Manipur`™s cup of woe has never been empty. While it is unlikely any place in the world has not had their shares of misfortunes, Manipur`™s chain of tragedies never seems to end. Not only this, it does not seem it will end any time soon too either. It is difficult to imagine what those who lose loved ones to unnatural death must have gone through, and must be going through, and it is suffocating to imagine that these losses are unlikely be the last. But first, this invocation cannot but recall the nine youth whose bodies still lay in the ill-equipped Churachandpur District Hospital mortuary. We have no desire to comment or be judgmental of the politics that led to this tragedy, but all the same wish the near and dear ones of the nine the strength to live through what must certainly be an endless nightmare. This beleaguered land has lost so many, to pandemics such as AIDS, and to its myriad enduring soul-tearing conflicts. Often, sitting alone in solemn contemplation of Manipur`™s long list of tragedies, it is difficult not to be visited by the haunting lines of Irish poet, William Buttler Yeats, hanging desperately on to hope in a time of overwhelming despair and sorrow, `O When May it Suffice`.
Manipur today has far too many things to mourn, overshadowing its occasions for celebration. There is not a day that passes without somebody or the other getting killed violently, either in fratricidal killings or else in the protracted war between government forces and insurgent fighters waging a liberation war. If the tumultuous winds of rebellion fostered by certain ruptures in the smooth flow of history had not swept them away, many generations of men and women probably would be still living amongst us and become eminent respectable citizens, as eminent and respectable as many who occupy the top strata of the society today. But this was never to be. Come to think of it, the storm of this war having spanned over many decades, practically all of us would have known many of them, some brilliant peers who may have won fame and fortune, others merely ordinary nondescript acquaintances in the neighbourhood, suddenly transformed into heroes and martyrs by the winds of the times.
Yeats`™s song is of such a sense of void he felt remembering the `martyrs` of his native Ireland who he had known in person, and could have been still with him had it not been for those `martyr moments`. In his celebrated Easter 1916, he looks back to that year when government troops swooped down on the brewing Irish Republican Army rebellion in Dublin, and executed many of the movement`™s pioneers. `A terrible beauty is born` he exclaims in the poem, recalling the combine of horror, awe and disbelief he had felt at the time. Ordinary men and women, in ordinary professions, whom `I have met them at the close of day, /Coming with vivid faces, /From counter or desk among grey, /Eighteenth-century houses.` Familiar acquaintances on the streets whom `I have passed with a nod of the head, /Or polite meaningless words, /Or have lingered awhile and said, /Polite meaningless words`. In that September of 1916 everything transformed all of a sudden `All changed, changed utterly: /A terrible beauty is born.` There were also those he envied and did not like very much. `He had done most bitter wrong, /To some who are near my heart, /Yet I number him in the song; /He, too, has resigned his part, /In the casual comedy; /He, too, has been changed in his turn, /Transformed utterly: /A terrible beauty is born.` Yeats also sensed the tragedy that all the spiralling and increasingly senseless violence can bring, and this foreknowledge made his soul burn: `Too long a sacrifice, /Can make a stone of the heart. /O when may it suffice? /That is Heaven`™s part, our part, /To murmur name upon name, /As a mother names her child, /When sleep at last has come, /On limbs that had run wild. /What is it but nightfall? /No, no, not night but death; /Was it needless death after all?`
Nearly a century after Yeats went through his soul scorching self-questioning, many of us in Manipur are still left to go through similar soul searches and ask, `O when may it suffice?` wishing to remind those around us that `too long a sacrifice, can make a stone of the heart.` The tears of sorrow that swell can blur vision as we watch the world move on `“ even our own government contract chasing, easy unearned money loving, little world `“ unmindful of all the sacrifices and martyrdoms. The haunting forbidden question that shapes up within often is: `Was it needless death after all?`