North East is so cute yaa!

I have said this before and I say it again that for now, I am glad to be back from the land where everything is “so cute yaa”. “Hey, look at that kid, he’s so cute ya!” “That dog is so cute yaa!” (The localites would surely find this amazing – people from Mumbai calling their breakfast cute.) It wouldn’t have been long before every hill, every tree, every fern and every sparrow began to look cute.

Imagine a father sparrow coming home one evening and telling his kids, “You %$@^%!! How many times have I told you not to drop your droppings all over the floor of the nest? And you have the cheek to do this on the very day when some stupid tourists call me cute, you…”

Every place we went to had a sinister cuteness hovering about it. All of a typical Mizo village in Aizawl was cute, including where the head tribesman kept his water bottles, where he shat, where he kept his women and chicken and the names of each of these abodes. One of them read Lal In – which an ignorant Malayalee would think is the abode of Mohanlal.

Well, despite the excessive use of the word ‘cute’, everything in the North East was cute in a way. There were many things that one couldn’t imagine seeing like trees laden with purple flowers. There were amusing sounds to hear and giggle. Then there were amusing names of people and of places.

Mizoram, it seems, holds an unofficial record for the maximum number of funny-sounding names. So it wouldn’t be surprising to run into people named ‘Everfriendly’. A weary member of the trip lamented that she would love to marry someone named ‘Never Walk’.

The term Mao means stone. So there are these triplets intellectually named Mao, Patthar and Stone. What is more interesting is that these names often come from random English words they caught from someone’s conversation or some English word they caught in a film, that they liked the sound of. (Which takes me back to a show by Russel Peters who once wondered how to react if someone called you ‘a fuckin’ blowjob’) So, there are funny names like Stormy Weather and Bhavya.

With due respect to the sentiments of my North Eastern brethren, I add that the names of places in that part of the country sound like they are filled with phlegm, like comedian Jeff Dunham's dead puppet terrorist Achmed. There are places named Hmawngzawi and Khliehriat. Wonder if they colloquially use abbreviations for these names. “Hey, where you off to?” “Aw, me…ah…no…awww…ya…go to…aww…ya…K.” Or “Hey, you wanna run me down to the H-Wi?”

Name, place, animal, thing just got more exciting. String a few letters together to make a completely random word that remotely sounds like an organ off the human anatomy and you are in a village in the North East! No kidding. Get a map of the region and catch Pynursla, Lakadong, Lumding and Lungding (could be distant cousins), Haflong and Longpi.

Meanwhile, in other news, dhinchak dhinchak has become a standard entity on treks small and big alike. For those who came in late, or never came in, dhinchak dhinchak is the story of how some guy called Shivaji gatecrashes a party being hosted at the Le Malvan (the only underwater hotel in India) – used as a teaser to dedicate a song to a person, situation or an object.

And it so happened that these dedications last only for 15-20 seconds and then fizzle out to make way for the next dedication. The game never ends as ceremoniously as it begins. It only fades out when the people who know the lyrics come to know of their might and pull out or drop asleep. The alternative is that something interesting happens right when a dedication is happening, like a flat tyre or an accident.

These so called dedications are also sung as stand-alone songs in antakshari style and rapid fire style for approximately six hundred and seventy two times. Remember that if you change vehicles…you’ll also have to sing those very songs in the other vehicle…that will make it one thousand three hundred and forty times! Then you go about humming all of these songs to yourself for the next fortnight. Bah! Whoever thought of making these songs so catchy surely knew what he was doing.

I might sound like I have had enough of the northeastern states but I am going back there to steal their folk songs. I think they are cool with their throaty + nasal vocals, earthy beats and homemade stringed instruments. Think I’ll make that my mission number two.

Hey, this article is so cute yaa!