Shanti Thokchom's Life Experiences
- Part 21 -
Penpal's Friend

By Shanti Thokchom *

During my high school days at Adimjati, I became an avid fan of writing to penfriends all over. It was more to keep myself occupied and enjoy writing to unkown friends!!

I was more of an introvert during those days so this activity gave me an outlet to express myself!! It was the encouragement of our English teacher there that I began this pursuit to improve my vocabulary and also learn the different ways of the expression by others!!

I would write 10 to 20 letters everyday to penpals who wrote back to me after they saw my details in "Friends" magazine!!. It felt wonderful to be able to write to someone from other places and get to know stuffs which I'd have never learnt in the classroom!! and not be condemned!!

My first ever penfriend was a Meitei boy from Khongjom. He was in Sainik school, Imphal. Gosh, we had such good flow of letters between us! We competed as to who'd write more pages than the other!!

It just seemed as if we waited for each other's letters always!! We continued our correspondence for more than 6 years!! To others, it might seem we were writing love letters but we were not.. We were exchanging ideas, sending coded words, abbreviated words, new terms/ lingo that we thought might interest us...etc...!!

I met him after 3 years of corresponding with him.......MAN...O man, I was just shy as can be.... I never thought he'd come to visit me after the Church service got over at Khoyathong on a sunday.

I was dumb-founded and too nervous!! I kept fidgeting with my hair as I had it in two braids!!! I even pulled it out again and again because of my nervousness to face this friend for the first time!!!

I could have peed in my pants at that time.....because we were teenagers and could not even talk properly when we met. We might have projected ourselves to be tigers or lions in our letters but when we met..it was a totally different story......

Well, we all walked together and had a small chit chat. At least I got to thank him for visiting me. We all know how conservative our Manipuri parents are!! I was scared of what my mom would say about talking to him after the church service!!

Thinking back, it feels stupid!! But it was the prevalent times and society of that period!! I had another one of his classmates write to me too. I cannot recall his name well....may be something like Mungyamba Meetei from Singjamei.....!! I learnt a lot from them because they had their own distinct styles of writing!! I have good memories of them though!!!

My class mates were too busy talking about who is going around with who and who wears what and what boy said what and to whom etc... I was too busy trying to reply my penfriends' letters as soon as I received them.

My younger sister was an extrovert and did not care much about writing letters which she pooh-poohed as a matam mang ningai....(waste of time).

Well, some times when I received my penpals' pictures , she'd be the first one to grab them from my hands to see if they were good looking or not. She was teased by my classmates as the queen of Troy.

One day while we cycled on our way to school near Imphal DM college gate, some maybe 8 or 9 yr old kids, of Tiny Tots School teased us by saying "Iteima, kadomdano?"( sis-in-law, where are you going?)

My sis got down and confronted these little ones and said to them to bring their "Tamos" (brothers) right there so that she can follow them to their houses to be their "Iteima"( sis-in-law).

Believe me, those kids were speechless!! They never thought my sis would stop her cycle and face them. They thought they were just being big boys teasing gals... I am sure they must seen and witnessed their peers and other elder siblings do that kinda laknaba ( teasing) on the road sides which must have been the coolest and the most "in" thing to do at that time!!

I know our Manipuri boys do have that nupi laknaba (teasing gals) thing as part of their growing up ritual... I dont know about the present situation there in Manipur now about such thing as I have been out from there since '84!! Its nice to recall such incidents and share with you all!

Coming back to my good friend from Sainik School Imphal, he introduced me to his history teacher Mr. Udhop and his wife. Me and my sis took the mini bus to Pangei for this visit. We had a good time visiting his school and ate good lunch with them.

She was more curious to see my good friend and his other friends so she agreed to accompany me and not let my folks know of our visit. We'd be in dire straits if they knew because we were not supposed to be talking to any other unknown boys!!!

So you see, I am not a Ms. Goody-2-shoes!! At the school, we knew were being stared at and passed comments by the boys and it was pretty hard as I felt very embarassed. My sis loved all the attention while I was very sweating cos of the embarassment at being stared at by the boys form out of their dormitories!!

The couple made us feel very welcomed and showed us their garden and other greenery they had in their backyard!! They joked to us that the boys were enjoying the sight of gals visiting their school campus which was a rarity there!!

I kept praying inside myself for the visit to end soon because I could not take the boys' staring at us no more...Boy! I was damn glad to board that mini bus back after the nice visit!! I cant even remember all what we talked with my good friend!!

We kept up our correspondence till he passed out from there and then we lost contact after that!! He surfaced again out of the blue after few years when I was teaching at Baby K.G. school.

One of my students was his nephew or his private tuition student or something. It was pretty odd talking to him then because we were no more school kids!! I was getting into my grove of teaching these young 4th graders and was loving it very much!!

I don't know his where-abouts now! It'd be cool to get in touch with him!! I have been trying to locate him but since he was in the older batch of his school, no one so far has been able to help me locate him!!



More stories later ...... to be continued ...!!