Kangleimaichou

The site where they had built the house had never been trodden by any soul, it was the site where a widow hanged herself from a guava tree and there the dangling corpse was abandoned to eagles and vultures. After the flesh was eaten, only the skeleton remained hanging from the jute rope and then slowly the bones fell off one by one each day and finally they disappeared in the thick grass. And then for some reason the guava tree grew taller and bigger and then the branch from which the widow had hanged herself snapped, leaving the tree tall and erect without any branches, slowly the tree lost leaves and its colour transformed to many ,and then it became dry and overnight it fizzled out as though it were make of dust and got carried away by a strong wind to some unknown place. This had not been forgotten by the villagers but those who had witnessed had died and most people had heard of the tale as a folktale, only a few knew very well. They hadn’t given a thought till some governme...

Dust and dust is everywhere. But no one looks covered in it. Modern looking men in western outfit hollering "bheiya" in stead of "Tamo", and women with their noses recently made aquiline yelled "bhabi, where is jeeju?" To them "enamah and eteih "are too foreign. Their tones are loud enough for anyone to ignore. I am puffing a mild cigarette in front of a kiosk roofed with rusted corrugated sheets. The old lady shopkeeper is on the phone. She grumbled,"Ebemah, I can't understand a word your Saini man is saying. You have to teach me his language." I know the old lady well, I know the street. But I couldn't say I am familiar with the condition and changed characters. But each time I walk the streets here I see them, but I want to picture my grandparents instead; my grandfather sweeping the areas around, while my grandmother teasing him with all her witty Meiteilon phrases. And that teasing would go on till he had washed his hands ...

Froma short distance he could have been mistaken for someone in his earlyforties. The manner in which he walked, his stooping head, the handsclasping behind his back, his thick eye glasses and the beard, madehim look old. When we had sat down for a conversation he was stillthat prematurely aged man. I ordered some outrageously priced greentea, and he first thought for a while and asked if the place soldbeer. I said it would be impossible to get some. With a sigh and asardonic expression on his face he sat gazing at something, then hestood up and went up to the counter of shiny marble and asked for acup of Assam. The closest they had was Darjeeling, he didn't lookhappy. Holding the receipt he returned to the table and sat, hisright hand on the table, the right leg over the left. Before I couldask, he asked, “ What is that you want to talk about?” I said itwould be his observations of people and places. He nodded hishead and then raised his head to look at my eyes, it confused ...

--> He said he had not been treated well and instead of standing up to it, what had been imposed on him, he took it to his head and stored up the events for future use. The events had turned venom and his whole body shook every night when he returned to his mud-walled rented room, every night he became a possessed person, his nights were convulsive. He said nothing and asked nothing, and because of this aloofness people began to assume something was seriously wrong with the man. Dull teachers didn’t know his existence; cynical teachers thought he was a “spook”; his classmates never got to know him since he had classed them in his prejudged mind and the notion of interacting with people, who he had already classed as “red-necked buggers” was simply appalling. To him they were another breed and he belonged to the oppressed kind and to stand up to them intellectually was not a fitting payback, perhaps he had no faculty. His was to wait and wait, till his whole body...

After all those months of self-imposed exile I thought I couldn't relate to anything. All that I needed was some good tobacco and steaming strong coffee and to slouch in a couch thinking nothing. I didn't even want to look back, for I had dwelled in that for long, picking every detail, going through each one of them. I had been at war with my own self, and the bad part was ,after all those ituitive months, I still couldn't say who actually won the war. Some came up and asked if I really had gone back to the detached domain. They hadn't seen me those months gulping and muttering cynical things, which they most of the times thought was bitter. See the trouble is people always like to hear nice things, but I am someone who is still drenched in engulfing circumstances. It doesn't mean that unemployment, FDI, etc are irrelevant, there is something more crucial than all of these. Life and death. In many quick verdicts people said: Meitei yours are very gri...

The opposite of what most people do is what he has decided to do. He is headed the place from which generations have been fleeing. Acquaintances enquired if he was leaving the increasingly becoming political capital of the place for another hundreds of miles away from where he is headed. Upon learning their jaws drop, and the expression on their faces suggests he has gone mad. Or perhaps he has not succeeded in this city. But he said where he is headed since he was asked, and what they wanted to know doesn't go beyond finding the mere name of the place. From the shock, from the comfort they have earned here, and the listless things, he can tell they simply are disgusted by everything about where he is headed. From them the scent of earth had long faded, their language long corrupted and very soon they will disown it. Now, he regrets having told them. This remorse reminds of what his best friend's father said once back in school days. Son, if you have a dream, an...

67% off on Tales Of Human Mischief And Other Stories. The offer is only for a day, Saturday, 21 October, 2012. Click on the link below: http://www.infibeam.com/Books/tales-human-mischief-other-stories-nameirakpam-bobo-meitei/9788192218274.html?utm_term=Tales+of+Human+Mischief+and+Other+Storie_1_1 About the Book : This collection includes 14 of a young writer’s short stories. They are the tales of acute social and psychological insight. They clearly depict the lives of insignificant lots and the revelation of what they are subject to; the life caught up amid the conflicts between a virtually failed system functioning with an absurd mandate and armed movement which sprouted with far-fetched ideas and now transformed to a mere farce. To mention a few. In ‘A lost Kingdom’ one can see how collective naivety is usually common and how the travellers sees this through his observant eyes; ‘A Kanglei Life’ tells the untold story of victims whose lives are synonymous to mere objects; ‘T...

Launch of “Tales of Human Mischief” , a book by Nameirakpam Bobo Meitei On Friday, 28 September 2012 at 10:00 Venue: Manipur Press Club, Imphal, Manipur This volume includes a young writer’s fourteen stories, some of which can be called novellas as well. They are the compelling tales of acute social and psychological insight which clearly depict the lives of insignificant lots and the revelation of what they are subject to in a remote corner of the world. They also depict life caught up amid the conflicts between a virtually defunct system functioning with an absurd mandate and an armed movement which sprouted with far-fetched ideas and now transformed to a mere farce. “The Dying Man”, gives a painted picture of a reduced place where almost every responsible is a victim of fear and is only capable of vices, thus allowing the place to sink further without any light of hope. In ‘A lost Kingdom’ one can see how collective naivety is...

In front of the shop facing the tarmac road edged with dust and litters were three able men: one quite hairy with long hair who could have been mistaken for some Bollywood star had it not been for his foul language, the rest squatting by a brown sack of orange and lemons. When the youngest among them two squatting rose to lift the sack with the intention to pour down the fruits. Some ran down towards the road, promptly he hurried off to get them. The young man said something which made the rest giggle, and then the Bollywood-wannabe’s face turned crimson red, he rose holding a long iron rod tipped with a hook, then the producer of the joke rose and darted off. He apologized, then the Bollywood man dropped the rod and went back to sit. Was he reacting in an acceptable fashion to the other person’s joke with the rod? Further down from the juice shop was a narrow bridge which ran over a dry creek with the bed filled with thick refuse. On the parapets of the bridge perched ...

On a cold day in Delhi you could jump into some decent thick clothes and go for a walk, and at nights on the roofs you could lay in thick clothes over a sleeping bag counting stars. You may not like an early shower. It’s bearable and pleasant as it is never like those snow-covered winters which could generate avalanches anytime. But those pleasant days had recently come to an end and the temperature seemed to have abruptly shot up. You could feel the sun through your shirt, and when you had a bag the back of the shirt could easily stick to your back. When required to walk long you would consider it wise to wear a wide-brimmed hat to avoid heatstroke. If you are lucky enough to be a in a house with enough ventilations and the openings don’t face either east or west ,and, say, your flat happens to be on the ground floor or between two floors with the one above yours drinking and sucking the heat, then you would find your place pleasant, and if you didn’t have to ventur...

In front of the main building those cars bearing blue license plate and those distinct ones belonging to the Indians rolled in chauffeured by emaciated-looking dark-coloured haggard people who lay in their bright and clean uniform as some malnourished people in borrowed clothes. Their anxious eyes below their lackey caps and the discoloured unshaven faces atop the buttoned up uniform, and when they stepped out in their oversized uniform as stick men in clothes one could see their unpolished cracked felt or plastic shoes . The colours of their uniform made them more indistinct. Through the opened doors emerging graciously were the obese middle-aged people with creaky joints, ladies who had been starving themselves , and the last kind was the new generation which had been made familiar and now more or less accustomed to intercontinental junk food, and who ambled sweating and slightly tinged in known branded shoes, slopping toward one side because of their physical i...

After that wrought iron gate with clean roads,  lined with Australia-imported trees, leading towards buildings, spaces between them all green; it was the place where one could breath fresh air and walk unmolested by noises, the stares and the density of crowds. But it wasn’t meant for everybody; the cars with blue license plates mingled with the latest sedans and SUVs explained who they were. If they spat on the roads, if they honked to show their arrogance, even if their children screamed and spoke like rowdy kind, and even if they habitually ogled with their computer-screen reddened eyes and saliva slipping through the corners of their mouths, here those were deterred and behaved themselves out of pretension in front those “embassy people”, whose association was much valued. It would be entirely fashionable when someone stuttering in English usually preferred to declare “I have an uncle in New Jersey” in the company of some white folks, and if ...

The voice on the phone could easily induce any man who hadn’t known happiness in years, there was also the prospect of meeting someone whom I knew and had used as a character in one of the stories. I was in a friend’s car trapped among tens of sedans occupying a narrow but long stretch of road in one of Delhi’s supposedly posh areas. There was no policeman to man the traffic of honking cars, instead a woman in white shalwaar stood at the intersection point of the road holding a Honda car key in one hand while the another directed the cars. By sheer chance a gap emerged and it allowed the car to turn left. With unexpected respite it rolled on between decades-old building blocks which had been discoloured and reduced to virtually dilapidated state by cheap architecture and inferior construction materials. The colour bleached by the scorching sun of Delhi must have been reclaimed, but the cheap paints wouldn’t stand the rains and dampness, and when it was almost washed out,...

As though he belonged to another planet and showed up every morning in a discoloured shirt with frayed collar and the thinned sleeves rolled up, and a towel which bore the mark of being old and frequently used, his cracked feet in some Bata bathroom slippers. Every morning after the temperature had shot up quite high he appeared on the dust-covered street only to stand in front of an iron gate painted black. There were tens of iron gates along the street and the one where he showed every morning is no different the rest. But before each gate there were always parked vehicles especially designed for Indians and at the one where he appeared two moped covered in dust always parked. He squeezed himself between the mopeds and stood leaning against the gate and then getting hold of the latch he began banging it, soon a lean man bearing the same features in grey trousers and old shirt came out to unlock the gate for him. They said nothing to each other, but exchanged glances, then the p...

It was the blistering heat that rendered the nights sleepless. While you were in another hemisphere it was daily intoxication and the trouble " in your psyche", as Les would put it in the good old Irish places when you were the old regulars. You had been in that dust-blown place rolling on a yoga mat below the fan with its blades all covered in furs of damp settled dust and when it began to work a little longer it groaned ,as though it was not pleased at all to carry out the assigned task. You rolled over it the entire night before you woke up to put on some decent clothes in that almost inhabitable hovel room of yours, the bath with the bucket of tepid water only made you feel cleansed, but only for a while, then your were soon soaked in perspiration; the back of your clean pressed shirt stuck on your back, then you could feel the drops of sweat gliding down your back and some slipping further and rolling over the calf muscles.It wasn't like that uncomfortable place in a...