Calm-Sojourner: June 2019

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Midum pangpar (flower)

Local (Mizo) name: Midum pangpar/Midum par
English name: Hibiscus (red)/ Rose mallow

This is a common flower in Mizoram and it is locally called Midum par or Midum Pangpar. The following photos are taken in Aizawl, Mizoram, India. In Mizoram this flower is often found in government bungalows and offices premises. It is not an indigenous plant. I am not sure where it come from and who introduce in our state but what i can assure is that it is an imported flowering plant. The simple thing you can easily recognise in Mizoram is that government bungalows and offices are often decorated with this kind of flowering plant which means that the decoration can be seen as more "sarkari" or more "foreign." What came to my mind is that most of the government offices and bungalows are hardly decorated with indegenous flowering plant. This may be because of the colonial legacy still imbibes to the decorator or designers even in this post-independent period. The government and private garden or plant decoration in Mizoram can be easily differentiated with indigenous plants and imported/foreign plants. When the Bristish colonial offices were set up in Mizoram their houses and offices were often decorated with the flowering plants that they brought from outside which were later followed by the local people in their houses and offices premises decoration. Apart from government officials Christian missionaries also followed the same. One can question that why the indigenous flowers are not much used in goverment offices and bungalows gardens? Are we still following the era of British Raj in Mizoram? Or one may also can say that flower has no attachment with any particular human races, it just bloom wherever it was planted without considering the idendity of its planter!! :) :)