Chp 68. Pain!

Angels in black descended from the dark skies. The death knell is rung in a distance, a low monotone of life slowly being squeezed out…

All I feel now is deep excruciating pain. A remorse of the deepest degree. Heaven hath no rage like love to hatred burns. All senses within me are dead numb. The very last piece of emotion left within me shattered into a million pieces.

Love? Haha it is only the foolish who falls in love, and I, had the honour of sitting on its throne. How can emotions grow so strong that everything I do is now affected by it? Nauseas. Lose of appetite. Insomnia. Lose of all senses around me. Everything in slow-motion, spinning around me slowly, like the endless twirl of a bad marijuana trip. Now and then I had to take a deep breath and pinch myself, just to see if this is all but a bad dream. A nightmare personified.

Pain seems to be lurking in every corner. Everything that I do or see or hear – all I feel now is pain. The pictures of us together, the songs that we both used to love, the memories of the great time I had with her… all filled with pain now. A pain that just doesn’t seem to go away no matter how hard I try to erase from my mind.

You play with fire, you get burnt. I fell in love and now my soul is consumed in flames. All the fires of Hell are nothing compared to this fire raging within me.

I promised our closest common friends that I will not write about what happened the past few days on my blog. But I just cannot let things locked up forever like this... it’s eating me alive slowly, worse than cancer, killing the very essence of hope within me. I need an outlet. I need to take it all out from my system, otherwise I don’t think I can go another day living like this. Ofcourse I will spare the complete details. That is something personal and just because we are no longer together doesn’t mean I have the right to break the trust that we once had. No matter how much pain she has brought upon me, I will always respect her and… care for her.

Looking at my blog pains me even more. I’ve written about how I first met her, how I started falling in love with her, how she had come into my life and changed everything, how much I miss her, her birthday, the names that we might give to our children… every chapter about her is now a chapter of agony. But all these also made me realize one thing, that it is indeed better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all. Atleast she gave me the best couple of months that I had ever known. For the short time that she was mine and I was hers, I got a taste of what Heaven actually feels like.

I guess sometimes, things never turn out the way one expects. No matter how sure you think things are, it can always blow up right in your face. I was warned by my closest friends not to get a tattoo of her name on my arm. But even though I knew the uncertainty of any relationship, I was willing to take that risk. Because, speaking to her everyday and spending time with her, I knew deep inside that she was the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. Nobody has been able to make me this happy and complete in my entire life. Unfortunately, this feeling was not reciprocated. There was this great dream I always had. That one day, when I am old and retired, I would imagine myself sitting by the fireplace on my rocking chair surrounded by my grandchildren. And they would ask “Granpa granpa, please show us your tattoo again” and I would gladly roll up my sleeve and show them my wrinkled arm with a faded “Eve” still on it. And they would go “wow… that’s granma!” And I would once again tell them the story about the time I got this tattoo when granma and I were still dating and how I took that risk because I knew she was the one for me. And granma who is sitting opposite to me, would take a brief moment to look up from her busy knitting and smile at me, still looking as beautiful as ever… I think that is the problem with me. I dream too much. And sometimes I live in my dream, not wanting to wake up. Or maybe I am not able to differentiate between what is real and what is not.

Even though it’s going to take a lot of time to heal, one day I may find love again. Until then, let this tattoo be here, to remind me that, yes, I fell in love once, and yes, I got burnt too. Let this tattoo remind me that things always don’t turn out the way you expect, and people who you love the most can also be the ones who hurt you the most. When I broke up with my first girlfriend, I lost complete faith in love for almost two years. I never thought I’ll fall in love again. Until I met Eve. And now its deja-vu time all over again. But I am not going to go through what I went through before, because looking back at my life then, all I did was torture myself and brought misery upon my life. Let this tattoo be here to give me hope and remind me that there is such a thing called love and that it will cross my path once again.

Until then, I am off to Mumbai. Will stay with my sister there. I need some time alone, just to be by myself. No new mobile connection. No internet. I will not be updating my blog for a pretty long time. Time is a great healer they say… hence that’s the medication I am going to take. Goodbye everyone. And I wish you all the best in whatever you’re doing. God Bless.

Chp 67. UPSC

Wrote my UPSC Pre-lims exam today.

“Wrote” would be overstating it. Actually I slept through-out my UPSC exams. Why? Because I bloody stayed awake the whole of last night. Everytime I close my eyes, she is there. No matter how hard I try to replace her smile, she just keeps popping back. I tossed and turned from 11pm to 7am this morning. Gawdddd….

So I said screw it, got up from bed, took a long cold shower, and went to my exam centre directly. Just 9 out of 25 candidates turned up at my allotted exam-room. Morning paper – Economics. Everytime I came across the terms elasticity, demand and supply curve, price discrimination, marginal rate of substitution etc, pictures of my Eco Prof (Prof. Aapte, IIMB Director) flashed through my head. Oooooooh scary thought! Brrrr… But slowly… before I knew it… bang!!! my head crashed on the table… sleep! Much deprived sleep. Coming back to me now. It felt like a huge chaotic Mongolian horde invasion that I could not hold back. Everything around me slowly started becoming more and more blurry. I started seeing two pencils in my hand… three… four… blank. As if an over-dose of sedatives had been pumped right up my ass. My answer sheet slowly started fading away… no matter how hard I pinched myself or slapped my face, the urge to sleep completely overwhelmed me. Somehow managed to answer a few questions here and there…

Lunch break – 3 hours. Went directly to my fren Thaarie’s place. Her house was the closest from my exam centre. Dozed off to sleep immediately on her couch. Later she woke me up after 2 hours and made this really nice lunch for me, really sweet of her. After lunch, I went back to my exam centre immediately.

Afternoon paper – General Studies. I was still falling off to sleep, but then I was awake for a much longer period than during the morning’s session. Managed to answer more questions too. After the exam, 3 guys came up to me and ask some doubts from the question paper, whether the Archaelogical Monument found in Manipur is Bishnupur or Sisupalgarh, another 3 asked me if the handicraft of Nagaland is “Mon” or “Pasigat” while another guy asked me what is the total area of Sikkim. Aaaaargh. Why why why. Just because I look like these people, doesn’t mean I know everything about them. I am from Mizoram but have been in South India all my life. geeez I face this everyday… I usually could handle it, but with all the stress and despair I was going through today, I just felt like grabbing a bazooka and shooting everything on sight.

So that’s it. Me and UPSC. Something that I will never do again. A sheer waste of time and money. Gonna give management one more shot.

Chp 66. Mizo names

Me was just talking to my gurl a few hours ago. Just a couple of casual conversations, the usual lovers’ chitchat Suddenly we shifted to what names we should give to our children incase things work out fine between us (fingers crossed). She wanted to give an English Christian name along with the mizo name. I was like, comon I don’t have an English name and see how fine I’m doing. Everybody just loves to call me “Kima”. But she really wanted to have a Biblical name as a part of our kid’s name so I gave in. But I did try to discourage her by suggesting strange Biblical names like Nebuchadnazzar, Herod, Abishalom, Melchizedek, Baalathbeer etc but she saw right through what I was trying to do and so I stopped (Gawd I just love her soooo much).


But there was one thing we both agreed to. We are NEVER going to name our children with the mizo word “faka” and “dika” in it. No way are we going to have a “Lalfakawma” or “Zofakzuala” or “Lalrindika”. In Mizo, they sound very decent indeed, but not in english!

Any Mizo with a “fak” or “dik” in his name immediately becomes the butt of all jokes when he or she mingles with his/her non-mizo friends. Imagine someone named “Faka”. You would love to make fun of that wouldn’t you? And this aint the worst part. In Mizo, we add a prefix “ma” to call someone more lovingly. Like, people dear to me sometimes call me Ma-kima. Can you even imagine the riot it will cause when your Mizo friend is named Mafaka????

Apart from a “fak” or a “dik”, I guess any Mizo name is alright. Ofcourse there are always exceptions. Like my friend Jimmy. His full name is Jimmy Zochhuanawma Ralte. He was in the basketball team and recently we won a tournament. So there was this prize distribution ceremony during the School Assembly. Since his name was pretty long, it was cut short. The MC announcing the names, removed the last part of his name “anawma”. Hence it became “Jimmy Zochhu”!!!! Imagine someone saying that out loud infront of the whole school on the microphone! We Mizos couldn’t stop laughing the moment it was announced! Because in my language, Zochhu actually means “a Mizo female genitalia”!

For most Mizos who have a Christian English name before their Mizo name like Michael, John, Stephen, Mary, Esther etc life is much more easier for them than other Mizos who just have plain Mizo names. For example, they never get to hear “Huh? Come again?” when they say out their name. Nor do they have to deal with sly snickers from the person you’ve just told your name. And then ofcourse there are the other breed of Mizos who have English names, but nothing related to the Bible, like Osbourne, Stacy, Tracy, Emily, Jimmy, Robert, Jenny etc. Nice names I agree. But I just can’t help it, because whenever I come across such people, images of my favorite standup comedian Russel Peters immediately appears in my head. He pointed at a Chinese guy who had just introduced himself as Steve and sarcastically said, you’re right, that’s a Steve right there!

There was even a time when I actually thought of taking a legal action against the Government. If you have noticed, in most forms, like application to College, entrance exams, job applications, registration forms etc there is always a compulsory First name, Middle name and Last name field. Now Most of us Mizos don’t have such names. A Mizo with an English name would use his English part as the First name, his Mizo name as the Middle name, and his tribe name as the Last name. But people like us with no English name are left dumbstruck. So, what I used to do was, use “Vanlal” as my first name and “Ruatkima” as my middle name, even though Vanlalruatkima is one single name. No harm done yet. But slowly, the tables turned. As it was considered the proper etiquette to formally address a person by his middle/last name first followed by his first name, my name soon became “Ruatkima Vanlal” which made absolutely no sense (Its like changing "Subramanium" to "Nium brama Su" or "Amitabh" to a "Tabh Ami"). All my sports and educational certificates were soon awarded to a Mr. Ruat Kima Vanlal. Lucky guy. Hence I really felt it was kinda discriminatory to have a compulsory First, Middle and Last name field on such important Forms.

Anyway, I guess the bottom line is, it’s really important to consider various other languages first before naming your child. Look at me for example. I don’t wanna be asked “Do you know that kheema actually means mince meat?” for the rest of my life!

- Kima.

Chapter Interlude: Arsenal & Champions League

It’s 3 AM here in Bangalore. Arsenal has just beaten ManCity 3-1, right after trashing Sunderland 3-0 three days ago. Just one point behind Spurs now and one game remaining for both. Coming Sunday it’s going to be a fight for CL spot. Arsenal Vs Wigan and Spurs Vs West Ham. Both easy matches. For Arsenal, it’s a must win.

Various outcomes:

Arsenal lose, Spurs lose : Spurs are through to CL.
Arsenal lose, Spurs win : Spurs are through to CL.
Arsenal lose, Spurs draw: Spurs are through to CL.

Arsenal draw, Spurs lose : Arsenal are through to CL (on goal difference).
Arsenal draw, Spurs win : Spurs are through to CL.
Arsenal draw, Spurs draw: Spurs are through to CL.

Arsenal win, Spurs lose : Arsenal are through to CL.
Arsenal win, Spurs win : Spurs are through to CL.
Arsenal win, Spurs draw: Arsenal are through to CL.

Hence it’s a 6:3 odd against Arsenal. So incase Arsenal don’t make it to fourth place, the only hope they have is to beat Barca on 17th June (CL Finals) if they want to qualify for the CL spot next year. And yes ofcourse they are going to beat Barca. Its going to be one Hell of a match.