Who is a stud? The exact definition may differ from culture to culture, but at the end of the day, a stud is one who is surrounded by women or can easily be with any chick he wants. As the universal Bro Code aptly puts it – A stud is respected by all other Bros.
Yes you may find this post a tad sexist. Like how my friend Jerusha would say, “If a girl sleeps with different men, she is labeled a whore, but if a guy sleeps with different women, he is called a stud? That’s not fair!” Or as my friend Amos would say, “If a girl sleeps with different guys, she is called a whore, but if I do the same, then suddenly I am called gay? That’s not fair!”
A stud is a guy other guys respect, especially by us nerds and geeks. While we slogged our asses off during engineering exams, he was constantly on the prowl, always in the company of women. We respected him and envied him at the same time. “Don’t worry nerds, study hard for your exams and you will get all the bitches you want later,” he would tell us, as he took the assignment we did for him with one hand, and held the hottest girl in college with the other hand.
Oh we hated him right then. Because we didn’t want any female dogs. Why the hell would we want female dogs? We just wanted to speak to women, that’s all. But even though we never actually understood him, one thing’s for sure – We may have hated him, sometimes even loathed him, but at the end of the day we respected him!
In our Mizo culture, the word we use for such a person is “Luck”. Yes, it is derived from the English word, and it means exactly that. “Tlangval luck” means a guy who has a lot of women admirers or one who has no difficulty appealing to the opposite sex. There is hardly any moment in his life when his relationship status remains “single”.
In Mizoram, things are different.
I still remember being asked by a friend in Bangalore when he saw me play a riff of “Hotel California” and end it with the intro of “Sweet Child of Mine” – “Dude! You’re bloody amazing with the guitar! You must be having a lot of chicks after you, back in Mizoram huh?” Hahaha! Nopes. In Mizoram, women don’t give flying crap if you play the guitar or whether you're in a rock band. Because 90% of the guys can play the guitar over there. It’s as if we were all born with our fingers clutching an A minor chord and the first time we cried in the hospital bed, we probably did so in tonic sol-fa.
Nah, things are different in Mizoram. There are actually different time periods when a person with a particular designation was considered a stud. Every profession had an era of being deemed a “Tlangval luck”.
Here are some of them, and the reason why many Mizo children (like me) had once upon a time dreamt to become just like that person, so that we too would be surrounded by women. Ah… the dreams of a folly youth!
1. The TV Antennae Twister
This is as far as I can remember. During the early 80’s, Mizoram, which was not even a state then, was just starting to develop. The insurgency led by the MNF was slowly coming to an end, and few “privileged” people started buying TV sets. There was only Doordarshan channel back then, but Mizoram being situated on a high altitude and lying between Burma and Bangladesh, we could get (free) channels from Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, and even Korea, simply by adjusting our TV antennae reception!
That’s where the Antennae twister stepped in. He’s usually around 20-25 years old, jobless, clean shaven, smokes like hell, skinny, and really got a badass talent of climbing up the roof and twisting the TV antennae to find a particular channel. Women used to sigh in admiration as he twist and twist and twist… androgenic sweat dripping off him as he turned the antennae… switching from Burmese channel to Korean to Bangladesh… ahhh… ohhhh… ahhh…
Watching the women squirm in ecstasy, that was when a lot of kids decided they wanted to become just like the antennae twister when they grow up. And maybe that’s why a lot of guys started training by practicing with their little antennas first…
2. Driver/Handyman
The mid 80’s saw the signing of the Mizoram Peace Accord, and Mizoram became a state. Employment rate started growing and more and more people bought vehicles. Of course people who had vehicles were considered affluent, but they were not considered “Tlangval luck” because most of them were married and had a family. But the drivers were not. And boy oh boy, they had all the women!
Whether you drove a private vehicle or a government vehicle, being a driver was the new definition of being a stud. My dad was working in the Power & Electric department then, and I used to go with him during his tours across Mizoram. He usually moved in a convoy of 4-5 vehicles. And during those tours, I spent more time with the drivers, probably because I have three elder sisters and no brother, so they were like the elder brothers I never had.
During the tours, I used to just sit with them and listen to their campfire stories as they exchanged stories about their conquests and sexcapades, about the many virgins they "conquered" at this village and that village etc. And they weren’t just bullshitting. Wherever we went, while my dad and other senior officers were working inside the local office, these drivers always managed to find a village damsel they could take to their rooms. I was young then, but I understood.
And the best part about being a driver was that sometimes many of these drivers, especially truck drivers, had handymen. The handyman acted as the wingman. Now what better ways to score than having the stud reputation of a driver with an equally cool wingman! Ah, it was Paradise for them. That was definitely their era. In my mind, the studification process started right then.
So after we got back from one of those tours, I told my mom I wanted to become a driver when I grow up. She nearly had a heart attack. Strangely, my dad never took me along on his tours again…
3. SDO/JE
With more employment opportunity and Government sectors opening, the late eighties saw a sudden surge in a new stud category – the SDOs and JEs. The SDO (Sub Division Officer) and JE (Junior Engineer) bachelors were the center of attraction at every function, regardless of whether they were in the P&E dept, PWD, PHE, etc.
Maybe it was because of their lifestyle and the way they partied, even till today, if you go to any Mizo house party, people will be doing the “SDO dance”. And yes, to have an SDO or JE son-in-law was the desire of many Mizo parents back then.
4. Doctor
During the 90s, the stud crown was passed on to the doctors. Hell yeah, they not only saved lives, but made lives, if you know what I mean. They were that “lucky”.
In fact, I think more than the girls, it was the mother of the girl who was more in love with the doctors – most of them would do anything to make sure their daughter married a doctor. Now this kind of fight and attention, every guy loves, right? And so, many of us slogged hard for various medical entrance exams, hoping to become a stud one day too.
In addition to that, I was hooked to Robin Cook novels those days, so I really used to think doctors had an extremely glamorous lifestyle. After school, I was probably the only Mizo guy who had never even kissed a girl, and the ambition of becoming a doctor only became stronger.
But then, after the entrance exam results came out, I got into Guahati Medical College (GMC) which is a well reputed college, but I got a much higher rank in the Engineering entrance exam – So after much consultation and contemplation, I told myself – Ahhhh chuck it. I’m a nerd. And I’ll always remain a nerd. I’ll die alone, unknown, unconquered, unridden. Let the other guys enjoy, maybe this is my fate.
And so with a heavy heart, I said goodbye to GMC, lost the opportunity to become a stud, and dwelled even deeper into NerdDom and became a Computer Science Engineer. After graduation, I went back to Mizoram and everybody thought I took a four year course on how to install Windows. Now which mother would want their daughter to marry somebody like that huh?
5. Pastor
Ahhh now this is one stud who isn’t a badass and yet commands deep respect. He’s the apple of every mother’s eyes, the gem of the locality, and sometimes even the entire local community would go around searching for a fitting bride for him!
Take this scenario for example. Guy comes across a beautiful hot girl. He asks people around about her, and learns that she is extremely homely, devoted to God, sincere, honest, and all other things nice and sweet. He doesn’t think, “Dayymm, I gotta nail that” or “I gotta marry her”. Instead, the first thought that comes to his mind is, “Yeah, she’s perfect for our Pastor. I gotta fix them up!”
See, that’s how Pastors roll. Wicked! You come across such a girl and you do not hope that she likes you. Instead, you hope that she likes your Pastor! See? Bros before Hopes! Yeah, even the Bro Code works perfectly fine here.
6. IAS
IAS (and recently MCS) bachelors are another batch of studs who have no difficulty in finding a partner. I think they are currently the reigning stud-pions in Mizoram.
Line up a couple of suitors for the hand of a girl, and the one with an IAS designation will blow every competition away for miles. They are like the Terminator of bachelors, powerful and feared. Some are humble, some are badass, and some are humbly badass. All in all, they rock!
Conclusion:
So where do we copywriters stand in the stud ladder? Well, for the fact that most people in Mizoram will not even know what I actually do for a living (the term “copywriter” does sound like somebody who spends his whole day in a government office copying files and writing them out manually into a new document right?), I guess we don’t even make it to the ladder.
...which reminds me of that animation “Shark Tale” (with the voice of Will Smith) –
Sykes: Now I have to pay Don Lino protection, so everything you owe me, you owe him!
Oscar: How do you figure that?
Sykes: Simple - the food chain!
[Pulls out chart]
Sykes: On top there's Don Lino, there's me, there's regular fish...
Oscar: And that's me!
Sykes: No. There's plankton, there's single-celled amoebas...
Oscar: And then me!
Sykes: I'm getting there, I'm getting there... There's coral, there's rocks, there's whale poop, and then there's you.
Oscar: That's messed up.
Yup, in the Stud hierarchy within Mizoram, we copywriters are so messed up. Hehe…
Maybe there’s an important lesson in this. If you want to be a stud, then be one. Remember the old saying, “Nice guys finish last”? Yup that is so true. If you want to be a nice guy, that’s well and good, but don’t regret finishing last. I wanted to be a stud when I was younger too, but later chose the nerd path. And now, I am definitely not regretting that decision at all. What matters in the end is, regardless of who you are, are you happy? Once you learn the importance of happiness and job satisfaction, being a stud suddenly becomes insignificant.
Friday cheers! :)
Yes you may find this post a tad sexist. Like how my friend Jerusha would say, “If a girl sleeps with different men, she is labeled a whore, but if a guy sleeps with different women, he is called a stud? That’s not fair!” Or as my friend Amos would say, “If a girl sleeps with different guys, she is called a whore, but if I do the same, then suddenly I am called gay? That’s not fair!”
A stud is a guy other guys respect, especially by us nerds and geeks. While we slogged our asses off during engineering exams, he was constantly on the prowl, always in the company of women. We respected him and envied him at the same time. “Don’t worry nerds, study hard for your exams and you will get all the bitches you want later,” he would tell us, as he took the assignment we did for him with one hand, and held the hottest girl in college with the other hand.
Oh we hated him right then. Because we didn’t want any female dogs. Why the hell would we want female dogs? We just wanted to speak to women, that’s all. But even though we never actually understood him, one thing’s for sure – We may have hated him, sometimes even loathed him, but at the end of the day we respected him!
In our Mizo culture, the word we use for such a person is “Luck”. Yes, it is derived from the English word, and it means exactly that. “Tlangval luck” means a guy who has a lot of women admirers or one who has no difficulty appealing to the opposite sex. There is hardly any moment in his life when his relationship status remains “single”.
In Mizoram, things are different.
I still remember being asked by a friend in Bangalore when he saw me play a riff of “Hotel California” and end it with the intro of “Sweet Child of Mine” – “Dude! You’re bloody amazing with the guitar! You must be having a lot of chicks after you, back in Mizoram huh?” Hahaha! Nopes. In Mizoram, women don’t give flying crap if you play the guitar or whether you're in a rock band. Because 90% of the guys can play the guitar over there. It’s as if we were all born with our fingers clutching an A minor chord and the first time we cried in the hospital bed, we probably did so in tonic sol-fa.
Nah, things are different in Mizoram. There are actually different time periods when a person with a particular designation was considered a stud. Every profession had an era of being deemed a “Tlangval luck”.
Here are some of them, and the reason why many Mizo children (like me) had once upon a time dreamt to become just like that person, so that we too would be surrounded by women. Ah… the dreams of a folly youth!
1. The TV Antennae Twister
This is as far as I can remember. During the early 80’s, Mizoram, which was not even a state then, was just starting to develop. The insurgency led by the MNF was slowly coming to an end, and few “privileged” people started buying TV sets. There was only Doordarshan channel back then, but Mizoram being situated on a high altitude and lying between Burma and Bangladesh, we could get (free) channels from Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, and even Korea, simply by adjusting our TV antennae reception!
That’s where the Antennae twister stepped in. He’s usually around 20-25 years old, jobless, clean shaven, smokes like hell, skinny, and really got a badass talent of climbing up the roof and twisting the TV antennae to find a particular channel. Women used to sigh in admiration as he twist and twist and twist… androgenic sweat dripping off him as he turned the antennae… switching from Burmese channel to Korean to Bangladesh… ahhh… ohhhh… ahhh…
Watching the women squirm in ecstasy, that was when a lot of kids decided they wanted to become just like the antennae twister when they grow up. And maybe that’s why a lot of guys started training by practicing with their little antennas first…
2. Driver/Handyman
The mid 80’s saw the signing of the Mizoram Peace Accord, and Mizoram became a state. Employment rate started growing and more and more people bought vehicles. Of course people who had vehicles were considered affluent, but they were not considered “Tlangval luck” because most of them were married and had a family. But the drivers were not. And boy oh boy, they had all the women!
Whether you drove a private vehicle or a government vehicle, being a driver was the new definition of being a stud. My dad was working in the Power & Electric department then, and I used to go with him during his tours across Mizoram. He usually moved in a convoy of 4-5 vehicles. And during those tours, I spent more time with the drivers, probably because I have three elder sisters and no brother, so they were like the elder brothers I never had.
During the tours, I used to just sit with them and listen to their campfire stories as they exchanged stories about their conquests and sexcapades, about the many virgins they "conquered" at this village and that village etc. And they weren’t just bullshitting. Wherever we went, while my dad and other senior officers were working inside the local office, these drivers always managed to find a village damsel they could take to their rooms. I was young then, but I understood.
And the best part about being a driver was that sometimes many of these drivers, especially truck drivers, had handymen. The handyman acted as the wingman. Now what better ways to score than having the stud reputation of a driver with an equally cool wingman! Ah, it was Paradise for them. That was definitely their era. In my mind, the studification process started right then.
So after we got back from one of those tours, I told my mom I wanted to become a driver when I grow up. She nearly had a heart attack. Strangely, my dad never took me along on his tours again…
3. SDO/JE
With more employment opportunity and Government sectors opening, the late eighties saw a sudden surge in a new stud category – the SDOs and JEs. The SDO (Sub Division Officer) and JE (Junior Engineer) bachelors were the center of attraction at every function, regardless of whether they were in the P&E dept, PWD, PHE, etc.
Maybe it was because of their lifestyle and the way they partied, even till today, if you go to any Mizo house party, people will be doing the “SDO dance”. And yes, to have an SDO or JE son-in-law was the desire of many Mizo parents back then.
4. Doctor
During the 90s, the stud crown was passed on to the doctors. Hell yeah, they not only saved lives, but made lives, if you know what I mean. They were that “lucky”.
In fact, I think more than the girls, it was the mother of the girl who was more in love with the doctors – most of them would do anything to make sure their daughter married a doctor. Now this kind of fight and attention, every guy loves, right? And so, many of us slogged hard for various medical entrance exams, hoping to become a stud one day too.
In addition to that, I was hooked to Robin Cook novels those days, so I really used to think doctors had an extremely glamorous lifestyle. After school, I was probably the only Mizo guy who had never even kissed a girl, and the ambition of becoming a doctor only became stronger.
But then, after the entrance exam results came out, I got into Guahati Medical College (GMC) which is a well reputed college, but I got a much higher rank in the Engineering entrance exam – So after much consultation and contemplation, I told myself – Ahhhh chuck it. I’m a nerd. And I’ll always remain a nerd. I’ll die alone, unknown, unconquered, unridden. Let the other guys enjoy, maybe this is my fate.
And so with a heavy heart, I said goodbye to GMC, lost the opportunity to become a stud, and dwelled even deeper into NerdDom and became a Computer Science Engineer. After graduation, I went back to Mizoram and everybody thought I took a four year course on how to install Windows. Now which mother would want their daughter to marry somebody like that huh?
5. Pastor
Ahhh now this is one stud who isn’t a badass and yet commands deep respect. He’s the apple of every mother’s eyes, the gem of the locality, and sometimes even the entire local community would go around searching for a fitting bride for him!
Take this scenario for example. Guy comes across a beautiful hot girl. He asks people around about her, and learns that she is extremely homely, devoted to God, sincere, honest, and all other things nice and sweet. He doesn’t think, “Dayymm, I gotta nail that” or “I gotta marry her”. Instead, the first thought that comes to his mind is, “Yeah, she’s perfect for our Pastor. I gotta fix them up!”
See, that’s how Pastors roll. Wicked! You come across such a girl and you do not hope that she likes you. Instead, you hope that she likes your Pastor! See? Bros before Hopes! Yeah, even the Bro Code works perfectly fine here.
6. IAS
IAS (and recently MCS) bachelors are another batch of studs who have no difficulty in finding a partner. I think they are currently the reigning stud-pions in Mizoram.
Line up a couple of suitors for the hand of a girl, and the one with an IAS designation will blow every competition away for miles. They are like the Terminator of bachelors, powerful and feared. Some are humble, some are badass, and some are humbly badass. All in all, they rock!
Conclusion:
So where do we copywriters stand in the stud ladder? Well, for the fact that most people in Mizoram will not even know what I actually do for a living (the term “copywriter” does sound like somebody who spends his whole day in a government office copying files and writing them out manually into a new document right?), I guess we don’t even make it to the ladder.
...which reminds me of that animation “Shark Tale” (with the voice of Will Smith) –
Sykes: Now I have to pay Don Lino protection, so everything you owe me, you owe him!
Oscar: How do you figure that?
Sykes: Simple - the food chain!
[Pulls out chart]
Sykes: On top there's Don Lino, there's me, there's regular fish...
Oscar: And that's me!
Sykes: No. There's plankton, there's single-celled amoebas...
Oscar: And then me!
Sykes: I'm getting there, I'm getting there... There's coral, there's rocks, there's whale poop, and then there's you.
Oscar: That's messed up.
Yup, in the Stud hierarchy within Mizoram, we copywriters are so messed up. Hehe…
Maybe there’s an important lesson in this. If you want to be a stud, then be one. Remember the old saying, “Nice guys finish last”? Yup that is so true. If you want to be a nice guy, that’s well and good, but don’t regret finishing last. I wanted to be a stud when I was younger too, but later chose the nerd path. And now, I am definitely not regretting that decision at all. What matters in the end is, regardless of who you are, are you happy? Once you learn the importance of happiness and job satisfaction, being a stud suddenly becomes insignificant.
Friday cheers! :)
