Outsider/Indian

The signboard at the airport is unsettling. ?Foreigners and Outsiders? are supposed to report at a particular desk in the arrival lounge. Though it turns out that I don?t need an Inner-Line Permit, as I?m an Indian coming to Mizoram on official work, the ?outsider? designation remains, like a badge pinned on my shirt, through the following week.

We?ve landed at Aizawl?s Lengpui airport in a fifty-seater propeller plane, after flying over sparsely populated and stunningly green hills. I?m looking forward to seeing this part of my country, I tell myself. Ahead lies an antidote to the crowds of Calcutta, and the relentless monotony of the parched north Indian plain. The taxi ride from the airport to the Tourist Lodge in Chaltlang takes us an hour-and-half, past hill-station scenery and some houses on stilts.

Kendriya Vidyalaya maxims

At about 4 am the next morning, a cock crows. By 4.30 there is sunlight and the crowing has achieved the momentum of an express train. The creature is not going to shut up, so I get out of bed, planning revenge. Chicken curry for dinner!

I?m in Aizawl with two colleagues to oversee my university?s entrance exam, which is being held here for the first time. Our examination centre is the local Kendriya Vidyalaya, a set of aluminium-roofed sheds on a hilltop, decorated with wise sayings and garish portraits of national heroes. It has the peace and quiet of a school in holiday time. There?s a panoramic view of the town. Aizawl is about the size of Shimla, with houses crouching above one another, as if about to tumble down the hillside.

I collect slogans. My favourite was the one at Shimla railway station: ?Let us all, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians, Unite for the Sake of Our Motherhood.? The road to Aizawl provided ?Slow Drive Long Life? and ?Short Cut May Cut Short Life.? Our KV offers a different flavour: ?Experience is a hard teacher. It gives the test first and the lesson afterwards.? Or you can relish: ?Danish proverb: He who is ashamed to ask is afraid of learning.? That?s a good one, if the kids can ask without peril.

We meet the principal and scrutinize our list of examinees. Tomorrow?s session will have, among others, fifteen candidates for an MA in English, and only one for a Master?s in computer science. The pull of IT and Infosys lies truly far away.

Two of our exam sessions are on a Sunday. A parent tells me this is inappropriate. I explain, ineffectually, how difficult it is to schedule seventy-eight question papers in sixty-three exam centres. Driving through Aizawl?s main market afterwards, I understand the rebuke. Every shop, without exception, is shut, and there is hardly a taxi to be had. Everyone goes to church here. The Christian societies I?ve seen in Europe and America ? or on TV ? have been secularized. This is different.

An electric pole

As a determined sightseer, I easily recognize members of that breed. There don?t seem to be any around in Aizawl. The Tourist Lodge is infested with pontificating academics and NGO-types, rather than the wide-eyed, camera-toting creature it?s meant to house.

No postcards are on sale anywhere in Aizawl (later the Tourist Lodge disgorges four, depicting other parts of Mizoram, meant for free distribution). Instead of the bamboo hat or khumbeu at the state emporium as local produce I buy myself a notebook with a ?Mizo Boy? printed on the cover. On closer inspection, ?Mizo Boy? turns out to be made in Calcutta.

The Mizoram State Museum on MacDonald Hill is celebrating International Museums? Day. The five-rupee entry fee has been waived. Each visitor gets two toffees, providing some consolation to swarming schoolchildren. There?s an interesting model of the zawlbuk or bachelors? dormitory, and a forlorn set of musical instruments. The most striking exhibit is a bullet-riddled electric pole, with a notice proclaiming that it was located, during the insurgency, in the heart of Aizawl. I know that in 1966, Aizawl passed out of the hands of the government of India for a while, and was even strafed by the Indian air force as a result. Nevertheless, I?m surprised to find such memories enshrined in the state museum, along with the bamboo baskets.

The idea of India

Some free time takes me to the Bara Bazar. I find a road called Zion Street, and walk down to Israel Point. Women outnumber men on the streets. Every shop I see is being managed by a woman. Burmese cigarette packets and Indonesian soaps sell at ten rupees each. There seem to be hardly any people from elsewhere in India. It hits me that I haven?t seen a single woman wearing a sari over the last few days; and I haven?t seen a Sikh either. Can the idea of India really exist without sardars and saris?

The Mizoram state archives are impeccably catalogued and courteously managed. I consult files on the movement to join Burma in 1947. The Indian national flag couldn?t be hoisted in Aizawl on August 15, although the Union Jack was lowered. Lalmawia, an ex-captain of the Indian army, led the pro-Burma movement. An eighty-eight-year-old man I interview later judges that it made some sense then, ?as there were people who felt we are adjacent to Burma, and tribally more similar.? But nobody would think of joining Burma now!

For dinner at David?s Kitchen, a top local restaurant, I meet a much younger person, the editor of a development journal. ?We are reluctant Indians?, he says to me over rogan josh. Challengingly, he adds: ?How do you react to that?? I babble about historians who hold that nation-states have to be constructed. He ignores what I say. ?I am a Mizo first?, he insists.

Boozers beware

When darkness descends by 6 pm in a city which shuts down soon thereafter, evenings in a Tourist Lodge cry out for alcohol. The electricity comes and goes every few minutes; ?alternating current? acquires a new meaning. There?s prohibition of course, but mature adults may be willing to pay extra. Our waiter recoils when this is put to him. Friendly advice follows: be careful, this is dangerous; the YMA, or Young Mizo Association, forbids it. Prohibition here is not just a sarkari matter. The next day, we see a burnt house; it seems the owner sold alcohol. Astoundingly, the main item on the front page of the local English language daily, Newslink, is about a thirty-five-year-old man killed the previous day ? for drinking alcohol.

The weather over the past week has alternated between sharp sunlight and torrential rain. On our way to the airport the sun shines; when it?s time to board, clouds sweep in. We wait three hours for a clearing, and then fifty passengers run across the tarmac and scramble aboard the turboprop. As we ascend, the ground below looks like a crumpled green handkerchief. Our Alliance Air flight takes an hour-and-half to Calcutta. There ought to be a placard awaiting us when we land, announcing: Now Drink Beer Without Fear.