Headline, May17, 2013

'''THE PLAGUE -MISERY- OF

THE MIZOS'''

This story is about a small, remote state in the northeastern corner of  India, wedged between Myanmar,  -formerly Burma- and Bangladesh, called Mizoram. Hundreds of thousands of acres of Mizoram are forested with a single species of bamboo, which flowers once every 48 years or so.

When that happens, the flowers produce fruits whose protein rich, avocado like seeds are devoured by jungle rats, and the rat population explodes. The rats go on to eat everything. They wipe out the villagers crops and grain bins, and Mizoram is gripped famine. The last time this happened, thousands of Mizos starved to death, and the Indian Governments failure to respond with adequate food aid sparked a guerrilla war that lasted 20 years.

A place where people lives are held hostage by the reproductive cycle of a plant  -the story seems like a ghastly Orwellian fable, the fiction of a magic realist, fodder for Ripley's Believe It or Not. Was Mother India still saying that nature runs the show here and not them?

Mizos, who number less than a million, are Tibeto-Burman  -a different race with a different culture from the other billion plus people of India. They are believed to have migrated from southern China down into the humid, bamboo infested armpit of the Bay of Bengal a few centuries ago.

Through most of the 19th century, they lived in scattered villages and made war on another and their neighbors, taking the heads of their enemies. Transvestism was widespread among the men and was accepted by the society. The women had an unusual amount of say and still do.

The Mizos lived in isolation until the 1890s, when two baptist missionaries from Wales arrived. Their effort to convert this population of  ''hitherto ignorant tribals'' was facilitated by the fact that Mizos already worshipped a supreme being, whose name was Pathian, and believed in a place much liked heaven.

Even today, Mizoram remains one of the most cut-off places on earth and three quarters of its dwellings are made of bamboo. Between the ridges are deep valleys choked with bamboo, 95% of it the species that will soon be nurturing millions of jungle rats. Its scientific name is Melocanna bacciferra, but the Mizos call it, mau or mautak. It's impenetrable brakes cover about 30 percent of Mizoram's 8142 square miles.

After the bamboo flowers, the whole plant dies  -a traumatic event for the animals in the jungle, and for the rural people, who depend on the bamboo for their entire material culture. This ''dying of the bamboo'' and the ensuing outbreak of rats and famine   -the whole horrific cascade of events  -is known as the mautam.

But then the mautak waits 48 years to flower but this is not at all unusual in bamboos. Some species take a hundred years. What takes the ''gregarious flowering'' as it is called, after so long is a botanical enigma. Maybe some sort of genetic memory in the rhizomes, or alarm clock ticking in their cells  Even bamboos from Burma that were taken to Kew Gardens, in London, have somehow remembered decades later when they were born and have blossomed.

The last time Sinarundinaria nitida  a bamboo native to China- flowered gregariously in Szechuan and died, there was heavy mortality amomgst the pandas which eat its shoots. But then, after a year or two, the shoots reappear and the cycle begins anew. It's as if the entire eco-system has to be purged with the species. But other species flower every year, or nearly so.

So, don't miss the delightful posts that follow! The post continues!

With respectful dedication to the students and professors of Mizoram. See you all on !WOW!

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless