Lies, Deception and Neglect - The Lalgarh Story

There has been a lot of noise being made about the present situation in Lalgarh and the so-called increase in influence of the Maoists in present-day West Bengal. There has been many discussions about the Left Government’s ‘reluctance’ to ban the Maoist organization even as they are declared as ‘class enemy’ Numero Uno by the Maoists. But sadly the hypocrisy and the shadow-wars being fought over and over again are just covered up.

The Lalgarh situation has elevating since the last year, with the tribal inhabitants of the area creating a so-called ‘Liberated Zone’ with the ‘People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities’ a hitherto unknown Organization assuming control, with a so-called army and kangaroo court to boot. The government, unwilling to create another PR fiasco on the lines of Nandigram, just let it happen. The eternal blame-game between Mamata Banerjee and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya started afresh, with the age-old rhetoric in press conferences.

The most brutal irony of the situation is even as the politicians battle over the ‘who?’, the more fundamental question of ‘why?’ was just left out. On closer observation, Lalgarh, which has a tribal dominated population, has been long known as the home of the human ‘ant-eaters’. The starving population of the region have the one of the worst living conditions in the country with no basic civic amenities, not least of which is the complete absence of medical facilities for miles around.

Another very recurring image in this fiasco is that of a rather palatial home being broken down by a raging mob several hundred strong. The building, which belongs to the regional CPM strongman, Anuj Pandey, is the only private brick house for several villages. This setup, very much akin to Ceauşescu's Centrul Civic* project, had for long been a symbol of the unfairness of the world to the tribals, many of whom still stay in the forests and have no substantial property or education to speak of. The destruction of the house was symbolical of freedom to the tribals, very much like the destruction of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad was for the Iraqis.

And finally, the sealing off of the area to outsiders and the creation of the parallel government of the region. The comparisons with the Nandigram situation which this action brought could not be farther from the truth. While the Nandigram and the Singur situations were more for the Right of the residents to the profession of their choice, Lalgarh, has been just about the Right to Survival with dignity. Nothing but that one final right can perhaps push the emaciated and haggard faces we see on television to take up arms against a seemingly insurmountable enemy. There were several debates on Singur and Nandigram and two strong opposing views on the matter. But Lalgarh never deserved these debates; Lalgarh deserved and wanted a solution.

But then, everyone wanted to know who PCPA were, instead of why they were doing it. The Trinamool Congress said it was an extension of their movements elsewhere in the state, even claiming Chhatradhar Mahato to be one of their own. (It was claim they would later distance themselves from when the connection of PCPA with Maoists was established. ‘Chhatradhar Mahato was a member, he was expelled. ’, they claimed.)

The Maoists in West Bengal have a very colorful history. Even though it is considered the birthplace of the Naxalite Movement in the ‘70s, West Bengal being the pseudo-Leftist state that it is, has always escaped the full scathe of Maoist insurgency unlike Chattisgarh and Jharkhand. As a matter of fact, during the resurgence of Congress and TMC in the 2001 State Assembly Polls, Maoists were openly supplied firearms from CPM Party Offices, apparently to combat the common ‘class enemies’. It wasn’t till CPI (ML) and the Andhra factions of the Maoists combined to form the CPI (Maoist) in 2004 that the fight against the Left in CPM government was taken up in earnest. And herein lies the so-called reluctance of present day Left leaders to ban the Maoists in Bengal.




However, the revelation about the Maoist presence in Lalgarh could not have come at a more opportune moment for the Government, both State and Central. Just as the stunning apathy of authorities towards this forgotten corner of the country was being brought out, and the media was finally trying to get to the root of the problem, when this news just unified all opinion and media against the so-called common shadowy enemy.

Ironically, the Maoists stand to gain just as much, if not more than the government. As the combined might of the Paramilitary forces and the State Police rolls into one empty village after another, it’s increasingly becoming evident that the Maoists never had long-term plans in Lalgarh to begin with. Brilliantly using the human shield as protection, they have carried out one of the most comprehensive recruitments in recent memory. Something that started off as a spontaneous outburst against the nepotism and neglect was just hijacked by them. Once this was done, they practically invited the Army by holding a public press conference and announcing the plot to kill the Chief Minister. And the empty villages and the minimal resistance to the advancing army just stand to underline the fact that a whole generation of tribals has been sucked into the terrifying vortex of permanent insurgency.

All while the icons of a failed governance system, namely the State and the Central Governments point fingers and submit hypocritical petitions.

The Army keeps on entering village after village liberating phantoms and left-behind senile cattle…

And the tragedy of the situation is lost, one more time…

*- Ceauşescu's Centrul Civic - Ceauşescu's was the last Romanian Communist President who tried to build a complex called ‘Centrul Civic’ that was so extravagant that the people had to be rationed for electricity and essential food items to cover the costs.

Broken Promises

It had been a rather regular English class. The teacher being one of the better ones, the yawns had been delayed by a substantial time. But even as the class meandered along its own course, the teacher announced that there would be a new short lesson to be covered. It happened to be a song, one that no one in the class had heard before.

A four year old child gaping at a black and white television where a man is performing apparently gravity defying dance moves. The broken antenna on the roof-top brings down a steady series of disturbances, constantly reminding of its age like a disgruntled clerk at the verge of retirement. The child keeps on gaping. The momentary shrill pitched parts attract the attention of his family. A few leave the room with a disgusted face, while the rest remain. A few moments later his father ventures to ask with a patronizing smile, “How do you like it?”

The child stares back at his father for some time, perhaps trying to come back from the amazing world of grey-scale glitterati. “Its brilliant…”, he mumbles rather dazedly.

The name of the song was, ‘We are the world’. As the whole class grumbled and fumbled their way to prepare to take hurried notes, the teacher stopped them. It won’t be necessary, she said, there is history related to this song.


The artists who sang the song - U.S.A. for Africa

It had nearly been 20 years since the foremost artists of the time had united to sing the song. Most of the artists were on the wane by then, a few were even retired. But even though they no longer dominated the popular culture scenario at the time, the names of greats like Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Tina Turner and Lionel Richie were enough to capture the attention of the students. The very idea of more than forty of the greatest of the era coming together to sing one song intrigued us at that time. Heated debates followed, but the sense of awe and respect reserved for the song was evident.

The kid, now six, waits impatiently as his father brings out a cassette from the loft. Putting it in the new cassette player, both father and son wait as the songs start. And soon the nasal voice from two years back fills the room. The kid, still not fluent enough in English can just understand snatches of the song. But soon, as the melody gets to him, he just breaks into an impromptu jig. Smiling indulgently, his parents join in…

After the discussions on Ethiopia and the effectiveness of individual contributions in making a difference in the world, we had ventured to make a request. The request was for the teacher to sing the song to us. The teacher, who also had a great tenor, would be the nearest replacement to the real thing that we had.

Another couple of years had passed. The whole family had congregated in the living room for a double treat. It was a new color Television with cable connection. Coming from a grainy black and white one which had all of two channels, this was a huge leap. As they surfed through the channels happily, he suddenly stopped in this channel with a gigantic ‘M’ in the corner. It was the same man. He looked a bit different from earlier, but the moves and the voice remained. The kid’s moment of ecstasy was short-lived though as the older sections of his joint family started complaining and the television was closed for the day, leaving the kid scowling away teary-eyed.

The teacher however refused. There was this untold regulation in our school, which forbade music to leave the confines of Music Class unless in drastic situations. Being a senior teacher, she could not break it. But looking at the long faces all around her, she relented. But not at that moment. She would sing the song to us on the last day of term.

“Promise?”
“Promise.”

The parents, ever gently, entered the room where the scowling kid sat listening to his cassettes. The kid turned to them, visible salty tracks down his cheeks marking the latest unwanted canal in the beaches of adolescence.
“When I grow up, I will go and see him in a stadium from the front rows.”
“Really?”
“Yea… And I will dance there with all those other people…”
“Make sure to take us with you then OK?”
“Sure I will!!!”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”

The last day of term came. Even though the pressure of approaching exams did do its bit to push it out of our heads, a few students made their way to English class on the last day of term to hear the song. But a big disappointment awaited us. The teacher refused to sing it to us because of the poor turn-out. Next term, she said, or else the rest of them will pester me to sing it again.

As the kid struggled clumsily in the throes of approaching adulthood, the glib stunning dance displays and the slightly shrill voice was replaced by the more refined (?) and modern thrash metal and its accompanying head-banging. The magical performer passed away from his life very much like the black and white television where he had first appeared.

Many more ends of terms came. The song never did. By this time, we had discovered the wonders of international music channels and Youtube. Music was no longer inaccessible. But for some reason, I could never bring myself to go there and listen to that song. It was some kind of weird mental block that I could never bring myself to overcome.

And one day, the last ‘last’ day of term came. We left school.

I met my teacher that day, but the persistent thought about that song got lost among the thousands of emotions and memories churning away in my mind at that moment.

The promise had been broken.

I heard the song for the first time two days ago, as the channels launched into a series of tributes to M.J. But sadly as I heard the song, I realized that just like my teacher, a child would also be breaking a promise he made to his parents all those years ago.

Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson.



'If you enter the world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with.'- M.J.

Second Life

Her new life had always been a gambit. At twenty years of age , not many would have dared to take the risk that she had taken . But then, she wasn’t really one of them . Or , so she felt , as she hummed a little ad jingle while working in the kitchen .
She was getting a bit heavy. The little work that she had done in the kitchen in the last half an hour had worn her out . She sat down in front of the old gas oven , wiping her forehead with a dirty rag as she did . Maybe , it wasn’t really working out . And maybe , she thought angrily , that small town hick practitioner she was going to would stop this herbal crap , and just give her an Aspirin .

The kettle on the oven in front of her gave a small gentle whistle, shaking her out of her reverie . Muttering to herself , she got up .Take your medicines on time . As if this tea she was taking was a medicine. The name always made her smile though ... 'Pennyroyal Tea' ... Sit and drink Pennyroyal tea, distill the life that's inside of me , she mumbled , suddenly feeling nostalgic about those Grunge days back in the Bronx .Endless freedom . The hash just a call away . And now, I’m holed up here trying to make this freaking kettle to work ,she grumbled , taking the first bitter sip .

This life wasn’t really meant for her . She had been made for the Casino circle from day one . The rich asses and their punk pimps . The big boys who played rough . And them . The scum of the Bronx . The small fish . And it was all swell . The circle fed them . It wasn’t really a Casino though . More of a big bordello with hell lot of gambling going on . But then , as Jimmy said , it was a refuge . And Casino means refuge in Italian , he would mention in his deep accented voice .Well , he would have known . He was the college kid . He was the youngest in the gang except for her . But he said a lot of stuff that they never understood . Crazy kid . Wanted to travel to stars and stuff . But he was cute when he wasn’t acting all loony.

They had been sleeping together for an year when the big boys started making noises . Loud noises about the percentage. Word was they had made huge losses up in white market . Jimmy was in the middle of one of his freedom talks . Being someone . ‘Transcend’ from the ordinary . Hell , those were big words . Freedom talk was shorter . But it was good enough to bring him all the way up into the big boy’s radar . One day they picked him up . She cried a lot . Couple of days later , he was found hanging in the Alley . He looked like he had been chewed up by steel toothed alligators . It was the special treat of the mob . The Iron Maiden . It was said the Boss brought it back from Europe way back . It was a pretty nice ‘transcending’ session for the kid though . Rising up all of two feet from the rest with a steel hook pierced through his neck .

She had lost it when she had seen it . It had taken three people to keep her from it . A couple of days later she went to Jimmy’s uncle and squealed . He was a sheriff with the State Patrol . That created some noise with reporters and other random people shouting and coming down to the Bronx . He took it all in and had told her to lay low in this town while he figured it all out. She had protested , but he had nearly packed her off forcefully . That was three months back. Before she knew that she was carrying Jimmy’s kid .

She patted her belly . Jimmy junior would be with her forever . She would keep him decent . Educate him and stuff . Make him what his daddy wanted to be . She choked as she drunk down the now cold tea . Maybe one more cup wouldn’t hurt . The evening was becoming cold . She put some more water to boil .

She really missed him a lot . He was the part of her that was there for only the one year they had been together . Like a hallucination . Wake up and its not there anymore . Often after a night together , he would just sit and look blankly into the night sky . If she asked , he would say that he was looking on at his journey trough hyperspace . Another of his words that she would never understand . But back then she never tried . She had better things to do to him.

She was feeling surprisingly dizzy . The room seemed to be revolving all around her . She tried to hold on to the oven but her hands snatched at only air ….

A few blocks away a fake herbalist received an envelope from the Bronx that he was eagerly waiting for . He whistled softly when he read the amount . Enough to pay for an year’s rent …

New bets were placed on old whirring Roulette wheels …

Some hundred’s of miles away ,a man woke up from a nightmare of a young man’s corpse crying out to him , blaming him … Jimmy’s uncle shakily lighted a cigarette .. it would be another sleepless night …

A dead girl lay on the floor of a room …

The kettle gave its second soft whistle of the night .






.

The 'Naked' Truth

About 3 weeks after the cyclone Aila struck Bengal and created an impact that left parts of the states gasping, this myopic creature found himself rummaging through the newspapers of the last month trying to find something useful for the archives.

As I was sleepily browsing through the lot, muttering away (‘death, destruction, storm, storm, storm…’) I noticed the absurdly large number of times the word ‘naked’ and its synonyms were mentioned. Now, this being rather deviant from the regular dosage of the 101 popular derivatives of doom, I was forced to don my glasses to get a closer look.

It started off normally enough. It was mostly in reference to the residents of the Sunderbans after the devastation wrought by the Cyclone Aila. The terrifying storm has left more than 1 million people homeless throughout the state in its wake. The Relief Operation was also as wonderfully messy and irregular as any endeavor of the West Bengal Government in recent years has been. A week down the line ‘naked starving villagers’ begging for water (food was a luxury they did not dare expect any more) was the term that I found most commonly.

In the second week, things took a rather horrific turn. The starving and still ‘naked’ villagers started getting visits from the VIP s of all colors of the political spectra. The media coverage for these events was, as expected, immense. While in reality these visits achieved nothing of substance as far as the villagers were concerned, they did manage to hold up Relief Operations, shabby as they were anyways. After a round of visits from both the sparring leaders Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and Mamata Banerjee, and no progress whatsoever, the people of the delta truly lost their cool. The next visit by a CPM MLA Gopal Gayen saw him get smeared with mud, as the audience indulged in some very literal mud-slinging. He was also forced to walk in the knee-deep muck by the villagers while some tore at his kurta.

‘Naked anger’ had arrived.


All Hail His Highness, The Great Indian Politician ...
Meanwhile, elsewhere, a different drama was unfolding. So, even before the bloated rotting corpses of man and creature had been buried or burned, it had gradually been banished to the mid pages.

Strangely enough, ‘naked’ seemed to be in no mood to leave the front page.

The Lok-Sabha elections had seen the TMC-Congress sweep to a majority after demolishing the Left in many parts of their so-called strongholds. Before the desperate cries of the victims of the victims of the cyclone had stopped, a terrible turf-war broke out throughout the state with both sides leaving no stones unturned to increase their territory or reclaim lost ones. The brutalities continued unabated for a week will the death tolls showing a steady increase as the politicians played their favorite blame-games to perfection.

And the highlight of the show?

The brutal death of Yudhisthir Dolui, a TMC worker in Arambagh, who was mutilated and murdered in front of his family.

The politics of revenge saw the deaths of several CPM workers in retaliation.

‘Naked Aggression’ was on the cards.

As I continued looking after that, ‘naked’ seemed to have taken a hiatus. I had nearly given up, when suddenly, in the last paper, something caught my attention in the spot where I had found most of my earlier ‘naked’ news. But this came with a bit of a twist…

It read –

‘ STREAKER SHOCKER IN SCHOOL

Young intruder strips in front of Class X girls and scoots

… As he stripped down to his birthday suit, the girls screamed - out of fear, the authorities asserted - drawing the attention of students in the other classes.

The rest also caught a glimpse of the streaker as he sprinted like Usain Bolt without his spandex and flashed through the rear exit…’


Upholding Traditions ...

Nights in the North-East - Manipur

A visit to the north-east is always special, more so perhaps because of the feeling that you are visiting a place that has over the years became an untouchable among all wavelengths of the Indian Tourism spectra. This is presently my fourth visit to the North-East but the first time I’m visiting Manipur. And the experience has been very very different from the earlier ones I’ve had in Assam and Tripura.

Manipur has been one of the states worst hit by insurgency in the North-East. The combined terrorism by the P.L.A. and the various other Mao-Manipuri (tribes having nothing to do with the communist fractions in the Central parts of the country) factions has torn this valley state which has a comparatively miniscule population of 24 lakhs. But the state also has a long historical significance in the Indian Freedom struggle with it being the state where the flag of independent India was hoisted for the first time by Netaji’s Indian National Army in 1944. Also, the people of Manipur were involved in a very bloody and violent war against the British in 1891. Ecologically speaking as well, the various natural parks with its rare flora and fauna are all factors that should have contributed in making it a tourism hub.

The most accessible place in Manipur is easily Imphal, its capital. One and a half hours by flight from Kolkata, it is perhaps the only habitat in the state that even comes close to the definition of a city. This capital of a mostly agrarian state is a small poverty struck place with a very low standard of living. And most surprisingly the people of this state have not woken up to the fact that their state can be a tourist hub. So the set-ups in hotels and restaurants are not exactly very friendly towards outsiders, with a very negligible percentage of the employees having even a working knowledge of Hindi or English.

Imphal city in itself has very few tourist attractions. There are two temples in the city- Iskon and Govindjee. Both of them happen to be Vaishnav temples with a completely different style of architecture (Iskon has a Thai architecture while Govindjee is very stereotype Hindu temple) and history (Iskon is just about a decade old while Govindjee is a few centuries old). This doublet forms the main visual attractions (and very nice ones at that) in this city. Located at peaceful corners of the city, it was a very nice experience interacting with the friendly devotees at those places.

Two of the most beautiful and unique places in Manipur are Loktak lake and Keibul Lamjao National Park. At a distance of about 48 kms from Imphal, Loktak lake is the only lake in the world in which the floating weeds have collected together to form solid floating islands. These islands are solid enough to support small houses built on them, but still are not stationary at a point. Keibul Lamjao National Park basically consists of these floating islands and is the last home of the Asian Dancing Deer. Moreover, the lotus forests in and around Loktak lake make the path worth the effort. The last point of the advent of the INA’s progress, (marked by a Japanese Martyr’s Memorial) and an INA museum on the way were additional incentives.

But then again, this happened. This is an exercept from the day’s ‘Sangai Express’, a local daily –

“Although it is almost a month since the Army’s Operation Summer Storm was called off, villagers in and around Loktak Lake are still gripped by a strong sense of insecurity.
The villagers, who returned to their homesteads after the operation, have not completely settled when tranquility of the area was shaken by the killing of eight non-local people inside Keibul Lamjao National Park followed by military operations…”

The Brochure released by the Manipur Government claims that both these places are “beautiful picnic spots” …


Loktak Lake - All of the green vegetation is floating but mostly hard enough to walk on ...


Fortunately or unfortunately, we were oblivious to this report or anything of Operation Summer Storm when we set out the next day for a tour of Loktak Lake and Keibul Lamjao. We had visited the government tourism office the previous day. In another stunning display of government apathy towards the state’s tourism prospects, the man in charge of the office could not talk in any language other than Manipuri and very broken Pidgin English. But even after getting through to him and telling him the purpose of our visit, we never heard a word about the present scenario of the Lake and the National Park.

Getting back to our nice little car trip, the first on our list for the day was a tribal temple. The last remnants of a pre-Hindu and pre-Christian Manipur, the quaint traditions of the mountain gods were drastically different from the valley ones. From the prasads of raw meat to the holy bamboos planted in remembrance of the spirits, it was a drastic shift from the standard.

The holy bamboos in the Tribal Temple

The next on the list was Loktak. The biggest island in Loktak is a permanent hilly one called Sendra. The brochure claimed that there’s a guest house on Sendra along with a watch-tower for photography enthusiasts. This is where we were in for our first big shock. The path leading up to Loktak, a few hundred meters from Sendra had a huge shooting range on a barren face of the hill with ‘SHOOT TO KILL’ in huge unfriendly white letters written above. As we approached the habited part of the island, we were shocked to see the entry to the guest house complex being flanked by barracks on all sides. We were allowed entry on producing our identifications and promising not to take photographs of the army establishment. The guest house, as we realized, had been taken over by the army and entry restricted. The watch-tower was still open, and photography allowed. The lake with its green floating islands was visible for miles around, but the restrictions placed by the Army prevented us from leaving the watch tower and inspecting them from a closer distance. The only fact that proved that the islands were not permanent was a cleaning operation being carried out by the government. We could see the water being exposed as soon as one layer of soil was removed. Beautiful as the place might have been once, the outposts all over the place stuck out like bruises from the beating the state is taking from insurgency.



A house built on one of the floating islands on Loktak Lake

We were rather edgy from the time we entered the place. But the tension in the air was considerably decreased when a huge group of small children flocked to the tower along with their teachers for a school trip. Talking to the kids cooled our nerves.

But nonetheless, we weren’t all that sad to see the back of the place. It was particularly pleasant as the road from the Lake to the INA museum was through the lotus fields. And the INA museum happened to be next on our list.

Our enthusiasm was short-lived. The museum happened to remain closed on Mondays (nowhere mentioned on the brochure or in our conversation with the Tourism Department employee the day before). Also half of the museum has been converted to Army quarters. BSF Jawans were seen patrolling the place. This also happened to be the first Museum I’ve seen with bunkers inside it.

As we were roaming around the museum, we met a couple of BSF soldiers from the town my mother is originally from. Talking to them, we came to know of the present state of Keibul Lamjao (“We are afraid of going to that place unless we have some strategic operations there. It’s been long closed for tourists”). Another spot near Loktak, an embankment on the small rivers draining into the lake (‘idyllic beautiful spot in the foothills of the mountains’ according to the brochure), was again closed for tourists. Apparently, two army personnel had been killed in the spot a few months ago.

Coming back to the museum. Standing derelict in the middle of the myriad rank and file of the army, the museum is in a state of stark neglect. It has also been a constant target of insurgents and the statue of Netaji in front of the museum was destroyed in a terrorist strike in 1993. It has been rebuilt since.



Bunkers inside the Museum

And the historic significance of the spot? Well there is only one small marble engraving beside a bunker telling that this was the spot where the flag of independent India was unfurled for the first time in Mainland India. In 1944.

History has been covered in the cobwebs of time and the murky shadows of human minds…

The last spot in our list for the day was the Sadu Chiru waterfalls. Deep in insurgent territory as it is, thankfully, the restrictions placed on tourists in this case are a bit lax. The way to the waterfalls consists of a small trek up a rather stiff terrain in the middle of a jungle, something that I was really looking forward to.

The road to the base of the hill (the point from which the trekking starts) runs through a tribal village. The warnings that we had received turned out to be pretty true. The village was closed to outsiders. The walls of the houses we could see were full of pretty ominous PLA propaganda. The car also passed through a very shady looking toll-office that had no hint of officialdom anywhere near it.



A very disheveled me during the trekking to the falls

The base of the hill was however, the first spot we saw fully free of any army or outsider presence. The trek was a beautiful experience rounded off with good local tea, made from seeds instead of leaves. Thankfully the few shops at the base were friendly towards tourists and gave no inkling of the turmoil in the villages a few hundred meters from the place.

One of the very unique features of Manipur is that the traditional Manipuri family is a matriarchal one. The family decisions and the final say are all taken by the matriarch or Ima as she is called in Manipuri. A living example of this long standing tradition is the Ima market in Imphal. As the name might suggest, the market is maintained and controlled fully by the female population of the society. Moving through the market can be very eerie for a guy at times, as you’ll often end up feeling uncomfortable in the seemingly alien surroundings.

The city of Imphal is at a distance of 110 kms from the Indo-Burmese border. The border town of Moreh is also a main trading outpost maintained by the army of both the countries. Being a trading outpost, people visiting the place are allowed to move 5 kms into Burmese territory, to a city called Tamu. This Tamu-Moreh trading post is a very important outpost for most of the north-east as it is the one-stop place for the entry of cheap Chinese and Thai items.

We however looked at this as an opportunity to visit Myanmar (albeit only one small town ) without going through the tedious bureaucratic red-tape of Visa applications and stuff. And like most other road-trips in the north-east, this one was supposed to be pretty picturesque as well, through the virgin forests and what not. Honestly, after the previous day’s experience, we were all very cynical about it all.

But then again the trip started off nicely enough with a beautiful hilly road and a driver who fancied himself to be a NASCAR race-driver. It was entertaining. Scary, but entertaining nonetheless.

But then, the Assam Rifles outposts started. We had been forewarned that the road had several such ‘outposts’, both official and unofficial for purposes more often unofficial than official. These outposts, which are maintained by the Assam Rifles and the Manipur Police are said to have the ability to make life a misery for the tourists and well, let me just say that they lived up to their reputation.

At each outpost, we had to disembark from our car, walk for a few hundred meters and wait while our car was checked. The driver was expected to rush off to ‘pay’ visits to the chief officer of the check-post. The amounts of the ‘gifts’ that the driver had to part with varied from post to post from Rs. 30-50, a sum that is not all that paltry when put in the perspective that this was repeated nearly 10 times on the way there. The Assam Rifles posts were at times content with just checking, but the Police outposts needed oiling to allow peaceful passage.

The really painful parts were observed for the times they observed our cameras. A small-time interrogation would follow, along with I.D. Proof being displayed for good measure. Then, they would demand to see our cameras and command us to delete all photos and footage of everything, be it the surroundings hills or a harmless pic of the road.

Irritating as it was, the news that we read in the papers during our stay there convinced us that it was all in good time. But the bare-faced corruption was really disheartening.

Anyways, 110 kms of mountain paths and 10 Assam-Rifles check-posts later, we finally reached Moreh. The town, all-in-all had the looks of a medieval fish-market. It did not have any electricity. The roads were teeming with people coming from Myanmar, laden with goods. After a few stops at the shops, we headed off to the border. After submitting our I.D. Proofs there, we entered Myanmar.



Lotus cultivation in the lakes

The nearest Burmese town (I prefer calling them Burmese as I find Myanmar-ese a irritatingly long term) is 5 kms from the border, a small town called Tamu. The roads on the Burmese side are maintained by the Border Police of both the countries. The town in itself was a clean little town, flush from the riches of the Trade route passing through it. Even then however, there was no electricity. The locals said that the place received electricity for one hour everyday in the evening.

But putting all of that aside, Tamu was the first place that I visited in this trip that was a true gourmet’s delight. In the small shops that lined the roadsides, true Burmese food in a net and clean package was available for reasonably cheap prices. A full delicious meal with traditional Burmese preparations of fish, beans, chicken and bamboo with a beautiful salad of mangoes and boiled Ladies Fingers had us all smacking our lips with delight!!! The menu, though surprisingly similar to a standard Indian restaurant in the items, varied greatly in the method of preparations. The people of Myanmar are said to resemble the Nagas much more than they do the Manipuris. That is said to be another major reason for the stark differences observed the boundary of the two…

As the afternoon progressed the restaurants began filling up with workers back from work. By the time we left the place, the banter over the Beer bottles had reached its crescendo. We had a couple of over-enthusiastic people bowing effusively as we left  .

The way back was more or less the same story with the generous sprinkling of check-posts being kind enough to make us take a walk every time we dozed off…

As we trudged into the hotel after the hard day of travels, the power went off for the umpteenth time. We heard later on that it was just a part of what was going to be a three-day long power cut in the city of Imphal…

The next day we caught a bus in the morning for Kohima, our next destination.

As the bus choked and spluttered its way out of Manipur, I found myself asking if I would like to come back here ever again.

And I answer myself, Yes, but in a better day.
But as far as tours to Manipur in the recent future are concerned …
“The juice is just not worth the squeeze…”

Clouds overshadow the Arakan Valleys