I Still Hope For The Best

Omila Thounaojam *

Jamia Students protesting against discrimination towards NE students on 28 October 2009 :: Pix by Ibomacha Oinam

It was really funny when I first heard the term 'chinky' in Bangalore. May be I was too innocent or rather too ignorant or foolish to not know the connotations the word bore with it.

Whatever it implied, in those days I simply thought it might be meaning something like being referred to as a Chinese, so I didn't mind it at all and was feeling happy rather thinking that all's well until and unless it's something related to an internationally known land exclusively upheld for its respectable culture.

Time passed by and my awareness about the ways the world work by became all clearer-I must say crystal clear. Don't know still how I should feel when not only in the past but still at present people ask me with great surprise "where is this Manipur or Manipal?"

No one will ever believe me but it's true that I used to be a unpaid guide explaining things to my friends since my degree days about 'how' I live and eat and drink. You all may find it strange but it's true. Don't know exactly about 'how' all of them had this crystallized stereotypical impression about my place, I mean about North East states in an extended fashion.

Many were having this impression that I might be living in a jungle set-up where houses are built in the hill slopes— fixed up laboriously on the crooked slanting ground with everything possible even if that includes FEVICOL and my god, living on frog or dog or snake diet etc and etc. When my teacher in the class appreciated me for my good performance, my class-mates were so surprisingly impressed with me so much so that they started reserving seats for me in the class the next very day.

I thought during that time that may be they respect people with talent but when I see things now, I realize that they were utterly shock seeing a 'chinky' girl with a good brain.

I'm not being too negative about my friends but when I still encounter mature and intellectually sound people asking me the same questions my friends had asked some 7 or 8 years back, I'm left with nothing else working in my mind but just an indescribable feeling little similar to that of being a visitor in a foreign land from an alien land space.

Many may say that derogatory names are given to many community like 'madrasis' referring to the entire bulk of South Indian people, 'baung' to the Bengalis, 'laloo' to the people from Bihar and so on and so forth but still I feel that the way North Eastern people are discriminated in this country mainly owing to the different mongoloid feature they have got or their sharply different culture comparing to the rest of the states in our country - is on an extreme scale.

'Unity in Diversity'---I wish it to be a practical truth in our country and not just a flowery phrase to be made used of, to make things sound nice.

When I read Tagore's poetry that so beautifully sings of universal brotherhood and a world space occupied by free minds away from narrow thoughts- all I can say is it simply hurts when I think that the world is still divided by narrow domestic empty thoughts based upon caste, class, gender and creed with high respect only for people with money and thereby power.

Slogans are all around some praising- the rest critiquing acts of mankind working in full swing claiming it's just for the betterment of mankind, who knows what it truly implies except for God who sees the truth about things that man does.

I'm not an activist or a social writer but just a researcher who likes dwelling upon thoughts in between reading critical literary thoughts. I don't want to launch a social movement trying to justify whether ill treatments to northeastern people are reasonable or not but it's just that life is too short to be cut short by the meaningless psychological traumas the world inflicts when a northeast leaves his or her hometown to meet the mainstream for the purpose of learning little more about the ways of the world.

So I wish just this simple thing that the mainstream or the metropolis must not be too cruel to us based upon some biased preconceptions because it won't make this country grow better in spite of all its effort to make it the better.

Lots of writing could be done stretching this issue but better leave this page to dwell upon it the next time when my mind urges me to jot down some more on this snow-white paper...So friends skip reading my write-up if you feel it to be too messy trying to sound classy and read something more glossy that uplift your thoughts and lightens your heart.

Even then for now let me conclude my write up by saying—
I still hope for the best
Even believing in the sounds of silence
Why should I color my world with the sad ways of the world?
Better I listen to my heart that beats beautiful rhythms of life.
Oh Glorious life! Just sing to me hopeful rhymes
And let my mind turn into a treasure house of beautiful thoughts
Capable of touching many lives...