A Generation of Zombies

By Ranjan Yumnam *

My favourite movie lately has been 'Twilight' starring the teenagers' heartthrob Robert Pattinson and the pretty Kristen Stewart. The movie is a poignant story of love that sparks between a vampire hunk and a college going vulnerable girl, a human being. The paradox is that our cute little girl is just the perfect food for the blood sucking vampire like the steaming lamb chops are for us on a hungry day. But love happens between them and how impossible that love is. Sad. Poignant. And nostalgic.

Nostalgic because there seems to be a connection with our lives to the feelings of helplessness and suspense and the sense of impossibility portrayed in the flick. Fear stalks us; anxiety and uncertainties have clouded our minds. You may say, people elsewhere have their own share of worries-and who doesn't have problems? Yet they are vastly different from the ones we, the Manipuris, have to grapple with in nature and degree.

Our worries are not of the stock-market crashing down or swine flu ruining the business environment and curtailing our movement. Our fears are most basic and primal. Our fear is the raw merciless violence perpetrated by the vampires among us whose affiliations and objectives are indistinguishable from one another.

Are we going back to the primitive ages? Has the Darwinian theory of evolution eluded us? Consider how in the prehistoric days, men used to stay in groups and hunt animals. Their only concern was to gather enough food for survival, and fend themselves off from the rival groups who could encroach upon their territory and deprive them of prey. Violence is the only language they knew whether to pursue their game or protect their habitation.

That seems to be still pretty much true in our society despite our internet, mobile phones and sleek LCD tvs. Behind the veneer of confidence and nonchalant attitude, we are scared people. In the darkness, in the broad daylight, at home and outside, we are no longer safe because vampires are on prowl everywhere.

That makes us the zombies, the living dead. We have died a thousand times before we die, thinking whether this day could be my last. Has my turn arrived?

Zombies we are, repressed and muzzled, but I worry deeply about the effects of our collective fear psychosis on the minds of the children. In their most formative age, our children are exposed to the daily wails and screams of widows, cacophony of bomb explosions, shrill sirens of curfew and the ubiquitous sloganeering. But what is most potent are not the tangible grisly sights and sounds but the silent wave of mental turmoil that has no outlet.

So when these children grow up, can we expect them to be articulate and assertive? I doubt. They would whimper when they should flex their muscles and tame the wild bull like Khamba; they would retreat when they should holler "gung ho" and fight the enemies head on; they would fall down when they should get up again and again should they fail; they would crib when what they should do is to step forward and set things right. They would be cowards.

Our Gen X would be Gen Z-Generation Zombies.

I hope that this prognostication never comes true and I am proved wrong, everything of what I said. Because we need now a resurgent youth-more than in any era of our history-who can take on the world on an equal footing without any inferiority complex. The most important thing in the world is the will to succeed and visualise it, no matter what the odds are.

But if you have grown up in an environment of defeatism where you have been fed a daily diet of news of killings and injustice, you lose that inner fire in your belly and resign yourself to the fate of drifting in whichever direction the wind is blowing. You become a timid conformist, not much different from the pushover living next door.

To avoid such a shameful eventuality, we should create an environment where the boys and girls can believe that they can take control of their lives and destiny. We should not let our sins mar their future but unfortunately this is what we are unwittingly doing by committing them without any let-up.

It's time. There are three things we can do so that the next generation does not degenerate into a Generation of Zombies but be remembered as the golden generation of well adjusted and ambitious Manipuris. First, give them a good education and facilitate their seeking new knowledge from anywhere in the world. We need to insulate our most brilliant minds from the hurly burly of the Manipur situation.

I mean if Einstein were born in Manipur, chances are that he would have been rotting in a jail under NSA-so many strange things could have distracted his attention! We need to look beyond our constricted well and formulate a policy of sponsoring the best students for studies abroad either by private foundations or by Government. At the Government level, we should explore ways to make deals with other countries for cultural and educational exchange programmes that can enrich our experience and inform our future policies in development sector, not to talk of business and employment opportunities.

Second, respect human rights. I am sorry to say that human rights activists, because of their over zealousness, have stigmatised the issue of human rights and it has become a taboo subject associated with excesses of Government agencies and non-State players at the margins of the society. Human rights at the most basic level has to do with ordinary people like you and me-for instance, being given an opportunity of hearing and being heard.

It's about according the dignity that an individual deserves. The most effective way of ensuring that dignity is by allowing the rule of law to prevail. The upcoming generation should be shown examples of how the system is being run with values of fairness and justice and not just on whims and fancies of some power drunk coterie of people.

Third, create a conducive atmosphere for entrepreneurship. For that to happen, enabling conditions need to be put in place. Electricity, roads and free movement of people and commodities are important factors that act as the catalyst of business. Remove the thugs from the highways. Let there be free movement of ideas, men and materials-isn't that what globalisation is all about, warts and all?

Our children should trust that hard work and imaginative ideas can create wealth and that landing contracts and supply works are not the only way to becoming a successful person of the world. Pluck, rather than luck, is the key, stupid. That's what we need to drill in their young minds.

Last but not least, it's not just important to survive but also to live-fully, to the hilt. Let's kill the zombie in us and find the human being with the indomitable spirit.

Ranjan Yumnam

* Ranjan Yumnam, presently an MCS probationer, is a frequent contributor to e-pao.net. He can be contacted at ranjanyumnam(at)gmail(dot)com. This article was webcasted on August 30, 2009.