Once the rats came out nothing was left
There are two kinds of flowering-famine I remember. One we called mautam, caused by mautak bamboo (Meloccana baccifera). The other was thingtam, caused by Rawthing bamboo (Bambusa tulda).
I have a clear memory of the mautam in the 1960s. We lived in Pawlrung, 170 kilomtres from Aizwal. When famine hit us, everyone, except children and elders, migrated. We walked for three days and two nights, taking shelter in houses not known to us, to a place called Chiahpui across the flooded Tuiphal river. We worked in fields of other people where the rats had not yet come. Almost like slaves at times. We got rice in return that we carried all the way back, crossing rivers. There were no roads then, it was through thick forest.
I recollect my parents telling the rice harvest would increase the year preceding the deluge of rats, and it would rain more. It did. And once the rats came out nothing was left. We used to dig tubers out to eat. But when the rats came we couldn't find tubers even 10-12 feet underground. Brinjals became rats. Everything turned to rats.
The food disappeared. We did not store it like plains people. We used to say mautam is around and we should grow some other crops, but did not know of any then. We came to Aizawl in 1966 because the army was shifting us to camps. We became landless