The festival of light is already here to be celebrated with fervor and merriment. It will be immediately followed by another awaited festival of Ningol Chakouba. As curtain raiser to this festival, every year, fairs are organised at different pockets, in and around the town. Exhibitions and sales of handloom products under the initiative of the State government and its department have already begun. The Fishery department has announced that it will showcase indigenous varieties of fish, especially on the eve of the Ningol Chakouba. Besides the big commercial establishments doing roaring business, this is also time for small traders, self-help groups, and marginal entrepreneurs to try their hands in earning small profits for subsistence. The festive fever is evident at Khwairamband Keithel with shoppers bustling; bursting at the seams. This festive spirit would have got slightly subdued had the All Tribal Students`™ Union of Manipur (Tombing group) continued with their economic blockade along the highways of the State. With the oil stations closing down even before the blockade had started, public had begun to make beeline with their vehicles near the outlets. Over this, a senior journalist in a lighter vein had observed in a television discussion that our public is crazy about riding vehicles. He said the first thing that public do is to stand near the oil stations as soon as the news of any highway blockade is announced. Public gives priority to vehicular fuel rather than foodstuff, he added. At an average, more than fifty two-wheeler vehicles get registered at the Imphal West registration office every day. This small index of vehicles sold and registered could warrant the argument of our craziness for riding vehicles. We may also add that the act of queuing up at the oil stations could be manifestation of a deep seated insecurity. It appears this insecurity hinges on our inability to come out of the comfort zones. We are terrified of surrendering the comfort of reaching a particular destination on our vehicles. We are also terrified of compromising our `status`™ by travelling on passenger vehicles, not denying the fact that public transport system is in a shabby state in Manipur. The Manipur State Road Transport Corporation is almost nonexistent today. Modern low-floor buses which were allocated to the State under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission are now lying idle after a brief run, in and around the Greater Imphal. These buses were seen plying with good numbers of passengers when they were in service. The reason behind the withdrawal of the bus service demands attention.
Coming back to the argument of collective `craziness`™, the current festive session indicates one crude example of it i.e., our craze for gambling. Diwali or Jibanita is perfect time for gambling popularly known as Lagao. One can see it on the roadsides, at the leikai corners. Lagao mushrooms in these places when daylight fades. Here, people of all ages across-the-board take part. This reveals that there is a kind of social sanction attached to the game `“ the game of earning quick and easy money. Besides Lagao, we also have the Housie taking place in most parts of the valley, with wide ranging quantum of prize money. Within the last decade or so, Housie had started to take a different form, so much so that there were reports of Housie cartels getting busted by the police. The irony is that foot soldiers of the State police take equal part in gambling such as Lagao, that too in the name of controlling it. There is no sign of this collective `craziness`™ getting treated in the festive sessions to come. If one were to take cue from the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who takes such instances of public gambling as more than what meets the eye, one could say that Lagao is an expression of, an enactment of a story that we tell ourselves to understand ourselves. This delineation would take us far afield, but it should suffice, for our purpose here, to say that the story that we tell of ourselves through Lagao cannot be a very happy story. Since this is a story that we tell of ourselves, this sad story, sad to say, shall continue.