Temsula Ao

Stories from a War Zone

 Contents

About the Author

Dedication

Lest We Forget

1. The Jungle Major

2. Soaba

3. The Last Song

4. The Curfew Man

5. The Night

6. The Pot Maker

7. Shadows

8. An Old Man Remembers

9. The Journey

10. A New Chapter

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 PENGUIN BOOKS

THESE HILLS CALLED HOME

Temsula Ao has contributed a number of articles on oral tradition, folk

songs, myths and cultural traditions of the Ao Nagas in various journals.
She has published four collections of poetry and is the author of Ao-Naga
Oral Tradition (2000). She is a Professor in the Department of English,
North Eastern Hill University, Shillong and also Dean, School of
Humanities and Education at NEHU.
 I hear the land cry,
Over and over again
‘Let all the dead awaken
And teach the living
How not to die’
For those who know
What we have done
To ourselves
 Lest We Forget

Memory is a tricky thing: it picks and chooses what to preserve and what to
discard. Sometimes it is the trivial that triggers the process of remembering
a great loss. I remember how the memory of my mother’s special curry of
sun-dried fish used to haunt me long after her death, as though the absence
of this exotic dish from the family menu made her death more real than
anything else about her. But as I grew into middle age and beyond, it struck
me how memories are often sifted through an invisible sieve and selections
are made, of both the good and the bad, either to be preserved or discarded.
I suppose life has its own inbuilt mechanism of putting its house in order to
that human beings can live with a modicum of peace and tranquility.
But what do you do when it comes to someone else’s memory and when
that memory is of pain and pain alone? Do you brush it aside and say, it
does not concern me? And if you can do that, are you the same person that
you were, before you learnt of the pain of a fellow human being? I think
not, and that is why, in these stories, I have endeavoured to re-visit the live
of those people whose pain has so far gone unmentioned and
unacknowledged. Some of them no say that it does not matter, in the same
way that some people now say that the holocaust never happened. When
these people say that ‘it does not matter’, they mean that there is an inherent
callousness in the human mind that tends to ignore injustice and inhumanity
as long as it does not touch one directly. These stories however, are not
about ‘historical facts’; nor are they about condemnation, justice or
justification of the events which raged through the land like a wildfire half a
century ago. On the contrary, what the stories are trying to say is that in
such conflicts, there are no winners, only victims and the results can be
measured only in human terms. For the victims the trauma goes beyond the
realm of just the physical maiming and loss of life—their very humanity is
assaulted and violated, and the onslaught leaves the survivors scarred both
in mind and soul.
 Many of the stories in this collection have their genesis in the turbulent
years of bloodshed and tears that make up the history of the Nagas from the
early fifties of the last century, and their demand for independence from the
Indian State. But while the actual struggle remains a backdrop, the thrust of
the narratives is to probe how the events of that era have re-structured or
even ‘revolutionized’ the Naga psyche. It was as though a great cataclysmic
upheaval threw up many realities for the Nagas within which they are still
struggling to settle for a legitimate identity. It was almost like a birth by
fire. While some remained untouched by the flames, many others got
transformed into beings almost unrecognizable, even to themselves.
Nagaland’s story of the struggle for self-determination started with high
idealism and romantic notions of fervent nationalism, but it somehow got
re-written into one of disappointment and disillusionment because it
became the very thing it sought to overcome.
A few of the stories in this collection try to capture the ambience of the
traditional Naga way of life, which, even for our own youngsters today, is
increasingly becoming irrelevant in the face of the ‘progress’ and
‘development’ which is only now catching up with the Naga people. The
sudden displacement of the young from a placid existence in rural habitats
to a world of conflict and confusion in urban settlements is also a fallout of
recent Naga history and one that has left them disabled in more way
than one.
The inheritors of such a history have a tremendous responsibility to sift
through the collective experience and make sense of the impact left by the
struggle on their lives. Our racial wisdom has always extolled the virtue of
human beings living at peace with themselves and in harmony with nature
and with our neighbours. It is only when the Nagas re-embrace and re-write
this vision into the fabric of their lives in spite of the compulsions of a fast
changing world, can we say that the memories of the turbulent years have
served us well.
TEMSULA AO
Shillong
 The Jungle Major

In the pre-dawn warmth of togetherness, they made love again with the
fervour of lovers meeting after a long absence. They were indeed meeting
after a lapse of about five months, but lovers would be a misnomer to
describe these two. They were a most mis-matched couple. When their
marriage was first announced in the village, people stopped in their tracks,
gaped in wonder at the sheer improbability of this match and tsk, tsked,
some with disbelief and some in Utter disgust at the thought. The girl’s
father was soundly berated by his clansmen, who said he was lowering the
prestige of their clan by agreeing to the match. Why was he condemning his
beautiful daughter to life with such a man, they wanted to know.
The relatives’, as well as the general public’s, indignation over the
proposed marriage was due to the immense disparity between not only the
outward appearances but also the family positions of the girl and her
betrothed. The man was short, dark and had buck teeth. He was a mere
driver who knew some mechanics and was employed by a rich man in town
to drive a one-ton vehicle called a Dodge, now long gone out of use. He had
read only up to class five and could speak some Hindi and a smattering of
English picked up in the course of his journeys. He also came from a minor
clan in the village.
But the woman. Ah! She was quite another story! She was tall, fair, slim
and possessed of the most charming smile. Not only that, she came from a
good family and belonged to a major clan. Her elder brother was studying
in the engineering college; her sister was married to a Dobhashi in
Mokokchung. Another brother was studying to be a veterinarian doctor. It
was rumoured that this beauty had had a string of suitors who courted her
but every single one of them eventually drifted away to marry some other
village girl much inferior to her in many ways. The villagers were amazed
that any sane man would reject such a comely and eligible girl and marry
these typically dowdy looking ‘village’ girls.
But then there it was, the apparent mismatch was on, and the marriage
took place in due course. The couple moved to a house of their own, as was
the custom, and seemed to be leading a normal life. The man, whose name
was Punaba, earned enough to keep his wife in relative comfort. The
woman, who was called Khatila, seemed happy and content in her new role
as a housewife. Many years passed, but the couple did not have any
children. At first the villagers did not pay much attention to this fact. But as
it happens in any community, soon rumours began to circulate: the man was
either impotent or sterile; or the woman was barren. Some even went to the
extent of saying that she did not allow her husband to touch her. Just as the
initial announcement of their marriage had produced adverse reactions, now
their childless state became the subject of many lewd comments and absurd
speculations.
All through this period, the couple, though not unaware of village gossip,
ignored the broad hints and snide remarks and appeared to be totally
absorbed in each other and their own household. Punaba went on regular
trips to nearby villages and after collecting the fares, would go to
Mokokchung to give the money to his boss and to receive his salary.
Khatila cultivated a small field on the outskirts of the village and grew
some vegetables in her kitchen garden. The years of married life seemed to
suit her; her beauty remained as fresh as it was during her youth.
It was after a year or so of Khatila’s marriage, that the entire land was
caught in the new wave of patriotic fervour that swept the imagination of
the people and plunged them into a struggle, which many did not even
understand. This particular village also became a part of the network, which
kept the underground outfit supplied with information, food and occasional
arms. The subject of independence became public talk; young people spoke
of the exploits of their peers in encounters with government forces and were
eager to join the new band of ‘patriotic’ warriors to liberate their homeland
from ‘foreign’ rule. Some actually disappeared from the village and their
names henceforth were spoken only in whispers. Skirmishes were taking
place close to the village and the atmosphere within the village became one
of fear and mutual suspicion. People returned from their fields much earlier
than they used to. It seemed that a pall had descended upon the entire land.
Some villages, to which the underground leaders belonged, were severely
punished. The houses were ransacked by the security forces, the grain in
their barns was burnt and the people themselves were herded into camps
away from the village and kept in virtual imprisonment inside areas fenced
in by bamboo stockades. This form of group incarceration was the infamous
‘grouping’ of villages which the Nagas hated and dreaded even more than
bullets. Numerous stories proliferated of women being molested by the
security forces and the obstinate ones who refused to giye information
being severely beaten; not only that, sometimes they would be hung upside
down and subjected to unspeakable tortures like chilli powder being
rammed into their extremities. But so far, Khatila’s village was not touched
by any of these horrors as none of their boys who joined the underground
movement was of any importance in the eyes of the government and many
of them even managed to remain unreported.
One day, Punaba did not return from his usual trip but Khatila did not
seem unduly worried by this. A month passed and then another, but there
was no sign of this quiet man. When asked about his absence, Khatila
replied that he was plying his business in Mokokchung. That sounded
plausible, because people there had greater need of a vehicle than the
villagers in the area. Before long however, the village grapevine brought
news that their very own Punaba had joined the underground army and was,
in fact, doing pretty well for himself. It was also reported that strange
people visited Khatila with provisions when the adults were away in their
fields and disappeared before their return. She became more reclusive and
her visits to her parents’ home also became less frequent than before.
Not long after the news of Punaba joining the underground army reached
the authorities, the government forces came to the village and began
questioning the villagers about Punaba. Even Khatila was summoned and
asked where her husband was. She replied that she did not know and she
did not care whether he came back or not. Judging from the description of
the man given by the gaonbura, the officer concluded that a beautiful
woman like her could not be heartbroken over the disappearance of an
insignificant man like Punaba from her life. So they went away after
threatening the villagers that if they were withholding vital information
about the rebels, they would come back and raze their village to the ground.
They even cautioned Khatila that if she was lying to them, she would be
punished in a very special way. ‘We know how to deal with women like
you,’ the officer said giving her a lascivious look. In the evening some of
the village elders came to her hut and asked her to send word to Punaba not
to visit her. Khatila merely nodded her head and meekly replied, ‘I shall
try.’ She knew that even if she could not get in touch with her husband, he
would surely come to know about the incident through the underground
grapevine. But she had to play the part of a dutiful woman because she
knew that in her position she could not afford to antagonise the village
authorities in any way.
It was not long before the entire land was engulfed in the flames of
conflict between the rebels and the government forces. The oppressive
measures adopted by the army to quell the rebellion backfired and even
those villages, which were till now not directly involved in the conflict,
became more sympathetic towards the underground forces when they heard
of the atrocities committed by the armed forces on innocent villagers. By
this time, Punaba’s fellow villagers were in total sympathy with the so-
called rebels and this village became one of the main conduits for supplies
and information to them. Punaba sent messengers to Khatila regularly and
she knew all that was going on in the underground outfit that her husband
was now heading. Because of his age and leadership qualities he rapidly
rose in rank and after only three years of service, was made a captain in the
rebel army. During these years he even managed to visit his wife several
times, even though the visits were short. While he was in the village,
lookouts would be posted at strategic points to note the movements of the
other army, which patrolled the outskirts of all suspect villages as a routine.
This was one such visit when Punaba had come to see his wife after a gap
of five months during which he had been wounded twice and was at the
moment recovering from the most recent bullet wound on his right arm. The
restful stay with his wife after the arduous and dangerous activities of
underground life seemed to be doing wonders for Punaba; he felt healthy
and happy for the first time in many months. But all that was soon to be
over. That morning, before they could get up from the bed exhausted from
the morning’s bout of ardent lovemaking, urgent thumps on the bamboo
walls were heard, with the whispered warning, ‘Sir, sir, wake up, they are
almost here, our sentries fell asleep. Run away sir.’ Another voice, that of
Punaba’s orderly joined in, ‘Sir, I will hide under the house, throw your gun
and uniform to me and I will wait for you on the northern bank of the third
well.’ The voices melted away with the approaching dawn.
Khatila was in a quandary, what should she do? How could she save her
husband, herself and the entire village from the approaching soldiers? She
could now hear their voices and the sound of their footsteps on the rocky
path leading to their house. For Punaba trying to escape now was out of the
question; he would be immediately spotted and shot down like a dog. He
would never surrender and she could not lie this time because their small
bamboo and thatch house had no hiding place. Though extremely agitated,
this woman had enough presence of mind to first bundle up his uniform and
gun in a sack and throw it down to the waiting orderly who immediately
grabbed it and vanished into the thick jungle. Next, she fished out some of
her husband’s old clothes and ordered him to get into them, then she
smeared his face, hands and feet with ash from the hearth, hid his sandals,
ruffled his hair and began shouting at him, ‘You no good loafer, what were
you doing all day yesterday? There is no water in the house even to wash
my face. Run to the well immediately or you will rue the day you were
born.’ While she was shouting at the top of her voice in this fashion, she
was at the same time emptying all the water containers through the bamboo
platform at the back. By the time the soldiers reached her house, she was
loading the water-carrying basket with the empty containers and showering
more abuses at the hapless servant. Someone called out her name and
thumped on the door but Khatila continued with her tirade ignoring those
standing outside her door. When there was another loud thump she shouted
in an irritated voice, ‘Who is it now? Don’t you see what I am doing?’
Taking her own time she opened the door with a loud yawn. ‘What do you
want?’ she growled at the young Captain who looked somewhat surprised at
her manner. Whereas he had expected to see a cowering woman, crazy with
fear for her husband and herself, he was confronted by a dishevelled but
defiant person who displayed no agitation and seemed to be utterly
oblivious to any danger. He stood there in confusion; surely the intelligence
report was right; that Punaba had come to the village on his periodical visits
to his wife and that this was his house. Bur where was he? He could not
have escaped through the tight cordon that was so efficiently put in place by
his boys.
Just when he decided to affect a sterner stance, Khatila turned her back
on him and began to shout again, ‘Hey, where is that lazy so and so?
Haven’t you gone yet?’ The servant, now with the water-carrying basket on
his head shuffled out from the bamboo platform at the back and proceeded
towards the front door. The young Captain tried to stop him, but Khatila
was prepared for this; she said, ‘Sahib, no use talking to him, he cannot
talk. Besides, don’t you see there is no water in the house? What do you
want with a servant?’ So saying, she gave a shove to Punaba with some
more choice abuses and he hurried out of the house and onto the path
leading to the third well. Soon he and his small party vanished into the
jungle and out of the cordon set up by the soldiers. The Captain did not
actually have a clear idea about the person they were looking for, except for
the fact that the woman’s husband was the wanted man and this house was
the target of the search, though several other searches were being carried
out by different groups simultaneously in different sectors of the village.
The army often employed this tactic to protect their informers, so that in the
course of a general search, they would exultantly ‘discover’ their quarry.
Watching the retreating back of the ungainly ‘servant’, he thought, surely he
could not be that person. The young and inexperienced army officer did not
realise that the beautiful but simple village woman had thus foiled a
meticulously planned ‘operation’ of the mighty Indian army and that a
prized quarry had simply walked away to freedom.
Alone in the house now, she assumed another pose, asking the Captain
coyly whether he would like some tea; she could get that much water from
her neighbour. The officer was temporarily dazed by Khatila’s beauty and
would have sat down for tea; but his JCO politely but firmly reminded him,
‘Sir, aor bohut gharka talashi baki hai. Hame chalna hai’. (Sir there are
many more houses to search. We have to move now.) Though slightly
irritated, he said ‘Thik hai, chalo’ (All right, let’s go.) Reluctantly he led the
search party away from the house. Only after the entire search party left the
village could Khatila relax and she was never more grateful than on that
particular morning for the ugliness of her husband which had saved not
only them but the entire village. Had he been killed or captured that
morning the entire village would have been punished for harbouring a
notorious rebel and not informing the government forces about his presence
in the village. As had happened to other villages, their barns would have
been set on fire, their houses destroyed and the people would have been
taken to the ‘grouping’ areas. But thanks to the audacity of Khatila’s ploy,
the entire village was saved from such a fate.
 Meanwhile the struggle between the rebels and underground forces
continued. So did Punaba’s periodical visits to see his wife. It was never
discovered whether one of their own villagers informed the authorities or
the information was supplied by someone else. The escape of Punaba and
his party that day was, however, construed differently by the underground
bosses and the credit was attributed to his shrewd planning. He continued to
serve in the outfit for some three more years and for this particular escape
and several other subsequent exploits, he was promoted to the rank of
Major in the underground army. When a general cease-fire was announced,
Khatila persuaded Punaba to come overground and be with her. She told
him that life was becoming too lonesome without him. It also happened to
be the period when the government was trying to rehabilitate the
‘surrendered’ cadres of the underground army, and though he did not
possess a regular certificate, Punaba was given a job in the State Transport
Department as a mechanic and was posted at Mokokchung.
Years later, the real story of what actually happened on that morning was
told, at first only to a few close friends. But by and by this ‘exploit’ of
Punaba, the jungle major, soon became the favourite subject whenever
friends dropped in to share a drink in the evenings. Every time the story was
recounted, Punaba would look at his wife and ask playfully, ‘Aren’t you
glad that your jungle major is so ugly?’ And equally playfully she would
answer, ‘So, where is the water I sent you to fetch that day?’
 Soaba

No one really knew who his parents were or which village he came from.
He grew up as the town orphan living on people’s charity, often doing odd
jobs like fetching water and splitting wood in various households. Even
though many people tried to domesticate and keep him as their permanent
unpaid servant, he would not stay in one place for more than a week or so.
The longest that he stayed in one fixed ‘place’ was the time when people
saw him travelling on a P.W.D. truck with the driver for several weeks. But
there was no pattern in the comings and goings of this peculiar boy; he
came and went as he pleased. No one could do anything about his
wandering from household to household; the townspeople simply accepted
him as he was and gave him food and shelter when he appeared at their
doorstep.
Imtimoa was his name, although no one knew who gave him that name.
People mostly referred to him as Soaba, which means ‘idiot’ in the Ao
language. Soaba was obviously slow in the head and seldom spoke
coherendy. His vocabulary consisted of simple sentences like ‘I am
hungry’, ‘Give me more’ and at times loud screams of ‘No, don’t do that’.
But, more often than not, he expressed his feelings with gestures or grunts.
Though this boy was totally unaware of any reality except hunger and thirst
and shelter from the cold and rain, he was destined to be caught up in the
whirlwind sweeping through the land and creating havoc in people’s lives.
It was the late fifties and new happenings in the land were overturning
the even tenor of people’s lives. Though they had been living in small
townships, their rural and traditional outlook on life still dominated the
environment. These were people who had migrated to the townships as
petty clerks in government offices, teachers in the various schools and also
as small-scale traders who preferred urban life to a life of hard work and
meagre returns in the villages. Unlike the homogenous population of
villages, the citizens of these new towns belonged to all the tribes of
Nagaland. One particular group, of course, would outnumber the others
purely on geographical factors. For example, a town like Mokokchung
would obviously have more Aos than Angamis or Semas because the town
is in the Ao territory. Such towns also had many ‘outsiders’: Assamese or
Bengali doctors or teachers, Marwari and Bihari traders, Nepali settlers,
whose forefathers had fought with the British army and were given land to
settle down. Slowly but steadily, a new environment was emerging and
overtaking the old ways, and youngsters growing up in such places began to
think of themselves as the new generation.
These young people were caught, as it were, at the crossroads of Naga
history. The wave of dissidence and open rebellion was heady wine for
many of them and they abandoned family, school careers and even
permanent jobs to join the band of nationalists to liberate the homeland
from forces, which they believed, were inimical to their aspirations to be
counted among the free nations of the world. It was however not only the
people from the urban areas who joined these forces. Through a method not
dissimilar to ‘conscription’ based on clans, many rural adults had to
abandon family and fieldwork and were inducted into the ‘underground’
army of freedom fighters.
It was at this stage that a new vocabulary also began to creep into the
everyday language of the people. Words like convoy, grouping, curfew and
‘situation’ began to acquire sinister dimensions as a result of the conflict
taking place between the government and underground armies. Convoys
meant the massive deployment of army personnel to various strategic areas;
convoys were also the only permitted mode of travel for people who had to
go to different places on official or personal errands. Travelling with long
lines of huge and unwieldy army vehicles meant slow progress because
when one vehicle stopped, every other vehicle had to do so too. The roads
were dusty, unmetalled and the alignments were haphazard; some were cut
into the sheer rock face of the hills with very little space for negotiating
sharp bends. Many accidents took place, especially when visibility was
poor due to the constant umbrella of fog enveloping the hills. On clear days,
it was the dust churned out by the vehicle in front, which hampered
visibility and slowed progress. These convoys were also frequently the
targets of ambushes from the other side, often resulting in not only army but
civilian casualties as well. The word ‘grouping’ had a much more sinister
implication; it meant that whole villages would be dislodged from their
ancestral sites and herded into new ones, making it more convenient for the
security forces to guard them day and night. The harrowing tales of people
who experienced such forced migrations are not fully known and some of
the accounts have died with the unfortunate ones who did not survive the
intense physical and mental torture meted out to them. If there was one
single factor, which further alienated the Nagas, it was this form of
punishing ‘errant’ villages. It was the most humiliating insult that was
inflicted on the Naga psyche by forcibly uprooting them from the soil of
their origin and being, and confining them in an alien environment, denying
them access to their fields, restricting them from their routine activities and
most importantly, demonstrating to them that the ‘freedom’ they enjoyed
could so easily be robbed at gunpoint by the ‘invading’ army. Curfew, a
word that did not exist in the peoples vocabulary, became a dreaded fact of
life for people living in the towns. A word like ‘situation’ is a perfectly
innocent one, but in the context of the underground movement, it acquired a
singular meaning: it referred only to the fall-out of the struggle between the
two opposing forces.
But the ‘fight’ taking place in the jungles did not reflect the conflict of
interests that was eating into the moral fabric of a society where friendship
and loyalty were the casualties. The new breed of the disgruntled did not all
take up arms; they became the disquieting elements in the power struggle
between the two warring groups. This environment was created by the
government; they needed a band of die-hards who would be their ‘extra
arms’ beyond the law and civil rights and who would also ‘guide’ their
forces who were so pitiably uninformed not only about the terrain on which
they were fighting and dying, but also about a bunch of people so alien to
them that for all they knew, they could have come from a different planet!
So a band of self-seeking entrepreneurs entered the arena of this strange
warfare. They were designated as Home Guards by the government,
ostensibly formed for civil defense duties but in the town of Mokokchung,
there was a unit of this force which came to be known as the ‘flying squad’,
led by a notorious ex-cop reputed to be the perpetrator of several heinous
crimes. This band was equipped with vehicles as well as guns, and was
given free rations of rum to boot. They zoomed around town in these
conveyances of notoriety intimidating and harassing the public at will, often
settling old scores with rivals whom they would not have dared to challenge
under normal circumstances. What follows is the story of a most unlikely
person who attached himself to this group because of his fascination with
the vehicles in which they travelled around the town.
Since the day Soaba saw a squad vehicle scream past him on the street,
he became obsessed with them. He would watch in wide-eyed wonder as far
as he could see and was often seen running after the speeding vehicles. In
his wanderings across town, one day he chanced to see such a vehicle
parked in the compound of the leader and from that day onwards he
hovered near the fence around it. Once or twice, a guard shooed him off,
only to find him standing in another spot close to the fence. When this went
on for a few days, the wife came out one day and beckoned to him with a
plate of rice. He did not hesitate even for a moment, jumped over the fence
and, grabbing the plate, devoured the contents hungrily. From that day
onwards, Soaba became a fixture in the household from which he would not
have moved but for the tragedy, which ended his short sojourn there.
In the meantime, the fortunes of the leader of this squad seemed to be
changing dramatically. His name was Imlichuba but he preferred to be
called Boss, so everyone called him Boss. He was fast becoming a dreaded
figure in the new hierarchy being created by the government forces to
counter the influence of the rebel movement. His image as an ally of the
government was increasingly enhanced because of his unquestioned
authority over people suspected of subversive activities or those suspected
of being agents of the underground outfit. Army bigwigs and senior
administrative officers visited his house regularly, which was now
renovated with new fixtures and a fresh coat of paint. It was now more
securely fenced in with regular guards at the two gates. His personal
appearance too began to change; he started wearing new and fashionable
clothes and flashy rings on his fingers. Neighbours often saw parcels and
crates being delivered through the back gate after dark. It was also after
dark that his other visitors, the ones with dark coats or heavy blankets and
with head and face covered by mufflers, would enter through the back gate
for their business. It soon became a pattern that a day or two after such a
visit, there would be a raid in a nearby village or even in the town itself and
the army would arrest suspected collaborators. Sometimes, a few of these
arrested persons would be brought to the Boss’s house and left there for
‘proper interrogation’ by him and his boys. Often, screams and groans
emanating from the depths of this house, could be heard above the loud
music blaring out from the only record player in town owned by Boss. No
one knew what eventually happened to these people; if some survived the
tortures, they would either surface in the civil hospital or the local jail.
Quite a few were never seen again. Though the beatings and tortures were
common knowledge, people were scared to open their mouths much less
admit they had heard or seen something they shouldn’t have.
Soaba, who now slept in a small room in the wood shed, saw the comings
and goings through a hole in the bamboo wall and heard the agonised
screams of the detainees. Through the haze in his mind he sensed that
something bad was happening in this house. After a week or so, one
morning he tried to go out of the gate but a guard saw him and called him
back to split some wood. After he finished the chore, he was given his meal
and somehow Soaba forgot that he had wanted to go out at all and settled
down to his usual routine of watching the vehicles come and go or listening
to the songs coming out of a box in the house. In all this while no one spoke
to him except to tell him to chop wood or fetch things for the other workers
in the household. Nor did he try to say anything to anyone. Then one day he
happened to hear Boss screaming at someone in a loud voice. He did not
understand what was being said but he caught a phrase being shouted
repeatedly. Boss was calling someone ‘stupid bastard’, which to Soaba’s
unschooled ears sounded like ‘supiba’ and from that moment on he wanted
to be called Supiba instead of Soaba, because even to his simple mind,
Supiba somehow sounded better than Soaba. He tried to tell the people
around him that he wanted to be called Supiba instead of Soaba. At first
they did not understand what he was trying to say; but he kept on pointing
to himself and saying Supiba in the garbled way that he spoke. When
someone from inside the house called out Soaba, the boy began to scream
Supiba, Supiba. Only then did they understand what he wanted from them
and from that time on they called him Supiba in deference to a simple mind,
which in some mysterious way had sensed that there was something bad
about the name Soaba that was tagged on to him.
Boss’s wife, who was called Imtila, was basically a simple woman and
would have loved to continue being a normal housewife, looking after her
husband and children. But her husband’s changed fortunes compelled her to
set aside her hitherto sedate and domesticated lifestyle and adopt one more
in keeping with her husbands new status. While entertaining, she was
required to wear the expensive clothes and jewellery that Boss bought for
her She was expected to circulate among the strangers who came to the
parties and be the amiable hostess. He declared that she could not go out
anywhere without a bodyguard and her friends or relatives could not come
to the house freely like before. Gradually she became a prisoner of her
husband’s notoriety because her friends and relatives, sensing her
discomfiture when they called on her a few times, began to stay away and
even when the husband invited them on important occasions, they blundy
refused to come.
The coming of the boy, now called Supiba, therefore was a welcome
diversion for the lonely woman. She would go out to the shed where he
stayed and watch his simple-minded activities like rolling on the ground or
playing with sticks and stones all by himself. Seeing how dirty he was, one
day she ordered her servants to give him a proper bath and bought him new
clothes to wear instead of the rags he was always seen in. He was given a
free run of the compound but was not allowed inside the house. By and by
his section of the wood shed was cleaned up and a new cot was put in on
her orders. She always enquired whether Supiba had been given his meal or
not. This transference of affection to the idiot began to have a strange effect
on Boss’s wife; for the first time in her life she began to think for herself
and assess the true nature of her husband’s work. When he was first
inducted to the new force, she was happy, thinking that at last there was
going to be some discipline and order in his life and work. But as time went
by, it became clear that the opposite was happening; he was surrounded by
a bunch of savages in his squad, some of whom were hardened criminals let
loose by the authorities to carry out their despicable designs. Some were
deserters from the underground army who had left the hard life of the jungle
and, lured by easy money and booze, had joined the new outfit. These
people seemed to infest her environment. She could no longer call her home
her personal domain, there was no peace and quiet for her or the children
because her husband’s lackeys seemed to be everywhere, inside the house,
in the compound and some even had the audacity to enter their bedroom on
the pretext of giving a message to Boss. She avoided them when they
started drinking at night because then they became more abusive in
language and violent in temper. And if there happened to be any detainees
undergoing ‘interrogation’, they bore the brunt of their drunken savagery.
Then the night would erupt with the unearthly screams and cries of the
victims and even though the record player did its best to muffle the sounds,
the walls of the house seemed to reverberate with their agony; and the poor
woman with this knowledge in her heart would writhe in an agony of
helplessness. Sometimes she would even run to the bathroom and vomit
whatever little food she had eaten.
Boss was becoming impossible to live with; he had no time for his wife
or children now, they were becoming more like receding blurs than real
persons in his turbulent life. In his own way, he, too, sensed that his wife
had gone away from the sanctuary of their relationship and had retreated
into a world where he had no place. But he was so drunk with his own
power, which had deadened his human spirit, that he became insensitive to
this inner voice. Even the outward appearance of the marital relationship
snapped when Imtila removed herself from his presence and took to
sleeping in a different room. He soon lost all physical desire, not only for
her but also for any other woman. But out of a perverse sense of proving his
manhood, he would order women to be brought to the house for his
pleasure. On these occasions however, he discovered that he could not find
the energy or the desire to make love to them. The ones who went away
tamely were rewarded but the bolder and experienced ones who tried either
to talk lightly of middle-aged men and impotency or tried to revive his
flagging organ were mercilessly beaten and dumped outside the gate by his
guards.
Though Imtila was aware of these nocturnal visits to her husband’s
bedside and what happened to many of the women who had been either
lured by the promise of money and a good time or were forcibly brought to
him, she found that she no longer cared and felt only a deep sympathy for
the unfortunate women. The townspeople soon came to know about this
aspect of Boss’s deteriorating life-style and word went out to all families
with young girls to keep a strict vigil over their daughters, especially after
nightfall. Boss would frequently invite his army pals and government
officials for a party in his house. At such times, Supiba would become
restless and would even refuse to eat. Instead, he would sit in a corner of the
compound and whimper. He had somehow come to associate big crowds
and loud music with something bad, either happening at that very moment
or about to happen. On such nights, the visitors would bring their own
female escorts and drink and dance late into the night. Imtila at first was
compelled to mingle with the guests at least for a short while, but as the
estrangement between husband and wife grew, she ceased to do even that.
On party nights now she would lock herself in her room, refusing even the
food and drink that her maid brought for her.
On a particular night when the guest list seemed to be larger than usual
and there was much going in and going out throughout the day, Supiba
managed to sneak into the kitchen under cover of darkness and hide himself
in the small pantry, which was stocked with provisions for the party. That
evening, Imtila made a rare visit to the pantry to look for something and
discovered the boy crouched in a corner. At first she seemed angry, and was
about to scold him but when she saw the forlorn and frightened look on his
face, she restrained herself and instead motioning to him to be quiet and
covering him with her shawl, managed to take him into the room she now
occupied. There she pushed him under the bed and held her finger to her
lips to tell him that he should keep quiet. As usual, the party got on its way
and as the night progressed, the loud laughter and hysterical screams of the
girls rang out from all directions to indicate that things were getting out of
control. Once in a while one of the drunken men would discharge his gun in
the air and for a few seconds there would be complete silence. But soon it
would be followed by more raucous laughter as the party continued its wild
course.
Boss’s excessive drinking and increasingly wild behaviour was beginning
to irk his handlers. Whereas once he had been their special man to carry out
their shadowy operations discreetly, he had now become more of a liability
than an asset. The powers that had at one time released or reined in the
leash on him at will, found it almost impossible to keep him in check. He
now seemed to be running away with the leash, pulling them along and
threatening to expose the sinister abuses perpetrated by his gang on
innocent civilians at their behest. So they decided to put a damper on his
drunken escapades by putting fear in his mind; fear for his life. Earlier in
the day, a messenger from Brigade Headquarter had come to the house with
cases of rum and whiskey and also a message from the Brigade Major
warning him of a possible attempt on his life from people in his own squad.
But instead of feeling intimidated, Boss became defiant and even more
belligerent. The party was turning out to be more boisterous than usual and
Boss seemed to be on a special high. One moment he would regale the
gathering with bawdy jokes and the crowd would burst into raucous
laughter and then, suddenly, his mood would change and he would begin
shouting about traitors and what he was going to do to these dogs.
Someone, drunkenly breaking into a Hindi song, would somehow interrupt
the momentary silence induced by the tirade and the party would continue.
Tonight the supply of liquor seemed to be unlimited and the revellers paid
little attention to Boss’s drunken outbursts. But around midnight, one of
Boss’s bodyguards was seen whispering something into his ear. Boss
jumped up in a rage and shouted, ‘There is a traitor in this house tonight
who has come to kill me. We will search every person and every room until
we find him and show what happens to traitors.’ All activity stopped, each
person was looking at the other as if seeing him or her for the first time. It
was one of those moments when temporary sobriety is restored by extreme
fear. People seemed to sag in their seats if they were sitting and if standing,
they somehow seemed to shrivel in their places. In the deathly silence that
followed this declaration, only the faint shrill of a pressure cooker could be
heard from the region of the kitchen.
In the meantime, Supiba was feeling cramped under Imtila’s bed. He had
lain there since early evening. So he had crawled out when she had gone to
the bathroom and looking into a drawer of the dressing table, saw what he
thought was a toy, he had seen those objects in the hands of the children
playing in the compound. He went forward to pick it up, when suddenly the
door to the room was kicked open and Boss was standing there swaying
unsteadily on drunken legs. Supiba, like a cornered animal began to
whimper. Hearing the commotion, Imtila opened the door of the bathroom
gingerly and stopped in mid-track at what she saw: Boss, taking deliberate
aim was about to shoot Supiba in the head, execution style. She screamed
and said, ‘Wait, it is only Soaba, don’t shoot’. She made as if to lunge at her
husband at which point Boss redirected his aim at Imtila’s heart, hissing
‘traitor’ through grated teeth. It was then that Supiba sprang into action.
Growling like a fierce animal he tried to jump at Boss, putting himself in
the range of the gun’s aim and shielding Imtila. ‘Boss, Boss’, someone was
trying to say something to him but he was beyond all human reasoning; he
was still hissing the word traitor out of his foaming mouth. Even as Supiba
tried to signal something with his hand, which still clutched the gun, the
drunken figure discharged his weapon straight into his heart. With a
piercing cry of anguish, Imtila rushed to the body of the fallen idiot crying
over and over again, ‘Oh my poor boy, were you born for this? Why did I
let you come into this evil place?’ She was disconsolate, weeping and
muttering these words again and again in a monotonous dirge-like tone. A
stupefied Boss was led away by his bodyguards into the din of the raucous
party, which continued as if nothing had happened.
The next day, the townspeople heard that Supiba had died in an accident
while playing with a gun left near him by a careless guard. No one dared
ask who that irresponsible wretch was. They also heard that Imtila had
washed his body herself and dressed him in Bosss best suit before it was put
in the coffin. The actual circumstances of the death were never fully
investigated nor talked about and this poor idiot boy who chanced to be in
this malfeasant circle created by Boss and his cohorts was buried in a far
corner of the town cemetery, with only the reluctant pastor and a grieving
Imtila accompanying the pallbearers. After the funeral, Imtila locked herself
in her room and stayed there for three days, refusing to open it to anyone
except her maid who brought her food. On the fourth day she came out and
ordered the servants to remove all signs of Soaba’s existence from the
compound. The cot, piled high with his old clothes, was taken to a far
corner of the garden and burnt. It was as though she was obliterating a
painful chapter of her own life through this ritual.
Soon the household appeared to resume its old routine; Boss still strutted
around, his bodyguards at his side even inside the compound. He would still
ride out in the jeep escorted by his lackeys. He still drank heavily, but the
liquor now had a different effect on him. Instead of making him boisterous
and even aggressive, he became morose. Some other imperceptible changes
were also beginning to creep into the routine of the household. The parties
became less frequent and eventually stopped. Fewer people visited Boss
after the incident, some of his trusted lieutenants asked for leave to go and
visit ‘ailing’ relatives and quite a few of them did not return. The music
from the record player stopped and even the squad vehicles plied less on the
town roads.
Imtila began to notice the effects of these changes on the behaviour of
her estranged husband. He became listless and disinterested in anything
around him; it was as if a vital string had snapped in his evil genius when
he pulled the trigger that night. Like a man awakened from a long trance
Boss stole around the house as if he was trying to familiarise himself with a
new environment. But every now and then he would go on a drinking binge
lasting for days, become abusive and start shouting at everyone; then
suddenly he would collapse in a drunken heap muttering to himself, ‘Oh
you idiot, you idiot’. Though Imtila was indifferent at first, she gradually
found she could no longer ignore the behavioural changes in her husband,
and his growing depression, which was threatening to destroy his sanity. So
she quietly moved back into their old bedroom and began to make overtures
of reconciliation to this man who seemed to have diminished from his
former evil self into a whimpering helpless child. She tried to pick up the
broken pieces of their former life and create a new order from the pathetic
remains. It was not an easy task but she persevered because the alternative
was too frightening to contemplate.
It must, however, be said that the public persona of Boss did continue to
harass people and haunt their minds because the government saw to it that
he did not altogether lose his former standing as the commander of the
dreaded squad. They visited his house occasionally and sent him gifts. On
certain days he would even dress up in his squad uniform and, accompanied
by a few of his faithful boys, drive round the town but whoever saw him on
these occasions sensed that the sting had gone out of him because he would
sit stone-like, staring straight ahead as if he was in a trance. In the old days
he would stand in the jeep, brandishing his gun, his face flushed with drink
and mouth crimson with paan, he would let out loud whoops of derision as
the townspeople scampered to get out of the way of the speeding vehicles.
Recalling the earlier spectacle and watching the present parody, some even
went to the extent of saying that he now looked definitely shrunken in size.
The realisation soon dawned on the people that what had at one time
loomed over the town as a huge and menacing blot was fast becoming a
mere smudge on the horizon.
In his heyday, Boss loved to dress up in three-piece suits for his parties
and it was rumoured that he never wore a suit more than once. People often
wondered aloud how many suits he owned if that rumour was true. Now
that his exploits were becoming a thing of the turbulent past, people’s
attention turned to his present personal circumstances. And on the question
of his clothes, they wondered if Boss ever found out what happened to his
best suit. The speculations continued and no one could say for sure whether
he ever found out that it was buried with Soaba. But curiosity about Boss
never ceased and by and by they learned from ‘reliable’ sources within his
household that after the ‘sad accident’ in his house when the town idiot was
killed, Boss was never seen in a suit again.
Thus ended the tragic tale of Soaba, who, like a bewildered animal, had
strayed out of his natural habitat into a maze that simply swallowed him up.
The magic of Boss’s fast cars had drawn him into a world where violence
was the order of the day and which eventually claimed his life. There was
no one to mourn his death except a heart-wounded woman who was
desperately trying to cling on to humanity amidst the chaos that had
engulfed her world. In spite of the wretchedness of her own life, she had
tried to give him a certain measure of love, protection and care. But all her
concern and affectionate care proved inadequate when it came to protecting
him from the senseless death brought on him by her own husband.
 The Last Song

It seemed the little girl was born to sing. Her mother often recalled that
when she was a baby, she would carry her piggyback to community singing
events on festival days. As soon as the singers took up a tune and gradually
when their collective voices began to swell in volume and harmony, her
daughter would twist herself this way and that and start singing her own
version of the song, mostly consisting of loud shrieks and screams. Though
amusing at first, her daughter’s antics irritated the spectators and the singers
as well, and often, she had to withdraw from the gathering in
embarrassment. What the mother considered unreasonable behaviour in a
child barely a year old, was actually the first indication of the singing
genius that she had given birth to.
When Apenyo, as the little girl was called, could walk and talk a little,
her mother would take her to church on Sundays because she could not be
left alone at home. On other days she was left in the care of her
grandmother when the mother went to the fields; but on this day there was
no one to take care of her as everyone went to church. When the
congregation sang together Apenyo would also join, though her little
screams were not quite audible because of the group singing. But whenever
there was a special number, trouble would begin; Apenyo would try to sing
along, much to the embarrassment of the mother. After two or three such
mortifying Sunday outings, the mother stopped going to church altogether
until Apenyo became older and learnt how to behave.
At home too, Apenyo never kept quiet; she hummed or made up silly
songs to sing by herself, which annoyed her mother at times but most often
made her become pensive. She was by now convinced that her daughter had
inherited her love of singing from her father who had died so unexpectedly
away from home. The father, whose name was Zhamben, was a gifted
singer both of traditional folk songs as well as of Christian hymns at
church. Naga traditional songs consist of polyphonic notes and harmonising
is the dominant feature of such community singing. Perhaps because of his
experience and expertise in folk songs, Zhamben picked up the new tunes
of hymns quite easily and soon became the lead male voice in the church
choir. He was a schoolteacher in the village and at the time of his death was
undergoing a teacher-training course in a town in Assam. He was suddenly
taken ill and by the time the news reached the village, he was already dead.
While his relatives were preparing to go and visit him, his friends from the
training school brought his dead body home. Apenyo was only nine months
old then. From that time on, it was a lonely struggle for the mother, trying
to cultivate a field and bring up a small child on her own. With occasional
help from her in-laws and her own relatives, the widow, called Libeni, was
slowly building a future for her daughter and herself. Many of the relatives
told her to get married again so that she and little Apenyo would have a
man to protect and look after them. But Libeni would not listen and when
they repeatedly told her to think about it seriously, she asked them never to
bring up the subject again. So mother and daughter lived alone and survived
mainly on what was grown in the field.
At the village school Apenyo did well and became the star pupil. When
she was old enough to help her mother in spreading the thread on the loom,
she would sit nearby and watch her weave the colourful shawls, which
would be sold to bring in additional income. Libeni had the reputation of
being one of the best weavers in the village and her shawls were in great
demand. By and by Apenyo too learned the art from her mother and became
an excellent weaver like her. In the meantime, her love for singing too was
growing. People soon realized that not only did she love to sing but also
that Apenyo had an exquisite singing voice. She was inducted into the
church choir where she soon became the lead soprano. Every time the choir
sang it was her voice that made even the commonest song sound heavenly.
Along with her singing voice, her beauty also blossomed as Apenyo
approached her eighteenth birthday. Her natural beauty seemed to be
enhanced by her enchanting voice, which earned her the nickname ‘singing
beauty’ in the village. Libeni’s joy knew no bounds. She was happy that all
those years of loneliness and hardship were well rewarded by God through
her beautiful and talented daughter.
One particular year, the villagers were in an especially expectant mood
because there was a big event coming up in the village church in about six
months time: the dedication of the new church building. Every member of
the church had contributed towards the building fund by donating in cash
and kind and it had taken them nearly three years to complete the new
structure of tin roof and wooden frames to replace the old one of bamboo
and thatch. In every household the womenfolk were planning new clothes
for the family, brand new shawls for the men and new skirts or ‘lungis’ for
the women. The whole village was being spruced up for the occasion as
some eminent pastors from neighbouring villages were being invited for the
dedication service. Pigs earmarked for the feast were given special food to
fatten them up. The service was planned for the first week of December,
which would ensure that harvesting of the fields would be over and the
special celebration would not interfere with the normal Christmas
celebrations of the church. The villagers began the preparations with great
enthusiasm, often joking among themselves that this year they would have a
double Christmas!
These were, however, troubled times for the Nagas. The Independence
movement was gaining momentum by the day and even the remotest
villages were getting involved, if not directly in terms of their members
joining the underground army, then certainly by paying ‘taxes’ to the
underground ‘government’. This particular village was no different. They
had been compelled to pay their dues every year, the amount calculated on
the number of households in the village. Curiously enough, the collections
would be made just before the Christmas holidays, perhaps because travel
for the collectors was easier through the winter forests or perhaps they too
wanted to celebrate Christmas! In any case, the villagers were prepared for
the annual visit from their brethren of the forests and the transaction was
carried out without a hitch.
But this year, it was not as simple as in previous years. A recent raid of
an underground hideout yielded records of all such collections of the area
and the government forces were determined to ‘teach’ all those villages the
consequences of ‘supporting’ the rebel cause by paying the ‘taxes’.
Unknown to them, a sinister plan was being hatched by the forces to
demonstrate to the entire Naga people what happens when you ‘betray’
your own government. It was decided that the army would go to this
particular village on the day when they were dedicating the new church
building and arrest all the leaders for their ‘crime’ of paying taxes to the
underground forces.
In the meanwhile, the villagers caught up in the hectic activities prior to
the appointed day, a Sunday, were happily busy in tidying up their own
households, especially the ones where the guests would be lodged. The
dedication Sunday dawned bright and cool, it was December after all, and
every villager, attired in his or her best, assembled in front of the new
church, which was on the same site as the old one. The villagers were
undecided about what to do with the old one still standing near the new one.
They had postponed any decision until after the dedication. That morning
the choir was standing together in the front porch of the new church to lead
the congregation in the singing before the formal inauguration, after which
they would enter the new building. Apenyo, the lead singer, was standing in
the middle of the front row, looking resplendent in her new lungi and shawl.
She was going to perform solo on the occasion after the group song of the
choir. As the pastor led the congregation in the invocatory prayer, a hush
fell on the crowd as though in great expectation: the choir would sing their
first number after the prayer. As the song the crowd was waiting to hear
began, there was the sound of gunfire in the distance; it was an ominous
sound which meant that the army would certainly disrupt the festivities. But
the choir sang on unfazed, though uneasy shuffles could be heard from
among the crowd. The pastor too began to look worried; he turned to a
deacon and seemed to be consulting with about something. Just as the
singing subsided, another sound reverberated throughout the length and
breath of the village: a frightened Dobashi, with fear and trembling in his
voice was telling the people to stay where they were and not to attempt to
run away or fight. There was a stunned silence and the congregation froze
in their places unable to believe that their dedication Sunday was going to
be desecrated by the arrogant Indian army.
Very soon the approaching soldiers surrounded the crowd, and the pastor
was commanded to come forward and identify himself along with the
gaonburas. But before they could do anything, Apenyo burst into her solo
number, and not to be outdone by the bravery or foolishness of this young
girl, and not wishing to leave her thus exposed, the entire choir burst into
song. The soldiers were incensed; it was an act of open defiance and proper
retaliation had to be made. They pushed and shoved the pastor and the
gaonburas, prodding them with the butts of their guns towards the waiting
jeeps below the steps of the church. Some of the villagers tried to argue
with the soldiers and they too were kicked and assaulted. There was a
feeble attempt by the accompanying Dobashi to restore some semblance of
order but no one was listening to him and the crowd, by now overcome by
fear and anger, began to disperse in every direction. Some members of the
choir left their singing and were seen trying to run away to safety. Only
Apenyo stood her ground. She sang on, oblivious of the situation as if an
unseen presence was guiding her. Her mother, standing with the
congregation, saw her daughter singing her heart out as if to withstand the
might of the guns with her voice raised to God in heaven. She called out to
her to stop but Apenyo did not seem to hear or see anything. In desperation,
Libeni rushed forward to pull her daughter away but the leader of the army
was quicker. He grabbed Apenyo by the hair and with a bemused look on
his face dragged her away from the crowd towards the old church building.
All this while, the girl was heard singing the chorus of her song over and
over again.
There was chaos everywhere. Villagers trying to flee the scene were
either shot at or kicked and clubbed by the soldiers who seemed to be
everywhere. The pastor and the gaonburas were tied up securely for
transportation to army headquarters and whatever fate awaited them there.
More people were seen running away desperately, some seeking security in
the old church and some even entered the new one hoping that at least the
house of God would offer them safety from the soldiers. Libeni was now
frantic. Calling out her daughter’s name loudly, she began to search for her
in the direction where she was last seen being dragged away by the leader.
When she came upon the scene at last, what she saw turned her stomach:
the young Captain was raping Apenyo while a few other soldiers were
watching the act and seemed to be waiting for their turn. The mother, crazed
by what she was witnessing, rushed forward with an animal-like growl as if
to haul the man off her daughter’s body but a soldier grabbed her and
pinned her down on the ground. He too began to unzip his trousers and
when Libeni realised what would follow next, she spat on the soldier’s face
and tried to twist herself free of his grasp. But this only further aroused him;
he bashed her head on the hard ground several times knocking her
unconscious and raped her limp body, using the woman’s new lungi
afterwards, which he had flung aside, to wipe himself. The small band of
soldiers then took their turn, even though by the time the fourth one
mounted, the woman was already dead. Apenyo, though terribly bruised
and dazed by what was happening to her was still alive, though barely so.
Some of the villagers who had entered the old church saw what happened to
mother and daughter and after the soldiers were seen going towards the
village square, came out to help them. As they were trying to lift the limp
bodies, the Captain happened to look back and seeing that there were
witnesses to their despicable act, turned to his soldiers and ordered them to
open fire on the people who were now lifting up the bodies of the two
women. Amid screams and yells the bodies were dropped as the helpless
villagers once again tried to seek shelter inside the church.
Returning towards the scene of their recent orgy, the Captain saw the
grotesque figures of the two women, both dead. He shouted an order to his
men to dump them on the porch of the old church. He then ordered them to
take positions around the church and at his signal they emptied their guns
into the building. The cries of the wounded and the dying inside the church
proved that even the house of God could not provide them security and save
them from the bullets of the crazed soldiers. In the distance too, similar
atrocities were taking place. But the savagery was not over yet. Seeing that
it would be a waste of time and bullets to kill off all the witnesses inside the
church, the order was given to set it on fire. Yelling at the top of his voice,
the Captain now appeared to have gone mad. He snatched the box of
matches from his Adjutant and set to work. But his hands were shaking; he
thought that he could still hear the tune the young girl was humming as he
was ramming himself into her virgin body, while all throughout, the girl’s
unseeing eyes were fixed on his face. He slumped down on the ground and
the soldiers made as if to move away, but with renewed anger he once again
gave the order and the old church soon burst into flames reducing the dead
and the dying into an unrecognizable black mass. The new church too,
standing not so far from the old one, caught the blaze and was badly
damaged. Elsewhere in the village, the granaries were the first to go up in
flames. The wind carried burning chunks from these structures and
scattered them amidst the clusters of houses, which too burnt to the ground.
By the time the marauding soldiers left the village with their prisoners, it
was dark and to compound the misery it rained the whole night. It was
impossible to ascertain how many men and women were missing apart from
the pastor and the four gaonburas. Mercifully, the visiting pastors were left
alone when it became known that they did not belong to this village. But
they were ordered to leave immediately and threatened in no uncertain
terms that if they carried the news of what had happened here, their own
villages would suffer the same fate. The search for the still missing persons
began only the next morning. They found out that among the missing
persons were Apenyo and her mother. When a general tally was taken, it
was discovered that many villagers sustained bullet wounds as well as
injuries from severe beatings. Also, six members of the choir were not
accounted for. An old woman whose house was quite close to the church
site told the search party that she saw some people running towards the old
church.
When the villagers arrived at the burnt-out site of the old church
building, their worst suspicions were confirmed. Among the rain-drenched
ashes of the old church they found masses of human bones washed clean by
the night’s rain. And on what was once the porch of the old church, they
found a separate mass and through a twist of fate a piece of Apenyo’s new
shawl was found, still intact beneath the pile of charred bones. Mother and
daughter lay together in that pile. The villagers gathered all the bones of the
six choir members and put them in a common coffin but those of the mother
and daughter, they put in a separate one. After a sombre and song-less
funeral service, the question arose as to where to bury them. Though the
whole village had embraced Christianity long ago, some of the old
superstitions and traditions had not been totally abandoned. The deaths of
these unfortunate people were considered to be from unnatural causes and
according to tradition they could not be buried in the village graveyard,
Christianity or no Christianity. Some younger ones protested, ‘How can you
say that? They were members of our church and sang in the choir’. The old
ones countered this by saying, ‘So what, we are still Nagas aren’t we? And
for us some things never change’. The debate went on for some time until a
sort of compromise was reached: they would be buried just outside the
boundary of the graveyard to show that their fellow villagers had not
abandoned their remains to a remote forest site. But there was a stipulation:
no headstones would be erected for any of them.
Today these gravesites are two tiny grassy knolls on the perimeter of the
village graveyard and if one is not familiar with the history of the village,
particularly about what happened on that dreadful Sunday thirty odd years
ago, one can easily miss these two mounds trying to stay above ground
level. The earth may one day swallow them up or rip them open to reveal
the charred bones. No one knows what will happen to these graves without
headstones or even to those with elaborately decorated concrete structures
inside the hallowed ground of the proper graveyard, housing masses of
bones of those who died ‘natural’ deaths. But the story of what happened to
the ones beneath the grassy knolls without the headstones, especially of the
young girl whose last song died with her last breath, lived on in the souls of
those who survived the darkest day of the village.
And what about the Captain and his band of rapists who thought that they
had burnt all the evidence of their crime? No one knows for sure. But the
underground network, which seems able to ferret out the deadliest of
secrets, especially about perpetrators of exceptional cruelty on innocent
villagers, managed not only to piece together the events of that black
Sunday, but also to ascertain the identity of the Captain. After several years
of often frustrating intelligence gathering, he was traced to a military
hospital in a big city where he was being kept in a maximum-security cell
of an insane asylum.

P.S. It is a cold night in December and in a remote village, an old storyteller

is sitting by the hearth-fire with a group of students who have come home
for the winter holidays. They love visiting her to listen to her stories, but
tonight granny is not her usual chirpy self; she looks much older and seems
to be agitated over something. One of the boys asks her whether she is not
feeling well and tells her that if so, they can come back another night. But
instead of answering the question, the old woman starts talking and tells
them that on certain nights a peculiar wind blows through the village, which
seems to start from the region of the graveyard and which sounds like a
hymn. She also tells them that tonight is that kind of a night. At first the
youngsters are skeptical and tell her that they cannot hear anything and that
such things are not possible, but the old woman rebukes them by saying that
they are not paying attention to what is happening around them. She tells
them that youngsters of today have forgotten how to listen to the voice of
the earth and the wind. They feel chastised and make a show of straining
their ears to listen more attentively and to their utter surprise, they hear the
beginning of a low hum in the distance. They listen for some time and tell
her, almost in triumph, that they can hear only an eerie sound. ‘No’, the
storyteller almost shouts, ‘Listen carefully. Tonight is the anniversary of
that dreadful Sunday’. There is a death-like silence in the room and some of
them begin to look uneasy because they too had heard vague rumours of
army atrocities that took place in the village on a Sunday long before they
were born. Storyteller and audience strain to listen more attentively and
suddenly a strange thing happens: as the wind whirls past the house, it
increases in volume and for the briefest of moments seems to hover above
the house. Then it resumes its whirling as though hurrying away to other
regions beyond human habitation. The young people are stunned because
they hear the new element in the volume and a certain uncanny lilt lingers
on in the wake of its departure. The old woman jumps up from her seat and
looking at each one in turn asks, ‘You heard it, didn’t you? Didn’t I tell
you? It was Apenyo’s last song’ and she hums a tune softly, almost to
herself. The youngsters cannot deny that they heard the note but are puzzled
because they do not know what she is talking about. As the old woman
stands apart humming the tune, they look at her with wonder. There is a
peculiar glow on her face and she seems to have changed into a new self,
more alive and animated than earlier. After a while a young girl timidly
approaches her and asks, ‘Grandmother, what are you talking about? Whose
last song?’
The old storyteller whips around and surveys the group as though seeing
them for the first time. She then heaves a deep sigh and with infinite
sadness in her voice spreads her arms wide and whispers, ‘You have not
heard about that song? You do not know about Apenyo? Then come and
listen carefully...’
Thus on a cold December night in a remote village, an old storyteller
gathers the young of the land around the leaping flames of a hearth and
squats on the bare earth among them to pass on the story of that Black
Sunday when a young and beautiful singer sang her last song even as one
more Naga village began weeping for her ravaged and ruined children.
 The Curfew Man

The night curfew was still on because these were troubled times for all in
the land. Everything had been plunged into a state of hostility between two
warring armies; the one overground labelling the other as rebels fighting
against the state and the other, operating from their underground hide-outs
and calling the Indian army illegal occupiers of sovereign Naga territories.
Caught between the two, it was the innocent villagers and those living in
small townships who had to bear the brunt of the many restrictions imposed
on their lives. Of these, the night curfew was the worst for people living in
towns because soon after dark all social activities ceased, even church
services or social gatherings had to be concluded before the curfew hour
began. There were stories about how people carrying the sick to hospital or
in search of doctors were stopped and subjected to humiliating searches
causing unnecessary, and sometimes even fatal, delays. Often these helpless
people were sent back with abuses and threats completely disregarding the
urgent need of the poor patients. There were several incidents where
civilians were shot dead by the patrol parties after curfew and their deaths
reported as those of underground rebels killed in ‘encounters’ with the
army.
While all normal activities came to a halt after the curfew hour, for some
individuals their real work began only after dark. These were the informers
employed by the civil authorities and the security forces who were paid to
gather information about those whose sons or relatives had joined the
underground. They monitored the people who visited these houses; kept
watch on where they went and also tried to find out what they told their
neighbours and acquaintances. There was another group of people whose
activities too, were constandy monitored. They were the sympathizers of
the movement, many of them government servants, doctors, teachers and
even ordinary housewives. It was this band of sympathizers who helped the
underground organisation to procure supplies, medicines, and most
important of all kept them well informed about troop movements. In order
to detect and arrest the relatives of ‘rebels’ and their sympathizers, the
government began to enlist recruits from the ranks of the bad elements in
the towns and villages by paying them handsomely and sometimes even by
threatening to reopen old criminal cases if they did not co-operate with
them. These were the people who operated in the grey area between the
government forces and the so-called ‘freedom fighters’, some by choice and
others by compulsion.
There was, however, one among them who stumbled onto the job as it
were, through a strange turn of events. His name was Satemba and he was
formerly a constable in the Assam Police. Though he had not passed the
matriculation examination, he was taken into the force because he was an
excellent football player. His main job there, it seemed, was to play football
for his battalion and he and his colleagues won many shields and trophies.
Bur during a particularly rough final game between the Assam Police and
the Assam Regiment for the coveted East Zone Trophy, he was injured
badly. His knee cap was shattered, which meant that he would never be able
to play competitive football again. Nor could he perform the usual duties of
a constable because of this permanent physical handicap. He was also not
qualified enough to hold a desk job. His disability became a real problem
for his superiors who were trying to find a suitable place for him in the
force. As they pondered over this dilemma, Satemba’s wife, Jemtila,
suggested that he take premature retirement from the service so that they
could return to their village and take up farming. Though he had not put in
the requisite number of years for regular pension benefits, the authorities
decided to make an exception in his case on account of his consistent
performance as a goal scoring player in the batallion’s football team. So
with a token pension of Rs 75 per month, he left Assam and went to his
village in Nagaland to try his luck at farming.
Satemba and Jemtila accordingly embarked on a new phase of their life.
He acquired a piece of ancestral farmland from his clan and began to clear
it for cultivation. But being a latecomer and a junior member in the
hierarchy, the piece of land that was given to him turned out to be
unsuitable for any kind of sustainable farming. The dull village life and the
hard grind soon became intolerable, especially for Satemba and so after two
miserable years of farming, the couple came to Mokokchung town and took
up residence in a small rented house on the outskirts of the town. The house
rent was Rs 30 per month and so the two had to live on the rest of the
pension money, which more often than not got delayed in transit. In order to
earn some extra money, Satemba’s wife decided to do odd jobs in people’s
houses. Such jobs were difficult to find because the families normally
employed people from other tribes or even ex-labourers from tea gardens
for such menial jobs. The few households she approached were at first
reluctant to engage her, but she did not give up. After a few rejections she
managed to land a job in a family with two young children where the
mother was ill a lot of the time. Jemtila was an honest and hard-working
woman and as word of this spread, her services were in great demand. Very
soon she was able to quote her own rates and since she was a good worker
people were happy to pay what she asked for. She worked in several houses
each day and earned a tidy sum every month. But the itinerant nature of her
work was not to her liking and she began to look for a more settled place of
work. It so happened that at this juncture, a new Sub-Divisional Officer
took over and as his wife was expecting their first baby, he was looking for
a mature and hard working maidservant. When he heard about Jemtila and
her work, he decided that she would be the ideal helper and companion for
his wife. Jemtila was called to his office one day and after a brief interview
was engaged to work in the household on a full-time basis for a monthly
salary of Rs 100! Satemba was thrilled with the news and thought that if he
too could find a job somewhere, their life would become more comfortable.
They could move into bigger accommodation and maybe even plan to buy a
small plot of land where they would eventually build a house of their own.
As the distance between the S.D.O.’s quarter in town and their house was
considerable, Satemba would often come to escort his wife back home after
work. It was on such a day that the S.D.O. saw him and began to talk to
him, at first about general matters and then quite abruptly began to tell him
that he was looking for someone to gather information about certain people
in town as he had just come and did not know much about them. Would
Satemba be interested? Satemba was no fool and had lived long enough in
the town and seen and heard about disturbing things as a result of the
turmoil in the land. He had also noticed how tense and suspicious people
had become. Therefore he understood that the S.D.O.’s offer was not as
innocent as he was trying to make it out to be. He was non-committal at
first. He simply answered that everything depended on the nature of
information the sahib required and whether he, with his physical handicap,
would be able to gather it for him. The S.D.O. did not say anything further
and after Jemtila’s work was done for the day, she and Satemba hurried
back so as to reach home before the night curfew began. After a few days,
the officer sent word through his wife for Satemba to meet him in the
evening. They had a long discussion and at the end of it Satemba was
recruited as a government informer. It was certainly not the kind of job that
he had ever imagined doing, but he was compelled to take it because he was
discreetly reminded that his wife’s job was somehow connected with the
offer. Also, it was the first offer of a job that he had got after coming to the
town and he was already beginning to feel uneasy about the fact that it was
Jemtila who was the earning member of the family. In spite of his initial
reservations, Satemba accepted the offer, setting aside his qualms in order
to salvage some of his male pride. And so began the shady career of
Satemba who would henceforth live in the unpredictable area between trust
and betrayal and would never know the difference between friend and foe.
In due course he was quietly introduced to the officers in the army
intelligence network and more often than not, was instructed to deliver all
important messages to them directly.
In the beginning Jemtila was unaware of the nature of her husbands
work. She assumed that Satemba was to run small errands for the S.D.O.,
for which he would be paid a regular salary. It was only when he began to
stay out at night, sometimes returning only in the early hours of the
morning that she became suspicious and began to ply him with questions.
Satemba admitted to her that some nights he did not come home because he
got delayed while gathering some vital information for the sahib, which he
could do only at night. ‘What information?’ she persisted, ‘and those people
you meet, don’t they sleep?’ He wouldn’t tell her at first, but when she
threatened to go to the sahib and ask him instead, Satemba had to tell her
everything. Jemtila was furious, why hadn’t he told her earlier? They could
have thought of some excuse to decline the offer. She even suggested that
they go back to their village, rather than have Satemba do such a ‘hanky-
panky’ job, as she put it. She also threatened him by saying, ‘Just wait and
see, one of these days the other guys will come for you.’ It was only then
that Satemba told her how the sahib made it clear that her continuing in his
household depended on his accepting the job. And he added, if she lost her
job because of him, they would not only lose a means of livelihood, but also
become suspect in the eyes of the government and anything might happen
to them in these uncertain times. She still persisted, why didn’t he say that
his bad knee would not permit him to walk long distances and climb steps?
And, she triumphantly asked, what about the curfew? How did he manage
to evade the patrols? Satemba did not say anything and Jemtila quietly
repeated, ‘Just wait and see, one day they will get you.’ This woman was by
no means ignorant of what was happening all around them and how
circumstances were forcing innocent, peace-loving people to turn to means
that they would not ordinarily employ, just to stay safe and alive. She had to
admit that they were indeed caught in a vice-like situation and every time
Satemba went out at night, she kept a lone vigil in the darkness of their
small hut and worried until he appeared at the door.
On this particular night too Satemba had come out of his house carrying
information to the Brigade Major (Intelligence) who stayed in a small back
room of the Army Headquarters in the centre of the town. Curfew was no
problem for him because he was given the password each night by his
masters to enable him to move about freely gathering or giving information.
Tonight however, he was moving slowly because of his knee problem,
walking in measured steps in the shadows and hurriedly crossing the lighted
areas under the few street lights. Work such as this had become routine for
him but tonight there was an uneasy feeling in his mind. He had, earlier in
the evening, almost decided not to venture out tonight. There was a nagging
worry, but he could not understand why he was overcome by this unusual
feeling. The information that he was able to gather seemed to be important
and had to be passed on to his superiors immediately. His failure to do so
would have serious consequences for his career and he also knew that he
might be ‘taken care of’ by his masters any time if they thought that his
work was slipping.
With all these misgivings in his mind, he continued walking. He was
stopped a few times by the sentries with their loud cry of ‘Halt’. Each time
he would give the right password for the night and move on. It was a cold
night and his bad knee was acting up again. The doctors had told him that
there was nothing more they could do about his knee after they removed the
shattered cap. They also warned him about the intermittent pain he would
have to bear as long as he lived. Tonight the pain seemed to be accentuated
by the unease in his mind. He had reached the town square and felt like
sitting down to rest his bad knee. He chose a dark spot and squatted on the
cold pavement and thought about the message he was carrying for his
keepers. He had obtained reliable information that an important meeting of
the underground leaders of the area was to take place in the town during the
weekend. It was an ingenuous plan: the church was holding revival
meetings and lots of people from other towns and nearby villages were
expected to attend these, and taking advantage of this influx, the audacious
rendezvous was scheduled to be held in the assistant pastor’s residence,
which was in a secluded area of the town. Residents of the few scattered
houses had already been given notice to go away for the weekend. It was
actually a relative of his wife’s who came and told her about this order and
realizing that something of great significance was about to take place,
Satemba made the customary round of his own circle of informers and
came up with this vital information. If he could carry this message tonight,
and if the meeting did take place as scheduled, the army could indeed
capture the area commanders and inflict a big blow to the underground
organisation. And for the briefest of moments he wondered if his superiors
would give him a special bonus for helping them to capture or kill the
underground leaders. But even this prospect of monetary gain did nothing to
allay his misgivings.
Never before in his new career as an informer had Satemba seriously
questioned his own motives for doing what he was doing; he preferred not
to think about the rightness or wrongness of the government’s method of
operation. For him it was only a job for doing which he was given a
reasonable payment. For some time, he was able to suppress his earlier
qualms about the nature of his work and was becoming an effective
informer. He had even circumvented Jemtila’s opposition. But lately he had
become uneasy about his own activities, especially after a particular
incident in which, acting on his tip-off, the army raided a house in a nearby
village. While the underground agents who had taken shelter there managed
to escape, the owner of the house was arrested and beaten up so badly that
he later died of his injuries. For many nights after that Satemba stayed at
home saying his knee was giving him too much trouble. But the real trouble
was in his heart. For the first time in two and half years, he was beginning
to question himself and his so-called ‘job’. This latest information that he
had obtained was the most important development after the unfortunate
incident over which he had spent many uneasy days of soul searching.
Earlier, he had spent an agonizing day alone at home, debating with himself
whether to continue doing his assigned job or quit, citing health reasons.
His wife had come home early that day saying that sahib was in a very
agitated mood and had asked her to leave early.
Satemba became more unsettled by this piece of news and vowing to
himself that this was going to be his last job, had ventured out, bad knee
and all. After resting for a while in his dark corner, he stood up and started
to climb the steps leading to the brigade headquarters. As he approached a
flat area he saw a dark figure move out of the shadows. Thinking that it was
another sentry about to challenge a potential curfew violator, Satemba
raised his hand and was about to shout the password when he realized that it
was not a sentry but a total stranger who was wearing a black shawl and had
his face partially covered with a scarf. The stranger motioned to Satemba to
come forward and when he was close enough, quickly pulled him into the
circle of darkness. He gripped Satemba by the neck and hissed in his ear,
‘Go back home curfew man, and if you value your life, never again carry
tales.’ So saying, the stranger quietly vanished into the night.
Satemba remained rooted to that dark space. He did not know what to do.
Should he do as the stranger had just ordered? What if his movements of
the evening and the encounter with the masked character had been
monitored by ‘other’ secret eyes? If so, the brief encounter with the stranger
would make it appear that he was about to double-cross his paymasters. He
stood there transfixed, like a person who had strayed into a minefield and
could not take another step either backwards or forwards, without
endangering his life. He remained in that dark spot for the rest of the night
and when the sky lightened, slowly and painfully he made his way back
home holding on to his good knee which seemed to be bleeding. Some
pariah dogs looked at him briefly and he thought that they would start
barking at him any moment and rouse the neighbourhood. But as he passed
by them, he saw that they were shivering in the cold and trying to snuggle
up against each other to keep warm. The limping man was just another stray
creature they could ignore if he kept his distance from their space. When
the exhausted man reached home, Jemtila had just lighted the fire. He sat
down quietly near the fire while she prepared a hot cup of tea for him. Only
after he had finished his tea, did she bring in a basin into which she poured
boiling water and some lumps of salt. She then cut off the trouser-cloth
from his newly-smashed good leg, and began to wash the caked blood from
his injured knee. She saw that it was a peculiar wound, which could not be
the result of a fall as he claimed. Even though the trouser had been ripped at
the knee, there was no sign of any other tear. She understood the
significance of this but without saying anything or betraying her emotions,
she dressed the wound as best as she could and after helping him to change
into clean clothes, led him to the bed. Satemba meekly gave in to the
ministrations of his wife and crept into bed, to lie there the whole day and
contemplate his predicament, which forebode a dismal future.
When she went to work that day, Jemtila felt unusually light-hearted and
free because now that both of Satemba’s knees were damaged, he would no
longer be able to work for the S.D.O. If the first bad knee had secured him
his pension from the Assam Police, the second injury truly secured his
freedom from a sinister bondage. As soon as she reached the house, she
hurried into his office and told the S.D.O. that her husband had had a fall
last night and now his good knee was also badly injured and that it would
take a very long time for the wound to heal. She also added that he may not
be able to move about at all without crutches. She wanted to take the day
off so that she could look for a doctor who would come to the house to
attend to the injury. The officer was struck not so much by the implications
of Satemba’s injury but by the animated tone in which the woman conveyed
the information about it. She seemed totally unperturbed by her husband’s
injury. Instead, it appeared as though she was actually happy that her
husband had lost the use of the one good knee. She seemed unconcerned
about the consequence of this injury to his work. If Satemba could not walk,
he was of no practical use to the S.D.O. and would lose his job; surely she
must realize that. The officer was really puzzled by Jemtila’s attitude, and
remarked to himself how people of a certain class thought and behaved. He
observed her apparent ‘unconcern’ with contempt and even thought of
sending her off for good but then he realized that it would be difficult to
replace her with another efficient woman when his wife’s confinement was
imminent. So he merely grunted to indicate his permission, reminding her
tersely to come on time the next day. Then almost as an after thought he
added, ‘Tell your husband that his services will no longer be needed. And
also say that his wounds will heal properly only if he nurses them quietly.’
 Having rid himself of the feckless woman as he thought her to be, he
turned his attention to the urgent task of finding a replacement for Satemba
immediately. He did not say anything more and giving a nod of dismissal to
Jemtila, went quietly into his study and began to dial a number. In that brief
moment between the outer room and his study, Satemba and his injury were
swiftly forgotten and even the odd behaviour of Satemba’s wife became
irrelevant. There seemed to be something wrong at the other end because he
could not make contact immediately. The officer was becoming more
agitated by the minute and kept on dialing non-stop. After several attempts
when he did finally make contact with the impersonal voice at the other end
of the wire, he almost barked his orders into the mouthpiece, his whole
body jerking in nervous tension. The response of the disembodied voice at
the other end of the cord must have been reassuring because as the S.D.O.
listened, his body seemed to relax visibly.
A new curfew man would be in place by evening and the man with the
two smashed knee-caps had already become history.
 The Night

It was a night she would remember all the days of her life. It was the night
before the day when the fate of the baby in her womb would be decided. As
though it also sensed the turmoil in the mother’s mind, the baby kicked
around in the confines of its watery world most of the night, making the
mother more agitated. She could hear the even breathing of her mother in
the next room, but her father seemed restless. He had got up several times
to pass water and walked noisily on the bamboo platform adjoining the
back of the house. She heard him clearing his throat and blowing his nose.
She wondered if he, too, was crying. But that’s absurd, she thought, she had
never seen her father cry, even when her elder sister had died. She
marvelled at her mother who was sleeping so soundly as though tomorrow
was going to be just another day when she would wake up before dawn,
cook the daily meal, eat and go to the field to battle with the weeds, trying
to coax the crops not to give up on a poor woman and her hungry family.
The pregnant girl, whose name was Imnala, knew what would happen in
the meeting the next day, requisitioned by the wronged wife of the man
whose child was kicking inside her body. She would be called names of the
worst sort, they would point out that she already had a bastard daughter by a
man who had even refused to give the child his name, thus telling the world
that he was doubtful whether he was the one who fathered it. How it had
hurt her when the news was brought to the family that the father of her
newborn baby refused to send a name for the child, thus casting aspersions
on the mother’s character! He had come wooing her when she was the
reigning beauty of the village. Among her many suitors he was the most
ardent, overwhelming her with a deluge of expensive gifts and daily visits.
He was courteous with her parents, who thought him immensely suitable
for their daughter because he came from one of the major clans of the
village and was a junior engineer to boot. Instead of their strict vigilance
when other suitors had come calling, they encouraged the liaison, hoping
for an early marriage.
But things began to change from the day he sent word that he had been
called away on some important business and would return as soon as he
could. Days went by with no word from him, then months. And then news
trickled in to the village that Imnala’s suitor had joined the Naga
underground army and had gone to China for training. Not only that, it was
also rumoured that he had taken a wife from the female recruits of the outfit
and was living with her in the training camp. The family was devastated,
especially Imnala as she knew for certain now that she was pregnant. She
remembered how one day he had persuaded her to visit him at his parents’
house in the village where he was staying alone as his parents were living in
town at the time and had succeeded in breaking down her initial resistance
with words of tender love and passionate advances. From that day onwards,
till the day before his disappearance they had met every day and made love
in that house. When Imnala expressed her fear of getting pregnant, he
assured her that he was going to marry her very soon and what if their first
child should come a month or two early; it would still be theirs, wouldn’t it?
Completely bowled over by the man’s ardour and pledges of eternal love,
she became his willing lover and on the pretext of going to a friend’s house,
she spent those heavenly hours with the man she loved and who, she
thought, loved her in return.
Imnala was at that time studying in the eighth class in the high school in
a town called Mokokchung and was spending her winter vacation at home
in the village. She was a beautiful girl and was accomplished in all the arts
that a girl of her age was expected to be. She was hard-working too, a fine
weaver and a great housekeeper. Her mother was always happy and relaxed
when she was at home during vacations as Imnala was a big help not only
around the house but also in the rice fields. But this particular vacation was
to change the fortune of the entire family.
Now the very thought of this man brought an ashen taste to her mouth.
Her daughter was now four years old and she loved her dearly, but all
through these years, she refused to even take the name of the man who not
only betrayed her but also humiliated her in the worst manner by refusing to
acknowledge the girl as his daughter. But the villagers, who knew what had
been going on, said that God shows his own justice to man: the little girl
was the spitting image of the renegade father! It was perhaps God’s justice
to a wronged girl then, but it was going to be a different story on this
particular day when an aggrieved wife was going to bring in charges against
her of breaking up a happy family by her promiscuous behaviour with her
husband. On such occasions, village custom gave the aggrieved party a lot
of leeway: to hurl abuses including physical assault, within a reasonable
limit, and imposition of a fine in cash or kind. Most important of all, the
fate of the unborn child would be determined on that day, depending on the
admission or denial of parentage by the man involved. It would be decided
there whether the other woman could claim any child support, or if the child
was male, whether he would be entitled to any portion of the father’s
inheritance. Imnala wondered too, if the child were a girl, would she suffer
the plight of her elder sister? If a boy, and if the father cast doubts on his
parentage, would he have to live with the accursed title, ‘child of the
street’? In Ao society, for a boy to be thus branded was to become a non-
person. He could not claim kinship with any clan and therefore would not
be able to sit on any assembly of men when he grew up. If he wanted to
marry, whom could he choose, since he was not able to claim membership
in any clan? For all practical purposes such persons are effaced from the
social network of existence. Imnala was thinking, how could she live on
with two such children? What would it do to her ageing parents, especially
to her father who was now one of the patriarchs of the clan and who had
had a distinguished career as a gaonbura for many years?
It was precisely because of old Tekatoba’s credentials that the young
contractor from town, the father of the unborn child, sought him out and
persuaded him to be his partner in the road construction work. This young
man, whose name was Repalemba, generally called Alemba, belonged to
that new breed of high school dropouts who mingled with young engineers
and were given small contracts as part of the governments policy to keep
such young boys from joining the underground outfits. Because of his hard
work and honest execution of the earlier petty contracts, Alemba had been
given this substantial contract for building the road leading to the village. A
big contract meant big capital investment, which he did not have and which
he knew he could never hope to raise on his own. He was the only son of a
poor widow and even though he had an uncle in government service, he
was only a head clerk in the D.C.’s office with five children to feed.
Besides, his uncle had disapproved of his giving up school and scoffed at
his ambition of becoming a government registered contractor. They had
earlier had a serious falling out over this issue and Alemba would rather die
than approach his uncle for help.
So when he came to the village looking for a partner and approached the
gaonbura, the old man at first hesitated: what did he know about contract
work, how would he deal with overseers and chase after the bills in the
engineers office in town? Young Alemba said, ‘Don’t worry uncle, you can
leave all that to me, all that you need to do is to provide the earnest money
for the work and some working capital so that the work can be started
immediately.’ The old man spoke to his wife about the proposal; when he
had finished she merely spat into the hearth where they were sitting and
said, ‘Why do you worry me about things that I do not understand? All I
can say is, when will you buy the timber for the new house, about which
you have been bragging for the last ten years?’ He persisted, ‘Alemba said
that I can double my investment within a year, then we can not only buy the
timber but the CGI sheets as well.’ The old woman got up and said, ‘Leave
me alone old man, I am tired and I am going to sleep. Do what you want.’
In the end, the old man provided the required security deposit or earnest
money as they called it and also the initial working capital and the work
started immediately as the young contractor had promised. Under the
supervision of the enthusiastic contractor, work on the road progressed
satisfactorily and he was allowed to submit the first running bill. True to his
word, as soon as the bill was passed, he returned half the money that the old
man had lent him, saying, ‘Uncle, this is only half of your capital that I am
returning to you now, from the second running bill you will get the rest of
it. The final bill will be made after the work is complete. I am keeping all
the expenditure accounts so that we can have an accurate assessment of the
profit, which we will share on a 50-50 basis.’ Old Tekatoba was impressed
by the sincerity of the young contractor and replied, ‘There will be no need
to show me your accounts; I do not understand these things. I will happily
accept whatever you give me as profit because I trust you.’ After Alemba
left, the old man chuckled to himself and said, ‘I cannot wait to see the old
woman’s face when I bring home the timber and CGI sheets for the new
house!’
 On the business front, everything seemed to be going on smoothly. But
something else was happening in the gaonbura’s household. Every time
Alemba came to the village to inspect the work of the labourers, he brought
presents for Tekatoba’s young daughter, he brought meat and vegetables for
the house and stayed on chatting until the old woman had to offer him
dinner. Sometimes he would drop in when the old couple went to the field
and chat with Imnala, regaling her with stories of how the girls in town
were carrying on with the young officers of the Indian army and adding that
it was impossible to trust any man these days. They could either be working
as spies for the army or the underground or may be even double-crossing
both for a few bottles of rum and a sack of ration rice, which he said was
inedible after he had eaten the fine quality of rice in her house. Imnala was
flattered that he was giving her so much attention and buying presents for
her. Tekatoba knew that he was married and had two young children and so
he thought that whatever kindness he was showing to his daughter was
purely out of natural pity for an unfortunate girl. But as time went on,
Imnala caught herself looking forward to his visits and had to tell herself to
be careful about being too friendly with him.
One day when Imnala was lying in bed with a headache and slight fever,
Alemba came to the house. Her mother was drying paddy on the bamboo
platform; after a while the old woman said, ‘Since you are here Alemba, let
me go to my friend’s house who is also ill. She had sent word for me to visit
her. I won’t be long. So please keep an eye on Imnala till I come back’. This
was just the opportunity that he was looking for. He said, ‘Don’t worry
aunty, take your time, I have to wait for uncle anyway’. After the mother
left the house, he peeped into the bedroom and asked Imnala if she would
like a cup of tea. He knew that there was a pot of tea already on low fire as
was the custom in every village household and all that he had to do was to
pour some into a cup and carry it to her room. Imnala was not really thirsty,
but in order not to offend him, she said, ‘All right I would like half a cup’.
When he entered the room with the tea, he saw that there was nowhere for
him to sit except on the edge of the bed because the only chair in the room
was piled high with blankets and sheets. He put the cup on a small table
near the bed and as he sat down, he noticed that Imnala was disturbed by
his presence and was about to say something. Before she could do so, he
quickly asked her, ‘How are you feeling? Shall I massage your head a
little?’ Imnala, startled by this hint of intimacy, said, ‘No, no I am all right’
and tried to sit up, but when she raised herself, she was overcome by
dizziness and fell back on the bed. He jumped up and rushed towards her in
alarm and instinctively put his hand on her body. A gesture made in
momentary confusion was all that was needed to initiate the inevitable. The
touch so innocently executed seemed to ignite hidden fires in both and in
spite of her awareness that what was happening was not only wrong but
also extremely dangerous for her, she gave in to a primeval urging. They
made love for the first time on her sick bed. Afterwards, without saying
anything, Alemba went out of the room shivering, as though with a fever.
When the old woman returned from her visit, she found him dozing by the
fire, and when she peeped into Imnala’s room, she found her fast asleep as
if the fever had already broken and left her body.
What started almost as an accident grew into an uncontrollable passion
for both and in due course, the inevitable happened. Imnala became
pregnant out of wedlock for the second time. The village was agog with the
news and tongues began to wag: ‘What can you expect from a girl like that?
The old man’s greed has landed him with a second bastard grandchild’. The
wicked ones joked, ‘She too is greedy, you know what I mean?’ and they
would burst out laughing at their own ribald wit.
After the news of her pregnancy became public, Alemba’s visits to the
house became rare and Imnala remained indoors most of the time. When
her friends visited her, she tried to tell them that he had forced himself on
her. But even while she was saying the words, she herself did not believe
this, and years later she would confess to her best friend that it was like a
hungry person being offered a feast and that, honestly, she could not resist
the offering! And this night she recalled how the touch of a man after so
many years seemed to release a hidden spring and how the sense of
rejection by a man she had once loved so passionately was being wiped out
by the touch of another who was equally persuasive in his ardour. It was as
if her body had come alive again and was responding to a natural impulse.
Even in the dead of the night when she was thinking of the day ahead, the
memory of that touch made her shiver again with remembered sensations.
When Alemba came after a long absence, the old man only enquired
when the work would be finished, as though he was anxious to cut off all
connection with this young man who had brought this new misery on his
family. Alemba was stricken with an acute sense of guilt and rejection at the
abrupt words, and tried to explain. But the old man brushed him aside and
said, ‘What is done cannot be undone. I am only thinking about the child’.
Alemba understood what the old man meant; it was his way of asking him
not to put Imnala in the same position as the time when her little girl was
born. The young contractor did not reply. All that he said before leaving
was, ‘Uncle, the final bill is being prepared and you will get your share of
the profit very soon’.
‘Profit,’ the old man thought, ‘what have I gained from my partnership
with this man but shame? My family has once again become the object of
ridicule. I have lost face not only among my clansmen but in the entire
village. Even the old woman refuses to say anything to me. Her abuse
would have doused the fire in my heart, but now her silence is burning me
more. As for that no-good daughter of mine, she has the audacity to tell her
mother that I am partly to blame for what has happened! She told her that I
should have agreed to let her marry the widower when he asked for her
hand; at least, she says she would not have to be in this position today. But
how could I have allowed such a thing to happen to her? She is young,
beautiful and deserves a better husband.’ Suddenly he caught himself and
sighed, ‘A better husband? What man will think of taking my beautiful
daughter as a wife now?’
The old woman on her way to the field a few days later, was confronted
by a relative of Alemba’s wife and told that a meeting of the village council
had been requested by the wife to deal with Imnala’s case. This was the first
time she heard about it, though it came as no surprise because it was
customary for the council to sit over such cases. That evening when she told
her husband what she had been told about the meeting, he simply grunted
and said nothing.
In the meantime, Imnala had a message from Alemba telling her not to
worry about the child, that everything was going to be fine. She felt like
tearing her hair out and shouting, ‘What about me? Is everything going to
be all right for me ever again?’ Her whole life lay shattered now, her mother
had not said a word to her since the discovery of her pregnancy while her
father rarely went out now. He sat morosely on the bamboo platform all
day. Her brother came one day, only to leave her smarting with shame and
hurt at his abuse, her sisters, too, came to enquire how she was feeling, not
once mentioning Alemba’s name. Her young daughter became increasingly
troublesome, crying and throwing tantrums at the slightest provocation. In
short, life became a living hell for everyone in the family.
 Then came the day when, as custom dictated, the maternal uncle of
Alemba’s wife came to see the old man with the information about the
summons from the wife’s family to attend the joint meeting to be held in the
presence of village elders. Before he left, he told Imnala’s father, ‘Make
sure that she is there with the customary escorts’. It was not as if Imnala’s
father was ignorant of custom, but by saying this, the uncle was merely
complying with a social duty. On such occasions, custom decreed that only
maternal uncles or cousins on her mother’s side could escort a girl to the
meeting.
On the night before this dreaded meeting, the old man told his wife, ‘Tell
that daughter of yours not to open her mouth too much. Or else she may be
slapped with a much bigger fine than we can afford to pay.’ The wife
retorted, ‘You tell her yourself. Isn’t she your daughter too? And that rascal.
Wasn’t he your partner?’ The old man was taken aback by the vehemence
of her retort. This was the most direct accusation that his wife had hurled at
him. He wanted to shout at her but he had no words with which to counter
her accusation. He merely turned his back and pretended to go to sleep. But
all sleep eluded him as he recalled the events of the past year and half. Did
he purposely ignore the telltale signs when Alemba’s visits sometimes
seemed unnecessary? Why hadn’t he told him not to bring so many gifts for
the family? Should he have gone into the partnership at all? There could be
no answers to these questions except the certainty of the shame and ridicule
that awaited the family the next day.
On that fateful day, as usual, the old woman got up as soon as the first
cockcrow could be heard in the distance and started to cook. She knew that
the all-important meeting would be held only in the evening as was the
custom and saw no reason why she should stay back home moping or
picking up a quarrel with either her husband or the morose daughter. She
might as well get away from the stifling atmosphere at home and put in
some useful labour in the field. She ate the morning meal all by herself and
prepared to go out. But before leaving, she went to her daughter’s room and
hissed at the supine form, ‘Keep your mouth shut tonight girl if you don’t
want the sky to fall on you and the child in your stomach’. Imnala heard her
mother but she kept quiet. The old woman went out and collected the usual
things for the day, tobacco for her pipe, rice for the mid-day meal, a small
dao and a hoe and, picking up her tattered shawl, she went out to join the
other villagers heading for the fields. She kept up with the others and even
exchanged a few pleasantries with some. Looking at her, no one could have
guessed at the emotions churning in her heart making her breathless at
times. Beyond the village boundaries, she deliberately slackened her pace
and fell back. As she walked alone for a while, all the outward show of
normality and nonchalance seemed to abandon her and she slumped down
on a boulder by the wayside. The tears that she had willed to stay within,
gushed out with such force that she almost choked and she felt that the
immense heartache hidden from everyone so far, was clamouring to burst
out from the confines of her bruised heart. She had no control over these
forces now and sat there alone weeping, for quite some time. She wept for
the daughter so helplessly caught in the web of youthful passion; she wept
for her husband who had only wanted to build a good house for the family
and, above all she wept for herself for being a mere spectator of the sorrow
now engulfing them all, including the innocent unborn child. She even
thought that she should have persuaded her husband to accept the marriage
proposal of the widower for Imnala. Now she recalled what her mother used
to say: ‘Remember, in our society a woman must have the protection of a
man even if he happens to be blind or lame. A woman alone will always be
in danger.’ At that time she had simply laughed but now the words came
back to haunt her as she sat there weeping for her daughter. She got up
quickly when she heard voices approaching, and composing herself, walked
away quietly before the latecomers could catch up with her.
For Imnala, it was another dismal day. Her daughter had suddenly
developed a fever and was crankier than usual. She noticed that her father
merely pecked at his food, which he served himself. Normally it was she
who would serve him and fuss over him if he did not eat properly. Today,
everything had changed: her fate hung in the balance, she would have to
face and bear the scorn and abuse of Alemba’s wife and the censure of
society whose balance of justice always tended to tilt against the woman. A
married man was equally guilty, but today she would be the sole accused.
Even then she was strangely calm. She discovered that she no longer
dreaded the outcome of this meeting; some mysterious energy was working
in her and she was determined to face her accusers with her head held high.
‘Come what may,’ she thought, ‘I shall devote my life to bringing up these
two children in the best way I can. I shall finish my high school, get a job
and educate them. I shall spend every ounce of my energy so that they have
a better life than mine’. These thoughts seemed to revitalize the woman
who had only a few hours ago, grappled with fear and utter despair in the
darkest night of her life.
Imbued with energy derived from this new vision of life, Imnala swept
the house, cooked the mid-day meal and managed to soothe her daughter so
that, as the day progressed, the fever came down and she was a happy child
once again. Towards evening, Imnala took a long bath and wore her best
clothes. The father was surprised to see the change in his daughter but
pretended not to notice anything out of the ordinary. The mother came
home in the evening to a clean and spruced up house but she too, said
nothing. She merely washed up and took her usual seat by the fire to drink
tea and smoke her pipe.
When the maternal uncle came, accompanied by a cousin, Imnala was
ready. The mother gathered the grandchild to her and watched her daughter
in silence. The father got up to greet the escorts and taking the uncle aside
to the bamboo platform at the back, said to him, ‘Whatever the council
decides tonight will be something your niece has brought on herself. I ask
nothing of you but that you will bring back my daughter’s body to me when
everything is over.’ Behind these harsh and seemingly callous words lay the
fervent but indirect appeal of the father, which actually meant, ‘Please
protect my daughter as best you can. See that they do not abuse her
physically.’ There were instances where under similar circumstances a girl’s
hair was chopped off and her clothes stripped off ‘to shame her’. The uncle
did not say anything and the old man stood there alone, long after the party
left the house.
It was not known immediately what actually transpired in the meeting.
They only said that Alemba behaved like a ‘true man’ and managed to keep
his wife’s party from being too belligerent and abusive. Apart from this, no
one was willing to say anything more. Very early the next day, the villagers
saw Alemba and his wife going off from the village to their old life in the
town.
When Imnala was brought back home by her uncle, the father once again
got up to greet the party. Only the uncle spoke to him briefly and the old
man thanked his brother-in-law for having fulfilled his customary
obligation and said ‘You have restored my daughter to me whole and for
this may her clan never forget your great service. You have upheld the
honour of her mother’s clan in a fine manner. May the bond between our
two clans ever flourish.’ With only a nod of his head in acknowledgment,
the uncle silently walked out of the house accompanied by the cousin.
Left to themselves now, the family did not say anything to each other, bur
unlike many previous nights, they sat down to eat their meal together, as
though by mutual agreement. Though the meal was the usual fare, every
one seemed to savour it as though it was a feast. Imnala even fussed over
her father and coaxed him to eat more, knowing fully well that he was only
pretending when he said that he was not hungry. There was no talk during
the meal but each one of them seemed content in the knowledge that the
dreaded storm had come and gone, leaving them only a little dishevelled in
its wake. After a long time, all three of them, Imnala, her mother and father
welcomed the hour of sleep because they knew that there would be no
dreadful spectres to haunt them from now on.
It was as though a festering wound had finally ripened and erupted,
letting all the pus and bad blood out of the system. The pain remained, but
at least the threat of fatality had passed. The breath-choking, mind-numbing
agony suffered by the whole family seemed to ease off, leaving only a dull
ache where it had once throbbed so relentlessly. Nevertheless, even if the
pain should eventually diminish and disappear, the scar left by the wound
would always remain on them like a disfigurement.
Imnala’s life would never be the same again; she would have to fend for
herself and her two ‘illegitimate’ children as best as she could. She would
have to bear the stigma of being an unwed mother all her life. She knew
that her parents would never abandon her, but there was nothing she could
do to wipe away their un-shed tears or answer their silent recriminations.
The one consolation amidst the chaos of her life was that her unborn child
had been given the right to call someone ‘father’ in a society where
acknowledged paternity was crucial for a person born out of wedlock. In
spite of this social ‘insurance’ for the child, Imnala was aware that there
would be many difficulties for her and her children. But she was determined
to take life one day at a time, and tonight, despite all her apprehensions
about the future, she would sleep well because her unborn child had heard
the father say, ‘You are mine.’
 The Pot Maker

Ever since she became old enough to accompany her mother to the fields
and forests, she began to dream of becoming a pot maker like her mother
and grandmother. Her mother tried to make her learn weaving, a skill highly
valued as an asset in any girl Lut she only wanted to make pots, and lots of
them of various sizes and shapes. On days when she managed to stay at
home while her parents and other elders went to the fields, she sought out
the women who were expert potters and asked to be taught the skill. They
were at first amused by the little girl’s insistence; they thought that she
would soon outgrow her childish passion for the craft. They told her that it
was back-breaking and often frustrating work, especially when a sudden
shower ruined weeks of labour, and the pots drying in the sun were
destroyed by the rain. Some batches might be completely ruined if the firing
in the makeshift kiln was not done properly. Out of a hundred pots, they
told her, only fifty or so would turn out well enough to fetch a good price,
The rest would either have to be used at home for various purposes or given
away. They asked her, had she not heard her mother or grandmother ever
complain of these difficulties? She said yes, but she wanted to be a better
pot maker than anyone in the village and when she made pots, she told
them, she would sell every single one of them. The earthen pots made in
this village were famous all over the region and people from far off villages,
and even from other tribes, came to either buy or barter the pots with
produce from their fields. The little girl had seen her mother exchange pots
for chillies, dried fish, and a wooden stool and at one time even a dao for
her father in exchange for the biggest pot that she had made.
 The reason why the little girl did not disclose her fascination with pot
making at home was a conversation between her parents one night that she
had overheard. The mother was complaining to the father about their
daughter’s indifference to weaving. She said, ‘I don’t know what will
happen to our daughter when she grows up, she seems so reluctant to learn
the craft, she won’t even pass the yarn bowl properly when 1 am at the
loom. She will grow up to be a useless girl and no man will want to marry
her.’ The father kept quiet, while the mother went on in this vein for quite
some time. Eventually, he answered, ‘She can learn pottery from you or
your mother can’t she?’ ‘Never’, the mother’s voice rang out, ‘I shall not
teach her this craft which has brought no joy to me and only a pittance for
my troubles. Do you know how far that wretched place is from the village?
Sixteen kilometres and a sheer drop to the riverbank; still we have to climb
down because it is only there that you get both the grey and red clay
required for making pots. You do not know how difficult it is to dig the clay
from the hillside because you have never come there to help me saying that
no man can be seen meddling in anything to do with pot making. It is
woman’s work. I cannot even begin to tell you how your back aches from
carrying the heavy load uphill all the way to the village, and then pounding
the stubborn clay inside bamboo cylinders to soften it. You have not felt
how your left hand goes numb from holding it inside the moist clay while
the right one wielding the spatula screams in pain with every tap on the
clay. Do you know how many times I’ve dropped the mould out of sheer
exhaustion and have had to start all over again to make one single measly
pot? It takes months to bring out a batch after so much labour. And the
reward? A few rupees. But if she learns weaving, she can make much more
money besides providing enough cloth for the family. No, I shall not
condemn her to a fate such as mine.’ When the husband reminded her that
they too need pots for their own use, she countered, ‘Do you know how
many pots we can get in exchange for a single shawl? Five, if they are big
and six, if small. How many pots do you think we need, only three or four,
which will last us for at least a few years.’ Anticipating another rejoinder
from her husband, she quickly added, ‘Yes, I do admit that even weaving
demands a lot of hard labour; your back aches and your eyes get strained.
But you need not climb any hill and be out of doors in all kinds of weather.
Weaving is not messy like pot making and can be done indoors in all
seasons. Also the time spent on weaving one shawl is much less and the
return is handsome. So be warned, our daughter shall not learn this
thankless craft from me during my lifetime. I shall not pass on this burden
to her.’
So the little girl, whose name was Sentila, started going to these old
women in another part of the village to watch them at work. To see how the
clay was mixed with water and pounded, how careful they were when they
pushed their left hand into a lump of the softened clay and how deftly they
rotated the lump as they started giving shape to the rotating clay with a
spatula held in the right hand. The regular tap, tap of the spatula on the clay
was music to her ears as she watched in fascination the pot emerge out of a
shapeless lump of clay right in front of her eyes. When the pot maker was
satisfied with the shape, she would gently lower the newly made pot on to a
spot in her work-place and pull her hand out of the narrow mouth of the pot
carefully so as not to distort it because the clay was still soft. It would take
time to become firm enough to retain its shape. After two or three days,
again the pots would be given a final touch up in order to retain the required
shape and to test the consistency of the still moist clay. Only then would the
pots be taken out to dry in the sun. After that they would be loaded on to a
kiln in a uniform pattern on a bed of hay and dried bamboo and covered
with another layer of the same materials, and then the kiln would be fired.
The required temperature had to be maintained throughout the firing
process. Therefore one had to tend the fire carefully; over firing or under
firing would ruin the entire batch.
As it happens in any small community where everyone knows everyone
else, the little girl’s obsession with pottery became known and soon the
mother came to hear of her daughter’s visits to these pot makers. She did
not say anything to the girl at first; she decided to wait and see how serious
the girl was about this. She pretended that she did not know where she went
on the days that she was left in the village to look after her younger brother.
When Sentila visited the old women, the baby, who was ten months old,
would be strapped to her back with a cloth and she would labour up the
steep hill to reach their work shed. She would carry some cooked rice in a
leaf packet with her on these trips. When her baby brother became hungry,
she would chew some of it and, once it was soft, she would feed it to the
baby. Then she would sing a lullaby to put him to sleep while she watched
the women work intently. One of the old women sang beautiful folk songs
while working but when something went wrong, she would substitute the
words of the songs to suit her anger and frustration, which made everyone
laugh. Sentila enjoyed being there but by late afternoon she had to leave
them. So she would gently pick up her brother from where he slept, and
deftly swinging him on to her back, would walk home quickly so that when
her mother reached home from the fields, she would be there.
Sentila’s regular visits to the old pot makers’ shed became a topic of
village gossip. People started asking why she had to go to these other
women to learn pot making when her own mother and grandmother were
renowned pot makers themselves. Why was the mother, called Arenla,
refusing to teach her daughter the skill, which was her birthright? If all pot
makers followed suit, then there would be no expert potters to take their
place and the village would lose its status as the only village whose pots
were coveted by all. Didn’t Arenla know that in the days of head-hunting,
this village was spared many times because of their skilled pot makers? As
days went by, the gossip became open debate and finally, one day, Sentila’s
father, whose name was Mesoba, was summoned by the village council and
asked to explain what was happening in his household, why his daughter
was making these regular trips to the old pot makers’ shed to learn the craft
and most important of all, why was Arenla refusing to pass on the skill to
her daughter. Mesoba was caught in a dangerous situation; if he told them
what his wife had said about pot making and why she wanted their daughter
to learn another craft like weaving, they would find fault with her and an
immediate fine would be imposed on her for going against ‘tradition’. On
the other hand, if he pretended to know nothing about his daughter’s
clandestine activity, they would not believe him and he would be ridiculed
as an incompetent husband and father and not only that, he too would be
fined. He pondered over their query for a while and replied in a humble
tone, ‘Uncles and elder brothers, I admit that we have all along known
about Sentila’s visits to the old ladies and why she loves going there. She
told us that a particular lady sings beautiful lullabies and gives her sweet
potatoes every time she sings with her. Her mother has never said that she
will not teach her pot making; it is only that we wanted her to grow a little
bigger and stronger after her illness before we took her to Lithu (the
riverbank) to dig the clay. In fact, I have ordered a small digging dao for
Sentila at the blacksmith’s just yesterday. So what has been circulated by
idle mouths is not really true. You will soon see that Sentila will start
making the best pots in the village.’ What Mesoba blurted out to the elders
was impromptu; it was a desperate attempt to avert their ire. But luckily for
him, what he said did have a ring of truth; there indeed was a noted
folksinger among the old pot makers who sang while she worked and who
gave a sweet potato to the little girl one day. Sentila had indeed fallen sick
just recently and he had indeed placed an order for a small dao meant, not
for Sentila of course, but for his wife to use in the kitchen garden. After
listening to Mesoba’s explanation, the elders decided that there was no
cause to take any drastic action against him yet and so they let him go,
cautioning him to remind his wife that it was her duty to teach her daughter
the skill that was handed down from generation to generation for the good
of the entire village. They also told him that skills such as pot making,
which not only catered to the needs of the people but also symbolised the
tradition and history of the people did not ‘belong’ to any individual. And
experts were obliged to pass on their skills not only to their own children
but also to anyone who wished to learn. ‘Think of the teaching that goes on
in the morungs, the dormitories for young men which is our way of
educating our youngsters in the requisite skills for survival. In the same way
mothers are to educate their daughters in the skills meant for women. Your
wife should be willing to pass on the gift to her daughter.’ And ominously
they added, ‘Anyone refusing to do so will be considered an enemy of the
village.’
That evening, Mesoba went home with a heavy heart because of the rude
reminder of how things were with them in the tightly knit community of the
village. His wife’s arguments did make practical sense but he could not
ignore the logic of the village council, which always put the collective good
above individual interests. And if he wished to continue living peacefully in
that community he, or rather Arenla, had to set her personal objections
aside and do what was expected of her. They chatted late into the night and
decided that from now on, Sentila would not be left in the village to baby-
sit her brother but would accompany them to the fields.
In the following year, Sentila was taken by her mother to Lithu where the
grey and red clay was available. She was taught how to dig the clay with
her implement, how to load it on to her carrying basket and how to soak it
in the trough in the workshed before stuffing it into the bamboo cylinder in
the right proportion and how to pound it. She was a quick learner and she
did not mind working hard to achieve the right consistency and colour in
the clay to form a sort of malleable dough. But when she tried her hand at
the actual shaping of the lump into a pot, she came up against a lot of
difficulties. She could not hold the lump of dough on her thigh properly; her
moistened hand kept slipping as she tried to plunge it inside to hold it firm
before the spatula in the right hand could start tapping the dough into the
shape of a pot. The first attempts were disastrous and Sentila cried her heart
out at her incompetence. But she persisted and would not admit defeat. The
mother simply sat in a corner and watched the girl try again and again to
transform the clay into a pot. Even if Sentila was doing something wrong in
the process, her mother kept her counsel. Sentila would send appealing
looks towards her mother who remained unmoved. The whole process
seemed to have become a contest where the mother’s will seemed to thwart
every attempt of the despairing daughter to create even the semblance of a
pot out of the recalcitrant clay. While Sentila hung her head in shame and
frustration, the mother would push her daughter from the low stool and take
over the job, wielding the spatula expertly over the clay held firmly on her
thigh and gloat when the lump was transformed into a beautiful pot. ‘Do
you think that you can ever make anything like this?’ she would spitefully
ask her distraught daughter. These sessions continued for almost a year but
throughout this period, the daughter was made to feel so inadequate before
not only the mother’s expertise but also her open disdain, that she was
unable to learn anything from her. It appeared to Sentila that her mother’s
antipathy to her learning the art was putting a jinx on every lump of clay
that she touched. Instead of her dream pots, she could produce only
misshapen parodies.
The next year Sentila attained puberty and was required, according to
custom, to spend the nights in one of the girls’ dormitories. This particular
dormitory was supervised by a kind, middle-aged widow. Like everyone
else in the village, she too had heard of the discord in Sentila’s family
concerning her attempts at pot making. Also, the latest situation between
the mother and daughter had become public knowledge. The older woman
took to this serious young girl immediately and resolved to help her in
every possible way so that the girl could fulfill her dream of becoming a
good pot maker. She began to look for an opportunity to be alone with
Sentila so that they could talk freely. But, in a dormitory housing almost
twenty girls every night, this was not easy to do. However, an opportunity
soon presented itself. One evening it was announced that a renowned singer
was coming with his choir to sing for the entire village in the village
common. Learning that the lead singer was a handsome man with many
other young men in his group, every girl from the dormitory eagerly sought
permission from ‘Onula’ or Aunty to go and listen to them sing. Only
Sentila said that she would stay back because she was not feeling well.
Actually she had been looking for an opportunity to practice her art alone
and had smuggled some clay from her mother’s work shed for this purpose.
It was as if heaven had manipulated events to allow these two women to
come together for a pre-ordained purpose.
After all the girls had left, Sentila quietly took out the clay and the
implements from her basket and sat down in a darkened corner to try once
again to make a pot. At first she wielded the spatula tentatively, for fear of
waking ‘Onula’ who she thought was asleep in her room at the rear of the
dormitory. On the contrary, the older woman was watching the young girl’s
clumsy efforts with sympathy. She decided to wait for some time before
intervening. She noticed that Sentila was too tense, the left hand held inside
the damp clay was too stiff and her right hand was not moving fast enough
with the spatula on the outside of the lump. As a result, the rhythm between
the two was all wrong and the clay seemed unable or unwilling to yield the
right shape. When Sentila wearily let the misshapen lump fall flat on the
ground, the older woman came out of her room and gently asked the
frightened girl what she was doing with the clay. She said nothing but
bending her head she began to cry silently. Onula went to her, and putting
her arms around her said, ‘Don’t worry, little one, I shall teach you how to
make a perfect pot. Come, watch how I sit on the stool, holding my thigh
muscles taut and make sure to use sacking to cover the thigh so that the
lump does not slip. When you dip your hand in water before slipping it into
the clay, make sure it is not too wet. Hold the spatula toward your body and
tap gently like this. But most important of all, make sure that the tapping is
in rhythm with your left hand rotating inside the clay.’ Sentila watched in
amazement as Onula fashioned a beautiful pot right in front of her eyes and
asked her to try again. She took another lump of clay and with a confidence
she had never felt before, she started the process all over again following
the instructions she had just received from the sympathetic woman. As she
rotated the lump in her left hand and began tapping on the clay as
instructed, she felt exhilarated beyond words. She was creating a beautiful
pot! When it was done, she sat there admiring her work. But she was soon
jolted out of her euphoria when Onula said, ‘The mouth of the pot is all
wrong.’ Sentila looked and saw that indeed where there should have been a
gradual tapering of the mould to form a neck-like opening, her pot ended in
a wide chasm. She looked at Onula in frustration who only smiled and said,
‘Enough for the evening. The others will soon be back and we must not let
anyone know what we have been doing here tonight. When you work with
your mother next time, watch her carefully when she is shaping the mouth
of the pot. You are a quick learner and you will do well, but do not bring
this work here anymore. It is not from me that you should receive this
knowledge. It is your mother who has to pass it on to you. Remember, the
village has ruled.’ Sentila looked at Onula in a puzzled way but without
saying anything, collected her tools and the pot that she had made that night
and hid them in her basket. The next morning, before anyone else was
awake she hoisted the basket on to her head and started for home. But
before reaching the house, she veered off into the path leading to the village
well and hid her pot in a clump of bushes growing nearby.
During the next pot making session, she observed how her mother held
the left hand and the spatula, how she slackened the rhythm when
fashioning the mouth of the pots and how a strip of elongated dough was
added to the mouth to make the rim. She also noticed that her mother was
giving her quizzical looks when she caught her paying so much attention to
detail. Then, on a bright sunny day, the mother told Sentila that they should
try to make as many pots as they could, otherwise they would not have
enough days of sunshine to dry them. So they went to the shed quite early
and began the process. As usual, the mother completed a batch quickly and
asked Sentila to take over. Complaining that she had a headache and that
her back was hurting, she went out to the shed after telling the daughter to
try and make as many pots as she could. Sentila was surprised at her
mother’s assumption that she could make any decent pot at all and found it
odd that her mother did not stay back to gloat over yet another debacle.
With these confused feelings, she reluctantly slid on to the wooden stool
and taking a lump of the clay dough, positioned it firmly on her sack-
covered thigh. She dipped her left hand in water and carefully inserted it
into the clay. Thus positioned, she took hold of the spatula and lifted it to
start beating the dough to give it the required shape. As she lifted the
implement for the first tap, she felt as if another pair of hands took over and
was directing her movements. As though in a trance, she began to beat the
dough in perfect co-ordination with her rotating left hand. The clay seemed
to transform itself into another shape and before long she realized that the
pot was ready. She sat there transfixed at her own creation, wondering at the
dexterity with which her hands had moved as if in unison with her
quickening heartbeat. The moment was almost epiphanic. She, Sentila who
had suffered so much humiliation in her mother’s presence for failing to
master a simple craft, had now created a miracle. After a while she gently
lowered the pot and started giving the finishing touches to the neck. When
it was completed, she set it aside, separate from the ones her mother had
made. She started on the next one, and like a sprinter who had suddenly
found his momentum, she continued making pot after pot with the same
speed and dexterity that she had noticed in her mother’s hands. Finally,
when she looked at her row of pots, she saw that she had made just one
short of her mother’s tally.
She realized that it was almost mid-day, and being exhausted from the
labour she continued to sit on the stool and wait for her mother’s return. She
sat there for a long time, past the hour of the mid-day meal. She was
beginning to feel very hungry, so she decided to go into the house and ask
her mother to eat with her so that she would get an opportunity to tell her
about what had happened earlier in the day. But when she reached the
threshold of the outer room where, as in every house, the firewood was
stacked and where rice was husked and where the chickens slept at night, a
terrible scene awaited her. She found her mother slumped over the low
barrier separating this room from the main one as if she was still trying to
cross over. Her mother’s supeti (lungi) had come unstuck in the fall and a
white thigh was visible even from the street door. Sentila quickly ran
forward and carefully retied the supeti to hide her mother’s nakedness; only
after that she bent low near her mother’s mouth to see whether she was
breathing. She was not. Instead there was a dried streak where the saliva
had dripped. Her mouth was agape as if she was trying to call out.
Straightening up, Sentila ran towards the village common where she knew
that the day’s sentries would be seated around a fire smoking and drinking
black tea. When they heard her news, they all raced to the house, carried the
inert body inside and laid it on the pallet beside the fireplace. One of the
sentries was hurriedly dispatched to carry the news to Mesoba and to
summon all the relatives from their fields. Sentila crouched in a corner, dry-
eyed and speechless. Throughout the wake that night she was seated by her
mother’s body, muttering to herself. She stayed like that all night, refusing
food or drink and not going out even once to obey nature’s call. When the
body was being carried out of the house the next morning, she ran after it
shouting, ‘Mother, I did not wish it to happen this way; it simply came to
me. Please forgive me.’ Those who heard her speak, did not understand
what she meant, they simply thought that she was so distraught with grief
that she did not know what she was saying. But there was one among the
mourners who understood: Onula. Though she did not know exactly what
had happened the day before, she intuitively sensed that something
momentous had transformed both mother and daughter at life’s appointed
hour on that fateful day.
On her way back to her own house, she noticed that the door to the work
shed was slightly ajar. Out of curiosity, she stepped inside and abruptly
stopped in her tracks; two neat rows of newly-made pots stood side by side.
Moving closer, she tried to distinguish one batch from the other to
determine if it was the handiwork of just one or if a second pair of hands
rotated the clay dough and swayed the spatula to create the two separate
batches. She could find nothing to tell one batch from the other. She tried
hard to reconstruct what might have happened; it could not be the mother’s
work alone because Sentila said that she went back to the house much
before the mid-day hour, and it could not be Sentila’s work alone because
she was too young and inexperienced yet to accomplish so much even in
two days. But if both mother and daughter were involved in turning out
these pots, was it possible to differentiate between the two batches? Onula
stood there for a long time as if trying to absorb a new phenomenon. When
she came out of the shed, she had a dazed look on her face and seemed to
falter in her gait. Slowly she walked away from this place of wonder, as she
considered it to be, because she believed that she had just witnessed a
profound revelation in the two batches of still moist pots, standing side by
side in perfect symmetry inside the shed.
A new pot maker was born.

This story was first published in Tribe, Culture, Art: Essays in Honour of
Professor Sujata Miri, Van Lalnghak and Siby K George (eds.), 2005,
Guwahati: DVS Publishers.
 Shadows

It was a sunny day. For the first time in six days, the sun’s rays had
penetrated the thick foliage of the jungle. Washed clean by the heavy rains,
the leaves were shining like the newly-washed hair of maidens spread out in
the open to dry. Steam rose from the grounds as the dampness of the soil
slowly gave way to a new hardness and the boots of the marching column
of soldiers no longer squelched. These twenty-one volunteers were chosen
to travel through the jungle guided by a relay band of scouts who would
escort them from territory to territory until they reached Burma. From there,
a Kachin guide would take charge of their progress into China and then they
would be in the hands of their Chinese handlers during the entirety of their
training period. The mission of this particular group was to learn everything
about guerrilla warfare and the use of sophisticated weaponry while they
were in the designated training camp. The soldiers belonged to the
underground Naga army. Though the group was marching in an orderly
fashion, the surreptitious glances that were exchanged among the members
indicated that they were gripped by something more than the
understandable fear of the unseen enemy. Only one member seemed to
remain untouched by this; his name was Imli and he was a last minute
entrant into the group.
The selection of the recruits for such missions was done with meticulous
care. Only those men who had displayed extraordinary courage in
encounters with the Indian Army were considered. But this was not the only
criterion; tribal representation had to be balanced so that when these men
came back from training, they would be able to teach the different units
located in their respective tribal areas. The planners were aware that all the
members might not return, because regular army patrols were beginning to
be deployed even in far-flung areas, and the earlier group, consisting of a
large number, had suffered heavy casualties at the hands of these army
patrols. This was a fairly new development; the government had recently
become aware that the underground outfit was using the ancient trade routes
between neighbouring countries in order to avoid the patrols. They were
also able to ascertain that certain divisive elements in these countries were
quietly extending their support to this rag-tag army. The underground outfit,
too, realizing that their routes were now being patrolled regularly, had
decided to reduce the number of each trainee group to a minimum of fifteen
to twenty young people.
The small band of soldiers, therefore, was being extra careful in their
movement through the difficult terrain towards their destination. It was a
motley group drawn from the major tribes. Only Imli could be described as
an exception; he was the son of the second-in-command of the underground
army and his inclusion was seen as a serious departure from the norm. His
presence was resented by the others not only because of the hint of
nepotism but also because he was unaccustomed to the rigours of jungle
life. He was born and brought up in a town and had no knowledge of the
jungle as a village boy would have. He had been studying in Allahabad and
had come home when he was told that his father had been inducted into the
underground movement as a representative of his tribe. He had come back
with the intention of staying at home for a while with his mother who had
been ailing for a while now. But after a month of doing nothing, he began to
feel restless. He felt that if he could not pursue his studies, he should be
doing something more meaningful than simply sitting at home. So he sent
word to his father, through the underground network, that he too wanted to
join the Naga army. The father was furious at first; how could he abandon
his mother to a nurse and a distant relative in her state? The son wrote back
saying that he, the father, was himself guilty of that, wasn’t he? But the
father was adamant—he would never allow his son to join the underground
army. A year passed during which the mother recovered enough to tell her
son that he should go back to his studies. But Imli replied that he had left
studies for good and that he wanted to follow his father into the jungle.
The distraught mother then sent word to the father to come and meet her,
that there was a family emergency which she could not discuss through
letters. Seeing that there was no avoiding the issue, the father arranged a
meeting in their village instead of their town house as that was under
constant surveillance. Imli spread the word that he was going to take his
mother for a thorough check-up to the Mission Hospital in Jorhat, and left
the town in a hired jeep. But, as planned, halfway through the journey they
got into a government vehicle going in the opposite direction and reached
their village in the middle of the night. As soon as they met, father and son
immediately got into a heated debate over Imli’s decision to join the
underground army. Neither would give way until, at last, the mother
intervened and said that her son was an adult and that he should be allowed
to make up his mind about his own future. The secret meeting lasted till
morning when the father left with a terse remark to his wife, ‘One day you
will regret this.’ Imli and his mother then proceeded to their original
destination and came home after a week. The doctors had found nothing
seriously wrong with her, and only advised her to take plenty of rest and not
to worry too much.
How Imli made his way to his father’s headquarters remains a mystery to
this day because his father had refused to give him any assistance in his
‘mad pursuit’, as he termed the son’s obstinate determination to join the
‘freedom fighters’. Imli’s arrival at the camp coincided with the selection
process for recruiting the trainees to be sent to China and with a mistaken
sense of deference to the top brass, the selectors added his name to the list.
The father’s protestations were summarily set aside as mere show of
formality and ignoring even the reservations expressed by Hoito, the unit
commander, Imli’s name was included in the final list. The others in the
group, however, did not know anything about these happenings and
considered him a liability as he was so clumsy in the jungle. On a few
occasions he would have exposed the entire team to grievous danger had it
not been for the timely intervention of a member called Roko who had
taken to Imli immediately and made sure that he stayed with him all the
time, day and night. It was Roko who massaged Imli’s legs when they had a
longer period of rest during the march; again it was Roko who brought food
to Imli when he felt too tired to get up. Sometimes he even carried Imli’s
rucksack when he thought that the leader was not looking. After marching
for several days, the group left Naga territory and entered Burma on a hot
sultry day.
It was at this stage that they ran into trouble. The formerly friendly
Kachin rebels at the border refused to help them saying that certain
elements in the underground Naga outfit had entered into a secret
agreement with Rangoon to help them hunt these rebels down in return for
arms and ammunition for them to fight the Indian army. It was an
impossible situation for the travellers: they were stranded in the middle of
nowhere. To go back without proper escorts would be suicidal since they
had narrowly avoided detection by patrolling parties on two separate
occasions on their way up to this point. And without the co-operation of the
border guides they could not proceed further. Hoito, the leader of the group,
requested the Kachin leader to consider their plight and pleaded with him to
help them one last time. But the other replied that since he was acting under
instructions from his bosses he could not do anything. He had been
commanded to prevent their entry into Burmese territory. Hoito, being a
soldier himself, understood what his counterpart was saying and in order to
buy some time during which he could think of a way out of the impasse, he
asked the leader of the border guides to allow them to camp nearby for a
few days so that he could send an urgent message to his bosses for further
instructions. The request, which seemed reasonable, was granted and the
Naga group cleared a patch of jungle near a stream and made temporary
shelters out of tree branches and palm fronds.
On the first night in the shelter, Hoito took his second-in-command,
Chilongse, aside and they had a long discussion about what to do next. The
outcome of this private consultation between the two came in the form of an
announcement during the morning meal the next day. Hoito stood up and
explained to the rest of the group that because of certain developments
taking place on the ground about which the High Command may not have
been aware, they were caught in this situation. Therefore, in order to seek
clarification and further instructions, he was sending two members of the
team back to headquarters, Roko and Lovishe, because of their experience
in scouting and doing reconnaissance jobs in the past. He hoped that they
would be able to do the job assigned to them without coming to any harm.
They were to start immediately after the meal and were ordered to march
day and night, if need be, and report within four days. Everyone knew that
it was a tall order, but being soldiers the two did not demur and as soon as
the meal was finished, they started with the barest of rations and their
weapons. Before leaving, Roko went and shook hands with Imli,
whispering in his ear, ‘Be careful’.
 After the departure of the two, the remnants of the fire over which their
simple meal was cooked, were extinguished. They took care to use earth
instead of water to douse the flames as pouring water raises steam and a
distinct smell, which might give away their hiding place to passing patrols.
Then each soldier took out his weapon in order to clean and grease it as this
could not be done while they were on the march. Some cautiously ventured
to the stream to have a long-needed bath. Hoito was a strange man and a
hard taskmaster. He was also known for his unpredictable and violent
nature. Confronted with this present dilemma, he became more taciturn and
kept to himself, occasionally dozing off with his arm around his gun. He
slept fitfully till late afternoon and woke up with a start. He had had the
strangest of dreams. He’d dreamt that his father, who was dead for about six
years now, had come to visit him in his house in the village and was
scolding him for allowing a stranger to eat from his plate. He remembered
that his father had a plate with a three-pronged stand made out of a single
piece of wood, which he would not allow anyone, even his wife to use. But
on certain occasions, when he was slightly drunk, he would call Hoito to
come and share his food from the plate. He remembered that those were the
happiest days of his childhood. Was this dream an omen, a warning? Was
his father trying to tell him that there was a ‘stranger’ in his own little
group? Who could that be?
In this mood, he went over the events of the past few days and was
suddenly struck by the fact that there was indeed a ‘stranger’ in his group.
Imli, the man who was inducted into the group merely because he was the
son of the second highest boss in the headquarters and who happened to
arrive at the precise moment when the names were being finalised. He
began to feel uneasy about the way this person was recruited for the
training. Unlike the others, he did not have to pass any tests or even meet
the group commander, i.e. himself. He thought that everything about Imli’s
presence in the group smacked of the underhand and he began to get angry.
He had always entertained a secret grudge against Imli’s father because he
had once reprimanded him in public for failing to carry out an order in the
proper manner. This resentment was now extended to the son who, in his
estimate, had not ‘earned’ the right to be in this elite group and was instead,
becoming a liability. He was, however, somewhat pleased that the only
person who seemed to be close to Imli had now gone from the scene. He
had begun to notice how solicitous Roko was about Imli’s welfare during
the march. He had even seen him carrying Imli’s pack once or twice. But,
because he himself was fond of Roko, he had deferred taking any action
about this. He thought that Roko’s absence now was in a way very
convenient for him. The more he mulled over the matter, the more
convinced he became that there was an evil aura about Imli and that he was,
somehow, responsible for their present situation. But what galled him more
was the fact that he could do nothing about it till Roko and Lovishe
returned from their mission, if indeed they did at all.
On the second day of their forced retreat, they heard voices in the vicinity
and, fearing discovery, they immediately collected their gear, removed all
telltale signs of their brief stay in the area and moved further into the thick
forest. Luckily, they came across a cave in the forest and took shelter inside
it. It was damp and dark there but at least they were safe from the heavy
rain and danger of encountering the border patrols, which seemed to be
moving at regular intervals in the area. Hoito was particularly grateful for
the rain, which would obliterate all signs of their presence in the temporary
camp. But the problem of Imli continued to nag him, adding to the anxiety
of waiting for Roko and Lovishe and the constant fear of being discovered
by the Indian army. They stayed inside the cave for the next two days,
munching uncooked rice and drinking cold rain water. They did not dare
light a fire inside the cave lest the smoke disturb creatures like bats nesting
there, and also attract the attention of the alert soldiers keeping vigil on
these border areas.
But Hoito was constantly troubled by the presence of Imli in his group. It
was as if the humiliation that he had felt when he was reprimanded by
Imli’s father in public came back to him renewed manifold through his own
father’s accusation about the ‘stranger’ in his dream. In this mood he began
to think of getting rid of Imli before Roko and Lovishe came back from
their mission. But he had to accomplish this without raising any suspicion
in the minds of his soldiers. He knew that whatever he did had to appear to
be in the interest of the group. He was also aware that out in the jungle the
outcome of his plan meant only one thing: Imli’s death. And if he had any
qualms about it, he managed to dismiss them by saying to himself that as
the leader of the group he had to ensure the safety of his soldiers even if it
meant the destruction of one who was considered to be a liability. At the
same time, he had to ensure that he would not be implicated in any way
with the actual execution. By evening he had worked out a plan. He would
point out that if Roko and Lovishe succeeded in getting back with some
new instructions from headquarters, how would they locate their new
hideout? Was it not possible that they might even think that they had been
captured by the security forces? He, as the leader, had to ensure that they
meet up with each other without any mishap and move swiftly to their next
course of action. He would then announce that he would send Imli to the
spot where they had camped earlier and ask him to wait there for Roko and
Lovishe and guide them back to the cave. This would surely test Imli’s skill
in the jungle, a skill that Hoito was sure Imli did not possess. With this plan
in his mind, he called the group for a formal meeting and after explaining
his reasons for this course of action, informed them that he had decided to
send Imli to meet the two returning team-mates and bring them to their
present hideout. On hearing his announcement, the members of the group
were stunned. Everyone knew how unfamiliar Imli was in the ways of
jungle warfare and some senior ones even ventured to express the view that
sending Imli out of the cave would be unwise as he was sure to be spotted
and either be captured or killed. Moreover, his presence in the area would
advertise the fact that there were others in the vicinity and they would be
hunted down like dogs and killed. But Hoito was adamant; Imli had to go
on this mission to prove that he deserved to be in this group. Otherwise, he
declared that he could not be taken along with them because on two earlier
occasions, he nearly gave away their position through his clumsiness in the
jungle. Though the soldiers were greatly worried, they did not dare argue
with him further and thus, Imli’s fate was sealed.
Imli, on the other hand, was beginning to get excited by his brief
experience in the jungle. Whatever romantic idealism had first made him
decide upon a life in the underground army had soon evaporated and been
replaced by a new awareness of the ground reality. The constant and ever-
present danger in the hostile environment only bolstered his determination
to become a better soldier so that he could feel vindicated before his father.
The strenuous march up to this point had been an eye opener. His physical
endurance was stretched to the limit and the two occasions when he nearly
exposed the group to mortal danger were due to extreme fatigue and a
momentary lapse of concentration. But now he was determined to teach
himself the skills of survival in the jungle and prove to his father that he
was wrong in opposing his entry to this kind of life. During the two days in
the cave, he learnt how to dismantle and put together an automatic rifle,
which was in the custody of his unit leader. He also learnt how to walk in
the jungle without making a sound and how to communicate with his mates
through gestures and low whistles, imitating the sound of birds. At first the
other members of the group were dismissive of his attempts and said that he
would never become like them, but when they saw how serious he was in
his determination and also realising that he was the weak link in their
defense, they began to take turns in sharing with him the knowledge that
they had gained from their experience in the jungle. Although it was
impossible to teach him everything in two days, they were gratified to note
that Imli was a quick learner and did not mind the gruff insults hurled at
him whenever he made a mistake or gave a wrong answer. All in all,
everyone agreed that giving lessons to Imli relieved the monotony of the
enforced idleness and the constant pangs of hunger. So when Hoito made
the announcement, Imli took it in his stride and thought that he was being
given an opportunity to prove his newly learnt skills.
In the meantime, Roko and Lovishe managed to reach headquarters after
continuously marching for many days through the thick jungle and eluding
several patrols along the way. The fact that there were just the two of them
helped, because they made less noise and, keeping close to each other, they
maneuvered their way through animal tracks, ravines and streams to avoid
the soldiers who preferred the regular routes. When they explained to the
commanders why they had to return for new instructions, there was anger
and disbelief all round. Who told them this lie, they wanted to know? And
above all, why hadn’t Hoito sent any written message? Of course the two
soldiers could not give any answers to these questions as they were only
foot soldiers and were merely following the orders of their leader. That
night there was an emergency meeting of the High Command and the next
morning, Roko and Lovishe were given the order to march back to Hoito
with a written communique. They did not know what was in the sealed
pouch but after a hurried meal, and some provisions sneaked to them by the
cook, they started on the perilous return journey to locate their mates and
deliver the order to Hoito.
Back in the cave, Imli was given last minute tips by his well-wishers, and
as ordered, he crept out of the cave at dawn and slowly made his way,
taking a route which he assumed would lead him towards their first stop in
the jungle. In the darkness of the cave, he did not notice the absence of two
members of the group who had left earlier on Hoito’s instructions and were
waiting in a deep gully for his approach. Imli was being extremely cautious
and therefore his pace was slow. Once or twice he thought he heard some
noise in the bush and each time he crouched low in the undergrowth to
ascertain the source of the noise. But he could not see anything because of
the early morning mist brought on by the evaporating moisture from the
earth. So he plodded on, sometimes on all fours, afraid of being discovered
by the enemy. But what he did not know was that it was his own team-
mates who were stalking him in order to intercept him and carry out Hoito’s
instructions. After an hour or so of painful progress, he squatted in the
hollow of a tree to rest for a minute or two. It was then that the intermittent
noises which seemed to stalk him earlier, materialized beside him. At first
he thought that the intruders were from the other army and that he would
either be killed outright or taken prisoner. However, when he recognized his
team-mates, the initial shock and fear were replaced by relief. But only for a
brief moment, because the two immediately set to work; they overpowered
him before he could react and put up any resistance. They pinned him to the
ground and one of them swiftly put a gag in his mouth. They had come
prepared with vines to secure him and hammering stakes in the ground, they
tied him to the stakes, spread-eagled and face down. All the while they
avoided eye contact with him and Imli could see that one of them was
visibly distraught. Having secured him firmly to the earth in this grotesque
manner, they gathered leaves and dead branches of trees to cover him
completely. Though Imli was making frantic attempts to ask them why they
were doing this to him, his efforts came out only as feeble grunts because of
the gag in his mouth. Without uttering a sound, they went about their
business and when the camouflage was complete, they meticulously
obliterated all signs of their activities and quietly vanished into the thick
shadows of the jungle.
Roko and Lovishe had taken much longer on the return journey than they
anticipated. They were both exhausted from the almost non-stop march of
the last few days, their meagre rations were finished and their water bottles
too contained only a few drops. After marching for three days, Roko
suggested that they rest for the night so that the next day they would be able
to meet up with their mates. So before sunset, they began to scout for a safe
place to spend the night. It was Lovishe who pointed to the sprawling roots
of a tree at some distance and suggested to Roko that they head towards it.
By the time they reached the spot, it was already dark and, having satisfied
themselves that it was indeed safe there, they immediately fell asleep. When
they woke up the next morning, their nostrils were assailed by a putrid
stench in the vicinity, which they had not detected the previous evening
because they had fallen asleep immediately. But now the heat of the new
day had intensified the smell and they immediately became alarmed. Rising
cautiously from their positions, they signaled to each other to go in opposite
directions to discover the source of the foul smell. They were both
experienced jungle fighters and knew that what they smelled was rotting
flesh. But the big question in their minds was: was it animal or human?
Circling in from opposite directions, they could hear the distinct buzz of
carrion flies and as they followed the sound, their steps led them to the spot
where Imli had been left gagged, bound and staked to the ground. What
they saw lying in front of their eyes turned their stomachs. Death must have
come at an excruciatingly slow pace and he must have suffered terribly
even as life was oozing out of his helpless body. Nature and the scavengers
of the forest had done a neat job. What remained of him now was his bare
skeleton over which the flies were weaving a riotous dance of steel blue
wings accompanied by a buzz that was several decibels beyond human
tolerance. The hair on his head and even his clothes were ripped off and the
bloody and torn shreds lay strewn all over the place. They knew it was Imli
only because of his wristwatch which was somehow still attached to his
fleshless wrist. In places where some flesh had escaped the predators,
maggots had taken over; they were crawling out of the crevices between the
bones, including the two eyeless sockets. Even the gag from his mouth lay
at a distance, torn to bits and where there was supposed to be his tongue,
there was only a gaping hole where maggots roamed freely. Roko and
Lovishe simply stared at each other in speechless shock and sorrow. They
were no strangers to death, and violent death most of the time, but nothing
matched the horror of this sight. They stood there mute until Roko
collapsed, heaving with unuttered sobs. Lovishe quickly went to the
grieving boy and reminded him that they had no time to grieve. There was
something more urgent that had to be done: Imli must be given a decent
burial. So, silently, they freed Imli from his bondage, gathered what
remained of his body and clothes and buried him in a secluded spot away
from that place of horror. Roko wanted to put a cross over the mound but
Lovishe dissuaded him by saying that it would be unwise. In this way, the
inexperienced college boy who had joined the freedom fighters against all
odds found his final resting place in an unmarked grave in the shadows of a
deep forest in an alien land. Before burying their comrade, Roko told
Lovishe that he was going to keep the watch.
Though they were hard pressed for time, Roko and Lovishe decided to
look for a stream and follow the Naga custom of taking a ritual bath after a
death in the family. They were aware that they had not mourned for the
stipulated number of days for their fallen comrade, but the ritual of taking
the bath would all the same signify that the mortal remains of a Naga had
been consigned to the earth recently.
This completed, they were confronted with a problem. How should they
deal with their knowledge about Imli’s death? Should they admit to having
buried his remains? Should they ask Hoito about Imli? These were
questions fraught with dangerous consequences. They were veterans of
jungle warfare and were aware of the underlying currents of internal
dissensions and rivalry even within their group. If their commander was
somehow implicated in the horrible death of their comrade, and if they
admitted to having disposed off the dead body, they were bound to be
viewed with suspicion and even hostility. They knew what Hoito was
capable of doing if he felt threatened in any way. They also recalled how
antagonistic he had been towards Imli from the very beginning. So after a
long discussion, Roko and Lovishe resolved that they would not say
anything about finding Imli or burying him in the unmarked spot. They
would simply cite extreme tiredness as the cause of the delay in reporting
back from their special mission. They also took a vow that they would
never talk about Imli’s death to anybody, not even to their wives if they got
leave to go home. The watch which Roko took from Imli’s wrist would be
returned to his father at an appropriate time, and Lovishe was warned not to
ever mention this.
When they returned to the camp and Roko handed over the pouch from
headquarters, Hoito behaved as if nothing was amiss, only frowned once or
twice when he was reading the letter sent from headquarters. The evening
passed off uneventfully. That night the two scouts, Roko and Lovishe, slept
the sleep of the exhausted after many days of stressful trekking and the
traumatic experience of finding the gruesome remains of Imli in such a
sudden and unexpected manner. But they were trained soldiers and never let
their guard down. Early the next morning, they were ordered to break camp
and be ready to march after their meagre meal of rice and chillies. Hoito
waited until all signs of their stay in the cave were completely obliterated. It
was only when they were standing in single file, ready to march that he
started to speak, ‘You know that Imli was ordered to go on a special mission
to wait for the return of Roko and Lovishe from headquarters and guide
them to this camp. But till now he has not returned, though these two
persons were able to locate us quite safely. It now appears that Imli got lost
in the jungle and since they have not mentioned seeing any sign of him, I
presume that we will not see him again. What happens to him now is no
one’s fault but his own. So be clear on this point, no one is to be blamed for
his disappearance. And now I want to tell you that we are to abort this
particular mission and make our way back to headquarters until we secure
the complete co-operation of our old allies. And remember, if anyone of us
is captured, we do not divulge any information at all. Now let us march.
And remember, be on your guard at all times.’
So the column of tired fighters began to march, single file, with Roko as
the advance scout and Hoito himself in the rear. It was an extremely
agonizing march, there was hardly any food, their uniforms and boots were
in tatters and several times they had to lie in wet trenches to escape being
discovered by passing patrols. Their morale was at its lowest; their mission
was a failure in many ways, they had lost a comrade and were now heading
to an unknown future. Roko, especially, was haunted by the memory of the
horrifying sight of Imli’s dead body. Once or twice he stopped himself from
crying out aloud at the inhuman treatment meted out to his friend. But he
forged ahead, subsuming his personal anger and anguish with the present
need to protect himself and his group and bent on reaching headquarters
safely. This the group did after marching relentlessly for three days. Their
entry into the camp was unobtrusive, as if it was a routine matter for
soldiers to return to camp in this manner. For two days they were allowed to
rest undisturbed and were given as much food as it was possible for the
cook to spare.
On the third day, the group was called to the barracks of the Commander
to receive fresh commands. As he surveyed the group, the Commander
noticed the change in their demeanour and became puzzled. Till now no one
had specifically told him of the disappearance of Imli, the son of his
second-in-command, who was away at the moment. When Hoito was asked
about this, he gave the version which he had given to his boys just before
they started on their journey back to headquarters. The Commander listened
to him in silence and ordered him to write a detailed report about the
incident. He then told the assembled soldiers that due to this new
development, he was deferring their new assignment and that they were to
remain in camp until further orders.
The atmosphere in their particular section of the camp once again filled
with tension. The boys stayed inside, some trying to read the available
material, mostly gospel pamphlets and the odd Bible, while some strolled
outside aimlessly, but Roko and Lovishe kept to themselves, not daring to
say anything, even to each other. Hoito seemed to be the calmest of all,
writing his report laboriously and even whistling a tune under his breath.
His report was handed in on the second day and all seemed to be fine. But
during the evening meal, it was observed that Hoito was not in his usual
place. Nor was he in his tent. No one said anything, only Roko and Lovishe
exchanged surreptitious glances. The night passed off uneventfully. At
morning roll call, Hoito’s absence was marked and the rest of the group
were asked whether anyone had seen him. No one had. By noon it became
obvious that he had deserted and the Commander was seen going into the
tent of his second-in-command. It was only then that the boys realized he
had returned.
This presented a big problem for Roko. What was he to do with the
knowledge of Imli’s death? Though he could not say anything definite
about what had actually happened, he could certainly guess how Imli had
died from what he and Lovishe had seen. And also, the fact that they had
buried the sad remains of their unfortunate comrade. Then there was Imli’s
watch that he had extracted from the body and which he had kept hidden; it
had to be handed over to the father. Only then could the ‘missing’ report
that Hoito had written be challenged and a verdict of death through foul
play declared. The enormity of Roko’s secret dilemma was matched by that
of the Commander. Burdened with the responsibility of running the outfit
on a shoe-string budget and beset by forces far superior in manpower as
well as firepower, he was now saddled with the case of a missing cadre and
the desertion of a ranked officer. He took days to come to a decision.
First, he declared Hoito a deserter, and added that if he was caught alive
he would be shot by a firing squad. Second, he constituted an enquiry
committee to determine the circumstances which resulted in the
disappearance of Imli in the jungle. The work of the committee started
immediately. To begin with, every member of the group except Roko and
Lovishe was questioned individually and each one stuck to the version
given by Hoito: that Imli was assigned the job of waiting for Roko and
Lovishe to return from their mission and to guide them to the cave in which
the group had taken shelter. When they were eventually called, Roko and
Lovishe had a hurried conversation before going in for the interrogation and
promised each other that they would tell the truth about what they saw and
how they buried Imli’s remains. As it so happened, Roko was the last one to
be called. He was in the interrogation tent for a long time and when he
came out, he appeared to be a changed man. He never told anyone, not even
Lovishe, exactly what had happened there. He only said that when Imli’s
father saw the watch, he broke down and wept like a child.
The two friends were in for a surprise the next morning: the report of the
enquiry committee was short, and it simply reiterated the version given out
by Hoito and declared that the cadre named Imli was missing in action.
There was no mention of torture or murder or the involvement of anyone in
the episode. Soon after this, the entire camp was shifted to another location
for ‘strategic’ reasons and a general reshuffling of all the soldiers of the
camp took place. Roko and Lovishe were sent to separate camps and they
lost contact with each other until they both ‘retired’ from the underground
outfit during the general ‘amnesty’ declared by the Government of India
some years later. They returned to their respective villages to live like
ordinary villagers.
In the meantime, many other groups of the underground army made their
way to China for training and many lost their lives in encounters both with
the patrols as well as in accidents like drowning while crossing flooded
rivers or falling off slippery ravines. But no other underground soldier
seemed to have suffered the fate of the unfortunate Imli. It was only many
years later that word filtered out from some unknown sources about how
Imli had been murdered by members of his own outfit at the behest of
Hoito. The gory details of his horrifying death gradually became the stuff of
underground legend which led to a great deal of mutual distrust among the
freedom fighters and many factional clashes. In his old age, Roko often
reflected on this particular incident of his underground existence and shed
many a secret tear for his friend who was so cruelly murdered by his own
comrades. He was often heard advising the youngsters of his village not to
think of joining any army because, as he put it, ‘When you have a gun in
your hand, you cease to think like a normal human being.’
 Lovishe, on the other hand was not much of a thinker. He simply took up
farming as if he had never gone away and many younger people of his own
village were not even aware that he was once in the underground army and
that he had served under the command of the notorious leader, Hoito. And
what about Hoito? No one could say where he went when he deserted the
camp. He never went back to his village. It was as if the vast jungle simply
swallowed him up. The man, who had once harboured secret dreams of
becoming a Commander and earning glory in battle, was written off from
the rolls of the army as if he had never existed. Subsequent groups of
soldiers who were sent to China on similar missions reported hearing from
the natives about a mad man who roamed the forest, often shouting ‘imi,
imi’ as if he was looking for somebody or something. They could not say
whether he was a Naga or a Kachin or a mainland Burmese, because his
hair had grown long, become grey and matted, his flowing beard was
almost white and his teeth were stained black from eating roots and berries
from the jungle. They said that he certainly knew his way about in the
jungle and hid himself whenever he thought someone was approaching. But
they did not bother about him because, they said, he was of no consequence
to anyone now. So the lone wanderer was left to himself, to survive in the
shadows of the jungle from predators, man and beast alike, and eating
whatever was thrown away by them.
One day, this crazy-looking man saw spirals of wispy smoke in the
distance, and he believed that there would be food where the fire was. He
had gone hungry the last two days, his only sustenance being wild leaves
and stream water. He was becoming weak and light-headed, so throwing all
caution aside, he made his way towards the wisps of smoke. As he
approached the area, he could smell the sweet aroma of roasting meat.
When he heard voices, he crouched on the ground and inched forward on
all fours. But, unfortunately for him, he was spotted by the lone sentry
posted by the group who pounced on him and dragged him to the circle of
men eating and drinking by the fire. This was the group of jungle rogues
who had been terrorizing innocent villagers on both sides of the
international border, looting, extorting money and causing general mayhem
whenever they got a chance. They were renegades from all the different
rebel groups operating in the area and were familiar with the tactics of
survival in the jungle, robbing innocent villagers of food and other
necessary items at will and dodging the army patrols that regularly raided
the villages to flush out rebels who might be hiding there. On this particular
day, they had got hold of some liquor and meat and were having an
uproarious party, drinking and eating chunks of meat from a pig that was
being roasted over a roaring fire. By the time the mad man was brought into
their presence, a few of them were quite drunk. As soon as they saw him,
they swooped on him, some tore at his hair and beard and some began to
strip him. They began to speculate about who he really was and how he
would look without his beard and long hair. Taking up the cue, one of them
promptly got a dao and started to shave off his head and beard, while some
others pinned him to the ground. Many cuts were inflicted on the hapless
man as he struggled to free himself from their grip. When the hairy
camouflage was removed, his features became more recognizable and as
they now stared at the transformed man, one of the renegades jumped up
and shouted, ‘Oho, high and mighty Hoito, did you know that we used to
call you that behind your back? Look at you now, where is your whistle and
whip, with which you terrorized the young recruits?’ The speaker was a
deserter from the Naga underground army who had suffered, at one time,
severe punishment at Hoito’s hands. This was the main reason why he had
run away and joined this band of renegades, where he was known simply as
Boy, because of his tender age when he had joined them. He pushed the
naked man to the ground and began to kick him ferociously, spitting on him
and calling him all the foul names he could think of. He was already very
drunk and was becoming delirious with an insane rage against the man on
the ground. The others, who were not aware of the link between the two
men, were completely taken aback by the turn of events. They had initially
started out with the idea of having a little fun with the mad man, but the
scenario changed completely once his identity was established and Boy
took over. So they withdrew into a circle, while he raved and ranted and
continued kicking and abusing the fallen man. As suddenly as it had started,
the kicking stopped. The uneasy group saw Boy go to their temporary tent
and come out with lengths of rope. They began to shuffle around with
growing apprehension, murmuring, and some trying to talk Boy out of his
obvious intention. But he was beyond reason. He shrugged off their
restraining hands and shouted, ‘The man who smashed my balls and called
my father a woman deserves to die at my hands.’ By now the man was
almost unconscious, but all the same he was dragged to a nearby tree with
the assistance of two reluctant mates; his hands were tied behind his back
and they hauled him up to a sturdy branch, from which he was hung by his
ankles, so that, as Boy put it, Hoito would have plenty of time to repent
before he died. The members of this gang were no strangers to violence and
cruelty but the sight of this grisly performance was somehow proving to be
too much even for them, and one by one, they picked up their guns,
canteens and also the meat and slunk away into the jungle. When some of
them looked back, they saw Boy executing a drunken caper around the
swinging body, still cursing and taking an occasional swig from his bottle.
The man dangling from the rope began to moan. Hearing this, Boy went
into the jungle and collected some prickly leaves which he fashioned into a
ball and forced the gag into the mouth of the battered man. Once again he
did his mad gig round the inert body now swaying gently in the void
between heaven and earth. But after a round or two, when he realized that
he had been left behind by his mates, Boy went to the dying man and
shouted in his ears, ‘Pray all you want now, high and mighty Hoito, pray
that you die soon.’ With a last obscene gesture directed at the unseeing man
dangling from the tree, Boy threw away his empty bottle and groped his
drunken way into the dark shadows of the jungle.
 An Old Man Remembers

An old man is sitting by the feeble embers of the hearth cradling his right
leg. Today it is giving him a lot of trouble. The pain is excruciating. On
days like this when the constant drizzle since the morning has intensified
the biting cold of the winter day, he should have known better than to
venture our and climb those steep steps leading to his friend’s house. Bur
what else could he have done? Early in the morning his next-door
neighbour came to tell him that his friend Imlikokba had died in his sleep
during the night and that the funeral would take place in the afternoon. At
first light, the old man hobbled out and made his way towards his friend’s
house to have a last look at the face which had become so much a part of
his own. They had shared so much: played together as children, attended
the village school together and left it at the same time. They had slept in the
same young men’s morung, wooed girls from the same young women’s
dormitory and even got married within the same week! When he heard the
news, he felt as if a vital core of his own being had been wrenched off.
There was no way that he could have stayed away on this day when his
friend was embarking on his last journey, bad leg or no bad leg.
He managed to reach the house and found it already crowded with
relatives and neighbours. Preparations for the funeral were in full swing.
The digging party had already left for the graveyard to choose a spot and
prepare the burial site. When old man Sashi (his name was Imtisashi)
entered, people stopped talking as though at the approach of an important
person. They knew of the close bond that had existed between him and the
deceased man. Some people were aware of another shared association but
most were ignorant about the fact of their involvement in the underground
movement. The young of the village especially, knew them only as two old
eccentric buddies who sometimes quarreled loudly, calling each other
names and refusing to speak to each other for many days. But soon,
overcoming their differences, the two would be found in the village
common huddled together like young children, laughing their guts out over
some private joke. As Sashi came in, people made way for him and found
him a seat near the coffin, which was made out of rough wood that
Imlikokba had himself carried from his field.
Old man Sashi took his seat and the moment he sat down, his leg began
to act up. The effort of climbing up the steps to the house and the exposure
to the cold were beginning to stir the demons in his bad knee. Several times
he almost cried out aloud as the pain shot through his body and seemed to
lodge in his heart, making him gasp for breath. He suffered in silence for
quite some time because he wanted to stay on till the body was taken out of
the house for burial. But the relentless jabs of pain forced him to do
otherwise. He decided to leave before the pain became so unbearable that
he, too, would have to be carried to his house. He did not want such a
spectacle to mar the solemnity of his friend’s last hours on earth. So he
stood up with some effort and facing his friend lying in the coffin, began to
speak to him, ‘So Imli, after all, you’ve decided to leave me and go ahead,
ha. When we were young, I could outrun you any time, but today you have
overtaken me. But no matter, such time is not of our choosing. Go in peace,
my friend and do not look back. I, too, shall cross the water soon and join
you. Until then, Kuknalim!’ When he had started to speak, the people
noticed that his voice sounded young and firm; gone was the trembling that
was in his normal speech; even the usual lisp on account of some missing
teeth seemed to have disappeared. They were amazed to see him stand
straight, bad leg and all (every one knew he had a bad leg). After the
speech, without a backward glance, old man Sashi went out of his friend’s
house for the last time.
The trip back home, though short, was sheer agony; each step renewing
the pain, sword-sharp. But he refused all assistance offered by concerned
neighbours and passers-by. Leaning heavily on his cane, he took one painful
step after another and by the time he reached his doorstep, he almost fainted
because of the intensity of the pain. He somehow managed to revive the
embers in the hearth and soon had a roaring fire going. Carefully, he seated
himself by it and rested for a while letting the heat warm his ice-cold body.
Then, soaking an old rag in hot saline water, he began fomenting the aching
leg, cursing it all the while, ‘Why don’t you just die on me ha, so that they
can cut you off like they did to Toshi? Sure, he has to walk on crutches, but
so what, at least he does not suffer from any pain like you are giving me
now, does he?’ The fomentation and the warmth inside the house was a
relief. After the self-ministrations were over, he dragged himself to his
wooden pallet by the hearth and dozed off into a fitful sleep in which he
dreamt that he was falling off a cliff and calling out to his friend Imli to
save him, but that Imli did not hear him at all. He woke up screaming his
name and found that the fire in the hearth had almost died out and the house
was plunged in the gathering darkness of twilight. He thought that he ought
to try and revive the fire and cook something for dinner. But, instead, he
just lay there on his bed in the gloom of the winter evening. As he was
about to doze off again, he heard someone call out his name. He sat up with
a jerk; the voice sounded so much like Imli’s. ‘No it cannot be,’ he said to
himself, ‘Imli is dead and by now inside the earth.’ He sat up in bed, lost in
conflicting emotions. Slowly, he first lowered his bad leg to the ground and,
hobbling painfully, he groped his way towards the hearth. Carefully stoking
the dying embers he once again managed to have the fire going. But he
knew that he could not reach the hurricane lamp which was kept on the
bamboo shelf just now, so he sat by the fire holding ‘his bad knee. Then, he
heard another voice calling out to him timidly. He listened attentively. The
young boy called out again, ‘Grandfather, are you there?’ He recognized the
voice of his grandson, the one whose turn it was to sleep in his house that
week and called out to him, ‘Come in boy, and be careful, it is quite dark in
here.’ The young boy felt his way inside without any difficulty because he
was always in and out of the house on errands like this. He had brought a
hot meal for his grandfather. After setting the dishes on a bench, he lit the
kerosene lamp and watched the old man eat his dinner. When the meal was
finished, he washed the dishes and stoked the fire once again. Old man
Sashi felt new strength in his old limbs and started to talk to his grandson,
asking him how he was doing in school, who his best friend was, and if he
had managed to roll some more mud pellets for his catapult. The boy
replied to all his questions in a desultory manner, which made his
grandfather wonder if he was troubled by something. So he asked the boy to
sit near him and asked him in a kindly voice, ‘What is bothering you, my
boy?’ At first the boy kept silent, but the old man persisted in his
questioning. After a while, he awkwardly asked the grandfather,
‘Grandfather, is it true that you and grandfather Imli killed many people
when you were in the jungle?’
Old man Sashi was completely taken aback by the question. He never
spoke about his jungle days; it was as though that phase of his life was
consigned to a dark place in his heart and would be buried with him when
his time came. But tonight, the question of a disturbed child stirred old
spectres and left him speechless for a long time. When the boy sensed that
he had touched a sore spot in his grandfather’s life, he immediately became
concerned and worried. He rose from his seat and said, ‘Grandfather, it is
getting late, I must go back home and finish some chores. Then I will come
back and stay the night with you.’ The old man looked at the boy and
simply replied, ‘Yes my boy, and come back soon.’
For old man Sashi, his grandson’s question stirred up the many painful
memories that he thought he had managed to put away. It was as though an
ancient attic door had suddenly come unhinged and all the accumulated
junk of a lifetime had come tumbling out of dusty storage spaces,
threatening to engulf him. He did not know where he was going to begin.
Imli had often told him that the young had a right to know about the
people’s history and that they should not grow up ignorant about the
unspeakable atrocities that they, the older generation had witnessed. But
every time old man Sashi had hushed him up by saying, ‘What good will it
do them?’ It was only now that he was beginning to realize that Imli was
right because now his grandson was hurling a question at him from the
other side of history. Even in the midst of grappling with his confused
thoughts, he paused to salute the memory of his friend, ‘Good old sensible
Imli, how right you were and how wrong I was in thinking that the bad
things will go away if one does not talk about them.’ For a whole
generation of people like old man Sashi, Imli and all their friends and
relatives, the prime of their youth was a seemingly endless cycle of
beatings, rapes, burning of villages and grain-filled barns. The forced
labour, the grouping of villages and running from one hideout to another in
the deep jungles to escape the pursuing soldiers, turned young boys into
men who survived to fight these forces, many losing their lives in the
process and many becoming ruthless killers themselves. Survivors like Imli
and himself, did they not owe it to their fallen friends to tell the world what
it was like to be fifteen and sixteen in the turbulent fifties in these remote
hills they called home? Did he have the right to keep youngsters like his
own grandson in the dark about the price their parents and grandparents had
paid for a piece of the earth they now called Nagaland? But where would he
begin? Should he begin by saying, ‘When I was young like you?’ But had
he ever been given a chance to be young like them?
He remembered when his bad leg became even worse in the jungle and
his superiors gave him permission to ‘surrender’ to the authorities over
ground. But he could not go to his village immediately, he had to serve out
a prison term first because he was an underground ‘rebel’. The jail sentence
was, however, commuted on medical grounds and he came home after
serving only three months. It was then that the nightmares started. Though
he was making a valiant effort to lead a normal life as a common villager,
he could not hide the inner turmoil from his wife who would often shake
him awake when he groaned and moaned and sometimes even shrieked in
his sleep. Many times he would wake up crying and screaming because of
his bad dreams. It was at such times that his wife would plead, ‘Talk to me
Sashi, tell me what is tormenting you like this. It will lighten the burden in
your mind and your nightmares will disappear.’ But he would brush her
aside saying, ‘Woman, you do not know what you are asking me to do.’ The
only response that she gave to his curt dismissals would be a look of infinite
pity and sadness. Now as he sat by the fire nursing his bad leg, he wished
that he had not been so abrupt with her and also that she was with him
today. But she was dead and gone these past eleven years and here he was,
confronted by the same predicament. Only now this question from his
grandson was not a plea; it was a challenge.
When the grandson, whose full name was Moalemba, came back to the
house, old man Sashi simply told him to stoke the fire, reduce the wick of
the lantern and go to sleep. ‘What about you?’ asked the young boy. The
old man said he was not sleepy, as he had taken a nap in the afternoon and
would like to warm his bad leg for some more time. Moa went to his cot
beside his grandfather’s bed and was soon asleep. Old man Sashi sat staring
into the flames while his grandson slept the sleep of the innocent. After a
while he turned to look at the face of the sleeping boy and began to think of
himself at that age. And his thoughts took him back to those days when he
and his friend Imli played truant and went fishing in the streams near the
village. He remembered too, how they scouted the countryside trying to
locate the right kind of day with which to make the rounded pellets for their
catapults. They would dig the gummy earth with their small daos, knead it
soft by adding some water and roll it into small balls. They would then dry
the pellets in the sun to the right hardness. He remembered the few times
when they had left the balls in the sun too long, they simply crumpled when
they tried to shoot them at birds and squirrels. Imli was the better of the two
in this craft but Sashi was the expert marksman, so they made a very good
team.
But their most fantastic adventure was the time when they were hiding
from a group of women returning to the village after a day’s work in the
fields. That day, too, they had stayed away from school and were trying to
dig up a small anthill that stood on the wayside. If the women saw them and
reported their presence in the jungle, they would be in big trouble with their
parents. As they sat cooped up in a small hole trying to keep still, Imli
suddenly whispered in his ear, ‘Look at the middle one’. Sashi tried to focus
his gaze on the middle of the line of women slowly marching towards the
village with loads of wild leafy vegetables and yams on their heads and
nearly cried out. The one in the middle of the line was stark naked and her
breasts bounced with every step she took and he could see a darkness
around the pubic region. Her newly-washed skirt was spread over the
loaded basket on her head, drying in the last rays of the sun. She was
walking in the middle of the row to protect herself from any sudden
exposure to passersby coming from either direction. The two young friends
were so shocked and awed by the sight of that naked woman, that even after
the women had gone past, they just stared at each other as if to seal a silent
pact that what they had just seen was never to be talked about, not even
between themselves. Years later when he told his wife about this experience
saying how shocked he was by the sight, she started to laugh and said,
‘What is so strange about it? We women do it all the time. When we bathe
in the stream after a hard day’s work, we sometimes have to wash our skirts
too so that we are saved the embarrassment of entering the village in a
soiled skirt, and the one who does it on a particular day is made to walk in
the middle in order to protect her.’ He understood what she meant then but
the awe and wonder of that sight always remained with him.
Now, as he sat looking at his young grandson’s sleeping face, his
thoughts went back to the question posed to him earlier in the evening. How
could he explain to his grandson that some things in his life just
‘happened’? How could he explain why his childhood had ended so
abruptly? And why youngsters like Imli and him would be running for their
lives deep into the jungle in winter, which was the time of plenty in the
village after harvest? It was the season of festivities, but they had to go
hungry for days in make-shift camps, always hungry, always cold; but most
of all terribly afraid of the marauding Indian army that had burnt their
granaries and villages and that was now pursuing them even in their jungle
hide-outs. He looked at the sleeping boy and wondered if he, too, had been
as innocent and trusting at that age. After those tumultuous years, he always
thought of himself as old, born old, and now after the death of two of his
closest friends, his wife and Imli, he felt older than ever with the increasing
awareness that time was running out for him too. As the fire slowly died
out, he went to bed with a heavy heart. But he resolved that one day soon he
would tell his grandson how his generation had lost their youth to the dream
of nationhood and how that period of history was written not only with the
blood and tears of coundess innocents but also how youngsters like Imli and
him were transformed into what they became in the jungle.
That day came for old man Sashi sooner than he expected. As a result of
exposure to the cold on the day of Imli’s funeral, he was laid up with a
terrible fever and was confined to his bed. Many of his old cronies came to
visit him and cheer him up. These old men, several of whom were also in
the underground, did not know many of the dark secrets, which only he and
Imli had shared. Others from the village were already dead, either in the
jungle or after being captured and tortured. The visitors would stay for
some time and then, once again, leave him alone with his grandson. The old
man began to dread these times. He felt that young Moa was some kind of
inquisitor who was bent on ferreting the truth out of the dying man. Old
man Sashi would pretend to be asleep, or send the boy out on useless
errands. The grandson on the other hand, served his grandfather
solicitously, trying to cheer him up in his own way by telling him about his
school, his teachers and friends. But no amount of good food, or care, or
visits from relatives and friends seemed to have any effect on the old man.
He slowly began to withdraw into himself like an animal seeking shelter
from an impending storm or at the approach of predators.
On the fifth night after he was taken ill, old man Sashi had a strange
dream in which he met his old friend Imli coming back from his field
carrying a heavy load in a huge basket. When he went forward to help his
friend, Imli simply turned his face away and, without a backward glance,
left old man Sashi standing in the middle of the road. When he woke up
with a jerk, he remembered the look of rejection on Imli’s face so vividly
that he actually began to sob loudly. Though he tried to control himself, he
began to tremble with every sob, which eventually woke the boy sleeping
near his bed. Young Moa immediately went to his grandfather and
wordlessly, put his arms around the old man’s emaciated shoulders. This
gesture further aggravated old man Sashi’s sorrow and he began to whimper
loudly in his grandson’s arms. When the sobs were finally done, he turned
to his grandson and in a feeble voice asked him to stoke the fire and boil
some water for tea. As Moa went about the task, they heard the distant
crowing of a rooster but they both knew that it was only the first hour after
midnight when cocks crow once and go back to sleep. Old man Sashi, after
five days of lying prostrate on his hard bed, lowered his bad leg first and
then the other, and sat down by the fire gratefully taking the cup of hot
black tea offered by his grandson. He then began his story. When he first
started to speak, his voice was almost inaudible, and the young boy had to
move closer to his grandfather’s side in order to make any sense of his
words. But as the hot tea warmed him, old man Sashi began to speak in a
louder voice. Young Moa sat down facing him to listen to the rush of
memories, which the old man was no longer able to contain in his brain. It
was like the massive gush of a waterfall, which now threatened to drown
both storyteller and listener.
‘Listen carefully, young one,’ the grandfather said, ‘because this is the
first, and the last, time that I shall speak about these things. They have
given me nothing but pain all these years and therefore I did not want
anyone to know about them, especially you. But now I realise that my
friend, your grandfather Imli, was right, I should tell you these stories
because only then will young people like you understand what has wounded
our souls. We, too, were young and carefree like you once, but all of a
sudden our youth was snatched away from us, and instead of schoolbooks
we were carrying guns and other weapons of destruction and living in the
jungle like wild creatures. I still remember how everything changed for me
and my friend, Imli. It was the last day of school in December before the
Christmas holidays and all of us were excited, nobody paid any attention to
what the teacher was saying. We were talking loudly to each other about our
plans for the holidays. Imli and I had made plenty of pellets for our
catapults and were looking forward to camping out in our farmhouses away
from the village and shooting down the birds that come there in great flocks
to eat the leftover grain after harvest. Of course, you know, that this is the
time when the birds taste best and as we made our plans, our mouths
watered at the prospect of eating their succulent meat. But it was not to be.
Even as the last peal of the school bell was dying away, we heard a great
roar, of women and children shrieking and crying and trying to run away
from the balls of fire which seemed to be chasing them. All the school
children rushed out and we saw the most horrifying sight of our lives. At
that time of day, as you know, the only people left in the village are
children, nursing mothers, old people who can no longer go to the fields and
a few village sentries. It was these helpless ones that the gun-toting soldiers
were picking out easily and shooting like animals running away from a
forest fire. One village sentry was running towards the school, shouting at
the top of his voice, “Run to the jungle, run to the jungle.” We were
paralysed with fear and shock and simply stood where we were. But he kept
on running and shouting, his voice now gone hoarse from shouting and
from the smoke he inhaled with every word. At last our teacher took up the
cry and instructed us to scatter in different directions towards the jungle,
telling us to go as far as we could go before nightfall. He added, “Stay
together in small groups and do’ not make a noise or light any fire wherever
you may be. We will come for you in the morning. Now run, run for your
lives.” I quickly took hold of Imli’s hand and began to pull him away from
the school compound. But he did not turn or move towards the path I had
chosen for us. Instead he was moaning and pointing to a figure just below
us on the village path. It was the sentry and some soldiers wearing heavy
boots and helmets were beating him up. I cried out to him, “Come on Imli,
otherwise those soldiers will catch us too and kill us.” Still he did not move
and, instead, made as if he would go towards the fallen man. I held on to
him tightly, not letting him go and craned my neck to see the man on the
ground. His face was unrecognizable, a bloody mess, but because we were
standing at a higher level, I could make out what he was wearing. It was
only then that I realised why Imli was behaving in this manner: the inert
man on the ground was his father who was on village sentry duty that day
and was coming to warn the schoolchildren to run away from the village.
As though my recognising his father was the cue he needed, Imli began to
whimper like a hurt animal. It took all my strength to pull him away from
the spot and drag him towards the jungle. By that time of course, all the
other students, young and old, had disappeared into the jungle and we found
ourselves separated from the main group.
By the time we reached the edge of the forest, away from the mayhem in
the village, it was already dark. We were hungry, we were cold, but most of
all we were terrified, not knowing where we were heading. The eerie jungle
sounds were beginning to grow in volume, which only added to our fear.
With great difficulty, we crawled our way in to a huge tree-trunk and
holding each other tighdy, we tried to rest for a while. But rest would not
come because every now and then, Imli’s body would go into terrible
convulsions, with unearthly groans coming out of the depths of his being.
He was remembering the sight of his father’s battered body lying so
helplessly in the dust of the ravaged village. It took all my strength and
determination to keep him from becoming completely hysterical and
breaking away from the hold of my weakening arms. Fortunately, the
terrible physical and mental agony he had undergone exhausted him and he
fell into a fitful sleep. After a while, I, too, finally began to doze off and fell
into a deep sleep.
But we were in for a greater shock in the morning. When we woke up to
the birdsong that surrounded us, still holding onto each other, the scene that
confronted us seemed to be a picture out of hell. Half a dozen dirty, bearded
and longhaired creatures were standing beside us pointing their guns at our
heads. We thought that we were already dead. Our mouths fell open but no
sound came out though we were trying to scream. Our bodies lay still and
lifeless though we wanted get up and sprint to safety in the jungle. I do not
know how long we stayed like that but only remember marching alongside
these creatures deeper into the forest, stopping only once to eat some scraps
of food they were carrying and drinking from a tiny waterfall hidden by tall
ferns. Eventually we crossed a small river, which was almost dry and
entering another forest, suddenly came upon a clearing dotted with small
hutments. We could smell wood fire mingled with the aroma of rice and
meat being cooked. All through the trek, someone who appeared to be the
leader of the group stayed near us and even helped Imli several times when
he stumbled and fell, without saying a word. But as we were about to enter
the clearing, he drew us aside and spoke for the first time and wonder of
wonders, in our own dialect! We were so stunned that we remained mute
though we understood what he was saying. He was telling us that we were
safe here but that we should not say a word about what had happened in the
village the day before to anyone in the camp. When he said ‘camp’ we
immediately realized that we were in the hands of underground soldiers.
We were led to a secluded section of the camp and told not stir out except
when summoned. We were given food, some used clothes and told to bathe
in the small stream adjacent to our hut. We did as we were told and returned
to our allotted space among the strangers. We did not reveal that we
belonged to the same village as the leader of the scouting party. That night
we tried to sleep but the uncertainty about our future and anxiety about our
loved ones kept us awake most of the night. Towards daybreak we must
have fallen asleep because when we were shaken awake, the camp was
already dismantled and the party about to march off to an unknown
destination. We followed them meekly on empty stomachs because we did
not know what their reaction might be if we dared to ask for food. The mid-
day halt was short and the little food that we received merely made us
hungrier. But the march went on relentlessly until the sun was about to set.
Bringing the column to a halt, the leader sent a few scouts to look for a
suitable site to set up camp for the night. When one was located deep in the
jungle, we were herded into the makeshift lodging where we spent another
miserable night bothered by jungle sounds and bitten by mosquitoes. The
next morning was no better; after a scanty meal of cold rice and salt, we
marched again. But it got worse as the topography of the land changed, and
we found ourselves following steep animal trails to reach our destination. It
took us nearly two hours to make our way to the hilltop beyond which our
final destination seemed to be located. By early evening we reached it and
what a surprise it turned out to be.
The training camp, was at the base of the steep hill we had climbed
earlier and was surrounded by even higher hills in the other three directions.
It was a veritable fortress in the valley with the hills providing natural
protection. It was here that our jungle life began. We were told that we had
been recruited into the Naga National Army and that we would be given
proper training here. We had to take an oath to remain loyal and if at any
time we attempted to run away or betray the others, we would be shot. We
stayed there for nearly a year during which time we learnt to forget family,
friends and everything to do with our former life. Soldiers we were made
into and that’s what we resolved to remain. Imli and I did not talk openly in
front of the others who belonged to other villages. We had developed a
cunning that we did not know we were capable of. But we shared a tacit
understanding that we would look out for each other at all times and that we
would bide our time until we found an opportunity to run away. That was
our dream; to escape and go back to our village and be reunited with our
families. It was that dream that kept us going.
But it was soon to be shattered. In a pre-dawn raid the army attacked our
camp and we were caught completely by surprise. The location of the camp
was thought to be so secure that the commander had slackened the vigilance
by posting just two sentries, who in turn became negligent. Now we were
about to pay the price with our lives. Imli and I looked at each other asking
the silent question: can we make a break for it? Almost imperceptibly we
nodded and grabbing the rifles we had cleaned the night before, we crept
towards the store to steal some bullets. There was chaos in this part of the
camp, with everyone clamouring for bullets. We too joined the line to
receive our share. The commander was shouting, ‘Make every bullet count.’
We took the bullets and scampered out as if to join the fight, but as soon as
we cleared the perimeter, we sprinted away from the fighting and made for
the thick jungle. We kept on marching until nightfall and spent a horrible
night on the peak of the hill; hungry, cold, and desperately anxious to make
our way to the village we were forced to flee from ten months ago.
Sprinting downhill we stumbled on to a small spring where we drank the
crystal clear water and continued on our way. At dusk on the third day we
reached the outskirts of the village and stopped in our tracks: it was burnt to
ashes and inhabited only by a lone scrawny limping piglet which had
somehow escaped the general slaughter and was now scrounging in the
decay and desolation of the abandoned village. Imli and I spent the night in
the open at the same spot where our school used to stand.
Before daybreak, we marched out towards where the granaries once
stood. Here, too, the same scenario greeted us. As we were desperately
hungry, we began to rummage in the ruins of the granaries. At the far end of
the row, we came upon a partially gutted one. What the fire could not
complete, it seemed, the elements had pitched in to finish. The structure had
fallen into itself and rotting bamboo posts and walls stood out
incongruously in a grey heap among the blackened masses of the other
sites. Sensing that there might still be something salvageable under the
heap, we frantically removed the debris and, wonder of wonders, we found
an earthen pot, you know the kind where husked rice is stored? It was one
of those, and although its mouth was broken, the rest of it seemed to be
intact. Plunging a hand inside, we discovered that it had contained some
special sticky rice, which was now almost powdery to our touch. No matter:
we ate mouthfuls of that treasure; we were so hungry that we would perhaps
have swallowed even the ashes around us. We carefully packed the rest of
the powdery rice in leaf packages and decided to track down the other
villagers who, we were sure, had found shelter in a jungle hideout. We had
learnt to be stealthy in our movements, but it took us almost the whole day
to scout the area. Towards evening we saw some faint traces of smoke
rising to the sky in the west of our old village. It was a heavily wooded area
and our people believed that it was where the spirits of the forest lived. We
were not surprised that the villagers chose this place to hide because even if
the hideout were discovered, no local guide would dare to lead any
patrolling party to the forest because of this superstition.
Imli and I discussed how best we could alert the villagers of our
presence; if we surprised them, taking us to be hostile, they might do us
bodily harm before we had time to tell our story. So we waited until
nightfall to reveal ourselves to them. It was Imli who came up with the
brilliant idea of using birdcalls in the darkness. As children we had learnt
different birdcalls to convey messages across the far-flung rice paddies.
Hoping that at least some of our friends would be among the survivors, Imli
let out a soft tentative whoop like an owl, followed by a twittering sound.
No response. He tried again, still no return whoop or twitter. We almost
gave up, not because we did not want to join the group but because we were
faint with hunger and pain. ‘I’ll give it a last try,’ Imli said and taking a
deep breath let out another whoop. The strength and tone of that sound was
so deep that I thought his lungs had burst because he collapsed even as the
last note left his body. I slipped to his side to see if he was all right and tried
to raise him from the ground where he lay in a heap. Seconds after I
reached him, there was an answering whoop followed by a long twittering
echo. I could not hold myself any longer and cried out loud, ‘Here, we are
here, both Imli and I.’ We waited fearfully. After what seemed to be an
eternity, we saw the faint light of reed-burning firesticks approaching our
position. We also saw that it was a big group of armed men; the villagers
were taking no chances. They recognized us and when they saw our
condition, with Imli still lying on the ground, they made a makeshift
stretcher and carried him to the shelter while I hobbled after them. We were
taken directly to the headman’s lodge, our weapons were stored away and
after asking a few questions, he declared that we were to be washed and
given fresh clothing and food and that we were to spend the night there
under guard. We were so exhausted from our ordeal that even though we
wanted to ask about our families, we simply collapsed on our mats and slept
like the dead.
When we woke up the next morning, many of our relatives were waiting
to meet us; they included my old mother, brothers and my only sister. Imli
of course knew that he would not see his father, whom we both saw lying
below our school in a bloody heap; yet when an old man drifted into view,
he leapt out of the mat where we slept and ran towards him. It was indeed
his father, but what a sight: his face was disfigured almost beyond
recognition, he had a limp and one eye was missing. Imli stood there as
though paralysed; it was the father who called out to him and he walked
towards him in a daze. No words were exchanged, but to this day I can see
the look of wonder and horror that my friend had on his face as he shook
his father’s hand. His mother and sister silently watched the painful
reunion. Our joy at meeting up with our families was, however, short-lived.
A few days later, scouts came with the unsettling news that a large convoy
was heading towards the area where the displaced villagers were hiding and
they said that we might be the target. We made preparations to flee from the
present location deeper into the jungle. So, in the evening, we struck camp
and we were once again on the move. Before leaving, Imli and I resolved
that we would stay close to each other and use our weapons, which were
given back to us, if necessary. We told the elders that since we were among
the few who had guns, we two should be allowed to bring up the rear and
put up a fight if the need arose. They agreed and with the help of the faint
moonlight, the terrified villagers started out on yet another exodus in search
of a safer home. We marched all night and when the eastern sky began to
brighten, a short halt was announced so that we could eat the little food that
we were able to bring along.
It was at this point that I had a great idea, what if Imli and I lay a trap for
the army patrols that walk on foot along the road, after leaving the vehicles
in which they travel a little way behind them? At first Imli was aghast and
asked me if I had gone crazy. I said no, it just might work! It took me a long
time to persuade Imli to agree to my plan. After that I approached the elders
and told them of our plan. Predictably, they too were aghast at the audacity
and, as one elder pointed out, the suicidal consequences of the enterprise.
But I stuck to my suggestion, telling them that if we two were found in the
group, things would be much worse for the entire village. We were recruits
of the underground army and hence ‘enemies’. If we were not with them,
the worst that could happen to them would be some beatings and eventual
incarceration in the ‘grouping’ zones. But if we were found there, who
knows, the entire village might be wiped out. Even as I was saying this, I
was wondering from where I had picked up these arguments. However, they
seemed to be working. After a hurried consultation among themselves, they
agreed and so we parted ways there. We slackened our pace and no longer
followed the group marching deeper into the jungle to locate another
hideout. The two of us went into the jungle and began to work on our plan.
We collected vines from the forest and twined them into sturdy ropes. We
cut down lengths of bamboo and after splitting them open, sharpened the
edges to sword-points and wove these into small stockade-like structures.
But our problem was we had no food; so we spent an entire day foraging
and hunting with our daos in the jungle. We were lucky to came across an
abandoned farmhouse where we discovered some mouldy rice, which we
cooked in bamboo cylinders over an open fire. Imli went fishing in a nearby
stream and caught some shrimps, which we cooked in the same manner.
Being exhausted and hungry from our long march, we decided to spend the
night at the farmhouse. As we were about to go to sleep, we heard a noise
and peering into the darkness outside, we detected some movement in the
dim light of a late-rising moon. Dark shapes were stealthily approaching the
farmhouse with what appeared to be to be drawn weapons. There was no
time to panic or run; we had to do something if we were to save ourselves.
Luckily, we had the sharpened bamboo stakes with us and we began to
create a structure to put up at the door, which would pierce anyone who
entered. We knew that the spikes would merely form a stumbling block
without causing any real harm to the intruders. So, we hurriedly created two
mounds with anything that came handy, and laid them one on each side of
the fireplace to simulate two sleeping figures. We then retreated to opposite
corners of the small farmhouse, our guns at the ready. We hoped that the
fake figures would fool them for a while and give us an opportunity to use
our weapons. When we had last looked out we had seen four or five men
crawling uphill to “there we were hiding. Their progress was slow as they
were trying to make as little noise as possible, and, I suspect, they too were
apprehensive about what they would encounter inside the farmhouse. So
they were being very cautious and taking their time in launching their
assault.
They took a long time approaching the farmhouse. We strained our eyes
in the dark to make out how many men were in the group. There were five,
of whom two were advance scouts. These two entered the farmhouse
cautiously. We had purposely left the door ajar and after a cursory survey
they signaled to the others to enter. We waited. As they entered through the
door, now opened wide, they formed a straight line in order to cover the
entire structure with their firepower. What followed next still gives me
nightmares. As the soldiers rushed into the house, their legs and bodies got
pierced by the spikes and they let out blood-curdling screams, calling out to
their mothers and each other. One or two even fired their guns without aim
and the bullets whizzed by us. We were momentarily frozen with fright but
the flying bullets galvanized us into action. We took aim and as planned
earlier, sprayed our bullets into the vague figures at two different angles.
The logic was that even if we missed their vitals, we would at least shatter
their legs incapacitating them for any further pursuit. After the initial burst,
we paused only long enough to insert new magazines and waited for any
reaction. There was none; so we quietly slid through a break in the bamboo
wall at the rear and ran. We ran and ran downhill until our breath stopped
and our hearts refused to beat any more. We rested for a while and groped
our way across a stream to the other side and waited there until dawn.
Throughout, neither of us said anything but we both knew that we were
thinking the same thing: to go back and see what damage we had done in
the night.
When the eastern sky lightened, it was Imli who voiced our thoughts. He
simply rose from the ground and said, ‘Let’s go’ and without saying
anything, I followed him. This time we chose to approach the farmhouse
from the direction of the wooded area, which would lead us to the back of
the structure. We made our way cautiously, halting every ten minutes or so
to check for signs of other patrols or even movements or sounds from
within the farmhouse. There were none. In the meantime it was almost
daybreak, so we increased our pace and crept on all fours towards the silent
derelict structure. We waited, but there seemed to be no sign of life. So we
stood up cautiously and peeped through the chinks in the bamboo wall. Five
bodies lay sprawled on the mud floor now turned black with their blood. We
turned to each other with shock and disbelief. The bodies lay near the
threshold of the dilapidated structure at grotesquely twisted angles. We
were shocked by the grisly scene and could not at first absorb the fact that
we had done that. We crept in through the same hole through which we had
fled the previous night and when we went closer, we saw that the bamboo
spikes had pierced their bodies at different places, instantly incapacitating
them so that our bullets had found sitting ducks. Slowly the enormity of
what we had done was beginning sink in and I felt dizzy. Just then, one of
the figures, lying a little behind the others, moved a little and moaned. It
was apparent that the spike had only gone into his shoulder and because he
was not in direct range of our fire, his injuries had not killed him instantly.
But he had lost a lot of blood and would soon die. Without a moment’s
hesitation, I lifted my gun and shot him in the head. After ascertaining that
they were all dead, we began to collect their arms and whatever ammunition
they had. In the process I had to turn a body, which had fallen on his gun
and in so doing, saw the face of the soldier. He was my age and the look of
pain and horror on his face seemed so real that I rushed out and vomited.
Imli had to extract his gun because I could not go into the hut again. The
scavenging completed, we pulled the structure down and set it on fire. Our
haul was heavy but we had to leave the area quickly, so we walked as fast
as we could not only for our safety but also to get away from the scene of
the horrible massacre perpetrated by us. And do you know? We were not
yet sixteen when we became such ruthless killers.’
The old man seemed to falter here; the grandson peered closer and saw
that he was crying silently. So he poured another cup of tea and offered it to
his grieving grandfather. The young boy did not understand why he should
be crying; after all they were enemy soldiers, weren’t they? But he dared
not say anything and waited for the old man to resume his story.
‘As luck or ill luck would have it,’ the old man started once more, ‘we
were captured by a patrol of the underground army who had come to the
area to ambush a convoy, which was supposed to be coming with supplies
for the troops. But it turned out that a bridge had been damaged and so the
entire convoy had returned to their base in the plains. They were, however,
very happy to relieve us of the arms and ammunition that we had looted and
took us once more to a camp in the jungle. The camp commander wanted to
know how we came to “procure” the guns. When we told them what we had
done, at first he laughed and looking at our faces, said that we were lying.
But then he recognized the arms as army issue and also the small rear-guard
scout party, which had just returned, confirmed our story by saying that
they had seen a farmhouse burning. He grudgingly admitted that there
might be some truth in our story. And so he concluded that if the soldiers
were indeed dead, the army would surely retaliate by launching an all-out
campaign to hunt down the perpetrators; so once more Imli and I found
ourselves marching deep into the jungle, this time with an unfriendly and
suspicious group.
We stayed with this group for almost a year and went on several ambush
missions. Sometimes we would go to intimidate unfriendly villagers by
firing in the air in the vicinity of the village and instilling fear into their
hearts, we would come away with much needed supplies for the group:
sacks of rice, livestock and, on a few occasions, toiletries too. I remember a
particular mission, when we inflicted heavy casualties on a small convoy of
four or five jeeps. We had taken positions on two opposite hillocks through
which the narrow road passed. As soon as the vehicles entered this passage,
we sprayed them with bullets from both sides of the road before any of the
bodyguards could even take up their weapons. I do not know how many
soldiers died or if anyone survived the assault at all. Such details were
becoming increasingly irrelevant to our way of thinking and it was only
when our side suffered casualties that we thought of the dead and the
wounded. Within a short period of time, Imli and I had become hard-core
rebels though we never thought of ourselves in those terms at all.
Our group never stayed in one location for long and we shifted camps
regularly. I remember our last mission because it was there that my leg was
injured. It was an important mission and except for the cook, the entire
group was involved. We were to attack a convoy, which was supposed to
include some of the interim Naga leaders who were negotiating a permanent
settlement within the framework of the Constitution of India. The
underground leadership considered this move as a betrayal of the Naga
Cause and decided to ‘take action’ against these traitors by mounting a
series of ambushes along the route of the convoy. The attacks were to be
carried by different groups, of which we were going to be the advance
group. If we failed, others would be waiting further along the way.
However, anticipating such a move, the authorities had sent patrolling
parties all along the route to ensure maximum security for the convoy. We
ran into one such party even before we reached our vantage point. A gun
battle followed and realizing that we were terribly outnumbered, we were
ordered to run into the jungle to seek shelter. Imli and I too began to run,
but before we could reach tree cover, a stray bullet hit me from behind and I
went down in a heap. As I fell to the ground, I shouted to Imli to leave me
and run to safety. In response, he simply caught the straps of my rucksack
and dragged me down a steep incline where we hid for the night. In the
morning, he went looking for our comrades, some of whom were dead, and
the others either injured or hiding in the jungle. In desperation he trekked to
a nearby farm and persuaded a terrified villager to come and help him carry
me to our hideout. It took us the best part of the day, but we eventually
made it there. The villager was, however, not allowed to enter the perimeter
and was sent off with warnings of dire consequences to the entire village if
he ever spoke about this to anyone.
The wound on my leg festered and it became obvious that unless I
received proper medical attention, gangrene would set in and I would die. It
was Imli who proposed that he would go to Mokokchung and negotiate our
surrender so that my injury could be treated properly. At first our
commander was reluctant, but when Imli pointed out that he would
approach the pastor first and request him to be the mediator, he saw that it
was a reasonable plan. After some hesitation, he allowed Imli to make the
necessary arrangements and after depositing our weapons and taking an
oath never to reveal anything about our activities, we left our jungle life
forever.
Along the way, some villagers helped us with food and even some pain
killers for my swollen leg when they saw my condition. It took us three
whole days to reach the pastor’s house and by that time I had given up all
hope of recovery. My wound had begun to smell, my body was beginning to
swell and I slipped into unconsciousness several times on the way. When
the pastor saw my condition, he immediately borrowed a contractor’s jeep
and took me to the civil hospital where an operation took place
immediately, The bullet that hit me had made a clean exit but in the process
had damaged some vital nerve points and the muscles around them, which
had to be removed. The doctor told them that because of this, I would
always walk with a limp and there would be intermittent spasms of pain.
But he assured them that I would live. It seems that I did not wake up from
the anesthesia for two whole days and Imli used to say that it was the only
time in his life that he experienced real fear. But I recovered only to find
that both Imli and I had to spend some time in the jail because ye had taken
up arms against the government of India and had to pay the price.
Yes, my dear boy, we did pay the price, but the prison term was the least
of it. We came back to the village as it was being reconstructed on the
ancient site. But by then many of our age were dead, as was Imli’s father,
some were maimed like me, and Toshi and many others had drifted away to
live on the fringes of society unable to lead normal lives because of the
trauma suffered during our careers as freedom fighters. If I have survived
and seem normal, it is because of the love and friendship of Imli and the
devotion of your grandmother who understood my secret pain and sustained
me with her unquestioning love. Our youth was claimed by the turbulence,
which transformed boys, like Imli and me into killers. Yes, we did kill many
people but the truth is that till today I cannot say how I feel about that,
which sometimes makes me wonder if I have turned into a monster.
However, among the many secrets that your grandfather Imli and I shared,
what I have just revealed to you was the most painful to bear because it was
a constant reminder of our lost youth.’
But there was another secret, he was saying to himself, which Imli and I
shared. The recollection of that incident never failed to fill him with awe
and wonder because it took him back to his innocent boyhood. Even now,
he could see the bouncing breasts and the darkness below of the young
woman, walking tall in broad daylight. And another throught occurred to
him only then: he and Imli had been so busy staring at certain areas of her
anatomy that they never once glanced at her face and therefore they had
remained ignorant of her identity! His wife’s explanation years later, was a
practical one: the human body was not a subject for speculation or
abstraction. The act of walking naked while the womans clothes dried did
not seem to his wife anything out of the ordinary. Old man Sashi now
thought to himself that he should have been telling his grandson about this
secret and chuckling over the ‘man-talk’ but instead, he found himself
explaining to him about that area of darkness in his life, which he had tried
so hard to wish away.
His ruminations over, he continued, ‘He used to tell me, “Sashi, we owe
it to them, and since you are a better story teller, you tell them.” I did not
agree with him, thinking that what happened to us then would be of no
relevance to the young of the land now who have not carried a load on their
heads and cannot go to the next village if there is no vehicle. But I was
wrong and I admit that now. I had to tell you this because it is the secret of
out lost youth and also because I realise that once in a lifetime one ought to
face the truth. Truth about the self, the land and above all, the truth about
history. I do not know if what I have just told you answers your question or
makes you understand your reasons for asking it. But there is nothing more
I can add. You have to make what you can from what I have tried to tell
you.’
So saying he went out to the bamboo platform at the back of the house.
Moa remained seated at the low stool near the fireplace. He heard his
grandfather clear his throat, blow his nose and pass water noisily and then
silence. He turned his head towards the platform, but could not see the old
man because the lingering darkness of the departing night hid him from
view. So he got up and went to see what his grandfather was doing. He
found him standing on the edge of the platform, looking at the bank of
white clouds shrouding the valley below, deep in thought. Moa went near
him and stood by his side. They heard cocks crowing in the distance and by
and by saw faint lights in some houses. Life was stirring in the village.
Their silhouettes were becoming dearer as darkness was giving way to a
misty haze. Sensing the grandson’s presence, old man Sashi put his arms
around the young boy’s shoulder and turned his face towards the eastern
sky now brightening with the light of a new dawn. And the earth continued
to be.
 The Journey

The squealing of a piglet which escaped to the main room where they were
sleeping awakened the young girl. It was still dark but she was already alert
because this was the day that she was returning to her boarding school. The
winter vacation of nearly two months seemed to have gone by very quickly
and she was feeling a little disturbed at the prospect of having to undergo
another drastic change of environment. She still remembered dearly each
detail of the journey which had brought her from the plains of Assam to her
village in the Naga Hills. After the journey from her school to the foothill
town of Mariani, she had spent the night in the loft of a kindly shopkeeper.
In the morning she saw the women of the group cooking rice and curry,
enough for two meals—one to eat before they set out, and another to be
eaten at noon when they reached the half-way point of their journey. The
rice that was cooked came from each member of the party because it was
the custom for villagers to carry sufficient provisions which would last
them for their journey. A large common pot, big enough to cook for the
group was carried by one member and every time they had to prepare a
meal, each one put in a cupful of rice from the store of rations they carried.
After a cold and restless night, the young girl was hungry and ate
voraciously. She wondered if her brother, too, had brought provisions or if
he had worked out some other arrangement with a distant cousin who was
with this particular group. The firewood required for cooking meals had
been gathered at the, foothills before the start of the journey. After the
morning meal, the party set off at a brisk pace in single file; every
member’s basket laden with salt, dry fish, soap, bottles of hair oil and even
kerosene oil for the lamps. These were purchased with the money they
earned by selling oranges, ginger, yam and at times special sticky rice. Such
journeys were possible only during the winter months because the many hill
streams and rivers that criss-crossed the terrain could only be traversed
when the water level was down, just knee deep at points. The villages
would cross in groups, holding one anothe’r s hands so that they did not get
swept away by the swift currents.
It was one such group that her brother had teamed up with when he came
to escort her from her school to the village. The early start ensured that the
travellers would reach home before sunset. She remembered again how her
brother, walking behind her, would urge her to walk faster, telling her,
‘Faster, faster, in the evenings tigers roam these jungles’. In spite of the
fearful prospect, she could not keep pace with the others and when they
reached the half-way mark on the banks of the Disoi river, the others were
waiting impatiently for their arrival. Some had even opened their leaf
packets of rice and curry, ready to start as soon as everyone arrived. Some
women from the group came over to the young girl and dropped some
pieces of meat on her leaf plate. As a result, she had a huge mound of rice
and many pieces of meat which she could not finish. When she was about to
throwaway the leftover food, her brother scolded her, ‘Don’t do that, pack
up everything and carry it in your bag.’ After they had eaten, they entered
the river. The water was knee deep for the adults but reached up to her
eyebrows! Her brother and another man hoisted her up, each putting his
hand under an armpit and safely carrying her to the other bank.
Soon after crossing the river, the road became steep, at first gradually but
from a certain point, almost perpendicular. It was more than the girl could
negotiate and she sat down on one of the stone steps and began to cry. The
others had already gone quite far ahead, so they did not see this. But the
brother was worried, he sat down with her for a while and soothed her,
pointing to the sun moving towards the west and telling her once again of
the dangers lurking in the jungle. He could not carry her even if he had
wanted to; he was carrying her tin trunk with a few of her belongings
inside. She remembered how she struggled over every step until, when the
sun had almost set, they reached the village. When she woke up the next
morning her feet were swollen enormously and for one whole week she
could not walk properly.
Now on this morning when she would have to make the same journey
again, cross the same river, and travel further either by train or bus to her
boarding school, she was full of misgivings. The racket created by the
piglet had awakened her aunt and she was trying to prod the huddled figures
wrapped in torn blankets asleep on mats on the floor. She got up first and
going to her tin case, checked that her favourite dress, which her cousin was
eying all winter, was there. In no time at all a simple meal was cooked by
her aunt and after eating this, the young girl and her brother stepped out of
the house to begin the journey back. Even though it was still dark, it was
imperative that they make this early start in order to get a connecting bus or
train to her school town.
If the journey up the hill was difficult, she found that climbing down the
narrow perpendicular steps cut into the hillside was equally difficult, if not
more dangerous. She was wearing a pair of shoes given to her by a senior at
the school hostel who was tired of them. This was the first decent pair of
shoes she had had since her parents died and she had been sent off to the
missionary school to continue her studies there. She was determined to
leave the village in style because they were not allowed to wear shoes at
school. But she soon realised how difficult it was to walk fast in a pair of
shoes a size larger than her feet. So she took them off and tying them
together with the laces, strung them around her neck like a garland. They
were now dangling at an awkward angle and adding to her woes. Seeing her
plight, a kindly woman who was travelling with them offered to carry the
shoes in her basket. Tinula was greatly relieved. After what seemed like
ages, they reached the plains and the journey became somewhat tolerable.
By now the sun was up and its rays were penetrating the thick foliage
creating an unbelievably beautiful landscape. She could hear the varied
tones of different birds flitting from the branches and calling out to each
other. But the travellers had no time to stop and look or listen to anything.
They had to keep up a steady pace, especially Tinula and her brother,
Temjenba, as they had to reach Mariani by four in the afternoon. At one
point, after the party negotiated a puddle by walking over a fallen log, they
came across a peculiarly shaped depression and fresh dung near it upon
which the rays of the afternoon sun shone directly. Tinula’s brother
exclaimed to the older woman, ‘Aunty, there must be elephants here. Look
at the trees, all the bark has been eaten up. And we really have to hurry. We
cannot wait here for the elephants to pass.’ The woman replied, ‘Do not
worry nephew, they have already crossed our route. Look at the break in the
forest to your left; they have gone to the other side away from our path.’
Tinula wondered how the old woman knew this, because, to her, the forest
looked the same everywhere.
Just like her journey to the village earlier, they ate their midday meal on
the bank of the almost dry river and once again Tinula was helped by her
brother and another man to cross the river. When they reached flatter land,
the direct rays of the sun began to burn into the young girl’s skin making
her feel thirsty and itchy. But she had to keep up with the others who had
increased their speed. Sometimes she found herself running to catch up with
them, afraid that some wild animal would spring out of the forest and
devour her.
The winter sun was almost setting when Tinula and her brother reached
the railway platform. There was no time to purchase tickets; so they simply
jumped onto the train and immediately it chugged out of the station. It was
one of those suburban trains which stopped at all kinds of stations,
sometimes to take in a single passenger and once or twice it stopped even
when there was no one. All this while she and her brother were standing,
holding on to the window frames to keep from falling. After some time
Tinula felt a tap on her shoulder; a man was pointing to a small space
beside him. She tried to sit but the space was so small that she had to turn
sideways to keep her bottom on the hard wooden plank of the seat. No
matter, she was grateful for the edge-hold and leaning her head on the wall
she began to doze off.
At one of the small stations when the train stopped for a little longer than
the earlier stops, Temjenba went out quickly and bought two singaras and
two ‘single’ cups of stale tea. ‘Single’ in tea stall jargon meant half a cup
served in a small earthen kullar to make it look full. The singara was cold
and the tea, too, did not taste like tea at all; but it was some food and Tinula
was grateful for that. After what seemed to be an endless jostling and
bumping, the train finally stopped at its last station called Farkating. It was
the station nearest to the boarding school. From here they had to travel still
further to reach it. But it was nearly midnight and the whole station area
was deserted. Even the station master was now locking up his little room of
an office. Holding up a hurricane lamp, he was looking this way and that to
ascertain that everything was in order. Temjenba was greatly worried; how
could they walk to the school, a distance of about three or four miles in the
middle of a dark winter night? He stood there for some time wondering
what to do next when, suddenly out of the darkness, a man approached him
asking where they were going. When Temjenba gave the name of the
school, the man replied, ‘I am going a little father but will pass by the
school. I can drop you and your sister right at the gate of the school.’ This
seemed like a boon from heaven itself and so, grabbing hold of Tinula’s
hand, he followed the kind man to a waiting car. In later years Tinula was to
realize that the ‘big’ car in which she and her brother had sat squeezed
tightly among the other passengers that night had been an Ambassador.
At the school, her brother first dropped the tin trunk over the top of the
gate, then hoisted Tinula over it, and finally jumped in himself. He then
proceeded towards the Superintendent’s bungalow. After much knocking,
the lady herself opened the door to her office. She was annoyed at first for
having been awakened at this unearthly hour but when she saw the
shivering duo, she quietly went inside and came out with a torch saying to
Temjenba, ‘You can go now.’ He merely nodded at his sister and without a
word retraced his steps towards the gate and the dark night.
The Superintendent took Tinula to the school infirmary which was
temporarily being used to keep latecomers overnight after the holidays.
Since there was no extra bed that night, she was allowed to share the one in
which her friend, Winnie, was sleeping. Tinula washed her feet as best as
she could and crept into the warmth of the bed where, very grudgingly,
Winnie made some space for her. She was struck immediately by not only
the warmth of the bed after her cold and long journey but also by the
softness of the sheets. She was suddenly reminded of her last night in the
village when she had had to fight for her share of the tattered blanket with
her cousins, and how she was awakened by the squealing of the piglet in the
early morning. The transition from that environment to this one seemed so
abrupt and incongruous that Tinula began to giggle to herself. This annoyed
Winnie so much that she shouted ‘Shut up’ in a loud voice provoking the
house-mother to scold them both, telling them to go to sleep quietly. For a
while, they kept quiet; and just when Tinula was about to fall asleep in the
cozy fold of the soft blanket with a warm body next to hers, Winnie said to
her out of the blue, ‘You know your boyfriend, Hubert, has a new girlfriend
now.’ The announcement was so sudden and so out of context that Tinula
was taken completely by surprise. She was just thirteen and to call Hubert a
‘boyfriend’ was, of course, fanciful thinking. They had merely exchanged
‘looks’ at church a few times, but being an outgoing sort of person Tinula
had once or twice mentioned his name and said that she found him ‘nice’.
In her heart of hearts she knew that nothing would come of this fancy but,
secretly, she did hope that he too had noticed her. The suddenness and the
tone in which Winnie said the words hurt her deeply, and in order to
camouflage her real emotions, Tinula started to giggle again until tears
came to her eyes and the giggles began to sound like muffled sobs. Winnie
lay inert on her side while the girl next to her continued heaving. She
wondered momentarily whether she was laughing or crying, but she really
did not care.
Today, if you ask her, Tinula cannot tell you with any certainty whether
she laughed or cried herself to sleep that night but it was a night that stayed
with her as the defining moment of a great transition. In many ways the
journey from her village to the school was traumatic enough but the veiled
antipathy of Winnies remark made her realise that the barriers of life are not
only the physical ones. If she felt any disappointment or even a little bit of
jealousy when she was told that a boy that she liked had found a new’
girlfriend’, she does not recall. What she recalls today is the deliberate
attempt to hurt revealed by the tone in which the news was broken to her.
She had always considered Winnie a good friend and was happy to meet her
after the holidays. But now she realized that a strange emotion had
overtaken her and was forcing her to look at the warm body lying next to
her in a different way. She wanted to leave the bed and go somewhere else.
But it was late and the Superintendent had gone back to her room. Besides,
what reason could she give for her request to sleep elsewhere? So she
simply turned her back and pretended to sleep, though her body continued
to shake for a long while.
Once in a while she wonders vaguely about what happened to a boy
called Hubert whom she had never met face to face. But she often
remembers a girl called Winnie and that unforgettable winter night, the girl
who forced a thirteen-year-old girl to embark on a different kind of journey.
 A New Chapter

Gradually the earth seemed to be settling down, as though after a

protracted period of violent storms that had ripped through her heart. Life in
the village seemed to regain some semblance of normality. People were
talking of sowing and planting crops in the fields as in the old days before
the upheavals. With fresh hope in their hearts, they were also talking of re-
building burnt down homes and granaries. Schoolchildren were seen
rummaging through the rubble of their homes to see if any book could be
salvaged as school buildings were now being repaired so that classes could
begin. Women were retrieving their weaving tools hidden away in jungle
storage places in order to begin weaving much-needed cloth for their
families. Menfolk examined their cutting implements, honing them on
sandy whetstones. They were preparing to begin clearing the forest of
young shrubs for the next jhum. They knew that the job would not be as
difficult as in the old days because the scorched earth had not yet had
enough time to replenish herself; the vegetation was young and consisted
only of tender saplings, which could be cleared without much effort. In the
old days such areas would have been allowed to lie fallow for at least nine
or ten years before the cycle was resumed. But the core of the earth had
changed forever in the last decade and they had no choice but to turn to her
ravaged body, to hurt her some more and extract whatever she could yield
to them from her depleted resources.
It was the mid-sixties in Nagaland and an uneasy surface calm prevailed.
People were beginning to take stock of what had so suddenly overturned
their quiet lives and changed every single man or woman in the land
forever. Slowly and painfully Nagas were beginning to look at themselves
through new prisms, some self-created and some thrust upon them. Those
who survived, learnt to adopt to the new trends and new lifestyles. Old
loyalties became suspect as new players emerged and forged makeshift
alliances in unfamiliar political spaces. But the battle lines remained the
same; the forces merely shifted their vantage points and re-invented their
strategies to accommodate the new equations. While the underground forces
retreated further into their jungle hideouts, the occupying army ensconced
itself in prime locations in towns and villages and built new fortified homes
away from home. Life in these enclaves appeared more or less normal, but
every now and then rumours of sophisticated weaponry being stealthily
brought into certain strategic locations during night curfew would float
around. However, after the initial fear and apprehension everyone would
fall back into their ‘normal’ routine of life. In the upper circles of society,
the rumour that the bigwigs were planning to add new recreational facilities
like a billiards table in the club and a golf course for the officers in the
Army Headquarters, created a temporary flurry of excitement among those
who hoped to enter that charmed circle. But when nothing came of this
particular rumour, it was back to business as usual.
But in order to justify the presence of the armed forces who were in
danger of their very lives in the ‘troubled’ area (not to speak of the many
perks they enjoyed for the ‘punishment posting’), it was necessary for them
to have ‘encounters’ with the rebel groups. These were sometimes genuine
but more often, not. The countryside would ring out with loud explosions
and then reports would filter in with inflated casualty figures and
announcements of capturing either members of the rebel groups or arms and
ammunition from their camps. Whatever be the truth, the army was here to
stay and they had to be housed and fed in a proper manner.
It was to procure ‘supplies’ for these army establishments that a new
class quickly emerged. They came to be known as army contractors who
now entered the space between the opposing factions and were poised to
make their fortunes from the spoils of war. They were often persons with
‘connections’ in the right places, both overground and underground. They
became the new factor in the hierarchy now evolving in Naga society in the
wake of the upheaval. These people had easy access to the army high
command and enjoyed privileges not available to ordinary civilians. For
example, they could purchase things from the Brigade canteen whenever
they liked including liquor at subsidised army rates. They got invited to
army and government parties and functions and were treated at par with
both army and civil officers. In short, these contractors were actually a new
class of Nagas, who emerged as the third force in the power equation
between the two warring armies. Both sides recognised their utility in their
game and used them unscrupulously.
Even among the contractors, it was the ones with big money who bagged
the headquarter contracts, while the second grade ones had to content
themselves with the outpost contracts. The latter had to travel to all the
outputs of the army and paramilitary forces with the ‘contracted’ supplies
on designated days in the week. When supplies from the plains did not
reach them on time, they scoured the adjoining villages for vegetables,
livestock and other items so that they could fulfil the terms of their contract.
Among this group of contractors there was a man called Bendangnungsang
who found himself plying this trade because he could not complete his
college education and did not want to settle for a clerical job in the
government. He came from a good family; all his brothers and sisters held
high government posts and he decided that if he could not be a ‘sahib’ like
his siblings, he would be the moneymaker of the family.
But his pretensions of being a big player in the money market were not
backed by any understanding or practical experience of ‘making’ money.
He started his business with capital borrowed from his father and began to
travel in the jeep that he owned, towing a trailer full of supplies for the
outposts. Several times he had to go to his own village to procure
vegetables and livestock to supply to outposts near the village. In the course
of such business trips, he got reacquainted with a distant cousin of his who
had a vegetable farm. This woman was a widow with two small children.
Since there was no man in the family, she was unable to cultivate rice
because this involved heavy work. That is how she came to have her field
of vegetables which became her sole means of earning a livelihood. After a
year or two of doing this, she decided to rear pigs as well. There was a
practical reason for this decision. Each time a crop of vegetables was sold,
there would be a mound of old leftover vegetables, unfit for selling, which
had to be thrown away. When neighbours started scrambling for these
scraps to feed their animals, she began to think of starting a piggery herself.
But she had to wait a few more years for her financial situation to improve
so that she could ask her brothers to help her build the sty and accompany
her to the nearby village to buy piglets. It was a struggle, but her efforts
were rewarded within two years. The twin ventures were complementary:
the pigs were reared on the unsaleable vegetables while the vegetables
thrived beautifully on manure supplied by the animals. Life had started to
get just a wee bit more comfortable for the widow and her sons.
When Nungsang, as everyone called him, came to the village looking for
supplies, he opened a new market for Merenla’s produce. Apart from
buying vegetables, he also brought a few pigs from her, for which he paid in
cash. Seeing how much they needed each other’s business, Nungsang began
to advise her on the kind of vegetables she should cultivate. He even bought
seeds for her when any new vegetable was introduced in the farm.
But things were not working out as well as Nungsang had thought. He
discovered that the approved rates of his contract were often at par with
what he paid his suppliers and sometimes even higher because he had to
keep to his commitment and make his deliveries on time. Also, the items
had to be in strict compliance with the terms of the contract. After the first
six months, he realised that he was not making any profit at all. He was in a
real quandary; all his dreams of making easy money were evaporating right
before his eyes as he delivered live goats and pigs, called ‘meat-on-hoof’ in
contract parlance, at an increasing loss. The fish that came from the plains
often rotted before delivery and got rejected as a result. There were times
when carton after carton of fruit had to be thrown away because their
contents were in less than perfect condition. If he continued in this fashion,
his business would be wiped out even before completing the first year. And
all his secret dreams of competing for the prime Headquarter supplies
contract would remain just that. Now he would have to borrow more money
to payoff the mounting debts owed to the petty suppliers whom he had to
beg and cajole to let him have their goods on credit. Nungsang realized that
he had to somehow dig himself out of this hole if he hoped to compete for
next year’s contract. He knew that there was a method to this. His friends in
the same trade seemed to be making good money while he found himself on
the verge of being wiped out in the very first year of his contract. He
decided to swallow his pride and ask one of them the secret of his success.
The person he decided to approach was simply known as Bhandari and
his was an extraordinary story of achievement. He belonged to a
community that had been given land in the town in recognition of their
service to the British army during the great wars. His grandfather had been
rewarded thus, as were many others who raised generations of families in
the alien land, which had now become their ‘home’. This man had started
out as a handyman in a rich man’s household, learnt to drive and was soon
driving for him. Within a few years he bought an old jeep, left his job and
began to travel to the plains to bring supplies for the shopkeepers in town.
After some time he bought a secondhand Land Rover for himself from a tea
planter and hired a driver to take him around. This vehicle was his most
prized possession—no one was allowed to touch it. In his usual uncouth
way, he would joke that asking for his Rover, even for a few hours, was
more offensive than borrowing his wife for the night! When the army
contract boom began, he became one of the first to bag the prestigious
Headquarter contract and seemed to be doing extremely well. Nungsang
and he had been drinking and card-playing cronies for many years now and
it was to him that the hapless contractor turned for advice and tips on how
to turn his business around.
The very next evening Nungsang went to his house. Bhandari had been
engaged in this new business for barely five or six years but he was
obviously doing very well. His children were now studying in boarding
schools in Shillong and he had also constructed a new R.C.C. building in
place of his old home. After the initial inanities, Nungsang brought out the
bottle of Scotch he had brought and they sat down to an evening of ‘paploo’
with some other cronies who were already there. Throughout the evening,
Bhandari noticed that Nungsang was restless, he did not seem to be
enjoying his drink nor was he really interested in the card game. Sensing
that his friend was in trouble, he managed to send away the others saying
that he had to discuss something important with his friend. After the others
left he asked Nungsang what was troubling him. Bhandari listened to his
friend’s tale of woe and, smiling cryptically, said, ‘All you educated people
are such bloody fools’. Then, he continued in Hindi, ‘Tumlog bahut
imandari dikhane mangta hai aur contract me jo likha hai wohi deta hai,
na?’ Nungsang was dumbfounded. He exclaimed, ‘What do you mean?’
Bhandari merely gave him a pitying look and brought out pen and paper. He
made two columns and began to write. Parallel to the approved items, he
put the names of alternatives; for example, in the place of meat-on-hoof he
wrote pumpkins, squash and gourd. For fresh fish, he indicated dried fish;
in place of apples and mangoes he wrote pears and plums, available in
abundance locally during the season. Nungsang was dumbfounded; he said
that the N.C.O. in-charge would never accept these substitutions. Bhandari
clicked his tongue in exasperation and again spoke in Hindi, (he had studied
only up to class VI and did not speak much English) ‘Aare, budhu, turn kya
sochta hai? Yeh tender ka item officer logo ke liye hai, aur baki chize
jawano ke liye. Yeh jo mera ghar bana he na, meat-on-hoof se nahi, kadu
lauki se bana.’ Nungsang was still skeptical, how would be convince the
Subedar Major to accept substitutes for the genuine articles? Seeing the
naivete and helplessness on Nungsang’s face, Bhandari offered to
accompany him on his next supply trip to the outpost.
On the appointed day, the two contractors carried a bottle of Scotch and a
roasted chicken. Before the supplies were unloaded, Bhandari introduced
himself and invited the N.C.O. to sit down for a drink and a chat. It so
happened that this man was from Bhandari’s own community and
immediately a bond was struck. They began to speak in their own language;
at first the other man seemed to be protesting but eventually he seemed to
calm down and a deal was struck. For a considered sum, he would accept
substitutes twice a month, but he also cautioned them that if the fraud ever
came to light he would plead ignorance and say that he was coerced into
accepting the unauthorized items. Mission accomplished, the supplies were
unloaded, the invoices duly certified and signed, and the two friends left the
camp after shaking hands with the slightly dazed officer.
A different phase of business thus began for this new entrant to the field.
He began to buy more pumpkins than livestock and the local vegetable and
fruit sellers began to bring their produce to his doorstep, vying with each
other for his trade. By the financial year-end, he managed to break even and
the new year’s contract was once again awarded to him. The list of
substitutes now included dry fish also. So he went to a dry fish wholesaler
named Abdul Sattar, who had a stall in the new market recently constructed
by the Town Committee, and made a deal with him. Nungsang would make
an initial deposit of Rs 2,000 and he would be able to take other
consignments on credit until he received his monthly payment. So in place
of fresh fish, the outpost jawans had to eat the stinking dry fish twice a
month. Of course, the officers in the same camp got their normal quota of
fresh meat and fish throughout the month.
When he visited the village after a gap of a few months, he discovered
that Merenla’s pigs had grown quite big; so he bought two of them and
supplied them to the camp because it was Durga Puja time and he could not
risk the prospect of the jawans’ complaints by depriving them of their
favourite meat during the festivities. Nungsang was becoming ‘savvy’ in
the ways of the world and began to make a good profit through this network
of fraudulent substitution. Emboldened by the success of this, he began to
manipulate the contract in other ways too. When he first began his supply
business, he was very prompt in paying his various suppliers on time. But
now he stopped doing this and it was only when their frequent visits to the
house became a source of friction with his wife that he would dole out the
payments, sometimes only half of what he owed, and threaten them that he
would take his business to others who would not pester him so. He actually
did this to Abdul Sattar, the dry fish dealer, because one day he refused to
accept a part payment and said that if Sahib did not clear his account, he
would complain to the Town Committee Chairman. Nungsang became
incensed and abused him and almost threw him out of the house. The next
day he went to the market and negotiated terms with another dealer named
Karim who had a stall right next to Sattar’s. It was his way of showing him
what he could do to those who objected to his capricious business dealings.
The fruit seller who sold him mangoes and bananas, which Nungsang
supplied for the officers, was not paid anything for months on end, though
he had on two occasions tried to meet him at home, unsuccessfully. After
seeing what happened to Sattar, no one now dared to ask the contractor for
payment. Right before their eyes, this member of a prestigious family of the
town, who seemed so decent and friendly in the beginning was turning out
to be a common bully. Not only would he not clear his outstanding bills, he
would insist on taking more stuff on contract from them with veiled threats
of dire consequences. These petty traders had no choice but to endure the
injustice because Nungasang’s brother-in-law was a First Class Magistrate
in the Deputy Commissioner’s office who could instantly cancel their Inner
Line Permits on some pretext or the other and then they would be thrown
out of the town.
While this was the reality behind Nungsang’s apparent success as a
contractor, hidden eyes in the jungle were closely monitoring his comings
and goings along with the other contractors. The cost of the new weaponry
needed to combat the Indian army was enormous and the ‘collections’ from
the general population were nowhere near the mark. The supposed lucre of
this new band of players in the emerging economic front presented itself as
a new source of ‘revenue’ for them. They had already extracted sizeable
sums from the headquarter contractors. Nungsang somehow got wind of
this and began to plan a counter move. Through his contacts he learned that
the area commander of the region where he plied his trade was an old high
school classmate. He sent word through the grapevine that he wished to
meet him. On the appointed day, which happened to be a regular supply
day, Nungsang finished his job in the outpost earlier than usual and on the
return trip, took his jeep into a disused road and waited patiently. Towards
dusk, hearing stealthy footsteps he became alert and, at the same time, a bit
anxious wondering if he had made a mistake in trying to manipulate these
people and whether he had landed himself in real danger. As he was
thinking these thoughts, suddenly, out of nowhere, half a dozen armed men
surrounded his jeep and motioned for him to step out. In the dim twilight he
could not make out their features, but he had the distinct impression that the
soldiers were very young. After a little while, his old classmate Wati came
out of the shadows and solemnly the two shook hands. He then dismissed
his guards who melted away into the gathering darkness but Nungsang
knew that they would be keeping vigil from previously selected vantage
points. Left alone, these two old friends became more relaxed, Nungsang
brought out a bottle of Scotch and two glasses and they began to discuss
‘business’. He tried to convince the commander that his business was not
doing as well as that of the town contractors and that if he had to pay the
underground outfit the same percentage, he would be totally ruined.
Couldn’t the classmate suggest a way out? At first the wily jungle man
would not commit himself to anything. Nungsang continued to plead his
case. When the booze hit the halfway mark, the other man began to ask the
contractor about his brothers and sisters. Nungsang immediately sensed that
there was a catch somewhere in the inquiry because the underground outfit
knew everything about everybody in town, especially those in government
service. However, he went along with the other’s ploy and gave all the
details of his siblings and where they were posted. The jungle man began
with the preamble that he himself could not do anything about condoning
Nungsang’s ‘dues’ to his government, but there might be a way to work out
a deal if he promised to do something important for his boss. He then went
on to explain that the boss’s eldest son was a college dropout and was
becoming a nuisance to his mother in town. If he were inducted as a clerk in
any government department, his boss would be eternally grateful to
Nungsang and he would then ensure that the underground ‘tax collectors’
would not bother him as long as he and his boss remained in-charge of the
area. It seemed that even in the parallel ‘government’ set-up of the
underground, transfers of ‘officers’ were a routine policy matter.
Nungsang was taken aback. This line of negotiation had never occurred
to him and now he began to think fast. He said that since the authorities in
Nagaland knew the names of all the bigwigs in the underground, it might be
difficult to find a job for the son of his boss. The other man quickly
countered this by saying that the father’s name could be changed and better
still, the name of his village, too, could be changed. The discussion went on
for some time until Nungsang came up with the suggestion: why not send
the son to Assam where one of his brothers, the older one in the Border
Areas Department, and the other in the Police, could find him a placement?
The other man thought for a while and agreed to place this suggestion
before his boss. Before parting, Nungsang brought out another bottle of
liquor and handed it to his classmate along with a carton of cigarettes and
some bundles of ‘bidi’. The jungle man simply nodded his thanks and
walked away telling Nungsang that he should expect to hear back within the
week.
Business continued as usual for Nungsang. He continued to supply his
lowly vegetables in place of ‘meat-on-hoof’ twice a month having
successfully carried off this trick so far, even three times one month! But
the Subedar Major put his foot down and the wily contractor was forced to
fall in line. Two weeks had already passed since his meeting in the jungle,
yet there was no news from his classmate. Meanwhile stories of forcible
‘tax collections’ not only from townspeople but also from villagers were
being heard more frequently. On his next visit to the village, he found
Merenla in a dejected state. She told him that one day a gang of armed men
had entered their village and taken away large quantities of rice and other
foodstuff from several houses in the village including livestock like goats
and pigs, her prize sow being the biggest among them. Angrily, she added
that one of the men had laughed when he saw her pumpkins on the bamboo
platform in the back of the house and that before leaving he had smashed a
few with his rifle butt saying, ‘Let this be your meat aunty, ours have four
legs. By way of consoling her Nungsang bought the rest of the pumpkins
and paid her in cash. Walking away from her house, he somehow felt good
that he was able to do a good turn to someone in distress. On his way to
town, he unloaded the consignment in the outpost despite the protests of the
Subedar Major who complained that his whole camp was beginning to
smell of rotten pumpkins now. Nungsang ignored him and went on his way.
He was driving slowly, lost in thought, when suddenly some young boys
appeared in the middle of the road and ordered him to stop. He was
frightened. Though the boys wore ordinary clothes, there was a different air
about the way they stood and looked at him. After parking his jeep on the
side of the road, Nungsang got down and, as calmly as he could, asked them
what the matter was. They simply motioned for him to walk towards a
jungle path, one leading the way and the others following behind. After
about fifteen minutes or so, they came to a secluded spot in the bush where
Nungsang saw his classmate. As soon as the scouts were dismissed, the
other man told Nungsang that his boss had agreed to his suggestion, but that
he did not want his son to join any security force, police or otherwise.
Nungsang explained that the matter might take some months and that the
young boy should report to him immediately so that he could be sent to
Shillong to await his appointment. After settling this deal and assuring
Nungsang that he would not be bothered about ‘taxes’ the jungle man
brought out a gift for his classmate: a special kind of fish found only in a
certain river in the Ao territory, cooked in a bamboo container. Nungsang
was deeply touched and thanked him profusely. This fish had become a
rarity now as all the rivers had been indiscriminately bombed or bleached to
catch them. He had often described the exotic taste of this fish to his wife
but she refused to believe him until she tasted it herself. Now, here was an
opportunity to prove to her that he was not exaggerating.
Nungsang had been anticipating a meeting of this kind when no message
had come to him for weeks. So in order to be prepared for such an
eventuality, he had kept a parcel for his classmate in the jeep. It contained
two pairs of jungle boots, woollen vests and stockings, insect repellants and
the inevitable liquor and cigarettes. After saying goodbye to his classmate,
he asked the scouts to follow him to the jeep and sent the package to the
waiting man in the jungle. Carrying the fish cooked in a bamboo container,
he started his jeep and proceeded towards town and home. While the
immediate problem of paying ‘taxes’ to the leader had been held off, he
knew that he had to invoke filial loyalties in the strongest terms if he were
to succeed in keeping his part of the bargain. He had to somehow convince
his father first, for only through his influence would his brother agree to
such a deal. He knew his own family and was confident that though there
would be the initial shocked response, they would come through for him,
because he was considered to be the odd one out who had missed his
opportunities in life and in their own individual ways, they all felt sorry for
him. As he had anticipated, his father was at first furious: how could he
commit himself to such a treacherous deal with the underground people?
What would his brother say? Had he forgotten that they were all
government servants? He flatly refused to do anything about the proposition
and stopped talking to the son for one whole week but Nungsang worked on
his mother’s sentiments. Though he knew that there was no immediate
danger to him because both he and his classmate had agreed that finding a
berth for the boy in any government office would take time, he pretended
otherwise and stayed at home saying that he was afraid to go out on his
usual business trips. He knew that his mother would panic because there
were enough instances of people being killed for failing to comply with the
demands of the underground and no one was immune to the general fear
psychosis. This factor and the mother’s constant allusions to the threat to
her son’s life finally overcame the proud government pensioner’s resistance.
Though plagued by a sense of guilt, the reluctant father allowed the boy to
be sent to his eldest son and wrote a letter saying that unless he found a job
for him, his younger brother would face dire consequences. The brother,
too, was thus drawn into the manipulation and with the help of a fellow
officer, the boy was appointed a clerk in another department after having to
wait for two months. Nungsang was greatly relieved but it never occurred to
him to even think for a moment what it must have cost his father to make
this compromise nor what his brother had to do to procure the job. Only
years later when Nungsang heard that the clerk, now a head assistant, was
married to his classmate’s daughter, he thought to himself that he was not
the only manipulator.
Though the business was now ‘picking up’, thanks to the various
manipulations he had become an expert at, the years of being a mere
contractor were beginning to take a toll on Nungsang. Though he still
hobnobbed with people like Bhandari, he had always harboured notions of
his own superiority over people like him who came from nondescript
backgrounds. He began to dream of a better future: he decided that haggling
with dry fish dealers and fruit vendors and going to the appalling livestock
‘mahals’ to buy the twice-monthly rations of meat-on-hoof was not going to
be his permanent vocation in life. Bhandari and his kind could keep all such
contracts for all he cared. But for Nungsang, the son of a prestigious family,
there had to be something much higher than this work, which he
increasingly thought of as demeaning and much below his status. Why, he
said to himself, he was no better than the Abdul Sattars and Karims of the
world! But the question was, what else could he do? With this inner
dissatisfaction distracting him all the time, he began to drink more, became
irritable at home and even more belligerent with the foolhardy creditors
who came to the house to press for payment and were unceremoniously
chased off the premises with abusive words ringing in their ears. The only
consolation he had was that in spite of his growing dissatisfaction with his
trade, he was able to build a decent house for his family on a plot of land
given to him by his father. Outwardly, of course, Nungsang was his old
swaggering self at parties, drinking hard and at times boasting about his
family background. The parties that he threw at home were becoming more
boisterous and sometimes he went to the extent of saying that he had the
most beautiful wife in town as if that was a ‘qualification’ of sorts, much to
the mortification of the young girl he had married, who was aware of his
inner turmoil.
In the meantime, the political affiliations in the state were veering away
from the idealists. Nagaland had become a state of the Indian union, the
first Legislative Assembly was in place and it became apparent that
Nagaland was now working its way to becoming a part of the much-
vaunted ‘mainstream’ politics of the country. After two years of his
election, an MLA died, creating a vacancy and necessitating a bye-election.
This was just the kind of opportunity that Nungsang was looking for. He
once again went to Bhandari and broached the subject. At first, Bhandari
was simply amused but later dismissive about Nungsang entering the
political arena. He said, ‘What do you know about politics?’ and reverting
once again to Hindi, he continued, ‘Tumko kaun vote dega? Tumhara party
kiya hai? Ruling party ne to aur kisiko chun liya he.’ It was indeed true that
Merennungba had already been chosen as the nominee of the party in power
and his campaign had been launched with much fanfare only the day before.
But Nungsang was adamant. He tried to convince Bhandari that as the new
group of influence makers, if they had a representative in the Assembly,
they would become more powerful and this would help them gain a
stronger foothold in the new economy of the state. This made sense to
Bhandari but he was still unsure about Nungsang’s candidature. They
debated long into the night and recognising the near desperation in his
friend’s arguments, his long-time crony promised to convene a meeting of
all the contractors the next day to enlist their endorsement and financial
support.
The meeting, which was held in Bhandari’s house, continued till late in
the evening. While some people initially made fun of Nungsang’s ambition
openly, others began to see certain merits in the proposal. Bhandari recited
what Nungsang had said in their private meeting the night before as though
the idea was his own. Nungsang was at first surprised at the
misrepresentation that his wily friend had just uttered but he let it ride
because it was going to work in his favour. Bhandari tried to convince his
fellow businessmen that they should grab this opportunity of sending one of
their own to the seat of power in the state and added that among the
contractors there was no better candidate than Nungsang because of his
family connections. After some more deliberation, at around ten that night,
the contractors adopted a momentous resolution: they would sponsor
Nungsang as their candidate for the Assembly and he would run as an
independent candidate and if elected, would try to join the ruling party. The
big question now was finding the funds. Being businessmen, they decided
to approach the business community of the town and raise as much money
as they could; the rest, they said, would be the candidate’s lookout. In the
list of businessmen, they included even the petty shopkeepers and suppliers
like Abdul Sattar and Karim. The irony was that Nungsang owed these
people considerable sums, but now they found themselves compelled to
contribute towards his campaign! They could do nothing about this except
pay up. And on such a note a new chapter of this contractor’s life began.
The family was, at first, like Bhandari, dismissive about Nungsang’s
prospects and bluntly refused to have anything to do with a mad-cap
venture like running for an Assembly seat, which they thought was already
in the pocket of the official candidate. Knowing Nungsang and his
limitations they thought that he would not find many supporters even if the
funds were somehow managed. But when certain disgruntled sections of the
ruling party began to lend covert support to the independent candidate, they
too began to have second thoughts and even to secredy relish the prospect
of their brother becoming an M.L.A., which was a much more respectable
thing than being a mere contractor. The father was initially non-committal;
but when he saw the gradual build-up of support for his son, he decided that
the family should be actively involved. He told his other children that
Nungsang had a real chance of being elected and if that were to happen, it
would greatly enhance the family’s prestige. Besides, since Nungsang had
set his heart on this venture and needed his family’s support, each one
should contribute towards the campaign fund, just like they used to do when
one of them was going for a training, an interview or getting married. For
this family, prestige was of utmost importance and they were disciplined
into thinking that no price was too high if it bought them this prize. And
now the father had decreed that each one come up with a sizeable sum
towards the campaign fund to push the family oddball onto a seat in the
Legislative Assembly.
So the stage was set for the big fight between the ruling-party
heavyweight and the independent minnow. The new house that Nungsang
had recently built became overnight a bustling hub of strange activities.
People came in and out of it at all hours of the day and night. An amateur
rock band suddenly appeared one morning pledging eternal support for the
candidate and said that they would liven up the whole atmosphere with their
music. They appropriated the empty space on the front verandah and set up
their motley assortment of guitars and a drum set and a local garage owner
lent his truck battery for the sound system to tide over the regular power
cuts. From the word go they emitted loud shrieks and discordant sounds
from their musical instruments, drowning out all other sounds, but everyone
tolerated their efforts at making music in good humour. A makeshift kitchen
suddenly sprang up in the backyard because Nungsang’s wife refused to
cook the big meals required for the ever-growing crowd of freeloaders. In
this public kitchen, a distant cousin took charge of things. He was assisted
by two hefty relatives: their size proving to be an effective deterrent to
many of the rowdies, who after tasting the plentiful supply of free liquor in
both the camps, would sometimes create havoc here. The public kitchen
sometimes remained open way past midnight when the slightly tipsy cousin
would signal to his muscle men to douse the roaring fire with buckets of
water. The loud hissing of the dying embers was the signal that cousin-cook
was retiring for the night.
The scenario in the house resembled a ‘mela’ gone haywire but,
fortunately, there were no major mishaps. The canvassing, spearheaded by
Bhandari and five other young contractors, was achieving the desired result:
many young people and neutrals among the older generation were being
converted to Nungsang’s cause. The campaign, now stretching to almost a
month, was doing well. But an unexpected event suddenly put a damper on
the progress: four days before campaigning was to be over, the other camp
took out a procession through the town, shouting slogans, beating drums
and some were even seen taking swigs from bottles. The whole town came
out to watch the seemingly endless vehicles carrying hundreds of supporters
of the rival candidate. Nungsang’s camp was caught unawares. The workers
and supporters became disheartened by the sheer number of riders and their
vociferous and very visible show of support to the other candidate. With no
previous experience, nor new ideas about the ways of an election campaign,
the chief agents were concentrating solely on meeting people in their homes
and soliciting their votes for Nungsang, while the public kitcken took care
of the general feeding of those avowed supporters who continued to flock to
the open house. But Bhandari, the main organiser of the campaign,
remained calm amidst the general gloom and set about countering whatever
effects the opposition procession had had on the general public as well as
their own workers. He decided that they, too, would take out a procession
and immediately went to work: He called up his associates in town, who
had trucks, and requested them to lend him the use of their vehicles for a
procession the very next day. Even jeep owners were not spared.
Among the younger contractors was a boy called Imrong, who thought
that their procession should do something different to wipe out whatever the
previous procession might have accomplished. He went to Bhandari and
explained his idea to him. The older man listened intendy and immediately
understood. But, he asked, what could be done in a few hours to achieve
what Imrong proposed? Imrong replied that he required a few items: a large
quantity of white long cloth, several dozen boxes of fabric paint, jute ropes
and bamboo poles of specific sizes and lengths. Then he inducted a few of
his friends into this group and declared that they would work all night to get
the job done. But there was a rider; his group needed peace and quiet, so the
band had to be dismissed by six in the evening. The self-styled musicians
were not amused, but had to comply with the request of the main campaign
agent and so, muttering obscenities under their breath, they reluctantly went
home.
What Imrong planned was to paint symbols and slogans on the white
cloth and decorate each truck with a number of these, while smaller pieces
would be made into flags. Ail would carry Nungsang’s election symbol: a
beautiful hornbill. It seemed like an impossible task to accomplish in the
few hours they had. But they had reckoned without Imrong’s genius; he was
a self-taught artist and had quite a reputation as an accomplished painter of
signs and landscapes. The boys that he brought with him were all amateur
artists. Ail night this dedicated band of painters worked under Imrong’s
instructions; from time to time Nungsang’s wife brought them soup, tea,
coffee and other savoury tid bits. From the public kitchen came a special
dinner brought in by the two assistants. When they entered the room and
saw what the boys had created, they almost dropped the trays of food, so
awestruck were they by the beauty that lay before their eyes. They lovingly
caressed the hornbills on the many flags and banners, murmuring to each
other; ‘so, this is what it looks like.’ By the early hours of the morning, the
house was strewn with the banners and flags hung up to dry with the image
of the legendary bird beaming from every conceivable space. Anyone who
entered the room instinctively felt that this symbol, so beautiful and life-
like, was the harbinger of a new force which would rejuvenate the flagging
spirits of the tired campaigners, especially after the ‘coup’ of the procession
mounted by the opposition.
By early morning, Bhandari came in with his band of campaigners. When
he saw what Imrong and his friends had accomplished overnight, he too,
was awestruck. He knew then that the proposed procession would be the
clincher and began to think of making it into a huge statement for the voting
public. Then he recalled how the riders in the trucks had been seen drinking
and behaving rowdily and decided that their procession would project a
sober and civilized image instead. He called all the supporters and
instructed them that mixed groups of old and young people must fill the
vehicles during the rally and that they must all remain completely sober. No
drunken and disorderly behaviour was going to be tolerated during the
procession. For adding more grandeur, he persuaded a few of the elders to
wear full traditional dress with headgear and in each truck made one such
personage stand prominently as the centrepiece flanked by the younger
people. Each vehicle would be packed to capacity. He and the other
campaign organisers would ride in jeeps, which would follow the trucks.
There would be no drum-beating or indiscriminate shouting: they would
shout only ‘vote for’ at strategic locations and orchestrate them in such a
way that the shouts would be relayed from the first vehicle to the last at ten-
minute intervals.
 As planned, the procession started from the compound at exactly 2 p.m.
on a sunny afternoon, just forty-four hours before the end of campaigning.
The trucks, all spruced up for the event, held orderly groups of young and
old, bearing beautiful banners and flags. The pace was sedate and the shouts
regular and well orchestrated. The townspeople, having witnessed the other
show were at first puzzled; but as the procession made its way through the
main streets of the town, more and more people came out to watch this new
spectacle and stood rooted to their spots. They had never seen such
disciplined behaviour. They remembered the other procession; the shrieks
and the drunks hanging out of the vehicles, bottles in hand. There had been
nothing beautiful in that earlier event.
After nearly two hours of orderly progression through the town, the
triumphant procession returned to camp and had a rip-roaring party past
midnight. Apart from the orderliness of human behaviour in the procession,
what remained vivid in the minds of the townspeople was the mesmerizing
sight of the magnificent birds fluttering from the banners and flags
festooned on the slow-moving vehicles. Even years later, older people
recalled that the sight of the legendary birds stirred something elemental in
their racial memory and they fancied that the birds had descended from
their lofty perches in the deep and dark jungles and had come to participate
in the political parade with a clear message for the people. They claimed
that their votes were swayed by the impact made by the sight of this
ancestral symbol. It was indeed a fortuitous coincidence for Nungsang that
he was allotted this symbol by the election office for he had had nothing to
with it. But for many voters it was the defining factor in his favour rather
than any new-fangled political ideology, which they did not understand
anyway.
Election day came and as a precautionary measure, truckloads of casual
labourers were brought from building and road construction sites as
‘additional’ voters who were instructed to put their signs on the hornbill.
While they were waiting for their turn, one of them said aloud, ‘Why do we
have to put our signs only on the bird?’ Immediately, someone from the line
retorted, ‘With this kind of money, drinks and a free meal, I would put my
sign even on a snake if that was the instruction.’ The group leader, who was
all the time moving up and down the line to ensure that the boys behaved
and did as they were told, heard the exchange and moved closer to the
group. Lowering his voice, he spoke to them in their own language; ‘Do as
you have been instructed. Put your sign on the bird and only on the bird. If
anyone disobeys, we will find out immediately and you know what will
happen then.’ Cautioning them to be quiet, he began his pacing once more.
The labourers knew ‘what would happen’ if they did not do as instructed
and stood meekly in their positions. When the turn of this bunch came, the
Polling Officer suddenly got up from his seat and declared that he had to go
to the toilet urgently and disappeared. His assistant, a young clerk
temporarily inducted into the job, was quite nervous and forgot to scrutinize
the slips of paper held by these outsiders in order to verify whether they
were genuine voters or not, and allowed them to go inside the booths. All of
them pur their signs on the hornbill staring at them from the ballot paper.
Afterwards they were taken to the public kitchen in the candidate’s house,
given liquor and food and the merry bunch then went back to their
worksites richer by fifty rupees.
Counting day came amidst half-hearted claims and counter claims of
irregularities, which, of course, were not entertained by the Returning
Officer. When the final tally was taken, it was clear that Nungsang had won
by a decent margin. After two days of more feasting and merry-making, the
public kitchen was dismanded and the cousin and his bouncers were paid
handsomely for their services. The musicians packed their frayed
instruments and after haggling over their rewards, went home, still
grumbling about some people’s insensitivity to good music and their
miserliness. Imrong, the creator of the beautiful birds won praise from
many people, even from some in the rival camp who said that it was the
bird that won the votes for Nungsang. But from the winner, Imrong got only
a vague promise of distant rewards, which was of course promptly
forgotten. For Bhandari and his select coterie, the rewards for their
contribution would come later, in many different ways. Bhandari was
willing to wait; he would demand his ‘pound of flesh’ at the appropriate
moment. He would press the new Legislator to spearhead the introduction
of a bill to recognise his tribe as an indigenous group in the state.
The next evening, the select group led by Bhandari came to the new
M.L.A.’s house for a celebratory party. But by then fatigue had set in and
both guests and hosts were beginning to feel the effects of the hectic
campaign, which had just ended. They were in no mood for a prolonged
party. After a few drinks, they went off, leaving Nungsang and his wife with
a few hangers-on. Unlike other nights, everyone dispersed by eleven
o’clock and the house too seemed to shut itself down. The sudden silence
after the noise and confusion of earlier nights seemed to create an air of
unreality all round and without saying much to each other, the M.L.A. and
his wife went to bed.
Nungsang’s term as a contractor was coming to an end and he gave
Bhandari the power-of-attorney so that he could wind up the business on his
behalf. Thus ended a chapter in the life of the man who, in search of an
identity, had gone into business because it was the only course left to a
person with his credentials. This new venture, too, was undertaken with the
same purpose. The whirlwind campaign and the ease with which he seemed
to have made the transition impressed many observers. But little did they
know of the many casualties he had left by the roadside on his way to the
House. The moment his candidature was announced, his sub-contractors
began to fear the worst: at the best of times they never got full payments,
and now if he got elected, they could forget all their pending bills. And after
the results were declared, their fears were confirmed and they sadly closed
that chapter in their ‘khatas’. But what really galled them was the fact that
they had to give, not donations but subscriptions, on the directive of the
Contractors’ Union, to the campaign fund of the man who had strung them
along on false assurances for years. Being shrewd businessmen however,
they recognised the importance of this emerging group as the new force in
the power structure of the state and with an eye to their own survival they
complied without a murmur. So the Abdul Sattars, Karims and many other
petty suppliers of the market were left licking their wounds while the newly
elected Member made preparations to go to Kohima for the oath taking and
formal induction to the House.
For Merenla of the pumpkins, it was quite another story. Ever since she
had entered into an agreement with Nungsang to supply him as many
pumpkins as she could grow, she had planted only this crop in much of her
field season after season. The villagers were amused at first, but when they
saw her doing this year after year and earning good money for her efforts,
they began to call her pumpkin Merenla. In the beginning, this soubriquet
did not bother her; she rather liked it because the pumpkins were indeed
bringing her good money. But from the moment she heard that Nungsang
was aiming for higher things in life, she had begun to worry, for unlike
other years, this season, she not only planted pumpkin seeds in her own
field but she even leased a portion of her neighbours land to do the same.
By the time the election result was known, Merenla’s pumpkins were
rapidly turning from green to yellow in the process of maturing. Whether
she had a buyer or not, she had to harvest the lot and with grave foreboding
she gathered them with the help of her sons. As usual, they were to be
stacked on the bamboo platform at the back of the house but because of the
additional harvest, the space on the platform fell short. So some pumpkins
had to be stacked on top of the woodpile as well. Merenla still hoped that
Nungsang would not abandon her with this surplus crop and that he would
help her somehow. She had heard that his friend Bhandari was looking after
his business now and maybe, just maybe, Nungsang would instruct him to
relieve the poor woman of her harvest, which was very likely going to
become a ‘burden’ for her if no buyer turned up. But there was no word
from either Nungsang or his friend. This poor woman who had innocently
believed that she had found an easier way of earning a livelihood through
this arrangement with her cousin, now found herself totally abandoned. She
felt quite betrayed. In all these years she never knew what role her
pumpkins played in her cousin’s unscrupulous scramble for money and
power and how she had been used in his scheme of dark dealings. All that
she knew was that she had to earn a living for her sons and herself, and she
had thought that she had stumbled on a good and honest way by
collaborating with her cousin. But the man who opened this doorway for
her, seemed to be totally unconcerned about her fate now that he had
ascended a higher road. This, she thought, was cruel because she was
brought up on the tradition that family ties were more sacrosanct than any
others and besides, he did have a business obligation to her as well. Slowly
and painfully she began to see that people who go away from villages think
and act differently even if they are relatives. She said to herself over and
over again that a fellow villager would never have treated her in this
manner.
Days went by and no one came for her pumpkins. Now when she heard
herself addressed as pumpkin Merenla, she would flare up and scream at the
person who addressed her thus. She became irritable with her sons and they
began to spend more time outside than at home, which further incensed the
poor harassed woman. Nature, too, seemed to be turning against her: some
of her pumpkins were ripening too fast and rotting in the stacks. The house
was beginning to stink horribly because of this. Beset by this cruel turn of
events, Merenla stopped going out and spent most of her time lying on her
cot. Her sister-in-law came one day and asked her if she could take some of
the pumpkins to feed her pigs. She said yes listlessly and remembered her
prize sow which was ‘stolen’ by the so and so’s from the underground; she
thought that if she had some pigs, she could have at least fed them some
portion of the harvest, which was now ‘infesting’ her house as well as her
mind. Lying in bed she thought long and hard and saw that it was her
naivete and blind trust in her cousin that had landed her in this predicament.
Deep in her heart she knew that she had to do something about it but a
crippling lethargy seemed to overwhelm her and she lay there for days
staring at nothing. Far greater than the financial loss was the ‘loss of face’
suffered by the widow in the community because of her cousin’s
heardessness and it was this which hurt her the most. But as a mother she
had to think of her sons and eventually the lost look on their faces and the
suffocating stench of the rotting pumpkins galvanized her into action. She
said to herself that she could not continue in this manner forever and that
life had to somehow go on. The next morning she got up from the cot with a
new determination and called her sons to help her sort out the good
pumpkins from the rotten ones. Then she instructed them to inform all the
relatives to come and take as many of them as they wanted. The rotten ones
she set aside on the platform. Many of her once-prized pumpkins thus
became distress gifts to families, who converted them to pig food when they
themselves grew tired of eating pumpkin curry at every meal. And yet many
more remained, threatening once more to engulf Merenla and her sons with
their rotting odour symbolising the great debacle of this simple woman’s
venture as a ‘supplier’. So one fine morning she decided to close this
chapter of her life by doing something spectacular.
She sent off her sons to their uncle’s field quite early in the morning.
Choosing the moment when she knew that all the villagers would be on
their way to the far-flung fields, Merenla proceeded with her plan. She left
the front door wide open so that people could see right through to the
platform at the back, where she would be performing. Wearing a red scarf
on her head, Merenla began to shout ‘Vote For’ loudly and with every shout
she would hurl a pumpkin to the ground below. The initial shouts went
unheard, but when the village pigs began to scramble for the shattered
pieces of the pumpkins with loud squeals and grunts, the noise attracted the
attention of the people going to their fields. They stopped to investigate;
some even entered the house to find this quiet woman hurling her produce
as though she was performing a strange ritual to get rid of something
‘unclean’ as in the old days. Unaffected by the presence of her fellow
villagers Merenla continued. She silently welcomed their presence because
they had unwittingly become witnesses to her performance.
There was something essentially childlike in a grown woman taking out
her frustration on some common vegetables and yet, those who saw the
scene on the bamboo platform came away with a distinct impression that
the simple act of throwing out the pumpkins signified a deep resolve in the
mind of this poor widow to reorganise her life. The ludicrous performance
did not in any way diminish the inherent pathos of her situation. The
spectators were deeply moved, but they did not say anything, either to her
or to fellow villagers, who had witnessed the frenzied performance. They
merely shook their heads and went on their way.
When she got tired, Merenla stopped to eat her mid-day meal and rested
for a while. The platform was by now cleared but there were still quite a
few pumpkins left in the woodpile. Tired as she was, she was determined to
rid her home and her life of all the reminders of her earlier association with
her kinsman, and as soon as she felt rested, she resumed the task of
‘cleansing’. The pigs lolling on the ground below the platform had gorged
themselves on the windfall so much that they ignored the loud thuds now,
which had attracted them in the first place and did not even look at the pink
juicy bits lying all around them. But undeterred by their indifference,
Merenla continued her exercise and by late afternoon had finished
destroying all the fruit of her hard labour. Exhausted, she swept the entire
house, including the outer room where wood was piled. She then lit a huge
fire, heated water and had a long, leisurely bath. When the sons came back
in the evening from their uncle’s farm where they had gone to work for a
wage, they were pleasantly surprised to see their mother looking somehow
different in her Sunday clothes. The house, too, was swept and all spruced
up. There was not a single pumpkin in sight. They also noticed that she was
in a cheerful mood; gone was the despondency and lethargy of the previous
days. Though young, they instinctively realised that their mother had got a
fresh lease of life and felt greatly comforted as if she had actually hugged
and held them close to her bosom.
Simple village folk have a unique and singular way of using language,
therefore calling the widow ‘pumpkin Merenla’ was their way of adding a
new dimension to her identity during the period of her association with
Nungsang, the contractor. There was no malice or ridicule intended in the
sobriquet. In the very same way, long ago a villager named Longritoba
brought the seeds of the tomato plant to the village to find out if it could be
grown here. He discovered that it did well in the village, and by the second
year he was able to supply seedlings to whoever wanted them. This
vegetable became very popular and automatically came to be called
‘Longritoba pendu’, meaning, ‘Longritoba’s tomato’ because it was he who
had first introduced it to the village. So was the case with pumpkin
Merenla. But now under the altered circumstances, the villagers recognised
the message that she conveyed to them through her very vociferous and
public rejection of this identity on the day that she had ‘cleansed’ her house
and herself of something that had ‘wounded’ her both in the material and
psychological sense.
From that day on, in acknowledgement of her symbolic act, and out of
sympathy for a fellow villager, no one in the village ever used the sobriquet
once attached to her name. Life in the village went on as before and this
simple woman, now called Merenla as before, unobtrusively merged into
the rhythm of age-old village life, far away from the political permutations
and combinations forming and re-forming elsewhere in the land.
 THE BEGINNING
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First published by Penguin Books India in association with Zubaan Books 2006
Copyright © Temsula Ao 2006
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-8-189-01371-4
This digital edition published in 2017.
e-ISBN: 978-9-386-65195-2
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or
dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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