By Laifungbam Debabrata Roy
I was most pleasantly surprised to receive two in vitations recently. The first, to the inauguration of a unique sumang leela festival organised by Akashvani Imphal (All India Radio Imphal), which commenced on 10th January 2012 at the Iboyaima Sumang Leela Sanglen. Being someone who is not closely related to the All India Radio, it was all the more heartening that the state owned media should invite me in recognition of my mother’s long association with and contribution to AIR Imphal. We all grew up with sumang leela; it was part of our most happy facets of cultural life. AIR Imphal must be highly commended for making this festival a reality for us all, a part of the imperiled cultural life of contemporary Manipur. To me, the packed house and people standing demonstrated how alive sumang leela is today as a popular contemporary art, a forum for political and cultural comment; indeed, an assertive performing art, which could perhaps be always a moral mirror for us.
The nonagenarian distinguished singer and musicologist of Manipur, Laishram Birendra Kumar of Yaiskul shared a very exquisite historically and politically nugget of information with the packed to full house at the Iboyaima Sumang Leela Sanglen. Ever the scholar in our ancient tradition, he said in his brief address that women artistes and performers were among the pioneers of sumang leela or jatra in Manipur. Accompanied by loud applause, he said that he had come across published literature that documented the jatra performance of a troupe of women artistes from Manipur in Calcutta way back in 1826. This period, the venerated scholar said, was during the reign of Meidingu Chinglen Nongdrengkhongba, better known as Maharajah Gambhir Singh. Gambhir Singh was instrumental in liberating Manipur from a seven-year foreign occupation of Manipur by Burma in the early 19th century. This year, we memorialized the 178th death anniversary of Maharajah Gambhir Singh. I have my doubts whether the audience of those days in Calcutta could have made out the difference between women and transgender nupi-saabis of Manipur with their embellished effeminate mannerisms.
The other inauguration was to Re:PLAY 2012, the Internesenal Film Kumhei presented by the Manipur Film Development Corporation (MFDC) in association with Hun-tré! International Manipuri Projects. The inauguration at the not so full auditorium of the Jawaharlal Nehru Manipur Dance Academy was a vast contrast to the sumang leela festival’s the day before. The unquestionably more genteel and rather exclusive ambience of the film kumhei launch was underlined by the presence of the His Excellency, the Governor of Manipur, Gurbachan Jagat and film personalities from the USA and Indonesia. I was a little perplexed why this festival could not be presented in the brand new MFDC complex inaugurated recently by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi.
Film is not unfamiliar to Manipur. After its entry around the early 30s or even earlier, cinema quickly became popular. The early films makers included Sanayaima Maharaj Kumar Priyobrata Singh, the son of Maharajah Sir Churachand Singh Bahadur of Manipur. He recorded actual events such as the Hiyang Tannaba (Royal Boat Race) with his 8mm camera in 1936. The renowned artistes, Ima Thambalngoubi and Ima Tondon were perhaps the earliest women from Manipur to enter the celluloid world. Mainu Pemcha in which Ima Thambalngoubi played the lead role was produced in 1948. Later Kongbrailatpam Ibohal of X-Studio made many films including documentaries throughout the 60s. Manipur cinema never looked back after the releases of Karam Manimohan’s Matamgi Manipur and S.N. Chand’s Brojendrogee Luhongba in 1972. Most of the early films have never been seen by our contemporary audience, and a select few more from the archives that would fit into the theme of the internesenal film kumhei could have been included to enrich the local to international reach of the festival.
The inaugural offerings of the sumang leela festival and internesenal film kumhei deserve some attention for their contemporaneity and statement on the current globalized societies we live in. Andibachtiar Yusuf’s Romeo* Juliet (2009), premiered in India at the festival, comes from the Indonesian urban sub-culture setting of Jakarta and Bandung cities, which are basically co-cities merging into one another, forming a megalopolis. The youth of Jakarta-Bandung megalopolis portrayed as consumed by a vicious and violent football clubs rivalry provides the backdrop and context of a classic Romeo and Juliet romance for Yusuf’s fast-paced film. Violence and the human condition as a complex social association that has no end, no purpose and therefore, totally futile is underlined by the poignant and enduring purity of romantic love between two individuals. For the local viewers, steeped in the sporting tradition of Manipur, it was an unusual introduction of what can be possible too in the world of sport.
On the other hand, the popular sumang leela Sanagee Ching (Mountain of Gold) from Sanaleibak Nachom Artistes` Association is a melodramatic take-off from recent real violent events in Manipur. Again, a romantic liaison across antagonistically juxtaposed ethnic sub-cultures in Manipur portrays the tragicomic world of a contemporary and violently corrupt society that has resulted in the mutual parasitization of institutions and communities alike. Set in the violent conflict and corruption ridden scenario of government rural employment guarantee schemes, Sanaleibak Nachom Artistes` Association’s Sanagee Ching is also a sophisticated tongue in cheek allegory of our sana leibak (Golden Land) Manipur. Classic interposition of the comic and serious, the hallmark of jatra, had the expectant audience alternately in tenterhooks and laughter. Unlike the protagonists of Yusuf’s Romeo* Juliet, who could not avert the pre-ordained tragic denouement, who could not actualize the impossible, the protagonists of Sanagee Ching manage, to the relief of the audience, the impossible. Yusuf’s cinéma realité is in sharp contrast as an art to the “augmented reality” art of the jatra.
The individual life and the community life co-exist at different planes of imagination and expression. Both are inevitably reflected in art, and the obverse also is a reality. While the modern world and society paces on breathlessly, our psyche perpetually yearns for the slower, heavier emotions of the ancient. Football or the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, ancient emotions play out a different world of ideas. In the end, both jatra and cinema inject into the individual and community psyche, a world of possibilities.
