Kangleimaichou

You came out from the bush in a mangled bus with a seam-bursting fake Nike bag, then on a packed train for nights only to be in one of the mainland cities. To those whom you left behind you had a promise keep, the new place held everything for you. It should since all of your parents' were poured into that place so that you could live comfortably and pursue your dream. It was cool and people here spoke a different language, what they did was the benchmark of everything and each time you tried something you measured yourself against them. The bulky man in a white sedan with windows rolled down, loud music blaring; this is what you have to be, but man like him comes from a different place, where a highway blockade for few hours builds pressure on New Delhi, and at least ten of their leaders would come out with threat that will make the biggest man in the largest democracy shriek. Years after you had gone through the tunnel of British leftover education and picked up a job...

Having ransacked a house, found nothing but picked up a suspect ,they know they are in no position to expose their spoils to the media, so they creep out from the village amid the howling canines.  They cross the parapet-less bridge over the Leisha Canal and charge their way towards the highway and after having crept along for few kilometres they arrive at the university gate guarded by club-wielding security guards who slouch by the gate in creaky chairs, their tiny and drowsy bodies clothed in thick khaki over coats and heads below khaki berets and necks wrapped with mufflers.  They lay there like some  abandoned  immobile lumps , their faces revealed by the glow of the beedi which they pass around among themselves. They have failed to notice the approaching vehicles, only when the driver in the leading vehicles ,carrying the Major and the lady suspect, sitting on the same seat, issues some thundering swear words in Hindi, “sister fuckers! You motherfuc...

Outside the house, amid the mounting noise of barking dogs ,the soldiers interrogate Sanjit about the where about of some commander, and this  interrogation is offered with powerful physical assaults. If he knew the language he could probably talk his family out of this dreadful event.  Before he can think of a Hindi word and has the nerve to utter it, blows land on him and the tremor out of the fear steals the few words from his mouth.  Among his attempts he has managed to utter the Hindi phrase “ sir, help me” only rendering laughter among the soldiers because of the mis-pronouncement. Having realised the futility of his attempts he has reconciled with his senses to give in to what holds his fate and there he lays taking the blows, the incoherent interrogative questions, and the jabbing of rifle barrels and the heavy poundings of the butts and boots. In the living room the major asks simple questions in a malicious tone without bothering whether she reall...

The Major is deeply disturbed by the stark light of the lantern, he withdraws from the room and issues his desire to interrogate the members of the  family in separate rooms. The parents are herded to their bedroom , the little sisters taken upstairs; they wail in vain, deeply distressed by this Sanjit begs that he be allowed to accompany the sisters.  While begging he has already taken few steps ahead, this is misconstrued as an affront and thus has aroused the contempt of the Major who has not  given any green signal.  The contemptuous man strides forwards to grab the brother by the neck , his hand runs up to grad the hair and having got the right grip he yanks Sanjit out of the room and pushes him out of the house.  Sanjit finds himself at the feet of a few giggling but still jumpy soldiers who seize him by the shoulders, press him against the ground. His mouth stuffed with rifle barrels, chest under the heavy boots he lies there immobi...

Few days later when a media  team went into the village;they interviewed the petrified villagers and learned the news of a young village girl who was raped and left and warned of dire consequences if she broke her silence.  It angered the masses and there were demonstrations all over the state. The whole state was burning, people had come out to  get his head, but the man was nowhere to be found. Some believed that he was flown out in a special military helicopter ,and when he returned was hidden in the state army headquarter for, waiting for the fury to ebb. It rose uncontrollably and the whole place was inflamed, then in another remote corner of the state, five civilians were lined up and shot dead by the Central Reserve Forces after their convoy was attacked. This diverted the fury; compelling it to flit between the recent and just-happened incidents.  Major Ranjit’s crime dwindled but it isn't forgotten by the short memory of the people. The army...

From the curve of the tarmac road which runs through the village soft rumbling sound of vehicles can be heard, the headlights of the vehicles are switched off. Two big lorries and two Maruti gypsies are seen moving slowly along the road, probably sneaking into the serenity of the village.  The last vehicle stops around the curve of the road and from it helmeted people carrying rifles jump down and they stand by the road and take position, the vehicle at the front stops twenty metres away from Sanjit’s house’s gate, while the other stop right in front of the gate.  Now both sides of the gate been secured, those in front of gate now force open the gate as soon as they have forced their way through the house is encircled. As if the village has been struck by something mysterious the dogs begin barking and the voices of people mumbling can be heard, but not loud enough to distract many from their slumber. The helmeted people are the personnel of Assam Rifle led by...

Three successive nights I was at O'Neils' thinking she would show up; thinking what I should say when  she had showed up I drank too much and found myself the next morning rolling over the cold carpet of the the lodge which sat by the tallest mountain in the country. The following night,  mind carrying a bit of guilt for the excessive  consumption the night before, I planted myself at the same place wrapped in an overcoat. I just wanted a Heineken, then the pub manager started some nostalgic tracks from school days. Perhaps it was nostalgia instigated by my unproductive life, I lost count of how many I had ordered. So, hugging myself I came home shuffling, I was already in front of the lodge, stood there exposed by the yellowish lights. There was nothing that I could do in the room; I was too drunk to pick up a book, or write something. But I could sit somewhere and watch people, may be I could just sit there the whole night. I felt for the pipe and the tob...

One misty morning we heard a voice hollering through the black boxes which every young one admired ,for they had been brought from the "US." We rushed towards the origin of the noise and milled about the entrance of the big white building. The boy who was taken and put through some foreign education to succeed the white messiah was at the door wearing the same long cloth his predecessor wore. I know him, the grandson of our dead chief. He didn't address us in our dialect; it was done in the white man's language. It sounded nice and I know he tried very very hard to sound just like him; the harder he tried the more artificial he sounded, like a dog  trying to show that it could really bleat just like a sheep. He bleated in that language. Whatever it was and whatever it meant , it sounded very smart. The crowd disintegrated and I came home walking. Since it sounded very smart I was eager to find out from someone what he had said. From the gate I veered toward ...

NSCN (IM) once stood against New Delhi ,and now they have been in a static dialogue with New Delhi for years, abandoning their original demand, an independent land, and now a greater Lim. Here I wouldn't use the word Naga since it has no meaning in either of the several tribes' dialects, perhaps it does have in the twisted Assamese which is known with another word. In their shrinking days they had been involved in almost everything: taxing vehicles for using potholed palm-wide highways; striving forcefully in manufacturing a false identity, which by now has become a tag for several tribal group; and the successful ethnic genocide it has ever staged. They roamed the think jungles of the North-East, pillaged villages, instilled fear in the minds of people and drew strength from these cruelties. Now that they have been in in peace talks with New Delhi , they have been given a de facto liberty to flaunt their arms and roam the snaky roads to orchestrate their poli...

I couldn't figure out why they had to labour for me. When out of a thousand a thousand came to look at me, and to see if I was overwhelmed with the bestowed name, what else could I think. And there was no way that I could take my mental faculty beyond that little but marked territory. We had never been outside the place. There seemed to be no need for such an adventure: crossing the border of the village only to run into people who looked just like us, but with different dialects. Here, at least, I could wander about in my wrapper on nodding and smiling at everyone, but beyond our place those people would only give you a kind of bitter stare that makes you feel that you could be lynched, just like we chasing an unknown bird in the thick forest behind our village. The chief and his family were the only people who had the temerity to go beyond our sacred land; I saw his children when I was growing up, they once appeared in foreign clothes when a tall white man in one long clo...