There was nothing that Tonton’s wouldn’t do to be at where the successful few from his town are.
One among the few is the pock-marked face Tamo Ningthem ,always chewing betel nuts. Whenever he sees a teenage boy with a pimply face he will stop him and start a warm conversation, and after a while he will begin talking about the face saying he can do something. He enjoys pricking and squeezing such a face. After he has stained his own hands with the boy’s blood he will say more nice things about him and his family and will let go of the young person.
He tried to build a four-storeyed house in the town, but couldn’t finish it. Such a building stands out in a village like ours where most of the houses are either of whitewashed mud walls and the structures supported by wooden frames roofed with bright corrugated iron sheets or thatch and the mud walls plastered with cow dung and soft sand from the bank of the sullen Imphal River. What is modern about the place is the snaky village asphalted road which starts from the Highway and runs through it like a reptile between the thick clumps of bamboos and golden oaks standing tall as towers till the river bank and where it is met by a bridge which connects the town with another village.
One couldn’t explain the contempt people bear when their own gates of bamboos with wood posts and wrought iron are seen below the tall and stooping bamboos. Perhaps it is because the neighbouring village have no unfinished five-storeyed building and any iron gate. Young people who normally perch on both ends of village culverts near their swept entrances make provoking remarks when they see some young people in bell-bottomed trousers, red rubber Burmese sandals and tight T-shirts.
In this town of the Nameirakpas, Maibams, Thokchoms and Neprams nothing significant has happened in the past several decades. Two generations back each individual would get at least an acre of land or more from his parents, after one more generation the place had become slightly overpopulated with farming done in distant paddy fields requiring people to travel few kilometres. The creek which are divided by narrow lanes are now partly claimed, there are less fish in them and almost forgotten. And for those whose lands have become overpopulated don’t think about farming anymore. Those who are not employed with government jobs have to work as construction workers in towns; and for those who have known education have their latest generation in the biggest cities of India. But they are seen once a year with their meiyang spouses and kids blabbering in Hinglish and for those who haven’t had a meiyang partner come home to look for.
A man who calls himself maichou in the village said once ,“ could you imagine the Jewish people splashing themselves with everything German when the Nazis were systematically butchering them? They wouldn’t and decades after the act of horror would sound louder every day in every Jewish person. Do we feel that way? Our brains are smaller than a dog's!”
Many like to call him a “ horrible loony” , though he was called names people wanted but he was someone who couldn’t be touched or confronted. It must have been his lifestyle: every morning after a cold shower he sits on a reed mat in his colourful khudei holding a pena ,and then the rest of morning would be spent on scriptures which he reckons as sacred, passed down from other maichou.When this whole morning activities are over he is seen in his kitchen garden for some hours and after lunch the man makes his way to the university library. If he were a physically aggressive type many would have shortened his life, but there was a perennial fire which louts in the the place don't dare to touch.
Soon after this death the maichou has become someone from the past and his descendants ,who have become a part of anti-India armed movement, never bring up his name, except that “ my edou was an eccentric man.” People say the man’s descendants are as revolutionaries and then left the country as rich folks going abroad. Most seem to know where they are, but no one can point where they exactly are. When some say they are already the generals of the movement many picture them as Chairman Mao constantly puffing at a cigarette and smiling his cunning smile with his ugly teeth exposed, sometimes just like Che Guevara in his olive uniform with the beret and the large Cuban cigar slightly dangling from one corner of his mouth, but some bold people think of them as sleek men in meticulously cut and tailored suits running around in polished Italian shoes in some developed foreign.
People with a bit of money who rate themselves as successful normally have two characters in their provincial minds; either of someone who is rich and can build a tall brick house resembling a matchbox or like those men in smart suits and always running in nice shoes in developed foreign visiting their village once a year and behaving as though they are some tourists who know their ways around.
To be continued.............
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