She has written out the whole Bible thirteen times, and she timed every one

Mrs Lalthianghlimi with her handwritten volumes, photographed in August 2019, when she had finished eight. · Photograph circulated by Samson Panmei, August 2019

Faith

The first took Mrs Lalthianghlimi 422 days. The recent ones take less than half that. She has the number stamped in gold on every cover.

5Talents23 October 20262 min read

Mrs Lalthianghlimi lives in Ramhlun North, Aizawl, and she has copied out the whole Bible in Mizo by hand. Thirteen times.

There is a photograph of her doing it. She is at a small desk, pen in hand, mid-sentence. Stacked around her are the ones she has already finished, and on the floor beside her feet is a heap of spent pens, hundreds of them, in every colour, piled up like something swept out of a workshop.

She has been keeping score

Every finished Bible is bound in black board and stamped in gold on the front. KUT ZIAK, Mizo for handwritten. Her name. And then a line nobody asked her to add: the number of days it took.

The first one says 422.

Nobody told her to time herself. She finished a Bible that had taken the better part of fourteen months, had the duration pressed into the cover in gold, and started another one.

The recent ones come in under two hundred days.

She had the duration pressed into the cover in gold, and started another one.
On the first volume, which took 422 days

That is the whole arc, and you can read it straight off the covers. Somewhere in the middle she stopped being someone attempting this and became someone who does it.

Two facing pages of the Bible handwritten in Mizo in red and blue ink, in two columns with verse numbers — Two pages of her handwriting, photographed on 1 August 2019. · Photograph circulated by Samson Panmei, August 2019

The one thing she has said about it

The Bible Society of India has published a single sentence from her, in 2021.

Before I write, I asked God to strengthen my eyesight as well as my arm and hand so that I may write perfectly.

A prayer about the body. Eyesight, arm, hand.

By the time she said it she had finished six, so she knew exactly what the work costs. What she asked for was not a shortcut. It was the capacity to keep going, accurately.

What the Bible Society would not claim

Their October newsletter says plainly that no verified records exist from other Bible Societies or other countries, and that her work "may represent one of the highest known accomplishments of its kind."

No world record, because nobody has checked.

An organisation with every reason to reach for the bigger headline turned it down and explained why in the same breath. That restraint is the reason the rest of the report is worth trusting.

What we still don't know

Which edition she copies from. Whether she writes every day or in long bursts. What happens to the finished volumes, and whether anybody reads them.

What we know is that a woman in Ramhlun North has done this thirteen times, that she has counted the days since the first one, and that the count keeps going down.

Thirteen is her running total since she began, not thirteen inside three years. Worth saying, because the slower number is the more remarkable one.