By: Bobo Meitei
I left the old world behind with the hope that in another world, deeply influenced by the old, I would be able to discover something. It was six years ago and back then I had no plan, no concrete shape to embark on to give it a classical name. Perhaps the world then to me didn’t reveal too clearly or I didn’t have the intelligence to look at what was unfolding before with the intention to understand subtle human nature. This internal nagging compelled me to plunge to it and there I was able to sail through, then again, it was too raw for me to describe each bit that I could sense. Did they have a name? Like any other thing it did have one, but my attempt wasn’t to go and to redefine, mine was the unexamined world, the world which existed and yet none had dared to examine for they feared the percussions from the states and besides it wasn’t a part of the culture to defy the conventional set-up. It could be suicidal and could only draw the senseless meticulous fury of the state.
This endeavour didn’t induce the result that I always wanted to instead I went back beyond that, the world of my shattered home where life is required to court what he doesn’t deserve and all this grotesqueness being veiled with the democracy chink.
Since my arrival and until now the anxiety to paint with suitable colours what I had come across has been vibrant. The aim is to describe how one arrived with a reason and what he had to go through. And during his stay he sincerely got into the very core of the elements in this particular society and strove to analyse every incident and every prominent character and linked them to the unspoken charade. Had they been an outspoken people, what the society would have been like? What have made them the meek and surrendered subjects instead of being the proud citizens? The exterior of the charade was presented to them as a fantasy and they, after decades, after generations, have become the people who could instinctively feel the nature of it which they secretly felt they should contest and the also the kind of people whose psyche has been ingrained with decades of well-choreographed fantasy making them feel they have to live with and the mere thought of questioning instantaneously gripped their senses, rendering them a confused people.
Like other confused people who are also slightly aware of the fact that they were a different people within a marked geographical territory they become the people who look up at the people who are superior to them for almost everything and treating indignantly those darker than them a bit lower than themselves. This does make a lot of sense given the succeeding defeat by its neighbouring countries and when the nation was consolidated it was done through a feudal system which was propped up advanced western powers. They were awed by them since they brought them what a modern civilization needed but again what they received was not sufficient enough to grow and to make themselves a competitor. They were left behind with a bit of insincere touch by mediocre hands, which are visible in scattered establishments, quite vital to them. Getting into what was done mediocre by hands has been something they haven’t much thought of and therefore they remain a people who are still awed by and what had been brought in as strange blocks upon which they can’t really lay their claim.
Those who had ventured beyond their land return home with a stain of liberalism and they go about hollering without any conviction. The man who says” we seek Caucasians, no niggers and other Asians” at his work place has come out to holler at the top of his voice for equality and liberalism. Owing to their absence of conviction and human integrity they present themselves as susceptible people who can be played in the hands of the very whom they have come out protest.
