To Delhi-Part 6

         It was a rectangular room adorned with black upholstered chairs at a long conference table, there were more upholstered chairs of the same colour against the freshly-painted walls, a projector was suspended from the white ceiling and what was visible was the map of the North-East India. The man sitting at the top of the table was some academic who was considered a sympathizer of some militant group. I instantly recognized him, the upper part of his face was white as a dead man’s and from the lips till the jaw disappeared in his thick long beard. Six more of them were at the table, two Bengali ladies, one in jeans and kurta and another in Bengali sari and a Khasi lady. One among the three men was an Anglo-Indian and the rest were some Khasi men in big blazers.

        The sympathizer spoke, “We are honoured to have some distinguished people from the North-east, a much-neglected place. Some I got to admire during my sojourn, rather adventurous, in the region. Ladies and gentlemen what we are going to examine is a peculiar case, much more peculiar, which great thinkers, modern they will say, in the nation, the largest democracy, have long overlooked, to our dismay. The distinguished intellects, quite distinct, we have here will dissect and lay before you what we all have been yearning and then will deliver to you their sound judgments as well as the remedies. The region has been a victim of prolonged insurgency and it has been a major factor among the many hindering major developments in the region. Today, it would be sheer indifference on our part to leave this region’s grievances unheeded when our nation is speeding like a jumbo jet. There are countries around us which had been seeking our partnership in terms of trade, commerce and knowledge, and if we follow the same trail before our great nation will miss the billions of dollars from the trades which we could initiate with the ASEAN nations. I myself flew from here and landed in Yangon and drove around the country with bodyguards and then later on through the neighbouring countries. It was rather unfortunate that I couldn’t drive through North-east with the group.” 

        The distinguished people looked at his face and expressed their admiration of what his exploits then their faces became blank.

        He introduced the Khasi lady, and she introduced herself as a well-known writer of some sort for some newspaper, then she spoke, “I must thank Sir Haze before I proceed with my lecture…”

        The power went off and everybody in the room cursed the concerned department but nothing stirred as they sat thinking the it will come back. After five minutes the submissive looking man at the door entered with some candlesticks. The room was now getting hotter and the rising temperature was forcing people out, the distinguish pack went out. Outside on another side of the hall was a long clothed table bearing square-shaped containers filled up with greasy curry and some stuffy cheese sprinkled nun( flat bread). Discerning the pack an old lady in bright red sari came up with her slippers slapping loud against the steps. With the noise one could have thought she would serve the pack. She didn’t she moved close to the parapet, bent her head over it and shouted down, then a man with a skull cap appeared downstairs, his upturned face asked the lady and the lady shouted down, this time the man didn’t ask ,he ran and in few minutes he came up with bottled water marked with ISI. The sympathizer and the Bengali ladies gobbled what was put out, but the Khasi intellects hung back without touching the food with water bottles in their hands, then the Anglo man who showed sign of willingness to join stepped back and hung around the water bottle pack. Before they could finish the food the much-sought electricity returned but they displayed no sign of doing anything intellectual, I thought they would say “let’s shoot some craps.” And if they had said it would have been, “perhaps we should indulge ourselves in some laborious session”, it would have to be something like that which would reflect the doctoral degrees they had laboured for by gathering facts and figures and compiling them into something called thesis.

            While we were leaving the campus I began to wonder how they could prioritise commercial interests over the human conditions as well as the political problems the people there had been subjected to for decades. And the Haze's trip from the capital city of the country straight to the capital city of the autocratic state of Burma by overriding the region of which he wanted others to see him as the expert. Where did he interact though when his whole journey was on a plane financed and trailing behind some diplomats who only needed some verbose weight on their side, someone who was brought up in the region but he had long left the place and in this withdrawn cocoon from where he had been viewing the distant regions through his weary eyes. With a few books on insurgency which were a compilation of newspaper and magazine clips, nothing based on his personal experience, he was able to create a clout in the political city. And those who had come out to deliver their written papers were the people who always wanted to be just like Haze, but had failed once and never risen out of their pits. So, receiving an invitation from someone like him who had long been nesting here must have stirred the defunct thoughts they had memorized yet still received with awe at university level in their provincial universities by half-sincere students. There were the certificates which would thicken their profiles and a thick profile could land them with frequent foreign trips and other perks.

       It was rather cold outside and the mist filled up the whole place thick sending the people off roads. Shining through the thick mist were the yellowish lamps rendering the least service; that the place was still alive. We kept on walking ,there was no sign of rickshaws, every now and then few two wheelers appeared and then soon disappeared in the mist with their back lights glowing for a while and then fully consumed by the thickness of the mist. Though there was the feeling that we couldn’t get back early there was a warm feeling inside which was born out of the pleasure of walking on a wide empty road. I could hear everything, there was no need to speak at the tops of our voices.
           I knew my friend’s present very well and he knew mine as well ,but it was the past that we had shared for years we decided to reconstruct. We both knew we were pretending for a while but that pretension was useful to us and also harmless. But again the setting that we both spontaneously reconstructed was also limited and sometimes our conversation encroached into parts which we never thought we should touch. After university he confined himself to write his first book and it took him more than a year, during this period he had to live from hand to mouth and sometime he would virtually cadge. The book was finished then he was at the stage of contacting publishers. While thinking he should be take some times off he heard from home that he was needed at home, he said he couldn’t be home at that time but his mother insisted, and she wouldn’t say why she was insisting.


To be continued.................