Being a Rajkumari by Tanya Sana

Being a Rajkumari by Tanya Sana

Just a trend or “skeletal in the closet”?

Even after watching hi-tech movies of the west it has always been an inclination that whenever I see a Manipuri movie around I cannot resist and I end up watching. I do not expect much as the themes tend to be repetitive, with the same heroes and heroines in every other movie. It is rare that one gets to watch a decent film but a rare Mami Sami or Phijigee Mani doesn’t disappoint. 

But an unhealthy trend has been repeated over and over again.  One wonders if there is dearth of other storylines than the “ rags to riches” story of the lead hero( in the case of Manipur, of course joining Civil Services).The girl rejects the love at first seeing the poverty and then overnight falls in love because of his sudden  status change. Have all the other issues of the society been overshadowed by this trivial matter? Initially the trend was started by the success of “Ingen gi Atiya” trickling down to Mikithi, Yaiskulgi Pakhang Angaoba, Lamja Sara.  All these movies mentioned are mainly love stories with the central theme of the heroes overcoming all odds to get the woman of his dreams. But the presentation truly demeans the character of the females in the society.  It shows the film makers lack of research, creativity and the attempts of short- cut they are resorting to. What comes out is always a half baked love-story.

Watching movies and reading books about Manipur are one of the few means to stay connected to my roots.  Naturally it saddens me that movies such as these are building the image of the society that I have always cherished being a part of.  I f it is indeed the mirror of our society then I fail to understand how low our society has been stooped to. It seems like women have been reduced to a decorative piece just to be adorned.

Isn’t it a little ironic to see that coming from a state which always boasted itself for the power of its women? Whenever we compare Manipur to the rest of India, it is the status of women that we always point out, one wonders where that status disappeared in the movies. Yet we all know that the reality is a little different than what we would like to be.  It is a known fact that the status of a woman in Manipuri society is not all that different from the rest of India. From the norm of wearing Phanek as school uniform to the rampant eve-teasing which I have seen even in Delhi amongst the small Manipuri Community staying here. Or even many a times one comes across families who give birth to a lot of daughters till a baby boy comes along and the family finally stops growing. Many a time as a way of saying, a male child is referred to as a single born even if he has got sisters. How can women be regarded liberated in such a society when they are not considered enough to be called a person? I guess foeticide is just what remains, to be in the league of our “mainland”. Like in the “mainland” a man has no qualmss marrying again after the death of his wife or leading a life of a bachelor but if the same thing is done by a female she is considered “loose”. She is seldom allowed to gain company after her partner dies or leaves her. She is always needed to answer and judged upon by the society.  When a guy smokes and drinks it is nothing but when a girl does she is immediately type casted. I do not endorse all of these but I am referring to the mentality and the perception. As the great playwright Henrik Ibsen said “A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view”.

As uncomfortable as I am watching these regressive movies I guess it does reflect womanhood in Manipuri society still struggling for emancipation.  Till then progressive, modern themes and ideas would be a far cry from the monotonous and retrogressive themes of today’s Manipuri movies.

 

Life of a Manipuri Girl 

                                                                                    

                                                                                By: Tanya Sana Rajkumari

I tell myself “it’s a nightmare, it’ll end soon” But the thundering sound of bullets showering the tin-roof doesn’t stop. Mamma and Papa aren’t home yet. I pray they do not return home today. I want to cry yet I am scared, lest I utter a sound and they would come to kill all of us. Everyone talks in whispers. My little brother and I are too scared to even move. I keep seeing something in my mind, I can’t stop these thoughts crossing my mind, “HELP ME GOD” I cry out in my thoughts. My mind sees gunmen crossing our threshold, opening the roof, killing us in split seconds. I pinch myself back to reality. Alas! this is not a dream, that I will  forget in a few hours. It is an incident which occurred on 14^th August 1995.

 I was a four year old even then August 1995 incident remains vivid in my mind. Papa told me Imphal was a lot more peaceful before I was born and even when I was an infant. They recounted how they took me out for movies in the evening or at night and I sat on my mother’s lap watching the moving images with awe. Then all of a sudden we almost stopped going out at night. Times had changed; bomb blasts and shoot-outs were becoming common. My mom once told me how one day when I was about six years old a bomb blast occurred after I had left home for school. Panic stricken she called up the school asking if I had reached, she was told my van had not reached. I came home unaware of what was happening. My van driver whom we fondly called “uncle” or “kaka” apparently dropped us all home safely as soon as he heard of the bomb blast but he had taken a longer and different route to my house which took a little time. Many other ‘small’ incidents occurred which forced us to stay indoors most of the time. Once during school hours just after the lunch break we were all rushed into our class, all the school buses and vans were made to park inside the school campus. We were told there was a shoot-out occurring nearby, a classmate started crying, seeing her everyone in the class started laughing as we had no idea how grave the situation was. It was only when a couple of teachers came and scolded us to stay quiet as there were  still some insurgents in the vicinity and anything could happen that we went quiet. Our school was located in an isolated area in the outskirts so it was doubly scary for all of us. We returned home scared that day but nothing could match the 14^th August 1995 incident. I really feel we were all lucky to remain alive. People may think I am exaggerating but to me it was the closest taste of death. My parents had gone out to visit my maternal grandma. I was playing in the courtyard with my younger brother in the evening when we were huddled inside by my aunts in the safest room in our house. The paramilitary forces staying in the little hill next to our house were firing non-stop for about thirty to forty minutes at our neighborhood after an insurgent blank fired at them a couple of times from the neighborhood. Machine gun bullets showered at our roofs, it sounded like a hailstorm only it was deadlier. My parents came the next day as they got to hear the firing from grandma’s house and stayed there for the night. I often imagine what would have happened if my parents had been on their way back during the firing. I shudder even at the thought of it. After the incident many houses in the neighborhood had holes in the walls including ours, we even boasted of having a machine gun bullet too. It had come through the roof to the false ceiling then straight into the wall of the drawing room. I was scared and very angry and still am. I still wonder why that happened. What had we done that we had to go through those nightmares? I sometimes feel like a joke as we study about living in a democracy.  Many such incidents have occurred that I have lost count. Everyday many lives are lost and the widow population keeps increasing.

Imphal in the heart of Manipur, far away from the cameras and the voyeurism of the Indian media hardly makes it to the news of the mainland. I sometimes wonder where we belong.  We have trained our ears and eyes to listen and read to any snippets about North-East of India and have grown contented with it.  Once we land in our hometown it is another story altogether. What we see are the latest weapons, heavily armed personnel and all that is typical of a war zone.  I spent my first twelve years of childhood in this situation never realizing it was anything but normal. Even when they banned Hindi movies and Hindi channels I never realized anything was wrong. Then in 2001 after the State Assembly and the State Library were burnt during the Anti-Cease Fire agitation that my father put me in a boarding school. After a couple of years we all moved to a metropolitan city. It was then that I realized how unfair our childhood had been compared to all the other kids living in other parts of India where one could roam around freely and do what they liked and also get proper education (In 2001 some schools in Manipur had just about ninety eight working days all other schools were also shut for about three months). We were just too scared to go out that we were hardly involved in any of the activities that kids in other parts of India took for granted.  Even last year the economic blockade crippled the already strife-torn state. My friend bought half a dozen of amul butter and few other items from Delhi and carried home during those hard months. Many even started cooking the primitive way without gas as LPG prices soar to about Rs.2000 a cylinder. When I went home in February I was shocked to find we got just two hours of electricity every day. Half the time I had to put off my cell phone leave alone laptop.

I live in Delhi like many of my peers; I even did part of my schooling here as Imphal was reduced to a battleground. After a week or so in Manipur I get anxious to come back to Delhi as it is a struggle to even get basic amenities there. Yet dreaming of living in my hometown one day is something I cherish, but I know that one day is very far away. I am not the only one with this opinion, many like me even after often complaints of the bad weather, racist remarks and most importantly the crime against women, we still live and have made Delhi our home, at least for now.   

Our Language Our Identity

                                                              

On my first few days of college two Arunachali friends I had just made were amazed to find out that I could speak my native tongue fluently. To me it was the most natural thing I had inherited from my parents but to them it was a different matter altogether.  Arunachal Pradesh with its variety of tribal population uses Hindi as the common language. I have seen within my friends circle that each of the tribes’ unique language is being replaced by Hindi and Assamese.  Only one among them, a Miri (Arunachali tribe) friend can speak her native tongue.  Naturally many of their languages are in the endangered category according to the Linguistic Survey of India.

Imagine ourselves deprived of our mother tongue? How much ever we criticize, pass comments on our language and incline towards English or any other foreign language, we just cannot imagine ourselves living without speaking our native tongues. We need it as something as important as our own souls which no one can take away from us.  Yet, in our quest to be successful, to be worldly, to fit into the society, we often compromise on this important element of our identity, our language.

From the time we first go to school we are taught to call our teachers “ma’am”/miss. In my case I was taught from the moment I could speak my first words to call “mama” and “papa” like many of my generation kids. On top of that many of us were given foreign names which one never knew the meaning till Wikipedia and google came along.

Some months ago as I co hosted Fresher’s Day organised by the Manipuri Students Association Delhi (MSAD) I found myself more at ease with English and words came out so smoothly. I tried to put in Manipuri as and when I could but for that I had to struggle and think twice for that. We were told some people showed discontent at our usage of English for most part of the programme.  I agree with them to some extent  after all it is a programme to welcome the Manipuri Students. Yet our liberal use of English was to address the audience, Manipuri or not is another matter altogether.

 In our race to get accepted by our peers, by the society, we are fast losing our identity. As much as we would like to use English language as a symbol of our social standing one really needs to make some effort to not let our language erode before our very own eyes, getting devoured by an alien language.

Like it or not with every Manipuri coming out of the state the language is dying a slow death. One often comes across Manipuri kids living outside Manipur unable to speak the language or even understand it.  When I was in Assam I came across a Manipuri family  from Imphal who never spoke to their little child Manipuri, I was told she could understand Hindi but not Manipuri. Now in Delhi my little cousins know how to speak the language but in a limited fashion. Their Manipuri slightly accented and mixed with Hindi and English sounds a lot funny coming out of their tiny mouths.  

Language is intrinsically connected with the culture it belongs to, and that is the reason why when one knows a language or when one gets fascinated with a certain culture one tends to learn and pick up the language. A simple example  right in front of our eyes is the Korean language.

For this mass media has to play a huge role by producing meaningful at the same time entertaining films,   series and documentaries. Instead of churning huge number of films every month, meaningful films catering to the younger generation should be made more often. The movie nobap can serve as a good example in this genre. This technology savvy generation can revive the phoonga-waari tradition by showing on television or even better radio programme can be made on interesting phoonga -waari for children and adult alike.                                                                                                                                                                One should never underestimate the power of media and the biggest example right in front of our eyes is the Hallyu or the Korean Wave. We can see and experience the Hallyu enveloping our lives. It is useless to ape them or compare but one can learn about marketing their culture and language from them.  The Manipuri film Nobap in the recent times deserves a mention because keeping intact the entertainment factor it addressed serious issues relating to the Manipuri society like need for better education infrastructure in far flung areas of Manipur and the need for dedicated  teachers, child-labour and of course insurgency. And this movie did not have exotic locales outside Manipur to become a beautiful and a moving tale that it is.  Language and culture are like the two sides of a coin, one cannot leave the other behind.

  One may have in mind that mother tongue can be honed at any point, but it is not so. It loses touch, it no longer becomes one’s mother tongue if it is made to play the part of second fiddle to some alien language. It may not be the biggest problem right now but it will be someday. Most of the time it is overshadowed by all other problems but one should really give some thought to it and ponder about this. Language is our identity, it is what defines us. If we do not nurture it who would?    Our land being endowed with the richness of culture and the language, all it needs to be done is presented majestically as it deserves.

  

   

Intoxicating Books!

Tall dark and handsome, knight in the shining armour are some phrases I have grown up contemplating my perfect boyfriend. Judith Mcnaught and Jude Deveraux made my teenage years yearn for that perfect ‘man’. Till now I live in the illusion of finding my “knight in the shining armour” waiting to sweep me up in his arms and take me away in his black stallion.

My boarding school friends and I always longed for those times when we would visit the library and smell those hard bound books with the author’s name inscribed as Judith Mcnaught or Jude Deveraux. After every read we would tell each other the witty and flirtatious lines of the characters and gossip the whole day about it. Finally we would ask each other why Hollywood never made movies on her books and get sad over it. I realized now that it was best if we only read about it. Imagine an XYZ actor playing my favourite hero, the love of my life. I would rather murder the makers. It was our constant source of pleasure in our hectic lives we led as boarders and helped us cope with the home-sickness.

Long after I left the school, memories of those rainy Sundays and other short vacations flashed in my mind when we used to talk about our crushes, here the heroes from our novels. Sometimes we even used to fight a tug of war of our favorite heroes. Those were the days when we didn’t understand what love meant and were content with our heroes and the fantasies Judith spun. The best part is reading habit got developed in us. Now whenever I get bored with books by other authors I could always fall back to my good old Judith books that I buy whenever my pockets allow me to.

As I have grown older, completing graduation is old enough to realize that my favorite heroes would never come to life for me. Yet those treasured moments in the school library, sniffing the books transporting each one of us in the era that the author conjured in her books gives me a haunting nostalgia. The smell of those books was enchantingly sublime. It gave me high without any intoxicants and left me awake till I reached the very last page one I start it! Yet its time I move on and get real and stop living in fantasy but something forbids me!!

PS: My group of friends who enjoyed and were hardcore Judith fans are all single till date.

Alma Mater

7years ago I joined a school on a fresh spring morning. My whole family came to drop me, and I was simply ecstatic to join the picturesque residential school located on the Brahmaputra valley. My illusion of being in a Hogwarts like school were instantly discarded when I realized it was squeaky clean and new, I almost pinched myself back to reality to witness the real world rather than waste time looking around for any déjà vu.

Friends introduced themselves, juniors came up to me. Some juniors went around the hostel just before bedtime wishing goodnight to all. Or to some of us who were new. I was enjoying my new life. I realized the school paid attention to each and everyone. Suddenly somebody like me who prefer being camouflaged with the background started to get noticed. It was like everybody knew me. I found the new attention strangely alluring at the same time scary. Before I could realize I wasn’t that shy anymore, I could face the microphone, I could fight with anyone except teachers and seniors of course. Shortly thereafter I enrolled myself for horse-riding classes, elocution classes, sitar classes and so on. How much I did with sincerity was you know...well.. anyway I had different experiences and that was great. Then I realized my flair for English was above average and the opposite was for Maths and Hindi.

All hell broke loose I started panicking for the former the most that I couldn’t concentrate anywhere, Maths was haunting me and that was when I started crying and begging my parents to take me back home and let me join a school in Manipur where they could hire a private tutor for me. I was crying every Sunday whenever their phone call arrived. Alas! One fine day my dad simply said “Ok I’ll come to pick you up”. I refused. Reason: till then I was getting to know my friends and it is magical how friendships form in these schools, it is like a therapy I must say. They helped me a lot and I found a few of them who were as bad as I was to keep me company. We shared almost every tit bits happening to our lives, who was the bitch, who was going around with whom, which teacher we hated the most, mimicking funny accents of the teachers, discussing the meals we longed for. Reminiscing the “oh so perfect days” of being a day scholar and being a pre-teen and the ‘perfect’ life we led with our parents. And then never leaving each other, accompanying each other even while going to the washrooms was very common to the extent that some of us even took bath together. With all the great time with friends I had to struggle with maths excessively. I never understood these things and my tiny bird brain had a hard time comprehending and not to mention I still have a hard time purchasing things. I struggled with it till my tenth pre-boards. And my poor maths teacher found all the time in his life to teach us maths and make us pass. It was only because of his hard work that none of us had to cry after the D-day. An amazing man who didn’t care where he was, sitting in the field or library or classroom if he saw us, maths book conjured from nowhere and he would start off. Coincidentally his son was born when we were in 10^th and we even suggested names for his son and he liked one of them and named him after our suggestion “Aryan”.

Its been four and half years since I left the school yet nostalgia haunts me as my friends Shivani, Swati, Juhi, Poonam, Annalia, Divyalina and Bhavna made my life there an unforgettable phase.

As I look back and remember the times I spent with them and flip my slam where they scribbled before I embarked on a journey beyond the seven sisters I can't help regretting not being able to complete my schooling there.

Engaging his People – The Story of MKPB

By: Akendra Sana


If greatness is about touching many lives and leaving a lasting impression on others, then MKPB would qualify impressively. It has been three weeks after his passing away and it is about time we try to understand the many facets of the interesting personality that he was. One cannot call it a long association because of the circumstances. Blame it on my transfers if you insist.

They were the heady days of the mid nineteen eighties. There was a calm which was difficult to believe that it would go away in a matter of only about half a decade later. 1985 would qualify to be one of the watershed years in terms of the activities which were taking place in the life of all matters, economic and developmental in Manipur. For one, it was around this time some better hotels had come up in Imphal and some infant industries were in the horizon. One wonders if names are relevant now. Well, suffice it to record that Takyelpat was abuzz with activities. Manipur Inc. was indeed believed to be possible in the near future then. Of course, what have happened in later years is what they call the rest is history of which we all are too familiar with.

The Manipur Spinning Mills was still producing yarns. And MKPB was at the helm. I had called on him during that time on business and it was purely official on one of my visits to Imphal from Silchar where I was then located. After the initial requirements of the visit were met, he ventured to do some loud thinking of the need to find wider markets for the yarns that the Mills produced. He went on to say that there should be ready markets in Silchar and other parts of Assam and Tripura where handloom was produced. He also went on to say that Moreh had the potential to be another good outlet. He wanted me to scout for a suitable distributor in Silchar to which I had most happily agreed. For some months after my return to Silchar, we exchanged a number of letters, he explaining the type of work and responsibilities the distributor was expected of and in return I would tell him about the persons I had approached for the job. Unfortunately it did not progress much beyond that. However, later I learnt that he was leaving the Manipur Spinning Mills for it to chart out its own course. A dream gone away, one does not know. But then, he could not be happy to see the Mills getting evaporated before his eyes in later years.

What left lasting impressions on me and perhaps on many others like me were the twinkle he had in his eyes whenever he talked about anything Manipur and his ability to elicit immediate reaction from the listener. At another level his experiment with the enterprise of the Manipur spinning Mills must possibly be one of his efforts to engage the people at large in matters economic.

‘Is he still a bachelor?’ This was Nari Rustomji remembering MKPB in June 1984 at the Shillong Club when I was introduced to him by a friend as somebody from Manipur. Nari Rustomji of the infamous Shillong Brigadier story during the “Merger Agreement” negotiations in his book, ‘The Enchanted Frontiers’, after his retirement as Chief Secretary of Meghalaya used to come to Shillong during the months of May and June every year for several years from Bombay where he was leading a retired life. Nari Rustomji used to make a morning trek to the Shillong peak on every dry day of his stay in Shillong and on return would drop by the Shillong Club by mid morning. ‘Bachelor or no bachelor, the whole of Manipur loves him.’ I had said in the course of the long conversation we had. I did later mention to him of my encounter with Nari Rustomji in Shillong but could not muster the courage to relate the query he had made. His response was, ‘Oh, that Parsi chap.’ Today, we can all fondly say that indeed we all love you, MKPB and may your spirits help in the rekindling of hopes and aspirations of your people. Because we need your spirits to rebuild every fibre of our society.