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.