The last time that Friday the 13th bothered me was some 15 years back when I as a 10-year-old kid saw the horror flick “Friday the 13th”. That same hair-raising, traumatizing feeling got the better of me once again on Friday the 13th last when I read the “Naga Idol 2.07 Demystified” by Abhishek Singh. To be candid, I was horrified by his review of my previous article, which made me for a moment think that I had landed in unfamiliar territories. La-di-da Demystified! It is a grand piece of literary work implicitly containing some signs of perturbation and arguments ranging from the suave to the scurrilous – concealed by a veneer of good writing. I am at least honored that my syntax-error-ridden clichéd thing got some attention anyway.
No, the West is not the Devil but ‘toxic’ is not something angelic. Westoxication is westoxication but not to write in English simply because it is a western, and universal, language would be such an excess of stupidity, which is not in my nature, honestly … eh! Some misinterpreted lines considered insignificant by some almost-a-writer-in-the-making, like I did the last time, sometimes falls under the microscopic scanner of the hyper-typo-discriminating machines and that’s when your critique of 1,500 words is made to sound like one long expectoration… sigh!
I wish I was cocksure of anything as Mr. Singh is of everything. I wish we could turn anything Baloney into something Naga Idol so that we will have no garbage in the streets of Mokokchung! Now that’s not baloney. I agree no moral policing is warranted and I’d consider myself wise (… err wise!?) not to raise a debate on morality (and religion) here lest it leaves a slur upon the moral government (not moral police) of the world.
Not much purportedly “insulting, nonsensical and parochial (sic)” comment has been made, yet I think I had better terminate this thread here or I may become brusque. This thread reminds me of the good old days in the forums of www.kuknalim.com where we’d post arguments and counter-arguments and go on and on and on, on topics like “battle of the sexes”, “which came first – the hen or the egg” etc. until common sense prevailed, or until our overdrive of adrenal glands subsided.
It is not for me, sir, to attempt to fathom the inscrutable workings of the Council. But the MDACC does appear like it’s moving in a wide sea of glue. It’s the Mokokchung District ART and CULTURE Council barely organizing the M Fest (read Naga Idol) in one whole calendar year!
I came, I saw, I concurred not. Common Sense is unnaturally uncommon here in Nagaland. Anyway, I am not here to make Naga Idol forever poised between a cliché and an indiscretion nor am I here to lay the MDACC a stymie. (I am incapable of it either ways!) The only one point to be noted here would be that the it’s-cool-to-imitate-everything-you-please kind of impression it leaves on the minds of generation next is toxic. The ‘Naga largess paradox’ (we individually or in groups often support a group activity regardless of finding any plausible reason to agree with or to justify it) will most probably work in favour of Naga Idle (pun intended) again.
Meanwhile, I’m spending a pleasant and retrospective weekend contemplating on how miraculously Nagaland is going directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization. I shall keep writing for all that I feel is right (and against all that I feel is wrong) … keeping in mind that indigenous peoples’ identities the world over is facing the perennial thread of extinction posed by globalism, popular mono-culturism, neo-colonialism and the array of wrong notions imbued into the heads of the susceptible and incognizant by the mainstream media which may be detrimental to the posterity of this land.
Limalenden Longkumer
Mokokchung
