Ideal Characteristics of a Pa

Image by yathin via Flickr

This is the second post on our series on manliness. The first post is Manliness: The Lost Art of Being Pa , if you missed it.

Our concept of the ideal pa - a man's man - would differ from person to person. And as highlighted in my previous post the very concept and ideas of being pa (pasalpha/pasaltha) changes with time too.

Well, over the years my ideal man - the man I myself wanted to be, has changed tremendously. My expectations and moral standards get bogged down and my tolerance of mediocrity multiplied manifold.

Call me cynic or pessimistic, but the impact of (bad) music, drugs, money, promiscuous lifestyle and cable TV has exposed our Zo society to the ills and problems of very sophisticated societies of the West. So much of our traditional values and lifestyle changed that sometimes its good enough if you don't do anything wrong.

Let me give you an example. For some years now whether in Lamka (a Zo majority town in Manipur) or in Aizawl (the largest Zo town in India), parents are happy to give away their daughters in marriage to someone who only drinks! I am not saying drinking in itself is bad and immoral. It simply means that there are so many drug-abusers that parents are okay with alcoholics. Education, background, profession and even love becomes secondary. And that's the best they can ever get for their daughter too, as rare is a man who only drinks, too. Again what kind of a parent would not want the best for her daughter, right? Mind you, Mizoram is supposedly a dry state and, Lamka and Aizawl are majority Christian societies.

That is the level the Zo Christian society is reduced to. So our standards and expectations are being pulled down by the gravity of our irresponsible and reckless lives. We have come to accept mediocrity and even raised it to its undeserved stature.

So an ideal man, by the standards that we have today, may be defined something like this - a man who is not a liability to the society in which he lives. You see by that definition, someone who is not a liability is good enough. He may or may not contribute anything to the society, he may or may not be selfish and tlawmngai, he may not be able to support himself financially, but he has become good enough.


So, as you can see, I struggle to write this part of our series on manliness. I can get all utopian and idealist but reality continuously raps on my every conscience, and makes me nervous and drives me nuts.


I don't even have the guts to list out the ideal characteristics of a pasalpha/pasaltha.


Maybe, you are bold enough to do it. If so, please list the characteristics of your ideal man in the comment below.

[zoaw]