Tlabung

In talking about where I come from I have to do a little Bryson here. Since he's done it so well, thought I'd borrow his absolutely brilliant style just to begin this little write-up.

I come from Tlabung. I had to.

Somebody like me had to come from a place like Tlabung. A place which 

everyone knows has wealth and prosperity, good soil, vast arable land, but nobody actually wants to live there because of the heat and humidity in the summer.

Every Mizo soul tries to avoid a damp, marshy, hot, suffocating river valley since time immemorial. Our forefathers always built their villages on top of the hills to avoid the marauding mosquitoes, flies and raid from an enemy village. A place like Tlabung is the perfect example of what kind of place to avoid if you ever want to survive, stay healthy and have a normal life. And that is where I am from. Somebody had to have the courage to live in a place like that, I didn't but my grandpa did, that's why I had to come from there.

Once you get used to the place you'd never want to leave again. There was one English bloke who came to Tlabung in 1872 and established the township right then and there. He made his home right at the centre of the town (it was the centre because there was no other housing then until more people settled there sometime later). He had to live there because the place had such a wonderful charm where the air, the soil and the river were rife with life and life-breeding things. Little things bring great pleasure, and you get closer to mother nature in such a place. Little things like a gentle breeze that cools your forehead when you sweat would bring you great pleasure and satisfaction in such a place. It's no wonder why a bloke like Lt. T.H. Lewin chose to settle there, and why a bloke like me had to come from there.

Once you are in Tlabung, either you accept the fact that you cannot escape from it and got married with a girl named Liani and stay there for ever, or complain about its inescapability and got married with some girl named Liani and stay there forever and would never give a care about what you have missed or what people enjoy doing in the outside world because Tlabung is a world in itself. Do you have a famous friend, a celebrity, or someone who is in the news for the wrong reason, who complains about life because of the ever hungry media or paparazzi? Did they ever tell you that they want to escape from all the bright lights and the constant invasion of
their privacy? Ask them again if they are really serious. Are they? Okay, you have come to the right place. I can direct you to a place which is truly out of the world, serene, quiet, peaceful, beautiful and still interesting. This is the place to go if your celebrity friends are truly dead serious about escaping the limelight.

The place itself is a legend galore where legendary men and women roam freely without seeking for any recognition of their achievements. They just want to be normal people, not heroes you see on Television and read about in the newspapers. These guys are cool. Truly a place where unsung heroes and underachievers abound. Someone you see on the roadside, babysitting his daughter could be a guy famed for killing an elephant with a small wooden club. Or he could well 

be someone who had dived seventy feet in the water without any aid, I am serious man, no scuba diving! So, talk to these people but modestly, and never mention your achievements because you'd never know when you sit next to someone who had been there, done that, much more than you ever did, or will ever do. I come from such a place, hot and humid, easy to avoid, but hard to ingnore and escape once you are in it.

Why is it that we look at someone and say "Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?" and not look at himself and his personality? May be we are simply talking in recognition of the importance our environment plays in shaping us as the persons we are now. Paul was a Roman citizen by birth and people were impressed by his citizenship because Rome then was the capital of the world, no mean city at all.

Parisians boast of being there so do Londoners. Shanghainese look down upon all the other Chinese souls, proud of their city, of their heritage. Some Aizawlites are just being Aizawlites if and when they think and talk in a way which put down Mizos from any other place. Well, a city always has a founder (before him no one else was), that means all the other settlers now are simply immigrants - it's simply a matter of how long ago. And the greatness of a city is always relative. For someone who is looking for a greater city it does not matter where you come from. Be it Tlabung or Timbuktu, Lunglei or London, Aizawl or Aibawk, it's all the same really. As citizens of Heaven, we are all just passing through, we are just touring the world - we are on our way home now. It's a wee bit better up there I am told and 'wee' is always relative!