Disclaimer: This is an attempt at humour and satire. If you are offended by any of the remarks and things written herein, well, you are offended by them. If you want the official history of Mizoram, look elsewhere. Go.
In the beginning (plagiarism + blasphemy alert!)
After God created Adam and Eve. He decided to do a little experiment. He said “Let me make a new race of people, cover them with hair, and put them in the hottest place on earth. They will be blessed with immense intelligence but to even the field, I will give them the funniest accent on earth”.
So he created Indians (Not Native Americans, the real Indians. The one Columbus was actually looking for).
Then God said, “Let me create another bunch of people. I’ll give them intelligence like the Indians. They will excel in science and engineering and make many amazing discoveries. I’ll also give them a funny accent like the Indians, and instead of hair, I’ll give them small stilted eyes.
And that’s how the Chinese are created.
On Sunday, while resting, God hit upon a new idea. What if he mixed the two races? They will be of Chinese origin but they will live in India and be Indians.
And that’s the story of how the Mizos are born from a combination of two of the most stereotyped races in the world. However, this record may soon be bettered after some communities claimed that we are descended from a Jewish ancestor.
An Indian-Chinese-Jew… Wow!!
It may only be a matter of time before some genius said our ancestors came from Africa.
How we came to be
The term Mizo is a combination of two words – Mi and Zo. In olden days, ‘Mi’ means human/people while ‘Zo’ means hill. Therefore the term Mizo means ‘Hill people’ or ‘Highlander’. Nowadays, in the new hip Mizo language, Mi still means human/people, however ‘Zo’ now refers to something sub-standard (eg. “Saw pa saw a zo lutuk” loosely translates to “That guy is a doofus”). So with the supposed advancement in the Mizo language, the meaning of the term Mizo has become less esteemed (bookmark for debate).
The origin of the Mizos, like those of many other tribes in the North Eastern India is shrouded in mystery. The generally accepted as part of a great Mongoloid wave of migration from China and later moved out to India to their present habitat. It is possible that the Mizos came from Shinlung or Chhinlungsan located on the banks of the river Yalung in China. They first settled in the Shan State and moved on to Kabaw Valley to Khampat and then to the Chin Hills in the middle of the 16th century.
The earliest Mizos who migrated to India were known as Kukis, the second batch of immigrants were called New Kukis. The Lushais were the last of the Mizo tribes migrate to India. The Mizo history in the 18th and 19th Century is marked by many instances of tribal raids and retaliatory expeditions of security. Mizo Hills were formally declared as part of the British-India by a proclamation in 1895. North and south hills were united into Lushai Hills district in 1898 with Aizawl as its headquarters.
Boooringgg!!Here’s a better version:
In the beginning, the Mizos lived peacefully with other tribes in what is now called China. However, when the great alien warlord Xenu brought billions of people to earth on his DC8-like spacecraft and dumped them in a volcano before destroying them using hydrogen bombs, the essences of many of these people entered the human beings that lived during this time. One of the aliens killed was called Qrmntg (pronounced Jim). Qrmntg has a neighbour called Ythb5 (pronounced Larry). Now, Qrmntg and Ythb5 used to be best friends, however, one sunny alien afternoon a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, Qrmntg borrowed a lawnmower from Ythb5 and never returned it. This results in the two friends having a huge fight and the bros have been enemies since.
As fate would have it, the essences of both these homies survived the H-bomb and attached themselves to the two nearest life forms, one was the ancestor of the present day Mizos. The other was a monkey. The two ex-bffs continued their rivalry in the form of these two innocent mammals and hell started breaking loose. Now, normally, when a human being and a monkey has a rivalry, it’s usually gonna be the human being that came out on top. But we’re talking major jurassic times here; it was just after the first human beings evolved from monkeys, and haven’t learnt to use their superior intellect yet; the monkeys completely pwned the humans back then. In fact, many historians claimed this was the Golden Age of the monkeys.
Fearing for his life, the ancestor of the Mizos started moving south. During his stay in what is now Myanmar, the ancestor fell in love with a very beautiful 19 year old girl by the name of Cherilyn Sarkisian. However, the affair didn’t last and Cherilyn moved to present day United States where she went into hibernation for several centuries before finally resurfacing in the mid 1960. She still lives in America and now goes by the name of Cher.
The ancestor keeps moving south until he came across a small village. The people there welcomed him with open arms. They gave him a place to stay, a kind of bachelor pad which he shared with 3 other guys. They fed him with the best food and drinks. He wondered why the people were so nice to him. He would soon find out (insert tension building music here)….
One night, about a week or so after his arrival at the village, the ancestor was awakened by the sound of drums coming from a distance. Wondering what it was and half hoping that there was a party going on, he went over to see what was going on. Up ahead on the distance, he saw a simmering light. He was thinking to himself this could be a party or this could be hell. Then he saw some villagers and they danced in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat. He saw a sacrificial table in the centre. Lying on it was his roommate, the fattest among the guests – a guy named Bistuu San Ki, affectionately called the Bist. To his horror, he realized that they were offering him as a sacrifice to their gods!! They stabbed at the dude with their steely knives but they just can’t kill the Bist.
The ancestor freaked out and tried to run away from the village. But he soon discovered that all the exits were guarded. You see, in this village, you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. Dejected, he went back to his hut and thought to himself someone should write a song about the whole shindig.
The next few days, the ancestor keeps thinking of ways to escape the village. He decided that the best tactic before he has a foolproof escape plan is to work harder than any of the roommates without complaining, eat the least amount of food so that he would not grow fat and be a candidate for the next ceremony. The villagers also began to notice how hard he worked without complaining and how he would always be the first at work and the last one to leave.
One day, one of the villagers asked him why he worked so hard without expecting any rewards, why he would always get up earlier than everyone else in the morning and go to collect water from a nearby river. He was about to answer when he saw a big hairy spider slowly descending from the ceiling. He freaked out and yelled “Tlawmngaihna!!” which means “Oh my God! A big hairy spider”, in his native tongue. The villagers, though, never heard of the phrase and thought it defines his chivalrous attitude perfectly. And that is how one of the most beautiful words in the Mizo language was born.
Long story short. The ancestor escaped the village, went further south and settled in what is now called Mizoram.
In the next episode, we will look at the impact of the British rule in Mizoram and how we hold the unique distinction of being the only state in India to be bombed by the Indian Airforce all because of a bleeding vagina.
(As a sidenote, I’m trying to set a Mizo blogger record for the longest average post length. Right now, the record is held by Illusionaire over at http://mizohican.blogspot.com. And mine is 12.7% shorter than his (yes, we compare lengths). I may not be the best writer, but I can certainly try to be the ‘wordiest’. What I can’t do in terms of quality, I’ll make up for in quantity..)