Chp 72. World Cup: My Team

One of the hardest things for me to do during these two Holy Months of The World Cup is selecting a team that I would cheer for.

When I was young, choosing a team was easy because those days I never got to watch much of International Football mainly due to the fact that it had a very poor coverage. After all, the only channels we used to get in our television back in Mizoram those days were Doordarshan, Bangaladesh channel, Burmese channel, and if we twist our reception antennae a bit here and there, we even used to get “Arirang” the Korean channel!

And then Star TV entered the Indian market (Those were the days when Star Plus used to air shows like Santa Barbara, Tour of Duty, Mash, Sledge Hammer, Moonlighting, Force Five etc). So even in Mizoram, people stopped watching “Chitrahaar” on Wednesday nights and Bangladesh’s “Movie of the Week” at 5pm on Fridays (*sigh* Those were truly the days! Sniff Sniff…) and switched to a more globalized version of TV entertainment.

Those days, World Cup would mean supporting for Brazil, Italy or Argentina. And regardless of what team we are supporting, most of us knew just a handful of players. Pele, Maradona, Rudd Gullit, Van Basten, Batistuta, Valderrama, Gary Lineker, Cantona, Zico and Lothar Matthaeus. I forgot which channel used to show those WC matches live, but I do remember watching it, with flags and facial paints and drums surrounded by my childhood friends and cousins.

And now, a lot of things have changed. One thing for starters, I have seen a hell lot of International matches. EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga, you name it. Hence you get to know nearly every current world class players. And I’ve also never missed a single Arsenal game for the past 3 years now. And I think this is the main reason why I’m finding it so damn hard to find “my team” in this World Cup.

And I think this problem is more or less faced by every hardcore Club supporters all over the World. Arsenal players are present in almost every team that has qualified for the league, and at the same time, players from Clubs I really hate are also there in the same team. What to do?

The other day, I was watching Argentina vs. Ivory Coast from my cozy new Mumbai flat. My roomie from Bangalore, also a hardcore Gunner fan, was all for Argentina. We were text messaging each other through out the match. I asked him how could he not support Ivory Coast which had two Arsenal players Toure and Eboue, and yet root for a team that has the likes of Riqueme that played a havoc in the Arsenal camp during our UEFA semi final and Messi from Barca who beat Arsenal in the finals and also Chelsea’s Crespo & ManUtd’s Heinze. His reply was, how could I support a team that has Drogba who scored a goal against Arsenal in both our two encounters with Chelsea last season.

So you see where I am getting at. Look at England. The defence line-up is made up of Chelsea’s Terry, ManUtd’s Rio and Arsenal’s Ashley Cole and there’s also our Sol Campbell. And so finally, yesterday I decided to keep all Club differences aside. It was indeed a hard thing to do, but I am not going to get anywhere with my loyal Arsenal vow, and we are already on day 4 of the competition. Better late than never.

And that is exactly the reason why I will not be supporting France. As I said before, at first I wanted to be behind France due to its heavy Arsenal presence, but Henry turned out to be the sole Arsenal player in the squad. Now that I have kept Club differences aside, Henry’s presence is really not enough for me to support a team. Ofcourse France has an excellent fire power in the offence area with Henry, Trezeguet, Saha, Wilthord and Cisse calling the shots and the formidable Viera at midfield (Zouzou isn’t the God he once used to be), but it would be better to have talent equally distributed in every position rather than just one spot. No team is ever going to play a 1-4-1-5 formation And other than Thuram, their defence isn’t that great compared to other teams (I don’t like Silvestre, never had, never will).

So with France out of the option, what else do I have? Man, Brazil is so freaking strong with Roberto Carlos, Cafu, Lucio, Cicinho at defence, Dida behind the gloves, Emerson, Ronaldhino, Kaka, Arsenal’s Gilberto , Juninho etc at Mid-field, Ronaldo, Adriano, Robinho as forwards. Phew! That’s one mean arsenal of players (pun not intended ). But a promise is a promise. Like I said before, the victory of a weaker team is much much more sweeter than that of one that’s sure to win. This ship ain’t sailing to Brazil.

Italy is also very strong with Del Piero, Inzaghi, Totti, Nesta, Cannavaro and the trustworthy Buffon. The same goes for Spain with Raul, Luis Garcias, David, Torres, Joaqin, Arsenal’s Reyes , Salgado, Puyol and either Casillas or Cannizares behind the gloves. But most of the other players are unfamiliar to me, and yeah, too many people I know are supporting these two teams solely because of “their good looks”. LoLz.

Finally, I came to a decision. Me and somebody I treasure deeply are both going to cheer for the Netherlands. It’s high time the Dutch glory days are revived once again. Why Holland? Because much as I hate to admit it, I really hold ManUtd’s Nistlerooy in high regards (Forgive me, my Arsenal brothers, for saying this). I consider him to be the best “poacher” ever in the history of football. And then there’s Chelsea’s Robben and Arsenal’s very own promising young Van Persie, and Van der Sar happens to be one of my favorite goal keeper (he replaced Tim Howard). Ajax’s Sneijder and PSV’s Cocu are also players not to be taken lightly. Plus the team has a lot of people named “Van”, just like me Van lalruatkima . There are exactly 6 Van’s in the current squad: Van Der Sar, Van Bronckhorst (ex Arsenal now in Barca) Van Der Vaart, Van Bommel, Van Nistlerooy and Van Persie. And I used to love their current coach when he was a player: The Legendary Van Basten himself (Who happens to be yet another Van!!! )

Ofcourse having similar name is not the only reason why I love this team. If similar name was the criteria, I would definitely go for South Korea which has 7 Kim’s in their line up: KIM Yong Dae, KIM Young Kwang, KIM Young Chul, KIM Dong Jin, KIM Jin Kyu, KIM Sang Sik, KIM Nam Il and KIM Do Heon. Man that’s a lot of KIMs. You’re definitely going to see a lot of players sporting the same name when Korea plays. And I think it is indeed a very good strategy to confuse the referee

Among the under-dogs, I am all the way behind Togo, not just because they are led by Arsenal’s very own Adebayor who is the current African leading scorer in this competition with 12 goals to his credit so far, but also because they have a very impressive team record. They beat Senegal 3-1 and a host of other Nations and this is by far one of the best under-dog team ever. Go Togo!

Chp 71. World Cup: Opening Ceremony

Beer? Check.
Bean bag? Check.
Nachos? Check.
Freshly fried prawn chips? Check.
Enough cigarettes to last me 6 hours? Check.
Emptied my bowels so that I wouldn’t have to crap during the game? Check.

Ah! Finally I was ready to watch the Greatest show on Earth, Live! Woohoo!!! The opening ceremony wasn’t as great as I expected. Everything seemed to be a little bit chaotic and unorganized. And every time those Bavarian dancers tapped their feet on the ground, I shuddered, because all I could think of was the beautiful football ground they might be damaging with their steel toed boots.

The veteran’s parade was really really nostalgic, especially when I came across people like Didier Deschamps, Maradona, Lothar Matthäus and Emmanuel Petit walking around in their Armani suits and their body resembling nothing like the athletic well built soccer icon they once used to be. Had I already started drinking, I swear to God I could have cried on seeing all of them once again, smiling with such a deep sense of satisfaction and a glimmer in their eyes telling you they had indeed achieved their dream.

What made me genuinely smile on seeing them was one particular scene when they all got together to pose for a photograph while the parade was still going on. The all huddled together and the veteran players were handing out their digital cams to the people around them asking who can click it. Lolz! Even we mere mortals do that. And the person who clicked it would suddenly want to be in the next picture so somebody already in the snap would have to sacrifice his place in the photograph and do the honours of clicking it . Deep inside, I guess we are all the same. And some of these Titans were actually using the same phone camera that you and I use everyday. In a strange and twisted way, it actually made me feel like one of them

I was a bit shocked to see Claudia Schiffer walking by the side of Pele, the Greatest football player ever in the History of the “goal duniya” (hehe sorry I couldn’t help it with that corny pun) but then she IS Germany’s hottest babe around so I can somewhat understand that. But what really shocked me last night was when I switched on my TV and went to ESPN. Tra la la la dish dish dish and all the graphical intro about Germany 2006 and then finally we were taken to the studio. Appearing there right infront of my 21” TV screen was none other than Harsha! Yes, our very own Harsha Bhogle! He was giving the welcome speech and introduction to World Cup 2006! No!!!! This can’t be it! I immediately switched to Star Sports ~ MotoGP World Championship. Zee Sports ~ Sports Café. Ten Sports ~ French Tennis Open Live. Aaaargh. So I went back to ESPN. Harsha was still on the main screen. And to make matters more inanimate, Harsha turned to his TV screen to ask an “expert” for an opinion about the World Cup, and guess who appeared? Ravi Shastri! Why why why is this happening to me?

Harsha and Shastri definitely know how to sell themselves when it comes to Cricket, but by using the same brand at a completely different market, the TV Moguls are killing the very essence of Football spirit. Please keep these two streams apart from each other. If entertaining the Indian viewer is your intention, please use some other Indians with a good Football background (one who is not affiliated to any other sports). This is sheer Product assassination. In IIMB we learnt about STP – Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning. Just because there are some people who are crazy about both Football and Cricket, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they can be targeted together because the two games do not belong in the same segment and hence must be all together positioned differently. Yes I do agree Harsha is very good at what he does, but a brand image and value can easily get exhausted when over-used especially in two completely different Markets. Kotler might term this as “confused positioning”

Atleast the appearance of Gerry Armstrong (and Richard Keys?) on the studio set made things a bit more professional. Harsha did his part well, but it could have definitely been better had it been John Dykes in that seat (No offence intended, dear Harsha). Anyway, fast forward to the game. Germany Vs Costa Rica where another great shock was waiting for me. The game kicked-off and the commentary was in Hindi!!! All of us screamed out! Where’s the freaking English commentary? Other than me, my three companion ofcourse understand Hindi perfectly, but even they admit it is very “inanimate” to watch International Football with no English running commentary. I didn’t understand Hindi at all so to me it sounded just like those lightning fast 1000 words per minute South American football commentaries . JV said we should call up the cable operator but then we realized atleast 100 guys from out locality would have to call them up to ask for a change.

I quickly text messaged my friends all over India. Amos from Bangalore said it’s in English. Mary from Delhi said it’s in Hindi. Johnny from Calcutta - English. Puia from Aizawl – English. Ravi from Chennai – English. Arjun from Pune – English. Damn, a majority of them were all getting it in English. And then suddenly, exactly on the 4th minute of the game, the cable operators switched the commentary to English! Halleluiah!!!! 100 people from my locality must have called up the Cable Operator Two goals later, Mary from Delhi smsed me saying it’s still in Hindi over there. Hahahaha! Guess that’s her problem But the text messaging did not stop throughout the game and I was in constant sms with all my friends discussing about the game. When Germany conceded their first goal, Amos from Bangalore immediately texted me “There was nothing Lehmann could have done about it” and I quickly agreed, after all, we are both hardcore Arsenal fans and woe be anybody who bitch-slap any Arsenal player. Finally at the end of the game, I got an sms from Chandigarh’s Jimmy that I have been expecting. A very short but sweet sms. “We won”.

I like Germany a lot but it has a very young team. I thought I would support for France due to its heavy Arsenal presence until I found out only Henry was the sole Arsenal player in the entire squad (Viera and Wilthord are ex Gunners and Pires is out). Hence I still haven’t decided what team I’ll be supporting for. Last World Cup I rooted for Argentina and look at where that took me. Somebody very special to me and I decided to support for Holland together but I still need to analyze the various other players first. One thing is for sure, I will definitely not be joining the Brazilian Bandwagon. Yes they are the favourites to win the cup and yes they got an amazing fire power. But the victory of a weaker team is much much much more sweeter than that of one that’s sure to win.

The June pin-up of the Arsenal Official Calendar that my sis from UK gave me is none other than Henry himself. Had I been more superstitious, I would have considered this as a good omen that France is going to win (Check out the strikers: Henry, Saha, Trezeguet, Cisse). But since the competition go on to July, well, the July pin-up is Gilberto, hence passing a message that Brazil will win. Bah. Who believes in superstition anyway

Chp 70. Welcome to Mumbai

Bye bye Bangalore. Hello Mumbai.

This is exactly the 5th time in my entire life my feet touched the sidewalks of Mumbai. But unlike the previous times, this time my ass is going to be glued here for a pretty long time.

• 1st time: Mom and my two aunties took me to Mumbai for a vacation. That was a very long time ago. Hardly remembered anything except for the fact that I pee’d in the train from Pune to Mumbai, and also Smita Patil passed away due to cancer during our stay there.
  
• 2nd time: T’was during my Hyderabad days. My sis was doing her HR course at TISS so me and my tiny little cousin Saidingpuii went to pay her a visit. Stayed there for just 2 days. Since she’s busy with her studies, we partied with her friends at some pub in Chembur near her campus, and during the day, went to Colaba for shopping.
  
• 3rd time: bp Summer Internship Orientation. Picked up by chauffeur from Airport and dropped to Hotel. 2 days Orientation Program along with other summer Interns from various other campuses. Project briefing and query clearance session. Flew back to Cal.
  
• 4th time: End of my summer project. Presentation infront of the biggies of bp. Later on, went to stay with my sis for 2 days. Warmed up at “Toto’s”, dance-appetizers at “Shooters” and finally main-course-boogie at “Avalon”.

Arrived at Mumbai for the 5th time last week. My flight which was supposed to depart at 9pm, got delayed by an hour, another hour, another hour, yet another hour, and I finally left Bangalore at 1 freaking 40 am!!! No prizes for guessing which airlines I was flying.

My homies Amol, Momo and Monu were planning to pick me up from the airport and later go for a mid-night buffet, but with the change in my arrival timing, we decided to meet up some other time. My sis was there at the airport that night. Took me to her place.

Her place, my new home, wasn’t as bad as she described it over the phone. It was much bigger than I expected, about 4 times the size of my Bangalore pad. Fully furnished. It even had a shower! The kitchen had a four segment gas stove! One morning I got up and cooked rice on one, heated milk on the second, warmed up the previous day’s gravy on the third and oil to fry eggs on the fourth, all at the same time! Boy that felt great! Back in Bangalore, I had just one tiny electric stove. And that takes like forever just to heat up a freaking cup of coffee. Believe me, it was really frustrating especially on days when I decided to cook a meal for my roomies (soup followed by Maggie followed by fried eggs to go with the Maggie followed by pork luncheon can heated on oil). By the time I got to the canned meat, the soup and the Maggie were already cold. Aaargh. But now, no more of that lifestyle. Woohoo!

Her fridge too had a breathtaking view It was all stuffed up with goodies ranging from Tify’s Olives with Jalapeños to White Mischief Vodka. It was so unlike our fridge back home in Bangalore. There, most of the time, the only thing you’ll find in the fridge are water bottles The first thing she told me when I opened the fridge was that she’s gonna keep it locked every time I get drunk! Aaargh. I had enough of this. Alright, faith_no_more, Jupiter, BlackWhite, Teii, Diki, my sisters and anybody else taking my trip on my blog about the “fridge incident”, its time to stop ok? There’s a limit to making fun of someone. Fine fine I did something really stupid. But it was the first time such a thing happened while I was drunk. For many of my visitors here who wondered what all those “fridge” messages in my ShoutBox and comments were about, well, I’ll tell you. Only because these people will stop teasing me about it coz it’s in the open now and so there won’t be any more fun slyly hinting about that incident anymore.

A couple of days ago just before I left Bangalore, I was on a wild drinking spree, getting sloshed every night because… I just got dumped. So “Jupiter” would stay over at our place with me and “faith_no_more”, and sometimes some other friends come over, all to give me company and get drunk so that I’d forget about her. One particular night, I was extremely drunk and merry. I got more sloshed than I usually do. During our drunken chit-chat I had to pee suddenly so I swaggered towards the loo. Our small loo had a white door. I opened the white door, and with all my glory, I relieved my bladder. Ahhhhhhh… boy that felt ghooood. Suddenly, Jupiter screamed out followed by faith_no_more. That made me a bit conscious and I looked down only to find out that… I was peeing inside the freaking fridge!!! The “white bathroom door” that I opened was actually the fridge Gawddddd!!! It was so embarrassing. But there was nothing I could do. I just continued peeing and the guys continued screaming behind me. After I was done, I went straight to bed because I was too damn embarrassed to face them. Passed out within a couple of seconds. My dear Jupiter and faith_no_more cleaned up everything, really sweet of them. So that was it. My big embarrassing drunken folly. Happy now? So you are now officially not allowed to make fun of me anymore. Chapter closed. Bleh.

By the way, I was having lunch a couple of days ago with my friends Amrapali, Amol and Anita at “Pizzeria” next to “Mocha” in Powai, and my sister who was at Haiko (the adjoining building) invited me and my friends over to “Far East” for a beer coz she wanted to meet my friends. A very great big thanks to her for telling my IIMB friends about the little fridge incident. They took my trip the rest of the night, telling about it to Monu and Vijay who later joined us at IMAX. And very soon, this is going to spread even further and further. I think I made the right decision to confess about it right here on my blog so that people who hear about it later won’t have so much fun teasing me about it.

Moral of the Story: Never place your fridge next to your bathroom. Or, Never paint your bathroom door with the same colour as that of the Fridge.

Enough of fridge talk now. Let’s talk about parties . On my sister’s birthday, we went to this resto-bar at Rodas called “Aura”. Ambience was great. There were 13 of us, and my sister introduced me to all her friends. Amazing bunch of people, just like her. What I love about this place is that, wherever you look, people just love to drink, dance and laugh. I really am going to have a great time here in Mumbai. The crowd at Aura was mainly in their late 20’s and early 30’s. The ladies were all hot, and it was a very well behaved but at the same time wild party-animal crowd. One main difference between this and Bangalore was that, it was a very heavy hindi speaking crowd. The babes all spoke in hindi and the music was also mainly Punjabi pop. After all, this is Bollywood, the centre of hindi speaking funk so what else can I expect. But most of the people spoke to me in English when they realized I don’t speak much of hindi (sentences I learnt in hindi, courtesy my summer internship at Castrol, like “kis engine oil istamal karta hain” and “Castrol se koi parishani hai, mujhko batayiye” aren’t gonna help me at all that night). But towards the end, once the 3rd pitcher of draught beer cloud your senses, it’s all the same.

So that’s what I experienced so far. And oh, there was that dinner party at Marami’s place. A close friend of mine Pari from Bangalore was also there that night, and I really had a good time debating with Marami’s uncle about Inter-racial relationships after two quarters of rum. My roomie Rita literally carried me home that night Other than that, guess I’ve been just spending my time here in Mumbai doing nothing and watching movies I’ve downloaded while I was in IIMB. JV said I should get a job, and am really thinking about it now. Mumbai has definitely more opportunities than Bangalore, so who knows, I might soon start celebrating my first pay-slip.

Other than that, everything is just wonderful out here. When I wake up early in the morning and realized I’ve run out of cigarettes, there are always ciggies to whack from my sister or Rita. 24/7 electricity, water supply stops for only a few hours everyday which is nothing, amazing apartment and surroundings, and if there is anything we need like ciggies, booze, bread, milk, tandoori, vegetables, movie tickets etc, they are all just a phone call away, delivered right at your door-step.
Mumbai raacks!

Chp 69. Melodies of the Great Divide

I swore on my blood that I will not blog again for a long time until I get over Eve. Well I got news for you. Swearing on bad blood is just as loyal as Fredo Corleone promising never to betray the family. So says my inner conscience.

Blogging has become more than just a passion to me. I may not be the type who likes to share every intimate incident with the whole wide world. But one thing is for sure: I love to write about my life and share it with people around me who care enough to know about the various cultures and mindset of people in this vast diversity of an entity that we call India.

Why did I decide to start blogging again? Because I realized that shutting myself out will not help me at all in making me get over Eve. I am a complete music freak. I always relate myself or people around me to a particular song that I am listening to. Right now I am playing Fort Minor’s “Where’d you go”. The more I listen to it, the more I miss Eve. So I switch to a more “house” kinda music thinking it won’t remind me about her and then there was Dirty Vegas’ “Days go by” singing “You… still a whisper on my lips, I feel it up my fingertips… Days go by and still I think of you, days go when I couldn’t live my life without you”. Every song that I play, I couldn’t help stop thinking about Eve.

It’s amazing how many songs are out there that’s about people missing people. Every great band that has left a legacy behind has atleast composed one song that’s about separation. Recording Labels know such kinda songs sell coz everyone falls in love and gets hurt atleast once in their one time lifecycle.

My friends say I get too sentimental when it comes to love. I guess that’s just the way I am. Coz we are no longer teenagers experimenting with love and infatuation. People in our age group feel it’s time to stop fooling around and start searching for that one special person you’d want to spend the rest of your life with. I’ve found mine and yet I lost her. Nothing explains how I exactly feel about love right now more that Bryan Ferry’s “Slave to Love”. Guess I will always be the sentimental kind… the type that wants to get serious in a relationship and see beyond a simple one night thingie.

Love is a crazy little thing. Sometimes it gives you a glimpse of Heaven and sometimes it is pure Hell. And who says it better than Chris Norman who sang “Some hearts are diamonds, some hearts are stone…” It’s one of my fav classics that I just can’t stop listening to right now. Speaking of classic, another fav song of mine is Don William’s “Shot full of love”. When I first started becoming serious with Eve, all my closest friends were surprised. Kima you’re not the settle down type. Kima this is a long distance relationship, are you sure about it? Kima the two of you are poles apart, how did she ever like you? But I changed completely and managed to make things work. It’s as if the entire song has been written just for me.

“Once I had a heart cold as ice, love to me was only for fun.
I’d make a mark for each broken heart, like notches on a butt of a gun.

Once I had a trick up my sleeve, and a reputation all over town.
I was heartless and cold, wherever I go, I shot down every young girl I found.

chorus :
Yes I used to be a moonlight bandit; I used to be a heartbreak kid.
Then I met you and the next thing I knew there I was.
Oh shot full of love.

Well who would have thought someone like you,
Could take a desperado like me…”



Moving on to another favourite band of mine, Smokie. Similar to Air Supply, most of their songs are about love and separation. The song I would select from their collection right now is definitely “Needles and pins”.

“I saw her today, I saw her face, it was a face I loved.
And I knew, I had to run away, and get down on my knees a pray.
That they'd go away, but still it begins

Needles and pins,
Because of all my pride, the tears I gotta hide.

I thought I was smart, I stole her heart,
Didn’t think I’d do, but now I see,
She’s worse to him than me.

Let her go ahead, take his love instead,

And one day she will see...”

The wrong songs to listen to right now are songs like Firehouse’s “Love of a Lifetime”, The Law’s “Miss you in a Heartbeat”, Warrant’s “Heaven”, Van Halen’s “Can’t stop loving you”, Journey’s “Faithfully”, Reo Speedwagon’s “I can’t fight this feeling anymore”, White Lion’s “Till death do us apart” and Saigon Kick’s “I love you”. The rock songs of that era that best suit me are songs like Damn Yankees’ “High enough” -

“I don’t wanna hear about it anymore,
It’s a shame I gotta live without you anymore.
There’s a fire in my heart, a pounding in my brain, its driving me crazy…

We don’t need to talk about it anymore;
Yesterday’s just a memory when we closed the door
:
Don’t say goodnight, say you’re gonna stay forever, all the way…
Can you take me high enough; don’t fly me over, yesterday…
Can you take me high enough, it’s never over, yesterday’s just a memory…

I don’t wanna live without you anymore,
Can’t you see I’m a misery, and you know for sure.
I would live and die for you, and I know just what to do,
When you call me baby…
Don’t say goodbye, say you’re gonna stay forever…”

And ofcourse there is Cinderella. For bands of that era, I think they stand above everybody else when it comes to mushy break-up songs: “Heartbreak Station”, “Coming home”, “Don’t know what you got (till it’s gone)”, “Nobody’s fool”, “Somebody save me” and the list goes on. Incase you ever go through such a phase as this, I do recommend you listen to Cinderella.

Heartbreak Station:

“Waiting at the Station, tears filling up my eyes,
Sometimes the pain we hide, runs like a fire inside.
Look out my window, sometimes its hard to see,
The things you want in your life come and go so easily

She took the last train, out of my heart.
She took the last train, now I think I’ll make a brand new start
She took the last train, out of my heart.”

Madonna need no special mention. Every song from her album “Something to remember” is about separation and heartbreaks. “Take a bow”, “This used to be my playground”, “I’ll remember”, “You’ll see”, “Love don’t live here anymore”, “Forbidden love”, “One more chance” etc etc.

What I really love about the above-mentioned songs is that there are parts of the lyrics that I can really associate myself with, as if it’s exactly about what I am going through right now. Other such songs that my speakers seem to be automatically churning out are:

White Lion - Broken heart
Damn Yankees - Where u going now & Silence is broken
White Snake - Here I go again
Ozzy Osbourne - Changes, See you on the other side, So tired & Goodbye to romance
Judas Priest - You got another thing coming
Pearl Jam - Last kiss
Winger - Headed for a heartbreak
Great White - Once bitten twice shy
Chicago - If you leave me now
Reo Speedwagon - In my dreams
Poison - I won’t forget you
Bad English - The price of love
Tesla - A lot to lose
Def Leppard - Have you ever needed someone so bad
Nazareth - Love hurts
Motley Crue - Driftaway
Firehouse - No one at all
Kansas - Dust in the wind
Soul Asylum - Runaway train & Promises broken
Queen - Love of my life
Wet wet wet - If I never see you again
Eagles - The sad café
Del Amitri - Always the last to know
La Bouche - Do you still need me
Nana - Lonely
Wyclef Jean - Take me as I am
Macy Gray - I try
Jars of Clay - Lonely people
BeeGees - I started a joke
Kd Lang - Constant craving
Billy Ocean - Love really hurts without you
Rod Stewart - Some guys have all the luck
Sasha - I feel lonely
The Drifters - There goes my baby
Everly Brothers - Bye bye love
Barenaked Ladies - It’s all been done
Nick Cave & The bad seeds - Where the wild rose grow
Hootie and Blowfish - Goodbye
Kid Rock & Sheryl Crow - Picture
Bon Jovi - Heart breaking event
3 doors down - Here without you
Green Day - Give me Novocaine
Stereophonics - Maybe tomorrow
Moist - Breath
Todd the wet Sprocket - Dam would break
Eric Carmen - All by myself
Lionel Ritchie - Stuck on you
Angela Ammons - Always getting over you
No Mercy - When I die
Boyz II Men - End of the road
Akon - Lonely
Joe - Alone
The Streets - Dry your eyes
Johan - Chhingmitthla
Gnat - i tello chuan & Ngaihzual
SPi - Ban zai ka rel mahna
Eli - Hringhun palthiam a har
Ramthianga - Her chhuak leh se
Tracy - Ka di, ka bawihmampui
Lalramhluni - Awmkhua a har
Janie - A dam ngei ang
Plastic Coated - Boralna

No matter what mood you are in, there will always be a song that best fits you. Happy. Sad. Gloomy. Cheerful. Lovelorn. Horny. It’s all there.

I guess I will end this post with my favorite Poison song: “I guess every rose has its thorn, just like every night has its dawn, just like every cowboy sing his sad sad song. Every rose has its thorn.” How true indeed. Atleast I had the honour of facing both the rose and the thorn. I pity those who had not face such a thorn in their life. People say the first cut is the deepest cut. Well, I say, if you really really love that person, then every cut is just the same. This is my second cut and it bleeds just as much as my first. The more the cut, the deeper the wound goes. Until you can’t take it anymore and you just… fade away… poof…

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.

Chp 65. Wu Ji - The Promise

Hehe... I can’t believe I've just spent 2 hours watching a Chinese flick in Chinese language with Chinese subtitles!

Ever since The Promise appeared at imdb.com, I was dying to watch it. But I couldn’t find it anywhere at Ares and Limewire. And the very few people who are sharing it were not letting me copy at all. Finally found someone happily sharing it with me. At first I grew suspicious coz this guy might be one of those guys sharing a totally different movie under this name. But when I tested it, it was indeed the right one. And it was an amazing print! Only sour grape was, the subtitle was in Chinese. Anyway jobless me watched it.



I think the movie is definitely not up to the level of CTHD, Hero, Warriors of Heaven and Earth, House of flying daggers etc when it comes to the fight scenes. The graphics were a bit unreal... I mean, I guess that might be because the print was so clear that some of the CGs look a bit artificial and ridiculous. But the background setting was just Oh My God, if there was one place I must take my gurl to before I die, this is it. Truly breath-taking backdrops and sceneries.

There were some really good dialogues too, like when Don-Kun Jang (Kunlun) looked at Cecilia Cheung (Princess Qingcheng) and said "Ching hua mau ki" and she replied "Mai ping ling sing". awweeee that was chooo chweeeet

Hehehe... Anyway, I am definitely going to see it in the theatre once it is released coz from what I've heard, this movie is more of a love story than an action, so one HAVE to understand what the actors are talking about

Here is the gist of the story. Warning: It contains spoiler (Duh!)

One girl, one boy. Both fighting for food in a ravaged torn war zone surrounded by corpses strewn all over the Battlefield. Childish kidding and lots of Chinese dialogues later, girl ran to lake, dropped her food (which extremely resembles an idly) and cried. The river Goddess came and returned the food to her, and told her something.

Next scene: War. Evil King. With a huge army. All wearing red. On hill-tops that resembled the Grand Canyon. Down below, slaves in brown attire forced to crawl. Enemies from other side (dressed in black) released thousands of bull. All the slaves died except Hero slave. He out-crawled and out-ran the charging bulls with a wounded friend on his shoulder and actually led them back to the enemy's camp! He kept on running and running. Until he reached a place where he buried his friend. Then the red General came and probably said he was impressed by the way he ran so he made him his personal slave.

Together they ran until the General was ambushed by an Assassin who moved as fast as Hero. Just when the Assassin was about to kill the General, Hero stepped in. Hero and Assassin fought. They both moved equally fast and hence recognized each other. Assassin fled. With General injured, Hero wore the General's uniform and put on a golden mask.

Now red King became white King. Everybody dressed in white now. Enter the beautiful Princess. A bad person in red uniform tried to kill Princess. So Hero who was wearing the General's mask rescued her. Hero fell in love with Princess. But they were trapped at a waterfall. Hero, who still hadn’t disclosed his identity to Princess and evil King, jumped into the water.

Princess is now taken back and evil King fell in love with her. Put her in a huge golden cage and tried to woo her but to no avail. Later General recovered from his wounds and went to the Palace with Hero to rescue Princess. General fell in love with Princess. Princess thought it was the same man who rescued her earlier, so she too kinda liked him back. Hero very sad. But still he forced the Palace gate open so that Princess and General can escape. Hero captured and tortured by bad King, but later managed to escape too. Went back to his master, the General. Together the three of them lived happily. General humped pretty Princess in all directions. Not a scene I would recommend to your children.

And then things became even more and more confusing. Some magical race of people who saved Hero once are now killed by evil King. Maybe they were the Hero's people because they all moved as fast as him (and the Assassin who nearly killed the General once). Hero very angry. Vowed to take revenge in Chinese.

General tricked by evil King and captured. Evil King then sent army to capture Princess. Hero once again went to Palace to rescue General and Princess.

Next scene: General tied to a tree and Princess tied to a chair. Evil King laughing. Evil king revealed to Princess that he was the boy who snatched her food away from her when they were kids. He even showed her the bread he took from her (I wonder what kinda preservatives he must have been using) Anyway a small fight erupted. Evil King stabbed General. Hero suddenly appeared out of nowhere and stabbed evil King. With his last strength, evil King pulled out knife and stabbed back Hero. So, there they were, Princess crying and all three men who loved her bleeding to death. Some more Chinese dialogues. Then all three men died.

Final scene showed Hero being reborn! He took the Princess on his back and together they flew away.

Now seriously tell me, don’t you think the movie was good?

Anyway, another reason why I wanna watch the movie again with English subtitles is because I wanna see how way off I was in interpreting the movie Because I consider myself to be really good at this interpretation thingie, as I have watched countless number of Tamil and Mallyalam movies even before I could understand a single word.

Chp 64. Birthday Memories

Two bottles of Old Monk Rum and 78 Birthday wishes at Orkut later, I was just sitting in my room, enjoying this new sensuality of turning 26, in my own version of what I call voluntary solitude, when a strange feeling suddenly hit me. Boy, it felt good and at the same time bad to age older.

But whatever be the feeling, I made a promise that I will not write and crib about how sad I am to be growing older and how everything around me is moving so fast while I am left behind blah blah blah. No mid-life crisis posts here.

So now I am 26. Old enough to start a family of my own but still the baby of my own family. Talented enough to find a decent job but still unemployed. Experienced enough to pass on my legends to youngsters but still riding the silver highway.

As you grow older and older, birthday seems to become a lesser and lesser deal… now it is just a matter of formality. Happy Birthday to you! Oh that is so sweet of you. Muaaah muaaah. So when’s the party? Hmmm I don’t know, am pretty much broke. Ok, don’t forget to invite me if you throw a party. How can I forget you of all the people? Aweee now you’re the sweet one. Take care. Bye.

When I was young (read: below 10 years), I always celebrated my birthday twice a year. Once on my actual birthday and a second time along with my sister Dinpuii on her birthday. I don’t know what that was all about, but at every birthday picture of Dimps, I would also be there with a cake of my own! I guess you can call it sibling jealousy. There were times when I would actually invite my own friends to her B’day.

Birthdays are always memorable those days. I went through some of my old photographs and dug out a couple of them, the really unforgettable ones:

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21st April 1989:

All my three sisters were studying in LaMartiniere’s that time and Mom flew down to Calcutta to visit them or bring them back to Mizoram for their vacation or something like that. So it was just me, daddy and our life long servant U Liana who is more like an elder brother to me, at home. My aunt Pi Rini suddenly came to our house one fine day and told dad “Hey today is mama’s birthday!” Dad was like huh are you sure? And he checked up and yes it was indeed my birthday!

So he got to work immediately. No time to order cake from Zote Bakery. He went through his almirah (The one that he never opens up to me and my three sisters) dug out a packet of neutrino sweets, told U Liana to buy nine candles, and called up my aunties and uncles immediately to send over their children to our place for my Birthday party! LoLx! It was one of the sweetest thing my dad has ever done for me. Check out me and my “birthday cake” below!



And people actually turned up at the last minute. Given below are the party people of my happening ninth birthday bash


[ Cousin Zualteii, cousin Mahruaii, cousin BT-i, cousin VL-i, aunty Zohmingi, cousin Hriatpuia, Me, cousin Atea, my frens Zorema & Tluangtea, my best frens Tlaunga & Sanga (the twins) and good ‘ol U Liana ]

Eventually everything turned out great. I was happy because for presents I got a sketch pen set, a drawing book, a new pair of shoes and a toy gun that makes electronic sounds when the trigger is pulled. So after I blew out the candles, daddy and my aunties made dinner for me and my friends and cousins.



Till today, I think that was one of the most memorable birthdays ever.

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School days:

During my seven years at Montfort Residential Boarding School, birthdays never involved any cakes or parties as such. Instead, a birthday meant you can wear colored clothes for the day instead of the strict school uniform, distribute sweets to your classmates and teachers, and for dinner, your cafeteria table gets a roasted chicken And the best part was, during the dinner, suddenly somebody would start “shhhhhhhhh” and taking his cue, everybody would join in with the “shhhhh” and stop talking, and then a loud big Happy Birthday song, sung by everybody present in the cafeteria. *sigh* I really miss those times. And after dinner, you are usually sprayed with pepsi outside the cafeteria and given a wedgie by your classmates.

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College years:

My birthdays during Engineering College were all memorable. Birthdays then meant getting completely sloshed the previous night and missing the next day of class due to an inferno hangover But my most memorable birthday would be the one during my final year. Ofcourse it was a complete sausage fest as you can see in the pics below, after all, it was Tamilnadu, where the ladies hostels followed the most stringent law ever proscribed.





Sausage Fest indeed but what mattered the most that night was the fact that all my closest friends were there. Thomas, Paolo, Johnny, Jimmy, Varasidhi, Abhi, Jacob, Jazz, Kutti, Ani, Seby, Puia, Rohan, Kevin, Yohan, Arjun, Tony etc And that particular night coincided with Good Friday, and although a majority of us were Christians on Lent, we were all completely sloshed that night.

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So I guess that’s pretty much how I have been celebrating my birthdays these past 26 years. Sometimes simple, but what really counts, is the thought.

Chp 63. R.I.P. Isaac L.Hmar

Isn’t it strange how you can feel so close to somebody you’ve never even met just because you’ve read a lot of his publications?

I’ve never been that attached to men of paper before. The only time I’ve ever felt a deep sadness and remorse over a writer’s death (like the kind that hit you when your relative or someone very dear to you passes away) was on the sad demise of my favorite author, the late Robert Ludlum. Nearly cried the day I learnt about his death.

And today a very similar feeling overcame me. I just heard that the lifeless body of a journalist, Isaac L.Hmar, was found a couple of hours ago in Zemabawk, Mizoram.

Isaac Lalmalsawm Intoate, merely just 37 years of age, son of a Journalist and one of the chief contributors of English articles at various Mizo websites like zoram.com, izawl.com and hmar.net (currently closed down as a mark of respect for the dearly departed) spoke out against the recent rape of 21 hmar women by meitei militants in the Manipur-Mizoram border, and this could possibly be one the reasons why such an unfortunate incident befell him. The hunt is still on for the evil perpetrators.

We are once again reminded of how all of us are not equal. Some people are braver and more fearless than the rest of us, not afraid to stand up and speak out against what they believe is wrong even if it means bringing upon a threat to their very own existence. Isaac definitely falls in that category. And he paid the price for that with his life. He seeked justice while he lived. Rest assured Issac, you will definitely get your justice on Judgement Day.

Isaac, it is too bad we never got to meet or mail each other personally. I love your articles and would have considered it a great honour had we just sat down for tea and discuss about all those things in your mind. I know you will be missed by all, especially the Hmar community. My utmost sympathies and condolences to your family. India has just lost one of its most promising North-east writer.

Some of the articles Isaac has published at zoram.com are given below. You can find more about him at hmar.net, once it is up and running again:

-> Can Jesus Christ’s alleged marriage to Mary Magdalene be trusted?
-> Pre-marital sex, marriage v/s Law of land
-> The H.S.A: 50th General Assembly, 2005
-> The Mizo-Israel: Uncertain Future
-> Wish You A Happy New Year
-> Violence against women
-> Mizo-Kuki’s Claim Of Their Jewish Origin

[A picture of Isaac from Youthim.net]


Rest in Peace my brother.
We never said “Hi” while you were here.
Maybe if it is meant to be,
We will say more than a “Hi” up There.

Oh what a loss for the North-east,
To be martyred at such an early age.
You will always be remembered in our hearts,
And your words, immortalized forever.