Ukhruling isn’t over.
I was seriously sick when we reached. And everything was pitch black. I looked at the time on my mobile phone. 6.32pm. I’d woken up at 2.00am, travelled to BIAL (that’s 45 kms for those who care) to catch a 6.00am flight. Got into Kolkata and waited in the airport for two and a half hours. Took the flight to Imphal. And by road to the organisation for the next 4 hours. I’d travelled for almost 17 hours non-stop. No record this. More lengths have been travelled by many who have weaker constitutions than I. But the winding roads done damaged me for hours. I’m not a girl built for such travels, I’m not.
In the city now. Driving by, with my city idiot staring-looks. Holi holidays. Five days of it. The petrol bunks, already few are closed. “If they’re open, they get beseiged with groups asking for donations for the festival”. And outside each petrol bunk is a curious thing. Groups of women, four or five per petrol bunk, each sitting there by herself with four or five old bottles. You can see the names of the bottles from here: bisleri, aquafina, sprite. Each bottle filled with petrol. Each woman has a funnel. And a business-like attitude. A small boy driving a scooter comes up, pays one of them twenty or something and she measures out the petrol to pour into his scooter. Sits back down. “When the bunks are closed, these women operate.” Really? Sometimes when the bunks are open, the women’re still there.
I can’t remember what I did yesterday, let alone that we learnt at school about jhum cultivation. Do any of you know about jhum? Don’t lie. Seriously? The shifting cultivation practices of the North-East are apparently well known. They belonged to a different time, when populations hadn’t exploded, when urbanisation wasn’t such a crisis. It involves occupying a piece of hilly land and clearing it by setting it on fire. When the fire settles, the land is cultivated for a couple of years. When the fertility of the piece of land wears off, the cultivators move away, not returning to that piece of land for 10 or 15 or sometimes 20 years. In that period the land regenerates itself, the forest grows back and the whole process can start again. During the jhum period you can see forest fires across the land. From twenty-thousand something feet up in the air, the smoke is deceptive. Why are there so many fires? Minor militant battles raging? I innocently wondered. From the roads, the fires are much more unnerving. The smoke doesn’t reach you but in the pitch black nights of Ukhrul, they provide the only light for hundreds of miles. The patterns look like the lines on a heart monitor in a hospital.
The jeep journey back to the city is endless too. So’s the conversation. Well, not conversation, monologue. The girl-woman who gives us all the data, all the brilliant analysis and the anthropological inside-out scrutiny, talks. About the hills, the plants, the jhum cultivation, student elections, etc. etc. Dedicated, passionate, lovable and hardcore activist. Unfortunately for me, the silent-speaker and silence-seeker, the phrases “nineteen-to-the-dozen” and “can’t get a word in edgewise” were created for her. I want to beg her to stop, but I don’t want her to stop telling us about the hills and the plains. Much conflict begotten.
They’re talking about the flowers too. I love the flowers. I do. But they’re talking about shapes, sizes, colours, height, stamen, pollen, bark, petal, romantic encounters with the bees, nectar, latin names, local names, missionary positions adopted etc. “Rhodendrons come in purple, yellow and red. Orange in Bangalore. This is a local tree. Cotton trees have red flowers and orange flowers and they’re nice and big. Those other kinds come in twenty shades of magenta…” etc. I love the flowers. I really, really do. I know I’m a consultant and that consultants do such things, but I really don’t want to stop the jeep, get out, be introduced to the plants and shake hands with their colours. I want to enjoy them. Please?
Meanwhile. These plants here are called Japanese weed. Believed to have been brought by the Japanese during the second World War. They have lovely tiny white flowers. They are every-fucking-where. Pardon my Japanese. They have loads of medicinal uses, the locals have discovered. For gastric troubles, just pluck some leaves and make hot tea. Tastes a bit familiar, like a Kerala seed used by mum back home for the same purpose. Nice.
The people in the plains represent 50 per cent of the population of the state but occupy only 9 per cent of the land. The people in the plains accepted Hinduism in the 17th Century. The first huge structure you see as you drive towards the city from the airport at Imphal is the ISKCON temple. The remaining population are represented by 33 tribes who are considered STs and are supposed to get reservation privileges. The vast majority here are Christians. You will see many churches in the hills. Huge structures too.
Did you know there is a website called the South Asia Terrorism Portal? Yup, at www.satp.org. Check it out for the data on the militant groups (referred to as terrorist groups in the portal) and what the government thinks are the issues with Manipur.
The drive to Imphal again. The roads are by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO). Cute. Every two minutes you’ll see the concrete square structures painted yellow with red borders and messages printed large on them. Things like: “Speed Thrills But Kills. BRO. 84RCC. 25 TM”. Don’t know, don’t ask.
The Inn in Ukhrul. I climbed up to the terrace. The views of Ukhrul town are pretty. The same wooden homes and tin roofs. Coldness everywhere. Mist from your mouth. And the delightful little woollen blankets. Every time I pull them over me, I hear crackling. I wonder why several times, till I see in the pitch black night, tiny static electricity sparklers flying from my hands to the blanket. It’s fun to see the tiny sparklers. I keep myself amused for hours on end.
“Road Damaged Ahead. Go Slow. BRO. 84RCC. 25 TM”. Brilliant.
Many of the mayangs (foreigners) don’t know about the tradition of jhum. “They just burn everything randomly and don’t let the land breathe. Sometimes they return in 2 or 3 years. The land doesn’t develop properly then.”
“Thank You For Visiting. Please Come Again. BRO. 84RCC. 25 TM”. You’re welcome.
Mayangs are in plenty here. When the women in the plains saw us that is how they referred to us. The girl-woman in the back seat giggled, “They just said, ‘look, foreigners are here’”. Nepali, Bangladeshi, Burmese and us Indians. Much mayangness abounds. The city has a National Market, much like Bangalore, where goods are sourced from Burma/ Myanmar. Clothes over here are sourced from Bangkok. Which is why the boys (okay, the girls too) look like they’ve all stepped off a plane from Hong Kong. Brrr…
“Manipur. A Rose In The Boquet Of India. BRO. 84RCC. 25 TM”. I’m sure.
And the really strange thing? No foreigners. And by this, of course, we mean white peoples. In all during our stay for six days, I saw only two white women – in the airport. The group we worked with told us that their own funders from Europe had never visited them. Only one person had visited once in the last 12 years. That’s it. Why? It’s difficult to explain. There’s loads of trouble. Kidnapping. Militant attacks. All of these keep them away. Those who come need to get special papers since this is a restricted border area. Étrange? Not really.
“BRO. Building Roads. Connecting Lives. BRO. 84RCC. 25 TM”. If you like.
Contrast Kolkata Airport: thousands of people but who should my eyes fall on? The incongruities of an airport. Me with my jockeys, levi jeans, levi t-shirt and woodland sandals. And them, five or six families of four to five members each – of white peoples. All of them in saris, or kurtas and lungis and lehenga-choli type articles of clothing. Led by an old white man in saffron priest robes and his hair in a pony tail like usual priests. Casually strolling up and down airport. Seated before departure levels with their colourless saris. Carrying on conversations I half expect are in Sanskrit. And yet, it is I who stare…
By this time in the jeep journey, I am bored out of my pants. And the man-boy still sits next to me, unnerving me. And then out of the blue, speeding by the silent hills, I am unprepared for the next sign.
“You Are Not Being Chased. BRO. 84RCC. 25 TM”. Excuse me?
Lunch in the city. At a small place serving meals. “You don’t mind eating at a modest place, do you?” she asks us. I prefer it says I. So gracious I am, bloody snooty consultant. But I do prefer it, I really do. Sticky rice served with spinach dal, fish curry, eromba with fermented fish flavours and bamboo shoots, watery concoction (don’t know what, wasn’t introduced to it, didn’t ask), orange coloured tart-tasting lemon slices, papad, vegetable curry, fried fish that resembled something that died, and fried greens mixed with fried teeny-tiny shrimp that tasted bloody delicious. I needn’t eat for hours after such a meal. And then the street-side market. Let’s see, here’s onions, potatoes, tomatoes, long green pods which I later found out are special to this area and called stinky beans (not gonna ask; should try to eat though), black mushrooms, dry fish, fermented fish in little packs, yellow bananas and then, snails. Garden snails. Tiny black garden snails. Some are moving. Not the pricey French escargot marinated in 22-carat gold. Just ordinary – sorry, I have to say it – garden variety snails. Eeeww… Where do I get some cooked?
Apparently, says our ever loving guide, they’ll hunt and eat anything out here. Wild boar, wild birds, porcupines (you heard that right), ant-eaters, any-bloody-thing. And then she said it. Even cats… I’m gonna cry... I want my mommy.
They gave us wooden bowls as a gift for conducting the workshop. I have no idea what to do with it. Maybe keep grapes in them? They’re made of teak apparently. Gorgeously cut.
As we prepare to leave for the inn after dinner laaaate in the night – at 6.30pm (giggle…I like fucking with Bangalorean minds), the group are watching a Chinese martial art film. They say their byes and “have sweet dreams” (after the sex discussed in the workshop, this was an attempt to be sarcastic, hmph, water off a duck’s back). And the girl-woman explains to us that the film is Korean. Huh? They were watching a Korean film without sub-titles. Sometimes the sub-titles are Korean too. People understand Korean around here? “Yes, there is a great affinity to the Korean culture out here. They feel that we resemble the Koreans more and have similar tastes. So, many youth learn Korean very early. In fact more than Hindi serials, the Korean soap series Arirang is so popular that we’re mostly up to date about the goings and happenings on the soap. You can find housewives and children discussing the latest tragedies and love-lives of the characters on the series. You’ll find people buying up pirated DVDs of the latest episodes and families and neighbours gathering to watch and pick up where they left off in the series.” Sorry. Where am I again?
The dogs, how could I forget the dogs! I wish I’d taken pics, stupid me. They were shoooo gorgeous! Most of them were little bundles of fur. Tinier than back home and more muscle too. They loll about in the sun, whenever it’s out. They play with each other constantly. And most of them are completely black with white socks on. I mean, tiny white patches on their feet. Cute as hell. The cats are tiny. Wait, I mean Cat. One cat. Pacing the dining room mewing constantly. Looking up at the people and crying like crazy for food. Obviously figured I’m the sucker for such requests and stuck next to me for two days. I fed her so much fish and chicken, she probably likes foreigners now.
We stopped over at the vocational training institute. Drop-outs from high schools and colleges are taught to work with wood. The teak wood I was talking of earlier, and there were beautiful examples. I picked up coasters and a couple of serving and stirring spoons and paid a princely sum of 180. MP picked up way more for 350. Beautiful work. Wish I’d seen the boys who worked on them. Sigh.
We read the HIV technical report before we came here. The highest prevalence for HIV in all of India is in Ukhrul district. 6 per cent. No kidding. This one participant knows 70 to 80 positive people in his village alone. Manipur was the second state where they discovered HIV in India, after Tamil Nadu. Injecting drug users have a prevalence of 17.90 per cent (down from 24.47 in 2003). Men who have sex with men have a prevalence of 16.40 per cent (down from 29.20 in 2003) and 13.07 per cent among female sex workers (up from 12.80 per cent in 2003). Among pregnant women in ante-natal clinics the prevalence is 0.75 per cent (down from 1.00 per cent in 2003) and among those receiving medical attention in clinics for sexually transmitted infections the prevalence is 4.08 per cent (down from 13.00 per cent in 2003). So what the fuck does all of this mean? That there’s good news and there’s bad news. That’s what it means. Access to drugs in this part of the world, due to the Golden Triangle (known for its high opium-based agriculture and processing) is so damned easy, it’s a miracle more people aren’t already infected. But needle exchange programmes have been operational for quite some time though. Hopefully they will help in the long run. Hopefully time will heal.
And the thing Charan commented for the previous Ukhruling piece that I copied and will use here because it's useful. I have no idea how he has this line memorised. Maybe he's making it up. So I called him names. Told him the names started with a "B" and ended with an "H" or a "D" and referred to female dogs and illegitimate children.
Says Charan: A line from Meet Joe Black comes to mind though: Easter, the old lady in the hospital, says to 'Joe': "It nice it happen to you. It like you came to Cat Island and you had a holiday, sun didn't burn you red, just brown, sleep no mosquito eat you, rum no pound you head nex' day. But trut' is, dat bound to happen, you stay long enough. So tak dat nice picture home wi' you, but don' be fooled. We lonely here mostly, too. If we lucky, we got some nice pictures."
I think this is where I came in.
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