Along the meandering Paldai Brook

MV Guite writes an article, My Struggle With A Myth on Zogam.com.

Here's the introductory para.

I have never even in my wildest dreams imagined that I would someday be haunted day in and day out by a two-word phrase I used to dismiss as mere hearsay. I feel as if I have been dreaming time and again the very dream I dreamt of the other night so much so that it turns out to be more than a dream – a reality.

Read the rest here.

My comments:

I know the author too well and I could identify myself with the many things he writes about. I read the article over and over again. I’m loving every bit of it. The para where he likens himself, humbly, to a khuangbai struck me. Quenching a never-ever-satiable thirst, putting off things for a tomorrow that never comes, a tomorrow that's a yesterday now, and a tomorrow that's still a tomorrow, eking out a living turning mangled voices into words while the entire city lies in sweet slumber… and all. Yes, we keep on fighting a hand-to-hand battle with failure, head down in the rain, just trying to stay upright and have a little hope. A hope whose gate doesn’t seem as wide-open as it used to be. Like the author, I find myself wandering. Just someone lost in the deep woods. Moving back and forth without having walked a single step. Living it not knowing what it is. I keep going back to the start. But all’s full of nothingness.

And the poem is beautifully expressed, and sad. Yes, I know. I had been there. My childhood memories revolve around the Paldai Brook. I can still recall the euphoric moments of ceaseless canorous songs of cicadas … of wading through the ankle-to-knee-deep brook … of wandering with a catapult and pellets and angles … along the meandering Paldai Brook. Oh, how I long to go back there, just once …

Aw, khaubang chiahkiik nuam veng, seenlai hunnuam... Seengual lungtuak toh, kiginnni suunkhawl hun a, kangtalai toh, gophel toh, ngathal toh… Paldai luidung ah, ngabeng a, kileuh a, a lui gei a phaizang louhing dipdip tung a suun ihmut zaizai lai ni te… mubang ngai veng… aw, khatvei lel ka chiahkiik nuam…. khatvei lel…