putdownitis, everyone and everything just seems totally daunting, unfriendly and hostile. You go out and every other female seems so vivacious and alive, bubbling over with confidence and good health while you feel frumpy, dowdy, stupid and slow-witted. Thanks to the estrogen level drop, your skin goes into sand desert mode overdrive and no matter how much you moisturize or take pains to dress, there’s always something wrong with the end product so you can hardly stand to look in the mirror.

Even worse is the reality check mood that got me bad earlier this year. The so this is you and this is where you stand and what have you achieved in life to show for it stink bomb. That really sank me when I thought of everything I have not achieved and probably never will. I got out of it only when someone pointed out what I have already achieved – like my reasonably well-paying job. That kind of negative thinking and brooding over the impossible is dangerous since it could even get you into suicidal mode.

As I was writing all this, it struck me suddenly that all of this is very similar to adolescent angst, puberty blues or teenage stress. The physiological changes accompanied by all the hormonal psychological disturbances, when you feel the ground you’re standing on has suddenly shifted and you’re falling through space, and you’re not sure about anything anymore. So even if men don’t go through menopause, they ought to be able to relate to the emotional rollercoaster that goes with the territory. When something major is happening within your body, it naturally follows that everything goes out of sync because the human body is so intricately complex. As the psalmist put it, “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works.”

A final note: talking with people who have gone through similar experiences is always therapeutic, and I am truly grateful for the network of friends, neighbours, relatives, colleagues, you get the idea, who have shared either their personal ordeals and know-how or that of their mothers. It’s always reassuring to know you’re not alone in the dark.

Dejunkin' a Dresser Drawer

mismatched earstuds

dusty bottles of stale perfume

an empty jar of ecollagen

plastic-coated hairclasps

broken-toothed french combs

a box of white petroleum jelly still in its protective sheath

a dark-eyed peacock feather

l'oreal liss control long past its expiry

a gift tag saying merry christmas. love you lots.

bracelets in skin tones and sky blue and aqua,

silver and gilt-edged worn off in places

economy packs of neosporin and dipsalic

sunblocks in lotion, cream and gel

button strays

cds

a candle

dust whorls

hair strands

dog fur

and this is just the top drawer

wonder what's in the other three?

PS: After my last blog post, some folks seem to have pegged me down as being in some kind of deep dark depression. Not quite. Mood swings is the more correct term. Anyway, it made me remorseful enough to post something more lighthearted to say hey I'm ok.

Sunrise, Sunset and the In-Between (Midlife Crisis Blues)

And so a new time frame begins. Seems like only a couple of years ago that everyone was talking about the problems of things not being Y2K compatible but all that's ten years down the line already. Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset, and in between those two eternals, our lives are seamlessly spun out.

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,

The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,

Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,

And after many a summer dies the swan.

Much as I usually try not to think or sound negative, I feel incredibly aged this year. The immortal lines of Eliot's Prufrock, learnt a long lifetime ago when the world was still sunny and warm and bright with promise, speak for me.

No, I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me.

When a Number is Up

I've sometimes wondered what it must be like to have numbers on your cell phone of friends who die. Do you hit the delete button? Make a quick clean break? Or do you keep them and hang on for old times' sake?

In the five years since mobile phone connectivity came into my life with a major bang, not one contact on my list has died. Surprising since so many blood relatives and acquaintances have passed on in that time. That changed today though. Sawmtea, aged 28, and much too young to die, passed away this afternoon of heart failure. His was a number I often hit for help and information about my internet and cellphone connections since he'd helped me with both. He knew strings to pull and often had strictly confidential updates about new plans and schemes BSNL had in the oven which he'd gleefully tell me in hushed tones. You will be missed, my friend. And I think I'll keep you on my phone for a while yet.

Of Expectations

Why

do our expectations
of those we love
heighten so heavily
it strains the fragile bond
sometimes almost
to breaking point?

From the outside looking in

Ever have that outsider desperately wanting to belong feeling on coming across an invitingly cozy cocoon of light, warmth and comfort on a cold dark night?