Hugged by the Best

Someone had the best dream about me last night. And how she saw me, in her own words -

"You were being hugged by everyone around...then a white person in a robe, I couldn't see his face, with long hair - came and hugged you - and you had a beautiful smile..."

My first response was "That must be Jesus!"

She said she woke up with goosebumps. She hesitated about telling me about the dream because she was afraid it would make her seem like a crazy stalker type person :) But I'm so glad she did because this one dream has just lifted by blues away in one single stroke.

It's so weird. Especially because the dreamer (who is one of the nicest people ever) and I hardly have any contact with each other. She and I used to work in the same team but that was a long time ago, she's left the company since. She was not someone I hung out with or know very well unfortunately. But we occasionally say our hellos on Facebook, even met each other once some months back. And that's about the extent of our relationship. Also, she is not Christian.

So it's just amazing that she had this dream. And I am so glad she did because I now feel like I was really hugged by Jesus last night.

Beautiful ending to a shitty day!

Choose Your destiny, Flawless Victory

I really want to write about some people and their usernames on Facebook but there are a few more things about my last trip that I want to write about. I don't want anyone to think that eating is my only priority.

Okay, so the things I want to write about are - 1) Bollywood dancing, 2) Shoe shopping, and 3) My birthday.

1. DANCING

I just want to announce to the world today that I am now a certified Bollywood dancer :P That's right. Certified, stamped, and approved. I don't think I mentioned my little ass-shaking, crotch-thrusting, chest-heaving, tummy-jiggling romp on my previous post. On stage. In front of people. Hundreds of people from many many different countries. In glittery costumes. With loud music. Bollywood music.

**SMUG FACE**

I even have pictures to prove it :)

- in all my lubuk glory :)

It took weeks of practice but it was worth it. For me personally, it was like achieving something BIG because it's something that I've never even dreamt of doing. Dancing on stage?? And Bollywood at that!? You're kiddin' me!! So this can go into my little book of personal feel-good achievements. Pakak!

Oh and I even have extra drama to add to it. So we were supposed to be called 'Namaste India,' but when it was time for our dance, the commentator's voice rang out loud and clear - 'Next we have Jerusha and crew...' Hyuk!

(And please no hate for my Bollywood dancing! I've already taken some flak about Mizo-Bollywood. Just so you know, I have learnt all Mizo dances by heart and by soul way way way before I started Bollywood so..chances are I dance more Mizo dances..and better than your average Mizo girl :P)

2. SHOES

Alright, who loves shoes as much as I do? In fact, who doesn't love shoes? What woman in her right mind doesn't go weak in the knees at the sight of beautiful shoes in a shoe store? What crazy insane woman would say she doesn't like shoes and not be lying? What abnormal female human being would not shiver in an almost sensual delight amidst the smell of sexy new shoes?

Alas, our own dear Hyderabad has very limited options. I mean you have lots of stores that sells you shoes, but stores that sell buyable shoes? Not a lot. There are plenty of times I go out with the intention of spending money on shoes but still go home empty handed.

So being in Singapore was like being in shoe heaven (as compared to Hyderabad). The first store I went to the minute my feet touched Singapore soil was Miu Miu. Then Prada, then Versace, then Jimmy Choo...Just to smell them! I had to visit my affordable shoe stores too, mais oui.

And I look at my 8 new pair of shoes and I am happy! Happy happy joy joy!

3. MY BIRTHDAY

My birthday this year fell on the last day of our conference. Which means our awesome final conference day party was on the night of my awesome birthday. I felt it was a free fancy birthday party that Google threw for me. And me alone. PS: Look, you have to look at life that way (as untrue as they could/may be) or you're going to turn into a bitter bitch with a permanent frown sketched upon your unsmiling lips.
But no frowns for me because Google threw me a free, ultra-fancy birthday party. And I have mad Bollywood dancing skills and people to testify for it (or my lack thereof).

Also, my post title is the result of a week long obsession with the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. Ouch! Makes for excellent propelling music on the treadmill though...

MORTAL KOMBAT!

Frogs legs and geoducks

I'm back and I can't wait to brag about this - I finally ate a geoduck!! I'm super excited that I got to eat something I've only ever read about and saw on TV. Don't know what a geoduck is? This is a geoduck.

These phallic looking creatures are actually clams. I've never seen an..ahem..elephant's penis but I'm pretty sure elephant penises look like this.

Anyway, I've read about geoducks, endlessly pored over their pictures, and I have always been grossed out by their worminess and leechiness and caterpillariness and general disgustingness, but yet...also strangely fascinated by this very grossness. So I decided that I wanted to eat it :-) So it was a very nice surprise when we walked in to this seafood restaurant, and the first thing I saw was this on their tank -

This is what they look like after they're cooked. It's a good thing they're cut up, that's the only way I'd eat them. If they were served whole, gak! All I'd be able to think of is Armin Meiwes.

But this was yum. Stir fry with chives and pine nut, they taste almost like chicken but with a penis texture :D (because I'm sure if you cook penis, this is what the texture would be like.)

And these were the best prawns I've ever had in my entire life, and I have eaten a LOT of prawns. Plain boiled prawns. When will we ever learn in India that food can be better without spice overdose sometimes? A lot of times in fact...

And next we have frog legs with ginger. Again I thought it tasted a bit like chicken, just softer and more amphibian-y :P I wasn't a big fan. I liked the frog legs (and all other edible parts) back from my childhood days cooked in an empty 'khaini' can over an open makeshift fire on the 'banks of the Chite lui' better :-)

And this is again another dish I won't forget any time soon. It's called Soon Hock, don't know what it's called in English. Steamed fish if done right I will pick over Sunday morning pork any day. Okay this site says Soon Hock is "kind of fish that is highly priced for its exceptional steamed texture"

Okay that's all about food. Now I just want to show you some pictures of the resort we stayed in in Bintan, Indonesia. Pretty waters, pretty resort!

As you can see, even the rooms are pretty nice.
View from my room -

For anyone who plan on taking a vacation soon - this place costs only Rs 1700 a night. Yeah I know, unbelievable. If I was a married person with kids, I'd take my family here. If I was single, no. Unless I'm going with a big group. I'm not a big fan of manicured lawns and stuff like that on a holiday, I like them wild and uncultivated - to an extent.

Fun trip. And of course, the highlight of it all is definitely the geoduck meal. You know, a geoduck may be disgusting to look at but it's actually very tasty and it is not the most disgusting thing I've eaten. That esteemed position goes to the raw pig uterus I ate in Tokyo. Most disgusting by far in every aspect - taste, texture, smell, and looks.

What's the grossiest thing you've ever eaten?

Have birthday, will travel

I've just realised that my little blog has been around for almost 6 years! Hurrah for the longest standing relationship I've ever had with anything. We've come a long way together!

Having said that, I know I have been ignoring it on a major scale, and that is because I have become a robot. Robots don't have much to say except what they've been programmed to do or say. And blogging isn't one of the things I've been programmed to do lately. (And how is it that my computer flags contractions for misspellings when even my lowlier phone totally understands them!? T'is unfathomable indeed!)

Anyway, the latest in this robot's long line of missions is to fly to Singapore and I am leaving tonight. Yay! Work of course, but travel is travel. I got to spend my birthday last year in Tokyo, and another exotic birthday this year in Singapore officially makes me the girl you've always envied! :-) Another Sales Conference, and again I'm lucky enough to get a few extra days so I'm going to actually be able to check out Bintan in Indonesia before I head to Singapore.

In fact that was the only real reason behind this blog post, to talk about my trip. The first para is really just balderdash. I always feel I have to write something before I get on an airplane no matter what. And I really didn't want to make it seem like I'm bragging about my fancy birthdays even though I obviously am.

And if all upcoming birthdays mean a new exciting location each time, then bring on the birthdays! I'm all for growing old. (Come to think of it, even minus exotic locations, who wouldn't be for growing old. Better than dying isn't it?)

I used to make looong birthday wish lists but alas! I am now too tired and weary with the weight of ages on my back to do something like that. But if I could pick one thing I would really love to do on my birthday, it's this....

Sh(e)aring My Sheep

I want to show you all my latest artwork, my masterpiece, the culmination of my life's work. I call this - "Aerial View of Four Sheep Grazing" :P

PET Scans and Manali

Okay, a bit late but here we go anyway - I had my final PET CT scan I have been proclaimed clean - free of all nasty cancer cells! Hoorah! The lesions that they found on my iliac region and the one on my rectouterine pouch (the back wall of the uterus) that worried my doctors have all been found to be non-malignant.

Oddly, despite being able to more or less take everything that's happened so far in stride, this final scan totally freaked me out. It's very different getting a scan for the first time and getting one when you already have a history behind you.

It's like standing in a courtroom, after months of lengthy trial, to hear the final verdict - "Am I going to get a death sentence (of sorts) or am I going to be given my freedom?" - something like that.

I think it also had to do with week after week and month after month of hanging on and hoping - with everything you got, and you finally get to a stage where you're so drained and depleted that it becomes really really really difficult to muster up even an iota of positivity.

So I did the cheesiest thing. The day of my scan - I went, got scanned, was in a bad mood for no reason, was surly and difficult with the poor nurses, then went home, packed my bags and flew down to Delhi to meet Cousin Bteii. She and I went to Manali. I stayed away for a week just to avoid having to face that final scan result.

And when I finally trudged back home, I was 6 days late to get my results. But like 'a messenger from radiant climes,' this result came and told us all the beautiful things that we wanted to hear. I'm thankful for God's goodness. (But only a small part of me is. It's complicated and I don't know how to explain it, so let's just leave it at that.)

Every single weekend this year has been spent at the hospital, and now I only need to go 3 months from now for a checkup. I feel liberated!

And Manali was beautiful. The highlight of my trip was this handsome guy, Tiger. He'd happily run to me when I get up in the morning, like we've been the closest and best of friends for an entire lifetime. And we'd go for long walks up the hill near where we stayed, and sitting there in the peace and quiet, with apple and cherry and peach blossoms all around us, and the beautiful Tiger happily sitting there by my side, I felt calm and at peace. I was happy inside out.

Phantoma Sikret

Do you remember these?

If you do, you're ancient :-)

Macavity, clearly one of the great ancient ones loves them. So much so that she sent this email to the cigarette company after being re-introduced to these cigarettes by another great ancient soul after decades of forgetfulness -

fromMacavity

toinfo@harnik.in

subjectPhantom Sweet Cigarettes

Dear Phantom Cigarette Company,

We are big fans of your sweet cigarettes and were wondering if you would be so kind as to ship us a carton. We will be happy to pay for it, if you give us details of payment methods.

Or give us a list of distributors/shops in Pune/Hyderabad, so we can purchase from them directly.

Thank you

Regards,

Macavity

On life

"She said she usually cried at least once each day. Not because she was sad, but because the world was so beautiful and life was so short."

I Sing for Joy at the Work of Your Hands

My test result came and guess what?? Okay don't guess, I'll tell you. The lesion on my abdominal area shows "no signs typical to melanoma" or any "sign of malignancy." A heartfelt thank you to every person out there that prayed for me.

I'm sure no one prayed for me about this next win, but I did a lot of praying for this - the Google Football League! And looks like someone's prayers are being listened to. About time too (I just have to add that because I feel like God has been ignoring me and ALL my prayers for quite a while).

The Tribe won!

Here's an exuberant us after our win with our trophy. And look closely, because you'll see I have a second trophy in my hand ;) Does it look like a 'Best Player of the series' trophy to you? :)

It is, and that is mine! All mine! Yes, I won the best player award - believe it or not. I still can't quite believe it myself. (Caribou, Zoram lam ai chu ka awh zo rih khawp e haha. Commentator te pawhin 'All the way from Mizoram' an ti vel dap dap reng mai! :))

And now you can also say I was famous (for a day) because a thousand plus people ate a dish named after me for lunch :P The good Macavity who never have sambar at lunch had a bowl full of it just because it bore my name and she's an awesome friend.

I played defense, but I took over the goalie role when the games get to penalty shootout stages. And I, without any shame, will include this picture of me scoring a goal during the penalties because I'm so freaking proud of myself.

The only downside to all of these is that I now have the ugliest knees in the world. Scarred, scabby, just generally very unfeminine knees.

And on top of that, just when my battle wounds were about to heal, I made this really bad decision to go water surfing last weekend and I wound up with raw knees all over again.
But I think I sort of got to instructor-stage goodness :D And I would do it again in a heartbeat even if it meant even uglier knees.

Heh! Excuse the extreme modesty. It's hard to stay humble because I'M ON FIRE! YEAH BABY!

All this joyfulness aside, I have to go for another PET CT scan tomorrow to have yet another node (on my iliac region this time) checked out. Same thing again, we need to know if they are metastases of the melanoma.

It's getting to be a bit tiring, and sometimes I'm just downright sick of it all. I think I've only had about two weekends this year that I didn't spend some time at the hospital. But you know, even though every test is always frightening, overall I'm not too worried. I think God has always given me enough good to tide me over the bad. And whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well with my soul (Well I'm only trying still...)

And because the God on the mountain is still God in the valley, and the God of the good times is still God in the bad times.

The God of the day is still God in the night.

Dr Doom and Soccer and Life in General

"I'm afraid there's no hope. There's nothing that can be done. You'll have to start preparing yourself..." This is what my new oncologist told me on my first meeting with him 2 weeks ago.

After looking at all my test results and proclaiming "This is not good, this is not good at all" after looking at every sheet of paper, he told me that if this mass in my cervical region (called the pouch of Douglas) wasn't operable, there would be no hope for me.

"I'm sorry.." long dramatic pause, looking at me sympathetically. I think he half expected me to burst into tears but when he saw no tears forthcoming, he continued "I'm really very sorry."

We've been monitoring this lesion since we found out about it last year, and after a few failed tests we haven't been able to confirm if it is cancerous or just a harmless fibroid. All my previous doctors have been very positive since my nodes are all clear, and technically the melanoma would have to travel through my nodes before they can reach my abdominal area.

When I asked him why he was treating it like it was a confirmed case of metastasic melanoma when there's been no confirmative report, "It most likely is" he said. It was almost like he wanted it to be.

I was far from crying. Of course, it's scary to hear words like that, but I was too angry to focus too much on fear. How can anyone tell you that there is no hope? It is my choice, my decision to keep hoping or not to. No one should ever tell someone that there is no hope because hoping is a personal right, one that we can choose to cling to even on our death beds.

As I sat there, listening to all these dark predictions, all I could think of was how off everything seemed. "I feel like a million dollars, and yet this is what the doctor is telling me. How can I be dying when I feel so great?" It may sound a bit dense, but cancer or not, when you feel so healthy and ...alive, the thought of dying just can't really sink in. Even when this fancy doctor in this fancy hospital with all his fancy degrees tell you that there is no hope for you, your mind just refuses to believe the things you hear.

Anyway, Doctor Doom ordered a battery of tests and appointments with a radiologist (because he was positive I needed radiation therapy) and an oncological surgeon.

To cut a long story short, the senior surgeon was angry that a big deal was made out of something that was possibly nothing. He canceled all the tests that Doom ordered, and asked me to do another ultrasound guided FNAC (this is the only thing that's made me cry so far by the way, the pain is freaking intense).

I will get my test result on Friday. I feel very positive about everything. Hopefully, things will not be as bad as Doctor Doom predicted.

Well that's all on the dying side. On the living side, I am awesome! :) I signed up for one of the girls football team for the Google Football League. My team is called The Tribe, and guess who's captain? :) And it is only appropriate that a true tribal captains a team called The Tribe :P

That's me, #1, winning all the tosses for my team.

We've played two matches so far. Lost one 1-0, and I'll admit we were not very good losers. We sulked and remained dour-faced for the rest of the day.

A good lecture from our beloved coach -

And we won our second match 3-0!

Football is healthy. And I don't mean just physically. Believe me, when you're out on the ground engaged in full-out combat with your enemy, cancer is the last thing on your mind.

Love is also healthy :-)

This swell life

Booo!

This is how my feet looks right now, my classic swollen feet look. (I know you don't really want to look at my feet but I feel vicious tonight). Don't judge my poor feet too harshly though, there was a time I used to have nice feet. And these very feet, believe it or not, used to be gazed on with much love and adoration. But post thyroid surgery, bad hair days have taken a step back to bad feet days. Did I ever mention that when I was a baby, a maid spilled boiling water on my right feet? You can still see the scars. And now, that coupled with the bombasticity leaves me with very little to be proud of.

I'm home alone on a Friday night. Isn't that just tragic? My boredom these days is getting so unmanageable I'm starting to prefer being bored on my own. It's more tolerable than being bored in the company of others. At least I don't have to keep up pretenses. Here on my own I can paint my nails all the colors of the rainbow in one night.

Skipped out of work early, canceled dinner plans with a lie for an excuse. Tried to buy a pair of pretty red suede shoes to cheer myself up (thank God I still fit into a size 36!), but the stupid credit card machine wasn't working and I barely had enough cash to pay for my rickshaw fare back home. I went home fuming, accusing the whole universe of conspiring against me.

And I've been weeping like a fool because I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind and I felt so sad because I missed my unswollen feet and I'm so much in love and I don't have anyone or anything I want erased from my mind ever. Ever ever.

And I feel threatened. That this 'force' - something beyond anyone's control is trying to erase everything I know. Trying to erase me.

But I'm still here, my memory is still intact. And as for ugly appendages...they're not the end of the world.

And to compensate for the gross feet picture above, here's another one. Nicer to look at with pretty green trees and because I really miss this day.

One of these days, I will do something like this for a living. Hang around trees all day. With unswollen feet.

Poor Balaam, poor donkey!

I was overcome with so much confusion and general befuddlement while I was reading the Bible the other night. The source of this deep perplexity are these lines from the book of Numbers -

And God came unto Balaam at night, and said unto him, If the men come to call thee, rise up, and go with them; but yet the word which I shall say unto thee, that shalt thou do. 21 And Balaam rose up in the morning, and saddled his ass, and went with the princes of Moab. 22 And God's anger was kindled because he went: and the angel of the LORD stood in the way for an adversary against him.

Numbers 22:20 - 22

In verse 20, it clearly says that God told Balaam to "go with them." But then when he went with the men, God's "anger was kindled because he went."

And if you read the entire chapter, you'll see that poor Balaam was actually really careful about whether or not he should go with the men, repeatedly telling king Balak despite his offers of great honor et al "If Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond the word of the LORD my God, to do less or more."

Why was God angry with Balaam??? Does anyone understand?

How little of the Bible I understand! How little of my life I understand! How little of everything I understand...

It's Valentine's day O white-livered ones

On account of it being Valentine's day today, I'm going to take time off off my busy schedule to share one of my favorite stories with you. The following is an excerpt from T.H Lewin's book, Wild Races of South-eastern India - that's us if you didn't get it. Anyone belonging to the wild Mizo race should enjoy this story and I hope it reminds us where we came from and what kind of men our forefathers were.

And now let us proceed with the story. This is what Lewin said:

A young man, a Riang Tipperah, who lives in my house, was formerly a slave of Rutton Poi’s (a Lhoosai chief) [Rothangpuia], and I have heard from him many accounts of raids made by his master. He used to accompany the Chief as the bearer of his weapons.

His first raid was in 1860, made on the Bengallee inhabitants of Kundal in Tipperah. They fell upon the villagers at day-dawn, according to custom; and the Bengallee men, with one consent, ran away. The women, however, stood their ground, and abused their grim assailants vociferously for breaking into honest people’s houses.

The Lhoosai laughed at their shrill tongues at first, but later it was found troublesome, and one young woman had to be cut down pour encourager les autres. The Chief confided to my boy’s care two women, captives. All the prisoners were fastened together by a cord through the lobe of the ears, and the Lhoosais set out with their plunder on the return journey.

Now, one of the captive women was young, and not accustomed to walking; so after the first day’s march her feet swelled, and she was unable to go further. The Chief therefore ordered that she should be speared. “Well,” said the narrator, “I took the spear and went towards her, and Rutton Poia said, ‘Do it neatly, I will look on,’ for it was the first time I had ever speared any one.

When the girl saw me take the spear and come towards her, she fell a-weeping, and caught my garments and my hands, and all my heart thumped, and I could not hurt her. It was pitiful!

So the Chief began to laugh at me, and said, ‘O white-livered, and son of a female dog, when we return to the village, I will tell the young maidens of your courage;’ so I shut my eyes and speared her. My stroke was ill-directed, and she did not die; so the Chief finished the work, and he made me lick the spear. The blood of Bengallees is very salty. Since then I have not been afraid to spear any one.”

Among the Lhoosai it is customary for a young warrior to eat a piece of the liver of the first man he kills; this, it is said, strengthens the heart and gives courage.

Wild Races of South-eastern India - T.H Lewin

*Sigh* Don't you just miss those good old days! The days we ate human liver and licked the blood of our enemies off our spears! :-)

Seriously though, Rothangpuia is my favorite Mizo chief. If we were still living in Rothangpuia's time, today instead of spewing Hallmark-y lines to a man and giving him gifts of little bottles of liquid to make him smell like the inside of a shopping mall, celebrating Valentine's day, I would be seeing my man off to battle, and instead of a mushy love poem, I would be telling him "May you be unhurt, and bring home many heads!" What's more romantic I'm not even sure anymore...

And oh, happy Valentine's day O white-livered sons & daughters of female dogs! :P

P.s. You can download or read the book online here, which I strongly recommend you do. The Englishman's patronizing tone can get a bit annoying, but the book makes for a very interesting read otherwise.

Just call me Masterchef

Sometimes my own greatness astounds me. There is nothing I can not do in this world. How does one deal with such overwhelming worthiness? I'm like a modern day Midas, everything I touch blooms and turns into gold, or into a delicious cake!

Baking is such an ego trip :-)

If I had known mixing some flour and eggs and other otherwise boring articles together and putting it in the oven could bring one so much pleasure I would've studied baking in college. It would've been more gratifying than cutting open dead frogs and rats.

This is my first ever attempt at baking. I was already consoling myself before I got started. "Baking is hard and it's your first time so don't take it too personally if your cake comes out looking like a lump of charcoal" I told myself.

But voila! It didn't look like charcoal, and it tasted really really really good! :) (If you're my Facebook friend, you're already sick of these pictures because I plaster my wall with them). Anyway, pretty good for a first timer don't you think? Especially since my cook book was really undecipherable (ounces, grams..ugh!) so most of it was pretty much based on hunch work.

Well what I really aimed for was a Victoria sponge cake. I didn't have whipped cream so it falls short of the ideal VSC image wise, but my friends did not complain.


It's times like these that I really wish that I have the family here. Cooking is only fun when there are people to eat and appreciate it. I can happily slave all day in the kitchen just to hear people tell me how good my roast chicken was, and how full their tummies are and hear them tell me days later that they still dream of my prawn curry. And here there's only so much I and the two weight-watching roomies can eat.

Well, if anyone feels like cake, call me! :-)

Say hello to the demons in my head

(Wrote this some nights back but forgot to publish so doing it now)

Despite dear Blackestred's suggestion to unite Minotaur and my dignified cow, I feel, as an artist, I must explore my artistic spirit and graze away from my bovine fixation. Therefore, in this project, we will do demons instead.

Being the descendant of overly superstitious ancestors whose mountains and forests abounded with spirits, it's inevitable for one to grow up without a fairly obsessive interest in the supernatural. Stories from those days of yore thrilled and excited me when I was a kid, and I have these images firmly embedded in my head of what each spirit would look like. Funny thing is, I find even after all these years those images stay the same as they were first pictured in my head. And these are drawings of some of the spirits the way I've always imagined them to be.

First on the list is the tau. Male spirits I think. In the night, much akin to typical behavior of the human male, the taus like to hang out with their buddies. Accompanied by a very strong animal scent, very like the human male gathering. But the similarity ends there.

The taus, instead of chugging beer, spend their nights carrying torches and doing aerial acrobatics in perfect synchronization. Of course, humans can see only the torches, as the carriers are not visible in the dark. It's supposed to be quite a show, and those of us who never got lucky enough to witness something so mysteriously beautiful should realise that our lives are that much less richer because of it. This is what they would look like with night vision -

The tau, who is quite a social animal in the night is a loner during the day. When the sun comes up, they like to loll around on the branches of trees growing out of steep and inaccessible cliffs and sun themselves all day. In my head, the tau sunning himself always looks benign as he sleeps contentedly on his branch.


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Next we have the pheichham. This is a female spirit, and it's main job is to grant people wishes. Of course, just like today's corporate world, it insists on the longest and troublesomest process to get her work done.

When a human sees it, the shy pheichham will bats its eyelashes and run away. The human has to be brave enough to not run away screaming at its horrendous appearance, should be fast enough to catch the hoppity-hopping spirit, and be strong enough to hold on tightly and not let go because it will try to shake you off like a bucking bronco.

The pheichham will then ask him, not unlike a job interview, 'What do you see for yourself a few moments from now?' Then the brave soul will say all the things he wishes for himself, but all in one breath. If he takes a breath in between, his wish is immediately null and void, and the pheichham will jump away cackling.

The books always describes the pheichham as an old woman, horrible to behold, scraggly hair, drooping, saggy breasts and has only one leg. For some reason, in my little girl's mind, I saw her as an entire leg with a head, like so -

Pic 1.


Even now that I'm all grown up and I know now that this (Pic 2) is what a pheichham should look like, I can only picture her as Pic 1 in my mind.

Pic 2.
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Third on the list are the khuavangs. They consist of both genders and like humans, marry, reproduce and even spoil their young. They live underground. They're generally quite harmless except in the Kungawrhi story. My old school books didn't really describe their appearance but in the Kungawrhi story, they had black faces. But again, because I sort of connect them to fireflies, this is how I picture them -

They appear out of the darkness as glowy, pale faces, with a sort of a humming sound. They look sad all the time - most likely because of the drabness of their living conditions.

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And last but not the least is the khawlhring. Now this is a bad spirit, up to nothing but mischief. The khawhring's main occupation is to covet the possessions of the humans it shares its habitat with, with a particular fondness for gongs. In order to get its sickly hands on these coveted items, it makes people sick and then makes its demands through the sick person - "I want so-and-so's gong," and if this so-and-so refuses to part with his gong and its demands are not met, the sick person would never recover and eventually die.

The khawhring is a drippy, sloshy spirit, oozing with the slime of centuries old sicknesses. And of course, that's only in the pages of the picture book in my head. No one's ever given a clear description of a khawhring, and I have a feeling no one's going to find out any time soon.

It mostly afflicts its victim with terrible stomachaches. So next time you're stricken with that nasty stomach pain, think twice before you blame your poor ulcer.

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Bonus item: On the bonus item we have the tualsumsu. Personally, I think no other spirit is capable of striking as much terror as this one, the thought of it fills me with intense fear, even though it isn't in the habit of harming anyone except the poor soul it possesses. But I believe the mere sight of it would surely be worse than taking a few bops to the head. So being harmless doesn't really do much for its reputation in my opinion.

Well the tualsumsu is not actually a spirit but a possessed female human being. This woman will live a normal life and go about her daily routine during the day, but when it's night and the dark settles in and evil awakens all the dark forces, the spirit will flip this poor person upside down and proceed to make her roam around the empty streets inverted. The afflicted person might complain of a dull pain on the head the next morning, but won't remember her upside down romp from the night before.

A friend once told me this story of how when she was a baby, her dad was posted in some remote village. According to the village people, there apparently was a tualsumsu in the village, and at night people were scared to venture out, locking themselves in their houses. My friend's mother, obviously more enlightened than the simple village folks called it balderdash and paid no attention to it.

But then one night, as she was sitting by a window nursing the baby with only a candle burning and everyone else had gone to bed, out of the stillness of the dark night, she heard a thumpity-thump-thump sound coming down the lonely road. 'What could it be?' she wondered, and looked out the window - and behold! on the street was a young woman on her head, legs up in the air, slowly hopping down the street.

Now doesn't the very thought of that fill your heart with dread?

The tualsumsu somehow seems related to the Chinese hopping spirit. I saw it in some Jackie Chan movie once, this hopping spirit. Arms outstretched, hopping around and all I could think of was the tualsumsu. Maybe they're related. Or like the male/female versions, a bit like the succubus and the incubus.

I just don't like this hopping business. Normally-walking spirits are bad enough, I don't see where the need to hop arises. It's just not a nice thing to do.

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You can see I'm totally jobless. I am trying really hard to stay in more and go out less, so unless I do something, anything to do with my time, the restlessness monster will catch up with me.