Chp 841. Anti-Tobacco Songs

Good morning everyone from the beautiful hamlet of Neihbawih.

It's hard to believe that we're already in the month of December! As we were all preoccupied with various CoVid-19 lockdowns and face-mask regulations, time flew really fast. Wooosh.

For a very long time, Mizoram had the unique status of being the only Indian state with no CoVid-19 related deaths, until 28th October, when we got our first fatality due to this pandemic. But even then, as of today, 3rd December 2020, there are a total of 6 fatalities due to CoVid-19 in Mizoram, which is still far better than all the other Indian states where the numbers are in double, triple, quadruple and even quintuple digits!

And this is the part that baffles me.

I mean, yes, for a long time Mizoram enjoyed the status of being the only Indian state with no positive cases. And even after we got our first positive case, we still had the lowest infection and community spread rate in India. All that is because of our impressive ability to obey the lockdown rules and maintain strict social distancing as well as utmost regard for public health safety, all coordinated by the well efficient Village and Local Level Task Forces.

But once a person in Mizoram is infected, doesn't that put him or her in the same playing field as an infected person from Kerala, Punjab or West Bengal? Once infected, everybody's kept under the same (or similar) treatment, so why is there such a disparity in fatality rate?

If you look at today's current data [source: covidindia.org], Mizoram (3847 cases, 3572 recovered) has a recovery rate of 92.8%, and this is quite consistent across all states. Even Maharashtra, the state with the largest infection (18,32,176 cases, 16,95,208 recovered) has a recovery rate of 92.5%. But when it comes to fatality rate, Mizoram stands at 0.1% whereas Maharashtra is at 2.6%, with the national average being 1.4%.

I find this fact quite phenomenal because CoVid-19 is known to affect people with pre-existing conditions the most, and Mizoram has the dubious distinction of leading India when it comes to cancer. We are the largest consumer of tobacco related products in India, in terms of per capita consumption, mostly because smoking and other vices aren't considered taboo by most families in our Mizo society.

Thankfully, that trend has changed now, with more and more youngsters of today abstaining from cigarettes out of their own volition. Back during my teenage days, many of us started smoking due to peer pressure and the fear of not "fitting in", but the Mizo teens of today are so much wiser and way better informed. Kudos to them.

Earlier this year, just before the CoVid-19 outbreak, my uncle Dr. Malsawma had released 4 songs that he himself had composed, with the hope that it will create more awareness about the dangers of tobacco among our Mizo community. Those songs were performed beautifully by the much talented Ramhlun South YMA Choir.

The launch event was held at Synod Conference Centre, Mission Veng, on 19th February. A lot of family members, friends, well-wishers and colleagues in the medical profession turned up for the event.

My uncle immediately opened his speech with the grim news that Mizoram not only led India in cancer but we were also number #1 in terms of tongue cancer (male), lung cancer (male and female), breast cancer (female) stomach cancer (male and female), hypopharynx cancer (male), and gland cancer (male), not to mention we were also second and third in other specific cancer categories as well.

Yeah, that was reassuring. :P

But he stated the hard facts, and the truth may not always be palatable, whether we like it or not. Unlike people who call news that are not in their favour as "FAKE NEWS!", this is something we should all accept and try to rectify.

Dr. R. Thangliana, our Minister of Health & FW too delivered a fine speech on the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle free from tobacco and alcohol for the betterment of Mizoram. 

The launch ceremony was then officially initiated.

This was followed by the talented Ramhlun South YMA Choir performing the songs on stage, one at a time. In between each performance, there were other programs held on stage.

Overall, there were 4 songs, all performed by Ramhlun South YMA Choir. Though all the lyrics were written by my uncle, other people composed the tune. The four songs were:

1. "Cancer Thlentu", composed by Pu Lalrokima, Ramhlun South, about Cancer awareness.

2. "Sikserh Ralpui", composed by Pu Lawmzuala, Durtlang, about Malaria awareness.

3. "Sim Rawh Aw (Zu Put Put Suh)", composed by Pu Lalrokima, about Cancer awareness.

4. "TB Doral Lian", composed by Pu Lalrokima, about Tuberculosis awareness.

I listened in awe to each song.

By the way, yes, the above photo looked deserted but that was only because my cousins who were all sitting next to me went outside to take a short smoking break during the ongoing anti-smoking programme. Yeah, that was super ironic! :D

Dr. Samuel, husband of my cousin Lalnui and my uncle's son-in-law delivered the vote of thanks to conclude the launch event.

Ramhlun South YMA Choir once again came on stage to perform the remaining songs. I really like how they took the trouble of changing their uniforms to perform different songs. :)

Below is a short sample of the songs they performed that day, taken from my mobile phone (the official music videos are posted further below). Turn up your volume, do listen to these amazing songs.

Though all the songs above were really good, my favourite wes "Sim Rawh Aw" as they sang "zu put put suh" which is a very Mizo way of describing smoking in a very criticizing way. I'm not gonna lie, I do smoke, but the song definitely gave me new encouragement to quit smoking, and I plan to quit smoking soon. 

When I posted about this event on my WhatsApp story that day, my classmates from school who are all doctors now like Dr. Thalavai Sundaram, Dr. Ranjith Kumar, Dr. Saravanan Rajamanickam etc., all responded immediately, telling me how wonderful the initiative was, and how it was much needed for us Mizos, as they told me that apparently in CMC Vellore, in the Cancer ward, there's an entire wing dedicated for just Mizo patients alone! I was like, whoah!

Once the event was over, everybody headed home, except us, because, you know, we are always special, lolz. Our dear driver back then switched on the dimmer lights by accident, and by the time the function was over, our car battery was completely drained!

Yeah it was not a funny experience at all, especially while pushing the car to "running start" the vehicle in front of all the Ramhlun South YMA Choir members. :D

My mom, sisters and nieces went home in our relatives' cars while I stayed back at the Synod Conference Centre with our driver, waiting for the Ford mechanics to come and charge the battery. Our neighbour Mawizuala was sweet enough to stay behind and give me company.

And that was the launch function that day.

A few days later, my uncle invited all the choir members of Ramhlun South YMA again for dinner at his place to show his appreciation for their music, and since we live right next door, I too was invited as the official photographer. :D :P

We arranged the chairs neatly to seat everyone.

Soon the choir members arrived one by one, and once everybody reached, the short function started, where my uncle talked about the songs he wrote and history behind each of them. My aunt Nu Zovi (who herself was an extremely talented singer back during her heydays) ended the short function with a prayer.

Nu Zovi is the eldest among my mom's siblings (my uncle being the youngest) and since she couldn't come for the launch event that day because of her age, the choir performed the songs once again specially for her. This was so sweet of them!

And then it was dinner time.

The dinner was served buffet style on their terrace upstairs.

Hungry choir members standing in line. :)

Some of you might think I was focussing on just the female choir members above, so here's a photo of the male choir members as well. :P

Chow time. I really enjoyed watching the choir members eat, because while the rest of us chewed our food with that munch munch sound, these choir members were making a Do Re Mi Fa So La... sound every time they chewed their food. :)

The man of the hour, my uncle Dr. Malsawma, eating his dinner.

Nu Zovi eating dinner on the dinning table with my cousin Lalnui.

One final group photo before they dispersed.

And that was a fulfilling end to a wonderful evening. Our souls enriched by the beauty of their songs, our stomachs satiated by the delightful dinner.

To conclude this post, here are the four Music Videos performed by Ramhlun South YMA Choir, I hope you enjoy listening to them all as much as I did, and please give the videos some love by "liking" them on YouTube.

Cancer Thlentu.

Sikserh Ralpui.

Sim Rawh Aw (Zu Put Put Suh).

TB Doral Lian.

Ps. On a totally unrelated topic, I just wanted to mention that I was finally able to display the YouTube videos above in 100% width on your desktops and laptops because I used a special CSS trick to do so, you'll find the CSS source code at h3xed site. Just giving credit where it is due. However it is still not displaying in 100% width on mobile browsers so I'll look into this matter once I go home from Neihbawih. Cheers.

Chp 840. 16 years a Blogger

As we come to the last day of November, I realized I've been blogging since November 2004, so this means I've just completed 16 years of being a consistent blogger.

I've seen a LOT of changes on this platform during these 16 years, ranging from the way we used to publish our blog posts initially, to the dynamic template options introduced, as well as other enriching features added, like CSS support system, advertisement revenue integration, comment moderation etc etc., but I'll write about those experiences if I am still alive and well by the year 2024 to mark my 20 years of blogging milestone. :D

As of now, there are just a few things I want to mention in this update.

First of all, no, blogging is not dead. :)

Sure, a lot of old time bloggers (especially among our Mizo community) have stopped blogging, some of them due to new found responsibilities like marriage, kids, jobs etc., but most people stopped blogging because of the rise of social media.

In a virtual world where people can now easily pen down their thoughts and opinions on a Facebook status update or even in a WhatsApp group discussion, people no longer have the time and energy to write lengthy content for their blogs. Not to mention people prefer viewing memes or quirky video updates rather than reading long texts, which makes blogging even more unpopular today.

Though the demise of blogging is true, there are still more than 600 million blogs as of this year 2020, out of which around 152 million blogs are said to be active with daily to weekly updates, which is still a very large number (though a vast majority of that number are from micro-blogging platforms).

So, yes, blogging is not dead. Yet.

Having said that though, for the past 16 years, I have hated this blogging platform because of the name. Why is this platform called "Blogger", of all the names? Blogger is a person who blogs, and it is a common noun. Blogger is also the name of this blogging platform, and hence a proper noun, like WordPress, Tublr, Medium etc., which are also other blogging platforms.

Very confusing, naw?

You might think the difference may not matter much, but it is a big deal, especially when you're searching online for new blog templates, tips and tricks, technical queries, statistics etc., which are specific to just this platform alone. You will keep getting other blogging platforms in the search result because of the generic name "blogger". Bad SEO indeed.

And it is even more ironic that this is one of the top products of Google, the company that redefined online search as well as SEO and SEM. :D

To make matters worse, Google's "blogger" platform uses Google's "blogpost" domain as default, hence confusing people even more on what to call this blogging platform. Should it be referred to as "blogger" or "blogspot"?

Then there was also a time when blogspot changed the domain name from blogspot.com to blogpost.in for those of us in India, hence making all our old links invalid, and then somewhere along the way, they happily changed it back to blogspot.com without telling anybody, again making all the links of the posts we had published with blogspot.in invalid once more. Aaarrghh.

Of course all that could have been avoided had we hosted our own domain name even while using this platform.

For instance, I own the domain name kima.in (as well as mawng.com too, lolz) for many many years now, but haven't really migrated my blogspot domain name to that yet, as I don't want to lose 16 years of blog links leading back to my old posts that had been hardcoded on so many different referral sources.

Bottom-line is, I'm coping and managing with all the setbacks. Overall, this is still a pretty decent blogging platform, and I like how Google generously spares maybe one or two of their precious engineers to improve the platform. :D :P

Jokes aside though, yes, we're still seeing an improvement made to this platform like once in 2-3 years, so at least it is not a shelved product. The last update was made just a few months ago.

The new changes were announced on May earlier this year and were supposed to be implemented by June, but the deadline kept getting postponed, probably due to the CoVid-19 outbreak, and finally this new change was implemented on October, which was last month. 

And I had been suffering since then. :D

Now I really appreciate the dedicated Blogger team for this much due update. As you can read from their blog, the new changes have really enhanced our blogging experience, from refreshingly new UI layout in the editor section to new stats, comments, lists, search operators improvement and so on.

But the ONE big difference is that the new post editor is no longer a WYSIWYG editor. At least not like the previous version. For my non-techie friends, a WYSIWYG editor means a "What You See Is What You Get" editor. Basically, the rich-text formatting that you type in the editor is exactly how it will appear on your website/blog.

I always write my blog first on an MS Word document, along with all the required HTML tags like inserting a link and embedding an image. And when I copy-paste the content to the previous editor, that was it. My blog post was ready. That was how I used to update my blog for the past 16 years.

In this current new editor, if I copy paste from MS Word to the "HTML view" section, then all line breaks are gone! Everything becomes one single huge paragraph, lolz. So I have to manually press enter to arrange them in the required paragraphs. And if I copy paste it to the "Compose view" section instead, the line breaks are there, thankfully, but all HTML tags are now converted into text, so I have to manually insert all links and images again! Arrgh.

The quickest solution I can think of is to add two break commands <br /> after every paragraph, as you can see from the screenshot of this blog update below.

Ahhhhh. Quite a pain right?

To be frank, I really don't mind writing all my new blog updates this way, it is not that much of a hassle. The problem arises if I try to edit my old blog posts. Remember I wrote about how Photobucket screwed me up? For 13 years, I had been using their servers to host images for my blog posts, becoming a premium customer and paying $9.99 per month because of my high bandwidth usage. And then suddenly one day, with no warning, they jacked up the monthly charge to $39.99, disabling images for those who were unable to pay that highly exorbitant fee!

Suddenly, all the images across more than 650 of my old blog posts were disabled! That was such a dick move by Photobucket. Corporate greed at its worst.

And so I moved to different hosting services like AWS and imgur, and I planned to edit all my old blog posts slowly, one by one, changing the image host and re-linking them for each of those posts.

Yeah it's gonna be a huge headache to do that while at the same time putting those two line break commands for every paragraph as well. Aaaah, such is life. Nothing comes easy.

I did write to the Blogger team about this issue, but sadly I didn't get any replies.

Ahhh, anyways, that is my rant for this blog update.

Hoping to keep seeing you visit my blog, and if you're thinking of starting your own blog, please do so, nothing is too late.

Also, if you decide to start blogging, please don't copy my style of writing on a Word doc first and copy pasting it in the editor, as that is not only a big pain (as you can see from my description above) but it is also not the proper way in which you're actually supposed to be blogging. You are expected to type directly in the online editor, and if you do that, you won't face any of the issues I am currently facing.

Why do I still do it this way then? Well, what can I say, I'm just an eccentric old fart. :)

Cheers everyone.

Chp 839. Mizo Paratha

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet."

When William Shakespeare wrote those immortalized words in "Romeo and Juliet" more than 400 years ago, little did he know that it would apply to what we Mizos call a "Paratha" here in Mizoram today. 

In Mizoram, we call what other Indians would typically call a Bhatura or Puri as Paratha, and this practice is followed by everyone, hence confusing many tourists and travellers within the state. If Shakespeare was still alive today, he would probably compose a new soliloquy, "To be paratha, or not to be..."

Welcome to the unique world of Mizoram, where we eat just two meals a day, unlike most places in India where people consume 3 meals a day. We start our day with a heavy rice-based breakfast, and end it with a heavy rice-based dinner.

As The Mandalorian would say, "This is the way". This is how it has always been for our community.

We do not have a concept of "lunch" in Mizoram, in the sense, we don't eat a heavy meal in the afternoon, and instead consume very light snacks, with options ranging from Momos, Sawhchiar (Mizo porridge), Long (lauang latika), Chhangban (sticky rice bread), Chana, Sanpiau, Chow, Roll and "Paratha".

Tourists visiting Mizoram for the first time are often perplexed by this strange phenomenon of restaurants not serving a "proper" lunch meal in the afternoons. And to add to that confusion, imagine their surprise when they finally order a paratha, only to be served something else. :D

So this is what a "paratha" looks like in Mizoram. 

Unlike other places in India where people eat breads like chapatti, naan, kulcha and roomali roti with gravy or side dishes, in Mizoram, we usually eat our "parathas" bare. The most common way to eat it is by rolling it up like an egg-roll and taking a bite, while sipping tea. That is how we like it. :)

However, it can of course be eaten with other dishes as well. As you can see in the images below, we usually eat it with "kel ek chana" which is a mini-dish made from black chickpeas (kala chana).

It is a really tasty combination, though the literal translation of "kel ek chana" is "crap of goat" chana, since the chana looks like goat's shit, lolz. Seriously, who came up with that name? I'm loving the person already. :D

So, why is our Mizo paratha not actually a paratha? How different is a paratha from, say, a puri or a bathura?

Some people say it depends on the main base, whether we are using atta (wheat flour) or maida (refined flour). However, that is not a very clear distinction because while bhaturas are usually made from maida, puris are made from atta but there are also many Puri variants made from maida too, like the popular Bengali Luchi, not to forget the ones made from both atta and maida mixture.

Likewise, when it comes to parathas, the North Indian lachcha parathas are made from atta, while the South Indian malabar parottas are made from maida. And there are different variants of parathas as well, with different types of base, stuffing, layering and other ingredients. 

But there is one very stark difference, and that is the way it is prepared. Bhaturas, puris, luchis, kachoris, etc are all deep fried in thick oil, whereas Parathas (as well as naans, kulchas, chapattis, bhakris, etc) are all heated on a pan or tawa or tandoor with little or no oil (or butter / ghee).

Our Mizo parathas, on the other hand, are deep fried in thick oil. :) 

But to quote Shakespeare and put into this context, "A paratha by any other name would taste just as good".

It doesn't matter what we call it, it is extremely tasty and it is also a popular snack ordered by various offices and departments during tea break. It goes really well with other dishes too, like for example, alu gravy...

Super yummm with paneer and peas... 

You can even enjoy it with just a chutney mix of fermented soyabeans and raja mirchi. Sluurrp! 

Or you can have it with scrambled green chilly eggs (egg-cellent!)

My favourite combination is to fry eggs and place it on top of the parathas, known as "artui chhipchhuan" in Mizo which we find in chow and fried rice preparations as well.

And finally, it goes extremely well with kabuli chana, curd and pickle too...

The above image is ironic at best because the kabuli chana is nothing but chole, and the paratha is more or less a bathura, so what you see above is actually a Chole bhatura dish. :D

So, when did we Mizos first start calling this a "paratha"?

I asked many of my friends about this, even the foodies and expert of different Mizo cuisines, as well as academicians with solid background on our Mizo history, and nobody seemed to know how this bread came to be known as "paratha".

My theory is that, after studying the ingredients and preparation method of this dish, which included spending a lot of time with different tea-stall and restaurant owners, I think our Mizo paratha is most similar to a Bengali luchi, considering that they are both made from maida, both are unleavened, both are deep fried in thick oil for a very short duration, and in both cases, the dough is also mixed with salt, baking powder, soda, etc.

The Bengali connection makes the most sense because a lot of our vegetables and dish names are derived from Bengali due to our close proximity with Assam, Bangladesh and WB. One clear example would be a samosa - while most Indians call it a samosa, we Mizos call it a "singara", because that is how Bengalis call it.

So if our paratha is actually a luchi, why did we call it a paratha and not adopt the name luchi? 

Ahhhhh I don't know. I'm as baffled as you are. Maybe we didn't like the name "luchi" because it kinda sounds like a derogatory word in Mizo? You know, "lu chi" roughly translates in Mizo to "fuckable", do pardon my French. :D

Or maybe somebody heard the name paratha on a Doordarshan movie back in the 80's, and the name stuck? Kinda like how Xerox, Band-aid, Polaroid, Walkman, Vaseline, Post-it, etc are all actually specific brand names but later became generic common names, something like that?

I mean, if I was to let my imagination run wild, I would say there once was a man called Pu Vanlalpara in Mizoram, who got drunk one night and made dough by accident, and when he flattened and rolled the dough and fried it in oil, it was extremely tasty! Neighbours loved it. Since he had spent a lot of his energy and strength (also known as "tha" in Mizo) while making it, people started calling his new discovery as "Para tha" to honour him. :D :D :P

Yeah I know, that was lame. :P

Sir Avena Renthlei, IAS from Tamil Nadu and a self-declared expert on parathas, is of the opinion that since we Mizos were never exposed to the different types of bread, we just ended up calling any flat bread as paratha. I think this makes sense too. Remember my post about "Hotel-cum-Restaurant"? In that post, I mentioned that according to many Mizo travellers, a Restaurant is a place that serves tea-snacks (like momo, paratha etc) and a Hotel is a place that serves a full course meal (rice, pork curry, bai etc).

It really doesn't matter if that is correct or not, as long as people enforce the usage through the passage of time, then it soon becomes correct. That is how language evolves in due course and linguistics will show you how within two neighbouring regions, the same object can have different names and the same name can also refer to different objects.

Likewise, in Mizoram, like it or not, that is a paratha. :)

In fact, the word "paratha" has become such a part of our Mizo vocabulary that we call people having a large and flat face as "hmai paratha" (paratha face). :D

So I hope this clears the air about parathas in Mizoram.

My intention is not to advocate for the changing of the name "paratha" but rather to keep using the name and convey to future tourists about this. When you visit Mizoram and order parathas, do know what you'll be getting on your table. :)

I'm back at our farm now writing this blog update, but last night while I was editing the cover image for this blog post on Photoshop, I was doing so while eating parathas. :D

And today, on our way to the farm, I bought parathas again to eat for tea snacks.

As you can see, the view from Neihbawih is so much better with parathas in the foreground. :D

Hope you find this update interesting and informative, and thank you for reading till the end.

I thought I'll add all the different breads I had in the past 2-3 years when I was in Pune just to highlight the different types of Indian breads, but this post was becoming too lengthy, and with bad internet signal at our farm, I decided to keep this section for another update. Anyway, I did collect some of my paratha related pics into one folder and here's a brief sneak peak...

Yeah, that's gonna be one hell of a lip-smacking update. :)

Until my next post then, good night everyone.

Chp 838. Update from Farm

So this is my first blog update from our farm. :)

Far away from the hustle and bustle of city life, perched on a secluded hilltop overlooking the idyllic hamlet of Neihbawih below, surrounded by a sea of calm and solitude, that is where I sat down as I penned down my thoughts for this blog update.

This is a land still undefiled by mankind's relentless pursuit of modernization and industrialization, a land where the nettlesome noises of vehicular horns and mechanic clatters of heavy machineries are replaced by the rhythmic chirpings of midnight crickets and melodic tweets of morning swallows. A land covered by untrodden thick forests or neatly ploughed terrace farms displaying rows of vegetable plantations.

As we had recently started the renovation of our old farmhouse along with other farm related projects, I found myself spending more and more nights at our farm.

Much as I love the natural beauty and charm of living in the farm, I must confess though, it gets super boring at night. :D

So a typical day in the farm goes like this. I wake up at around 5 AM because I love watching the morning sun shimmering over the mist covered mountains, I love observing the way the first sunrays would glitter across the morning dews, and finally, I love taking a deep breath and inhaling that fresh and pure mountain air. Ahhh, bliss!

And then the whole day I would be busy doing various farm chores. Our hired hands do most of the heavy work like digging foundation holes and clearing boulders, while I do the light work like spraying weedicides and watering our mustard leaves (it is of utmost importance not to mix up the two! :D ). There are more than enough tasks to keep me busy the entire day.

Around 5 PM, it starts to get dark and our helpers go home. By 6:30 PM we are done with dinner and everything is safely locked up. After that, there is absolutely nothing else to do, lolz.

I talked earlier about how wonderful it is to live away from civilization. Well, it is TOO far away from civilization, so mobile network is extremely bad. I have to climb the highest part of our farm to get bits and parts of cellular reception, and it is dangerous to go there after dark because of snakes and... ghosts :P And so, I can't even use my phone to check WhatsApp messages or FB timeline after dinner. This will especially be tougher for people suffering from FOMO, the Fear Of Missing Out.

We don't have a TV either because there is no cable service in this area. There may be a few things to do and pass the time with had I been staying here with my friends, but with my companions being my mom, nieces and maid, those things are out of the question :D And so my only form of entertainment in the night before I sleep is to read a novel, which I have been doing for some time now.

Recently, I thought, what the heck, I'm not going to be able to blog for a long time if I keep staying in the farm, and so I bought a couple of new computer parts like a spare monitor, keyboard and mouse set, UPS etc and kept half of them at the farm. And so, all I had to do was take only just my CPU to the farm and then back to home again when we return, hence minimizing my burden.

Smart move, huh? Here is my farm setup, what do you think? :)

For internet, I borrowed my sister's JioFy dongle.

The network is still pretty bad even with that, but that's ok as I'm already prepared for a setback. Worse comes to worst, I'll just write my blog update on a Word document on my newly setup farm computer (for which I don't need internet), copy that document to my phone, climb up the hilltop where there is mobile data network coverage and simply update my blog from there. Yeah it is quite a roundabout, but it works, as you can see from this update. :)

I guess this is how I'll be updating most of my new blog updates from now on...

And the funniest thing is, THIS is exactly how I used to update my blog when I first started blogging! I've been blogging from 2004, and back then, mobile internet was unheard of (the closest we had to mobile internet back then was WAP, Wireless Application Protocol, not to be confused with that "song" by Cardi B) and most of us couldn't afford an internet connection at home as well, and so I spent at least the next 5 years of blogging by writing on my home PC, copying that document to a pendrive, and then rushing to a nearby Cyber Cafe to update my blog with that file, lolz.

It's so ironic because I have come in full circles again. :D

I have a lot of interesting tales to share with you about my farm experience, which I will in the coming days. From chasing rats in the middle of the night because they refused to let me sleep, to dismantling a honeycomb that bees happily constructed between our toilet walls, the exploits are endless. 

So do stay tuned for more as I'll bring to you the adventures of the accidental farmboy. :D

Cheers everyone, until next post.

Chp 837. One Year of Unemployment

Exactly one year ago today, November 15th 2019, I quit my job as a game designer, bidding farewell to the Corporate World for the rest of my life.

Yes, I still can't believe it's already been a year!

Everything felt like it was just a few weeks or months ago when that happened, with memories of me having my last corporate lunch or peeing for the last time in our office toilet still so fresh in my mind.

For those of you interested, you can go through the drama of my last day of employment by clicking this link - Chp 787. Goodbye, Corporate World.

Going through the above post again now makes me feel quite nostalgic. That is a life I will never have again, permanently etched in the galleries of my blog, filed under "work experience". Scratch that. It wasn't just a work experience for me, it was my life experience.

Waking up this morning and opening my Facebook feed to see this "memory" notification really jolted me out of my dreamy state.

But the biggest shock for me is realizing it had been an entire year since all that happened.

How did time fly by so freaking fast?

Well, the answer is simple. CoVid-19 happened.

As most of us spent the better part of this year being kept in lockdowns or under travel restrictions, we ended up having very few memorable moments to remember. Our human brain is wired in such a way that we tend to measure time by the amount of memories we had.

Because of CoVid-19, most of us were at home, doing the same stuff (watching TV, baking bread, reading novels etc) over and over again. Some of us were taking online classes or attending online classes, with no real exposure to the experience of travelling to school or college and meeting friends and laughing etc. Others were WFH - Work From Home, attending zoom calls and completing tasks without actually meeting any colleagues.

In a way, our lives became one monotonous cycle that kept repeating perpetually. There were almost no family outings or dinner parties, no birthday or wedding celebrations, no visits to the pubs or clubs, no church services or prayer fellowships, not even school and college classes, everything felt like we were stuck in oblivion, unable to progress, bound by invisible shackles around our ankles.

But as the late Freddy Mercury once sang, "Time waits for nobody". Time... just kept going. We didn't.

And that's how time flew by so fast, how one year of me being unemployed had gone by just like that. Poof with the wind.

[Pic source: "The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dalí]

But as all my friends and family members told me, I am the luckiest son of a beep they know of, because all my life I had been living outside Mizoram, and then when I finally packed up my belongings and moved back to Mizoram for good, this pandemic happened. :D

I'm not joking about the pandemic, nor am I taking it lightly, but it sure feels good and extremely reassuring for me to be with my family at times like this. Had it been any other year, I wouldn't even be in Mizoram, and my family would have been worried sick about me. Likewise, I, them.

I hope this whole CoVid-19 situation gets better soon. Too many people are affected by it, not just medically but financially as well. Doesn't matter if you are infected or not, the lockdowns and various restrictions will affect you, especially if you are living paycheck to paycheck.

Praying for Mizoram and the World.

See you again on my next update. Love and Prayers.