Part 2
Note: The concluding part of Umran Retreat Serials 1-5.
Hmar Literature?
Someone amongst us organized seminars in 2013 outlandishly entitled ‘Hmar Literature: Renaissance and its Prospects’. We must congratulate each other for upstaging ourselves to a level where we can discuss the prospect of revival of the glory of our art and literature of the bygone days as if we had one such era in our make-belief world! This is ‘self-deception’ I have always been talking about in several of my writings. I am absolutely clear on this, but it is not at all easy to understand with a warped mind. It’s an illusion of a glorious past in the distant mist. Oh yes, we love hallucinating!
Or simply ‘a fabulation syndrome’, a word coined by Julian Barnes in ‘A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters’ (1989 p.109-110) in which he describes ‘fabulation’ as “making up a story to cover the facts you don’t know or can’t accept and keeping a few true facts and spin a new story round them” to suit one’s purpose. This is what I used to call ‘Phuokfawm histawri’ (Concocted history), a moronic exercise in wishful thinking.
The vaunted title mentioned above raises many serious questions. Do we know what literature means? Is there what we so-called ‘Hmar Literature’ as such? Do we count the hurriedly prepared instant textbooks for MIL subjects which are haphazardly stuffed with a bundle of sub-standard essays, short stories and novels as some sort of ‘Hmar Literature’? What is the meaning of the term ‘renaissance’ to our level of knowledge and understanding? What kind of Hmar literature that we wanted to revive to its old glory? Are we living in a dream world?
Wrongful claim
One of the resource persons in the seminar claimed that “the adoption of Lushai alphabet for writing Hmar language was the beginning of the birth of Hmar literature”. If we agree to this assertion or assumption, the reduction of Hmar language into writing is the reckoning year of the birth of Hmar literature which came after 1920 with the first publication of Rev. Sandy’s translation of the Gospel of Mark in 1920, first collection of Hmar hymns in 1923, Bu Hmasa (Hmar Primer) in 1928 and the New Testament in 1946 (Holy Bible 1968). Which of the publications amongst these do we consider as deserving to be called Hmar literature? Perhaps none except some hymns composed by Rev. Thangngur which were originally in the Lushai language. Buhmasa is by no means a literary work and it could never be. Others are translations of the Bible in rudimentary Hmar language. Therefore, the observation quoted above stands no scrutiny.
Oral literature
Hmar literature or any literature as such began with oral literatures that were handed from generation to generation by words of mouth and to some extent, skill of hands. No nation or community could however specifically pinpoint where it exactly began but could trace its developments from the source of material available in many cultural forms and patterns. Literature is a reflection of the lives of the people and their experiences under various environmental conditions and influences within and beyond their control. It’s life mirror, inside out.
The oral traditions we inherited in various cultural expressions were heavily influenced by our rural background and the accounts of ‘Vai lal’ that subsequently crept into our stories indicated that these were composed after our contact with them, particularly with the Bengalis (Korvais) in and around 1350-1500 A.D, if not later. Since many Zo dialect groups were believed to have been evolved during and after Kabaw Valley settlement and subsequent occupation of the Chin Hills, we may conjecturally claim that the oral literature of the Old Kuki group of which Hmar is one, was born during that period and the Hmar written literature after the introduction of Roman alphabet by the missionaries in 1894 for writing the Lushai language, particularly after the entry of Christianity at Senvon in Manipur South Disctrict in 1910 which inaugurated the use of Hmar along with Lushai as vehicles for spreading the Gospel as well as a subject of formal study at primary level.
Common cultural property
But then, can we claim a status of mere reduction of a language into writing as carrying a badge of origin of a literature? The answer is an emphatic NO. What is worth noting to me is that the oral traditions including folklores and tales that we have claimed to be ours are not exclusive to the tribe; they are in fact a common property of all Zo ethnic and kindred tribes with slight local variations except folk-songs but not folk-music as the former was heavily localized. Most of them are now stored in books in Dulien-Lusei (Mizo) and only very few in Hmar. Other Zo dialect groups apparently reconstructed their respective folklores and folktales from these published sources. There are only very few Hmar-specific folktales perhaps born before the generic term ‘Hmar’ came to be used after 1800 AD and I have included some of these in Hmar Hla Suina.
While collecting materials for my book ‘Hmar Hla Suina’ and also for the Hmar Cultural Society (HCS) of which I was Chairman from 1963-1981, my associates and I knocked every possible door where we believed information could be had either by meeting and interviewing them or sending questionnaires. We spent days and months to revive the the faded memories of the remnants of the old generation and extracted as much material as possible, most of which were very patchy and disconnected but very important. Painstakingly, we had to piece them together, like a jigsaw puzzle; a tedious and tortuous task which any researcher has to learn to love and adore. Had it not been so, we would never have a story like, for example, ‘Zawllai’ which I created (recreated?) from a few lines of folksong I collected from Khuplal of Parbung in 1964 where I had a five-month stint as Headmaster. Twenty seven years later, my book ‘Hmar Hla Suina’ followed suit which enabled to preserve many valuable Hmar cultural treasures that would have been otherwise lost in oblivion. Another milestone publication was LENRUOL HLA BU, the outcome of cultural revival in the 60s and 70s.
Negative impact of Christianity
The arrival of Christianity had disastrous impact on the continuing development of secular literature as the newly converts with crusadic fervor were wrongly taught to shun their socio-cultural practices including their traditional dance, songs and tunes and sing only Christians hymns set in western tunes. They were taught to dismiss and reject their old ways as a pagan practice. Anyone who tried to preserve their cultural treasures was and still is considered a worldly creature and therefore to be disdained and consigned to eternal hell.
The unfortunate part is that the fanatics and the uninformed group in the church who regarded themselves as spiritual have always been those lacking in understanding and discernment; they are the ones who believe that man can live by bread alone. To them, singing songs of praise set in the traditional tune and poetic language is blasphemous and damnatory, an act of defilement bordering on apostasy. People who have gone through the process of bringing back the practice of commemorating Sikpui Kut (Winter Festival) know how much opposition and recrimination they had to go through from the clergy and their hordes. For they don’t know how important Sikpui Kut or any cultural event is to their national identity and how many valuable oral literatures that the revival of the Kuts has brought back to the coffer of the nation. Nation does not live by religion alone. And nation making is always God’s priority in order to realize His kingdom on earth and in heaven. Literature is the soul that binds heaven and earth together. Ultimately, literature is all about TRUTH and BEAUTY.
Culture-based Lengkhawm Hla
God worked miraculously in the 1920s when some spiritual poets with insight came up with hymns in a modified traditional tunes called ‘Lengkhawm Hla’ laced with Welsh tunes. They found the new breed of hymns good for community singing and in tune with their cultural psyche. The new hymns were called ‘Lengkhawm Hla’ and the tunes ‘Lengkhawm Zai’. Thangngur was one of the pioneer composers of Lengkhawm Hla and held a distinguished status of being the first soul who came up with what is known as ‘Hmar Zai’, a blending of Semruk Zai, Liendang Hla, Puma Zai and other traditional songs.
The culture-friendly Lengkhawm Zai hit Mizoram and the immediate surrounding States wherever the gospel entered and the people immediately accepted it as their own and joined the new foreign religion in droves. Written Hmar literature was born out of this wave along with formal use of Hmar language (known as Khawsak Trong) as lingua franca of the group. Breaking the Gordian knot that discouraged use of any Zo ethnic language other than Lushai in preaching and worshiping, including compositing new hymns, Thangngur first wrote few of his songs in Lushai and then switched over to Hmar despite stiff opposition from his detractors. Without Thangngur spearheading the move, we would have lost most of our beautiful poetic words in the face of the onslaught of the new religion and Lushai hegemony.
It was this honored task that the cultural revival in the 60s and 70s aimed to bring it to a new high despite church oppositions. Many popular Hmar secular songs written during this period are still sung on social occasions till this day. In religious hymns and secular songs, the Hmars are not lacking behind as compared to their immediate ethnic neighbors.
Prose literature
What is most worrying is our emptiness in prose literature. There are hardly readable writings in Hmar. Very few can write in understandable Hmar but lack in quality and depth. Our general level of understanding is not only low, but very very poor, perhaps situated in between animal and sub-human level while our ego level always hits the sky. At the intellectual level, we are perhaps at the proto-human level but we tend to think ourselves highly knowledgeable in spiritual matters. The truth remains that people in high spiritual plane produced many classical literatures like, for example, writings in the Bible, Rig Vedas and others which adorn the religious institutions all over the world. But we remain fruitless and sterile.
Empty spiritualism
It is a high time to look into ourselves. Our spirituality seems to be a sterile one as we have seldom produced tangible fruit for others to see and eat. Our partial or sketchy knowledge of the written word of God is bombastic and impressive but our understanding of and conformity to the Word is bordering on zero level. We talk about renaissance of Hmar literature without having any literature worth the name. People who consider themselves as regulatory body to the Hmar literature are the ones who still seem to be baffled with the correct use of the alphabet. It is futile to expect great literature to have come from such ego-imprisoned souls, not to talk of high-flown renaissance just because we love the terminology. Let us come down to the earth and its soil and smell, what patriarch Isaac, while blessing the wrong guy, called “the smell of a field” which is we beautifully translated as “Lalpa malsawm ram rim”.
Diagnosis
Why are we allowed ourselves to be placed in this pathetic existence? Do we ever dare to look ourselves in the mirror and see who we are? May be our problem is that emptiness cannot see emptiness as a blind cannot see another blind. I have been trying to find out the reason or reasons for the past more than fifty years. Two fundamental conclusions I have made, apart from the many possible causes, are:
(1) We read too little. Even if we read, we cannot understand much of it as we do not know the context referred to. So we loss interest in reading because we cannot fathom its beauty and pleasure. It’s a dangerous vicious cycle. Unless we read with understanding, we will never learn or progress.
(2) The language and construction of the BSI publication of the Hmar Bible which has virtually destroyed the character and structure of Hmar language, is the main culprit as most of us have grown up under its influence and tried to write in its fashion. Two wrongs cannot be righted by doing the same thing all over and over again. When I said this, I know many are aghast at my temerity as they consider such naivety on my part as blasphemous. I have no problem with that. But we should be absolutely clear on this: Yes, the Word of God indeed is inviolable, in the past, now and forever; but not the words of translation. In fact, wrong translation and incorrect use of Hmar language and construction is insulting the Word and the mother tongue. We have been doing this for more than 60 years. Hence the Delhi Version.
Translation
Good translation from standard works can be a good foundation for building up language and literature. The best example is the Bible translated in many languages. As on November 2012 the full Bible has been translated into 518 languages and 2798 languages have atleast some portion of the Bible. There are more than 450 English versions already. We have four versions in Hmar. We, who work for Delhi Version, strongly believe that fresh complete translation of the Bible in the way standard Hmar should be written and spoken is the only way to save the dying Hmar language from extinction and the souls long lost in translation. The sleek, leather-bound revised edition is expected to be out soon.
Let me quote just one verse (Genesis 24:67) to pose to every reader what he or she thinks as the thin line dividing what is literature and what is not from the four Hmar versions. Please ponder over and you may agree with us that a true Hmar speaking soul will put the way we do. It carries the soul and spirit of the language.
NIV: Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death (32 words).
BSI: Isak chun Rebeka chu a nu Sara puon ina chun a thuoi lut a; chun, Rebeka chu a nei a, a nuhmei a hung ni tah a; chun, ama chu a hmangai hleh a, chuongchun Isak chu a nu thi thua khawm chun a hung thlamuong thei tah a (49 words).
BFW: Chun Isak chun Rebek chu a nu Sari puon ina chun a thruoi lut a; chun, Rebek chu a nei a, a nuhmei a hung ni ta a: chun ama chu a hmangai hle a, chuongchun Isak chu a nu thi thua khom chun a hung thlamuong thei ta a (49 words).
BSI (Haflong): Isak chun a nu Sara chengna hlak puon-ina chun Rebeka chu a thuoi lut a, chuongchun an innei a, a nuhmei a hung in tah a. Isak chun Rebeka chu a hmangai hleh a. A nu thi hnungin Isak chu thlamuongtakin a um nawk tah a (47 words).
Delhi Version: Isak chun a nu Sari puon inah Rebek chu a thruoi lut a, a nei a, a nuhmei a hung ni ta a, a hmangai hle a; a nu a sŭnna leia a pûrdo khom hnĕmin a hung um tah a nih. (42 words)
Note: This article is the last serial of my musings on the Umran Retreat (23-25 October, 2013). A booklet entitled ‘Lungkham Bangna-2’ is expected to be brought out in course of time which will contain all the seminar papers on various topics.
(Delhi, January 30, 2014. Thursday)
Note: The concluding part of Umran Retreat Serials 1-5.
Hmar Literature?
Someone amongst us organized seminars in 2013 outlandishly entitled ‘Hmar Literature: Renaissance and its Prospects’. We must congratulate each other for upstaging ourselves to a level where we can discuss the prospect of revival of the glory of our art and literature of the bygone days as if we had one such era in our make-belief world! This is ‘self-deception’ I have always been talking about in several of my writings. I am absolutely clear on this, but it is not at all easy to understand with a warped mind. It’s an illusion of a glorious past in the distant mist. Oh yes, we love hallucinating!
Or simply ‘a fabulation syndrome’, a word coined by Julian Barnes in ‘A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters’ (1989 p.109-110) in which he describes ‘fabulation’ as “making up a story to cover the facts you don’t know or can’t accept and keeping a few true facts and spin a new story round them” to suit one’s purpose. This is what I used to call ‘Phuokfawm histawri’ (Concocted history), a moronic exercise in wishful thinking.
The vaunted title mentioned above raises many serious questions. Do we know what literature means? Is there what we so-called ‘Hmar Literature’ as such? Do we count the hurriedly prepared instant textbooks for MIL subjects which are haphazardly stuffed with a bundle of sub-standard essays, short stories and novels as some sort of ‘Hmar Literature’? What is the meaning of the term ‘renaissance’ to our level of knowledge and understanding? What kind of Hmar literature that we wanted to revive to its old glory? Are we living in a dream world?
Wrongful claim
One of the resource persons in the seminar claimed that “the adoption of Lushai alphabet for writing Hmar language was the beginning of the birth of Hmar literature”. If we agree to this assertion or assumption, the reduction of Hmar language into writing is the reckoning year of the birth of Hmar literature which came after 1920 with the first publication of Rev. Sandy’s translation of the Gospel of Mark in 1920, first collection of Hmar hymns in 1923, Bu Hmasa (Hmar Primer) in 1928 and the New Testament in 1946 (Holy Bible 1968). Which of the publications amongst these do we consider as deserving to be called Hmar literature? Perhaps none except some hymns composed by Rev. Thangngur which were originally in the Lushai language. Buhmasa is by no means a literary work and it could never be. Others are translations of the Bible in rudimentary Hmar language. Therefore, the observation quoted above stands no scrutiny.
Oral literature
Hmar literature or any literature as such began with oral literatures that were handed from generation to generation by words of mouth and to some extent, skill of hands. No nation or community could however specifically pinpoint where it exactly began but could trace its developments from the source of material available in many cultural forms and patterns. Literature is a reflection of the lives of the people and their experiences under various environmental conditions and influences within and beyond their control. It’s life mirror, inside out.
The oral traditions we inherited in various cultural expressions were heavily influenced by our rural background and the accounts of ‘Vai lal’ that subsequently crept into our stories indicated that these were composed after our contact with them, particularly with the Bengalis (Korvais) in and around 1350-1500 A.D, if not later. Since many Zo dialect groups were believed to have been evolved during and after Kabaw Valley settlement and subsequent occupation of the Chin Hills, we may conjecturally claim that the oral literature of the Old Kuki group of which Hmar is one, was born during that period and the Hmar written literature after the introduction of Roman alphabet by the missionaries in 1894 for writing the Lushai language, particularly after the entry of Christianity at Senvon in Manipur South Disctrict in 1910 which inaugurated the use of Hmar along with Lushai as vehicles for spreading the Gospel as well as a subject of formal study at primary level.
Common cultural property
But then, can we claim a status of mere reduction of a language into writing as carrying a badge of origin of a literature? The answer is an emphatic NO. What is worth noting to me is that the oral traditions including folklores and tales that we have claimed to be ours are not exclusive to the tribe; they are in fact a common property of all Zo ethnic and kindred tribes with slight local variations except folk-songs but not folk-music as the former was heavily localized. Most of them are now stored in books in Dulien-Lusei (Mizo) and only very few in Hmar. Other Zo dialect groups apparently reconstructed their respective folklores and folktales from these published sources. There are only very few Hmar-specific folktales perhaps born before the generic term ‘Hmar’ came to be used after 1800 AD and I have included some of these in Hmar Hla Suina.
While collecting materials for my book ‘Hmar Hla Suina’ and also for the Hmar Cultural Society (HCS) of which I was Chairman from 1963-1981, my associates and I knocked every possible door where we believed information could be had either by meeting and interviewing them or sending questionnaires. We spent days and months to revive the the faded memories of the remnants of the old generation and extracted as much material as possible, most of which were very patchy and disconnected but very important. Painstakingly, we had to piece them together, like a jigsaw puzzle; a tedious and tortuous task which any researcher has to learn to love and adore. Had it not been so, we would never have a story like, for example, ‘Zawllai’ which I created (recreated?) from a few lines of folksong I collected from Khuplal of Parbung in 1964 where I had a five-month stint as Headmaster. Twenty seven years later, my book ‘Hmar Hla Suina’ followed suit which enabled to preserve many valuable Hmar cultural treasures that would have been otherwise lost in oblivion. Another milestone publication was LENRUOL HLA BU, the outcome of cultural revival in the 60s and 70s.
Negative impact of Christianity
The arrival of Christianity had disastrous impact on the continuing development of secular literature as the newly converts with crusadic fervor were wrongly taught to shun their socio-cultural practices including their traditional dance, songs and tunes and sing only Christians hymns set in western tunes. They were taught to dismiss and reject their old ways as a pagan practice. Anyone who tried to preserve their cultural treasures was and still is considered a worldly creature and therefore to be disdained and consigned to eternal hell.
The unfortunate part is that the fanatics and the uninformed group in the church who regarded themselves as spiritual have always been those lacking in understanding and discernment; they are the ones who believe that man can live by bread alone. To them, singing songs of praise set in the traditional tune and poetic language is blasphemous and damnatory, an act of defilement bordering on apostasy. People who have gone through the process of bringing back the practice of commemorating Sikpui Kut (Winter Festival) know how much opposition and recrimination they had to go through from the clergy and their hordes. For they don’t know how important Sikpui Kut or any cultural event is to their national identity and how many valuable oral literatures that the revival of the Kuts has brought back to the coffer of the nation. Nation does not live by religion alone. And nation making is always God’s priority in order to realize His kingdom on earth and in heaven. Literature is the soul that binds heaven and earth together. Ultimately, literature is all about TRUTH and BEAUTY.
Culture-based Lengkhawm Hla
God worked miraculously in the 1920s when some spiritual poets with insight came up with hymns in a modified traditional tunes called ‘Lengkhawm Hla’ laced with Welsh tunes. They found the new breed of hymns good for community singing and in tune with their cultural psyche. The new hymns were called ‘Lengkhawm Hla’ and the tunes ‘Lengkhawm Zai’. Thangngur was one of the pioneer composers of Lengkhawm Hla and held a distinguished status of being the first soul who came up with what is known as ‘Hmar Zai’, a blending of Semruk Zai, Liendang Hla, Puma Zai and other traditional songs.
The culture-friendly Lengkhawm Zai hit Mizoram and the immediate surrounding States wherever the gospel entered and the people immediately accepted it as their own and joined the new foreign religion in droves. Written Hmar literature was born out of this wave along with formal use of Hmar language (known as Khawsak Trong) as lingua franca of the group. Breaking the Gordian knot that discouraged use of any Zo ethnic language other than Lushai in preaching and worshiping, including compositing new hymns, Thangngur first wrote few of his songs in Lushai and then switched over to Hmar despite stiff opposition from his detractors. Without Thangngur spearheading the move, we would have lost most of our beautiful poetic words in the face of the onslaught of the new religion and Lushai hegemony.
It was this honored task that the cultural revival in the 60s and 70s aimed to bring it to a new high despite church oppositions. Many popular Hmar secular songs written during this period are still sung on social occasions till this day. In religious hymns and secular songs, the Hmars are not lacking behind as compared to their immediate ethnic neighbors.
Prose literature
What is most worrying is our emptiness in prose literature. There are hardly readable writings in Hmar. Very few can write in understandable Hmar but lack in quality and depth. Our general level of understanding is not only low, but very very poor, perhaps situated in between animal and sub-human level while our ego level always hits the sky. At the intellectual level, we are perhaps at the proto-human level but we tend to think ourselves highly knowledgeable in spiritual matters. The truth remains that people in high spiritual plane produced many classical literatures like, for example, writings in the Bible, Rig Vedas and others which adorn the religious institutions all over the world. But we remain fruitless and sterile.
Empty spiritualism
It is a high time to look into ourselves. Our spirituality seems to be a sterile one as we have seldom produced tangible fruit for others to see and eat. Our partial or sketchy knowledge of the written word of God is bombastic and impressive but our understanding of and conformity to the Word is bordering on zero level. We talk about renaissance of Hmar literature without having any literature worth the name. People who consider themselves as regulatory body to the Hmar literature are the ones who still seem to be baffled with the correct use of the alphabet. It is futile to expect great literature to have come from such ego-imprisoned souls, not to talk of high-flown renaissance just because we love the terminology. Let us come down to the earth and its soil and smell, what patriarch Isaac, while blessing the wrong guy, called “the smell of a field” which is we beautifully translated as “Lalpa malsawm ram rim”.
Diagnosis
Why are we allowed ourselves to be placed in this pathetic existence? Do we ever dare to look ourselves in the mirror and see who we are? May be our problem is that emptiness cannot see emptiness as a blind cannot see another blind. I have been trying to find out the reason or reasons for the past more than fifty years. Two fundamental conclusions I have made, apart from the many possible causes, are:
(1) We read too little. Even if we read, we cannot understand much of it as we do not know the context referred to. So we loss interest in reading because we cannot fathom its beauty and pleasure. It’s a dangerous vicious cycle. Unless we read with understanding, we will never learn or progress.
(2) The language and construction of the BSI publication of the Hmar Bible which has virtually destroyed the character and structure of Hmar language, is the main culprit as most of us have grown up under its influence and tried to write in its fashion. Two wrongs cannot be righted by doing the same thing all over and over again. When I said this, I know many are aghast at my temerity as they consider such naivety on my part as blasphemous. I have no problem with that. But we should be absolutely clear on this: Yes, the Word of God indeed is inviolable, in the past, now and forever; but not the words of translation. In fact, wrong translation and incorrect use of Hmar language and construction is insulting the Word and the mother tongue. We have been doing this for more than 60 years. Hence the Delhi Version.
Translation
Good translation from standard works can be a good foundation for building up language and literature. The best example is the Bible translated in many languages. As on November 2012 the full Bible has been translated into 518 languages and 2798 languages have atleast some portion of the Bible. There are more than 450 English versions already. We have four versions in Hmar. We, who work for Delhi Version, strongly believe that fresh complete translation of the Bible in the way standard Hmar should be written and spoken is the only way to save the dying Hmar language from extinction and the souls long lost in translation. The sleek, leather-bound revised edition is expected to be out soon.
Let me quote just one verse (Genesis 24:67) to pose to every reader what he or she thinks as the thin line dividing what is literature and what is not from the four Hmar versions. Please ponder over and you may agree with us that a true Hmar speaking soul will put the way we do. It carries the soul and spirit of the language.
NIV: Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death (32 words).
BSI: Isak chun Rebeka chu a nu Sara puon ina chun a thuoi lut a; chun, Rebeka chu a nei a, a nuhmei a hung ni tah a; chun, ama chu a hmangai hleh a, chuongchun Isak chu a nu thi thua khawm chun a hung thlamuong thei tah a (49 words).
BFW: Chun Isak chun Rebek chu a nu Sari puon ina chun a thruoi lut a; chun, Rebek chu a nei a, a nuhmei a hung ni ta a: chun ama chu a hmangai hle a, chuongchun Isak chu a nu thi thua khom chun a hung thlamuong thei ta a (49 words).
BSI (Haflong): Isak chun a nu Sara chengna hlak puon-ina chun Rebeka chu a thuoi lut a, chuongchun an innei a, a nuhmei a hung in tah a. Isak chun Rebeka chu a hmangai hleh a. A nu thi hnungin Isak chu thlamuongtakin a um nawk tah a (47 words).
Delhi Version: Isak chun a nu Sari puon inah Rebek chu a thruoi lut a, a nei a, a nuhmei a hung ni ta a, a hmangai hle a; a nu a sŭnna leia a pûrdo khom hnĕmin a hung um tah a nih. (42 words)
Note: This article is the last serial of my musings on the Umran Retreat (23-25 October, 2013). A booklet entitled ‘Lungkham Bangna-2’ is expected to be brought out in course of time which will contain all the seminar papers on various topics.
(Delhi, January 30, 2014. Thursday)
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