Bamboo in bloom

Silchar, June 12: As armies of rats devour standing crops and a famine starts to spread its tentacles across Mizoram, Mizos worldwide are coming together to help their brethren back home.

The Mizo Christian Fellowship (MCF), an association of Mizo expatriates living around the world, will hold a gala musical concert in Maryland in the US on June 28 to raise funds for those affected by mautam famine, now sweeping across the northeastern state.

Mautam occurs once in 50 years when bamboo plants flower. The seeds attract a horde of rats and increase their reproductive prowess. The rapidly multiplying rodents exhaust the bamboo seeds and then storm paddy fields, leading to a severe food scarcity.

According to an official estimate, rampaging rats ravaged about 72 per cent of standing crops in 659 villages in the state last year.

MCF vice-chairman Laldinpuia said over phone from the US that the function was being orchestrated to acquaint overseas people with the suffering of the Mizos struck by mautam over the past two years.

He said some well-known gospel, folk and pop singers from Mizoram as well as American singers would participate in the concert.

The state’s new sensation band, Forever Young, and two very popular Mizo singers, Chhuantea and Vanlalsailova, will sing in the concert. Talks are also on with some American gospel singers to perform at the function.

Laldinpuia hoped that Mizos in the US — a majority of whom live in Washington DC and nearby areas of Philadelphia, Massachusetts and Connecticut — would make a beeline for the concert to make the humanitarian cause a success.

“We are hoping that non-Mizos will also join our endeavour,” he added.

The organisers refused to comment on the amount they would be able to generate from the concert, but said they had earlier raised from among themselves 21 lakh kyats for the cyclone victims in Myanmar, particularly the people of Mizo origin.

The ecological phenomenon has moved the Christian fraternity in the US, Canada and UK, from where humanitarian assistance is flowing into Mizoram. The Norlyn Audio Vision Services, a Canada-based humanitarian NGO, has embarked on a mission to distribute packed food in the rural areas.