When
your parents tied your shoes laces before you were sent off to school,
they saw this person who would mature soon, understand the world and
someday would do something to change this place. They also saw your
return when you left the place with future before you. A few years have
transformed you to the point that today you begin to see this place as
some Japanese tourist would perceive; your pity
for the place is found in the few tea tabled casual words; your
attachment to the place is the grumpy week-long stay. It’s a free world,
though; you have the right to choose what illusion or what inferiority
complex you prefer. But just don’t fake that it really is yours when you
have nothing to hold onto in this world. You can forget that the past
exists; the scent of mud faded long ago; its people are strangers; its
smell disgusts you; its sight are ‘very remote’; and you don’t even
understand their medium. But just don’t say that you really care. It
sounds like those grumbling and boastful Bengali who one would run into
in the best nooks of the world; they would talk about a bygone
renaissance and their accomplishments elsewhere, yet you couldn’t find a
single one of them in their dilapidated land. All that you have to
admit is that you are gone; you are a failure; haven’t realised that
failure; the actual world has outdone you and left you a hollowed out
person; and in that state you are just ashamed of yourself.
Delhi was once Chinglen’s ‘cradle of love’. With his student years over and the love that once comforted his stay has come to a tragic end, he is seized by a strong urge to flee the city. Run as far as he can from the memories of love. As a costly escape is beyond means, he returns to Manipur, a place long marred by protracted violence, a failed revolution, an engineered incessant political chaos, and already neck-deep in corruption. Perhaps to lick his wounds and hide with the beguiled sense. That the distance and the rich bizarre should shield him from the very memories sloshing thick inside him. His attempt to keep himself engaged as well as to make a meagre living lands him a shoddy journalist job and the opportunity to pursue a PhD at the state's only university. In the absence of his laidback editor and opportunistic professor, he teaches himself some degree of creative writing and dabbles in academia. As he moves further into the labyrinth, he learns the hard way that trying...
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