PARADISE BURNT: UNITY IN DESOLATION?????

For the past few days I had been meaning to write and get back to my old way of being that obnoxious writer, who would sometimes annoy the shit out of you yet still pretend to be very cerebral. Never mind all that shit. There are however a lot of things going through my mind; my mind, which has a very small and slow thinking capacity, not to forget a very bad grasping power, has been put to real test lately, with so much to go through. 
Lately the very little thinking capacity or thought process that my mind possesses has all been engrossed with what’s happening in Manipur. It is sad and at the same time galling to no end. I don’t think I need to go into the detail of what has happened and why it has happened. I am sure everyone must be aware of everything that’s happened, and if you don’t know it, feel free to google it. Google has all the answers. Some very powerful truths and some very biased views, and while you are into it, I also give you the freedom to choose sides. I, as the writer of this column however, will always choose my people and their sufferings, not only because they are my people, but because I feel and I know I am choosing the right side. It has been very sad turn of events for the people there, while there were some who sold the people, their land and their rights for money, others gave whatever they had, to keep the pride, land, the rights of tribal people and dignity unharmed.Contrasting type of people, but they do exist everywhere, as they say good and bad coexist, it is the law of nature I presume.

I haven’t lived in Manipur all my life, but I do feel the pain and their anger, I feel the same throbbing even though I am more than two thousand miles away. There are few things that I don’t understand though, we, the entire Northeast people are treated as outsiders in India, no matter how hard we try to blend in and we all feel bad, well bad is just an understatement, it actually brings down everyone.  Each and every person from the Northeast felt the  pain when this whole ‘Alienate the Northeastern’ was at its peak and during that time, being at home i.e. our respective states was the most comforting thing in the world. For a moment I thought, finally this part of the country is uniting as one, only to be utterly disappointed. Now imagine, let’s leave the entire country aside, because, ummmmmmmlet’s just say, India is just too big a country for everyone to blend in and be as one, let us concentrate on what we have on our hands right now, if being alienated in our own country feels that bad, imagine what would it bring you, if you were the have that same treatment in your own state. Imagine yourself being thrown out of your own backyard, and imagine being called an outsider in your own hometown. That doesn’t sound to good right, you know what, it gets us right in the feels, and to know the sense of everything, you must see and feel, or at least try, like us.

A lot of protests followed, some of that, I must admit, were out of the line and a bit violent or radical for my own liking. I can’t however; deny the fact, that it was needed. In fact, I saw this coming, a long time back, though I wasn’t expecting it to come to soon. Well, as they say, the sooner, the better. And to some extent the better it is, I would and all the people who can empathize with what has happened would understand why. A lot of criticism was drawn towards the protest that ensued, both constructive and destructive, while a lot of people just jumped on the bandwagon of how the protestors should protest; giving the example of Anna Hazare and even Gandhi led Indian movements, well to me that was really absurd. To all those people, I have something to say ‘kindly stay the fuck off if you don’t know the depth of all this’. I feel in all honesty, sometimes you’ve got to make your voice heard, but not just by shouting while marching on, but by burning and revolting, some might deem it as being violent to me however, it is just the necessary evil sometimes. I don’t personally advocate violence, however I now feel that sometimes you’ve got to take the hard stance and bear some loss however precious they might be, in the long run, I feel it will help.

Then there a lot of voices raised on how violent the crowd got and there were some who voiced their concerns about the treatment of people by the armed forces. While I feel very much obliged with the people who empathized with the people there, I would also like to raise my voice a bit here. The protesters did what every protester does; the question however is the conduct of the security forces. What I do not understand is how security forces resort to shooting the unarmed protesters without warning, using tear gases and water cannons, even using rubber bullets would have been understood. How the government sanctioned the usage of live bullets at the protestors is beyond me, I am no human rights activist or something, but I do know this for a fact that it has never happened anywhere else before, and I thought to myself, maybe Manipur was on its way to make history. I however was wrong, a huge part of my own country was still unaware of all this, which was utterly appalling to say the least and the very few who knew about it, branded it as a regular communal riots, and even as a riot instigated by the underground. It was a crying shame that no one noticed, what these people went through.

Yet here I was, thousands of miles away, hearing the news every day, reading about it over the internet and sometimes making some nervous calls back home. A lot of times it did actually make me very apprehensive, people were being shot and killed, even kids and the number rose as days went by. I started hating everyone involved in it, the hate which was there inside me for a long time, started to really grow with time. I still hate a lot of them still and looks like it is gonna stay this was for a long time. There were a lot of sleepless nights thinking what would happen next, a lot of nervous moments every time I hear someone has died, maybe for the fear that it could be someone close.

Everything seemed to go against us and my people at that time, and I felt we were being played by the authorities. The authorities, for whom, we the tribals have always been a pain, and honestly, they have never liked us, and we never did liked them. It was sort of a vicious circle spinning from time immemorial. They have always tried to take away our land, and there is no denying that this time they played every card to almost perfection, that what nagged me the most to be honest. Passing bills, enraging the people, killing them, instigating them to fight back, so they could kill some more and finally shut the voices down, making it look like state against the tribals. Which I think was not the case, it was, for me more like people of the valley against the people from the hill.

It was saddening to hear and read about the people who lost their lives during this atrocity, possibly because, I had a common tie with them and I could connect with them and feel their pain, it was even more heartbreaking to know all of them were still so young and some did not even start living their life. Imagine a 10 year old being shot dead, even when he had surrendered and begged them not to shoot, that is not what the armed forces were supposed to do. They were supposed to keep order not to break it. It was painful, to see everything going out of hand, the plight of the people was unheard, and the rage still burning high, all this could have led to a worse situation and for a moment I thought, we were heading towards a civil war, which would have brought a lot more destruction and agony to our people.

Everything that happened was depressing, however as the saying goes “everything happens for a reason”, and there was a reason behind all this too. If not for anything else, all this tension brought the tribal people together. The tribal people who always had the history of fighting against each other, the main reason why they were never taken seriously, all stayed behind. Everyone came together united, shouted in one voice and for one goal; to save the tribesmen and their dignity. If all this, the tension and killings, happened because the unification was supposed to take place, then these heroes made the right  sacrifice. Sometimes dead people can do so much to wake the living ones, and this was the perfect example of that. And in my opinion they would be proud of us, just like we are proud of them.

Not sure how long this unity will stay, noting the fact that we all have that fighter inside us, and we fight sometimes, for insignificant issues while overlooking the bigger picture. And the picture cannot be any clearer than this now, all it takes is for us to be united and realize that we all belong together. And as long as we stay together, there is no one, not single thing that could take away what he have and what we deserve and I hope that as long as this unity stays, we make it count and do something worthwhile, for all the sacrifices made are just a bit too precious to go in vain.

We have lost our paradise once, and this is our chance to get it back. This can’t stop now and this should not stop now. The road is long, but there are ways to get it, only if we will and it will only happen if we are together. For one cause, for one love and for us.