Kangleimaichou

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...