Home is where the heart is, and Manipur is home for many of us not just in the sense of a physical structure, a house, in which we take shelter from the elements, but a place which has grown into our hearts. However comfortable and secure a house is, it cannot be anything close to what a home represents. A place associated so intimately with so much memories not just of one’s immediate experience in a lifetime, but equally of an archetypal that stretches back into hoary times of fables and folklores. The land of grandmother’s bedtime stories on the cold winter evenings around the warmth of glowing charcoal briars; a land of the tears and sweats of our parents and their parents; a land of our childhood playgrounds, of fun games and occasional fights. The trees we climbed, the ponds we swam in, the spankings we received for doing so, all make for the rich kaleidoscope of nostalgia in anybody’s memory of home. Many of the ponds have disappeared, the trees too, the hills we trekked and picnicked are barren, each of their demise is like a stab wound for the soul. That good-hearted rogue, sozzled out of his mind from high noon, and a terror of our childhood, he too is gone, like so many others, having come to the end of his journey rather early. But that is life. Time and tide wait for no (wo)man. But the transient nature of life is what makes it all the more dear. In sublime irony, everybody wishes for immortality, but its impossibility gives the tale its sad and grand rings, all at the same time. This sad tale; this grandeur; joyous occasions; grieving moment; are all the stuffs that memories are made of. They are also what home is about – a love story in everybody’s life. For many of us, this love story is Manipur. In good times we have enjoyed its bounties, played and sung on its lap, and in bad times we have stuck with it for no other reason than that it is home.
So what is it to love Manipur? How must we love it? Set it on fire? Exploit and commercialize its resources? Pollute its lakes and rivers? Fell its trees? Amidst so much turmoil that has come to be its present, amidst so much of ethnic anxieties and mutual suspicions characteristic of this era, amidst so much hate literature against this place we call our common home, perhaps it will be helpful to mentally strip Manipur of its political garb for a while, for it is also very much a political entity, and refer back to just its memory contents. Hegemony, coercion, fiefdom etc are notions associated with politics and even culture. Manipur has not been innocent of these aberrations in its political life by any means. In any contest for power and dominance in a multi-ethnic situation, un-arbitrated by judicious, democratic laws, these are inevitable. But beyond the ugly fallouts of these contests there are also the memories nobody can monopolize or claim propriety right over. Let us search our souls and see what these memories tell us. Perhaps they will tell us of our common salvation.
Manipur is on fire and it is the duty of every one of us to see to ways the fire can be doused. Our values have been mutated unrecognizably, killing is no longer an act against conscience, corruption has come to be institutionalized, unjust ways to riches and status have become a norm rather than exception. Violence has become a language, and when this happens, all other languages recede into the background. Everybody wants to be heard but nobody wants to listen. How can reason rule in such an atmosphere? These are by no means expressions of love. We need to be honest, but equally we need to be brave to stand up to oppression of any form by anybody. We need to respect ourselves and our honest individual convictions and stand by the dictates of these inner voices unwaveringly. There are external factors to Manipur’s damnation but a larger part of this damnation come from within. In similar proportion, a greater part of its salvation too must come from within. Democracy promises the external factors can be negotiated and resolved. It must be said, the present generation, at least has a memory to cherish despite all the anarchy around. Things were not as bad as it is now. It is the responsibility of this generation to ensure the next has something to inherit other than just nightmares for memory.