Ambling in Aizawl

On a recent trip to Aizawl, I whiled away a morning walking through the city centre. Despite the familiar press of crowds at Bara Bazaar, the old market district of Aizawl, it felt different from other Indian cities. The streets were cleaner. The air was crisper. And despite slow traffic on the narrow roads, drivers didn’t erupt into a cacophony of blaring horns.

I wove my way between vendors in the main market, which, in the 1980s and 1990s, was famous for consumer products from East Asia smuggled in via Myanmar. Smuggled goods are no longer novelties, but stalls still manage to surprise with the items on offer: leafy vegetables to smoked fish, pirated DVDs of K-Dramas and Pixar animations — all dubbed/sub-titled in Mizo — to Chinese induction stoves.

From the market, I walked uphill to Millennium Centre, a multi-store mall, took a bus to the next stop, and then climbed up McDonald Hill. Along the ridge of the hill, opposite aptly-named High Field, is a memorial that marks the spot where the first church in these hills was erected in 1896. Next door is the Mizoram State Museum — not spectacular, but with interesting exhibits in the ethnological gallery on the first floor: drums, weapons, and rice-beer paraphernalia; and the textile gallery on the second floor: traditional textile, and the uniform of a Mizo National Army recruit. When I came out of the museum after a lazy hour, school students were playing in the field — it was time for lunch.

I walked down the hill, and turned towards Chanmari. The first restaurant I checked specialised in North Indian food; the second had a sign that read, ‘Indian thali. No beef, no pork’. Then I found Red Pepper restaurant.

A large group of local students had occupied most of the tables — I read that as a sign of authenticity. The place is decorated in a tribal chic style with a couple of bamboo huts with thatched roofs inside the building.

With the guidance of the helpful staff, I ordered Mizo rice beer, smoked pork, vawksa and white rice. The rice beer was fruity and frothy like a light lassi , with a sour aftertaste. The smoked pork was grilled more than smoked, but sweet and crunchy. Vawksa just means pork in Mizo, but what I got was the highlight of the meal — a savoury and sour broth with pork and a leafy vegetable, possibly mustard greens.

Hunger sated, I walked to Chanmari bus stop, where I saw a promotional banner for the Chanmari Football Club. Aizawl FC might be the former (2016-2017) national champion, but local pride in other teams is evident everywhere. Later, at an apparel store, I saw a sign that certified that the store was a ‘proud Co-Sponsore (sic) of Chanmari West Football Club’.

With all the interest in football, I wondered where the grounds were on these steep hills — I hadn’t seen any other than the High Field. I found my answer when I went to look at the city from the vantage point of the Aizawl Theological College, perched high on a ridge at the northern end of the city.

The panoramic view revealed fields on the bald pate at the top of hillocks, fields cut where the slope was gentle, and a ground squeezed into the narrow valley of a river between two ridges. Working around the constraints of the land is a feature of the city. Houses perch at the edge of the road, sometimes with three or four floors built from the road level down to the curve of the slope.

The next day on my flight back from Aizawl, I had a long layover at Kolkata and took a cab to town to enjoy a Bengali meal. Leaving the airport, the driver suddenly braked — a car had suddenly stopped ahead — and in response, the cabbie pressed down hard on the horn, as if to remind me that I wasn’t in Aizawl any more.