In a state where associations, organisations and trade unions are a dime a dozen, the Kerala Mizo Association (KMA) can easily go unnoticed. It has approximately 130 members, doesn’t have a regular office and officially meets once a year. But more than 2,500 km away from home, in a strange land by the sea, the association provides a handful of ‘hill people’ a feeling of oneness, and an occasional platform to get together.
‘’We’re few in numbers at present, but growing,’’ KMA president Wilson Vanramhluna said, seated in his pleasant, first-floor home in Muttada. ‘’The association was in fact formed in 2009, but had been inactive for some time. We are now reviving it. For a start, we organised a blood donation campaign at the Medical College Hospital here. Back home, we do a lot of community work and we want to prove, wherever we are, our usefulness to the society,’’ he said.
‘Mizoram’ roughly translates into ‘Land of the Hill People’ and the first Mizos began travelling to Kerala courtesy the College of Engineering, Trivandrum (CET). One student came down in 1985 and the numbers gradually rose. Today, they are around 130 Mizos in Kerala, with 20-25 in Thiruvananthapuram. There are only seven families, though.
‘’Students form the majority, followed by seminary students and technical people. Mizos started going out of their state only 10-15 years ago. We are a small group in Kerala, that’s why we call ourselves the Kerala Mizo Association. In Bangalore and Hyderabad, the associations are named after the cities,’’ said Wilson, who is employed with a software company in Vayalikkada.
Wilson himself is half-Malayali, his teacher father Kurien Thomas having left Thiruvalla for the north-east state in the 1960s. Kurien and wife Lieni Kurien lived in Khawlian, in Aizawl district, for some years before the insurgency forced them to move to Manipur. The southernmost of the ‘Seven Sisters of the East,’ Mizoram is a tiny state and has a population a little higher than Thiruvananthapuram city’s. Today, there is another link between the two states - Mizoram’s Malayali Governor Vakkom Purushothaman.
Mizos are a close-knit community. Back home, there is the Young Mizo Association (YMA), in which all boys from the age of 14 upwards and all unmarried girls are members. ‘’For instance, if there’s a death, the YMA does all the necessary work, like digging the grave and making the food for the guests at the bereaved family’s home. The family needs to do nothing,’’ Wilson said. Mizos are also great music lovers. ‘’Almost everyone can sing. Our meetings are followed by lots of singing and a grand dinner.’’
Mizo names are real tongue-twisters to outsiders, so simple names like David, Rex and Julie are popular. For example, Wilson’s Mizo name is Vanramhluna, and his elder son Rex’s name is even troublesome for the non-Mizo - Lalhmangaihzuala. There’s an easy rule to distinguish between male and female Mizo names - all the male names end in ‘a’, and the female names in ‘i.’
The KMA general body meets once a year, but members get together whenever they can. They also hope that their numbers in Kerala will grow in the years ahead. ‘’It will grow. Earlier, everybody used to go to Kolkata, Delhi and Bangalore. But now they also want to come to Kerala,’’ Wilson said.