Contemporary Manipuri Short Stories
- Part 2 -

Nahakpam Aruna *

Library at Manipur University (MU) , Canchipur as seen on October 21 2014 :: Pix - Deepak Oinam

The age of Meirik that followed the 1960s literary trend still continues to be one of the most prominent literary waves in Manipur. The short story experience of the 1960s was a result of many well known writers' coincidental convergence at one point from different literary directions and sources. In 1974, writers like Shri Biren, Ibomcha, Lamabam Biramani, Priyokumar, Laitonjam Premchand, Kishorchand, Ibohanbi etc got together under the leadership of Nongthombam Kunjamohan as the editor published a literary journal called Meirik.

The primary objective of the group were to reflect upon and express the changing face of society and its impact on the lives of the people, and capture the cumulative effect as a literary movement. It was a conscious movement. In their manifesto, they have succinctly spelt out why short stories should be written and for whom they should be published.

The writers of this period further broadened their social consciousness. The level of trauma and anxieties that have come to occupy their minds could not be sufficiently expressed in the form and style introduced by earlier writers. They made an attempt to truly reflect the struggle for survival, the crying pangs of the common people and the experience of their exploitative condition.

Out of these efforts, they resorted to a sharpened realistic portrayal of the society and came closer to realism. Another sketch of the times was the way how these writers went looking inwards rather than the outward gaze that was so imminently intrinsic to earlier works. Whenever there were inadequacies of the short story form while delineating their idea of social reality, they even went beyond the prescribed structural style of realism so as to create a new form that was compatible with the content.

Allegories, symbols, dreams, fantasies, folk elements, psychological perspectives were effectively utilized to create new revolutionary writing as a means of expression. The experimental movement that has been discussed here can be put into the following three categories:
(i) Experiment for experiment's sake in search of a new form
(ii) Ideas oriented narrative without a structured story line
(iii) The psychoanalytical perspective

The experiments that were initiated with the advent of Meirik have now come to occupy a significant space in the 1980s. Every writer since the 1960s till date had experimented with various narrative styles in one or more stories keeping aside the idea of literary competitiveness. Without much diversion from the thematic or the ideational notion, this experimental movement incubated the writers for two decades between 1970 and 1990. Even if one encounters a variation in the current new Manipuri short story writings, it would simply be either an expansion or contraction of the core element represented by this movement or just the reincarnations of the same.

The problems and issues dealt by the earlier short stories but not so new in theme like dominance and subservience, tension between the rich and the poor, seer helplessness and despair of the marginalized, the breakdown of morality, etc are all reappearing in the new experimental writings.

Prakash's "Wakat" (The Plea), Kunjamohan's "Kasturi Garrage," Biramani's "Hanuba Amasung Yongyam" (The Old Man and The Monkeys) and "Huigee Rachna" (Dog's Essays), Laitonjam Premchand's "Shahing Chaba Amagee Wari" (The Story of a Cannibal), Kamal Toijamba's "Mithungsangee Hanuba" (The Old Man of the Guest House) can be clubbed into this group. They have not yet gone far to the extent of doing away with the convention of characterization and plot making.

Biramani and Premchand have deployed folk elements to construct symbols and express the concerns of the contemporary times. If Biramani's writings edges on the spectacle, Premchand's work is an embodiment of love and pity. Kamal Toijamba's work Shaktam Machet Machet Mang Macha Macha (Patches of Images and Little Dreams, 1999) is a more advanced product of the Manipuri experimental writing in short story.

The state of uncertainties and turmoil prevailing in the region has also shaped the writer's conception and meaning of the political and origin of the crisis triggered by the same. Toijamba's "Uchi" (Mouse) and "Pebetki Leibakta" (In the Land of the Pebet) reflect this trend.

In an attempt to represent the unbelievable realities that have dogged the region, various imageries and symbols are being used without a supposed moral compunction. He sketches a dream/fantasy like sequence of a mouse that was rescued by a kind hearted woman. The mouse finally found shelter inside the woman's attire and played with unbridled freedom.

Abstract ideas as foundation of the story, possessing the features of poetry, narrative without a structured story-line since the launching years of Meirik are some characteristics of works prominently being deployed by writers like Yumlembam Ibomcha and Lamabam Biramani. Ibomcha's works are known for their proximity to his own poems. He is at ease breaking the wall between short stories and poems and thereby enabling himself to walk to and fro over the thoroughfare he creates against the wall.

While keeping the thematic tradition, he draws a picture of the metaphysical while adopting a universal approach. Ibomcha and Biramani make attempts to truly reflect the anxieties set into motion by the massive strides in the development of science and technology and the feeling that mankind's space has shrunk; and the constant struggle to carry the load of thoughts over their heads while falling deep into the abyss along with individual modern sensibilities. Mode of expression is the poetic mood sans plots and characters.

They express their thoughts using only symbols and imageries as in Ibomcha's "Ishing" (Water), "Gari" (Vehicle), "Sahar" (City), "Numitee Asum Thengjillakli" (The Dusk Sets In) and Biramani's "Lambi" (Passage), "Oon Henna Henna Tatharaklee" (The Cascading Snow), "Meethungshang" (Guest House) etc. That Biramani has now stopped taking recourse to this style is a different story altogether.

Adept at composing poems, Ibomcha still has the ability to select consistent symbols and imageries for effective use in writing short stories. Due to overemphasis and overuse of abstract symbols and imageries in the same thematic content, there are times when certain level of confusion creeps into some of his short stories that make one difficult to differentiate between two ideas.

Elangbam Dinamani, who reserved the space for comedy and satire in Manipuri short stories, not only observes life's delicate balance but also becomes part of the experimental writers' caravan. In his, Kege Makhongda Certificate (The Certificate Under the Castor Tree, 1995), Dinamani mocks the social system for ignoring and disguising fundamental truth with a decadent culture masked by artificial glitter.

This artificial glitter to the writer is symbolically represented by the "certificate." His satirical take on the political culture has been amusingly effective. In "Malem Achumba Numeet Palan" (Observing World Truth Day), Dinamani infuses life into the iconic statue of the blind folded woman with sword and balance.

On a day when the world was observing the International Justice Day inside a hall, the lifeless statue turned into a living woman, and she was attempting to untie the piece of cloth wrapped around the head to obstruct her sight. She managed to unknot and came out of the hall but was waylaid by the guards. She finally bribed the guards by giving her pair of gold ear-rings and escaped into the jungles.


(This article originally appeared in Manipuri as one of the chapters titled "Houjikki Matamgi Manipuri Warimacha" in Nahakpam Aruna's Nongthangleima Amasung Taibang, Imphal, 2001. It was abridged and translated by Dhiren A. Sadokpam in 2008.)

To be continued..