Suspended living

By:- N. Arunkumar *

Every time we think we had enough of killings and bloodshed in our streets, we come across another sensational revelation to shake up our lives and pull us all into a vortex of angry reactions to the atrocities being perpetrated on us. The story of the Khwairamband killings has taken an altogether new twist with the Tehelka disclosure in our newspapers.

It has managed to once again drag us all into the debate about the rights and wrongs of the whole episode from a new standpoint. The cold blooded nature of the murders has left us wondering about the veracity of each agencies claim, about the sequence of events that unfolded on that horrible morning in the busy market area of the town.

Horrible, because our theories, mostly based on hearsay and rumors floating thick and fast about the episode has now been squashed and given rise to new theories and rumors that are doing the rounds equally faster.

It simply adds fuel to the fire and stokes more caustic deductions about our lives and times. Whatever happened was rightly condemnable by the world. The brutality of the issue emits alarming signs about the mysterious game - plan's being stage - managed by unseen forces on our beloved land and people.

Our motherland is bleeding from within, a sort of internal hemorrhage that calls for immediate surgery. Invasive surgery it has to be or else the bleeding will lead to organ failure sooner than later.

Already, we are witness to the organ failures from the part of the establishment's inability to curtail or reign in the instruments of the terror that has been viciously let loose on all of us. Life indeed has become more than cheap in Manipur today. Killings here and there are going on relentlessly with formidable ramifications for us.

If it is not the non -local, unnamed, uncared or hopeless Bihari natives who do odd jobs and loot us, who pay the price for the war that we have let loose on ourselves, it is the security forces in broad day light and complete backing of the administrati! on that is spilling blood over us.

The coin has two sides to it of course, though we have no time to think of those other sides as long as people are being hunted like wild animals and silenced by a few bullets. We have time only to see our side of the gore and bloody sequences each day.

And, we have time only to cry hoarse that this is wrong and should not happen to us, without anyone to listen to us. The thugs today are the uniformed policemen and army personnel who are playing with our lives as if it is nobody's business.

No national media is giving coverage to our plight, as they are frightened to come here and cover our struggles for the world at large, without partiality. However, we are getting enough negative publicity as a society for the wanton manner of killing migrants within our land.

That has brought us bad publicity that we could have done without, considering that the cat is still in the bag and not let out of it. If the non - locals are killed, we too will be killed seems to be an untold mantra here.

Where are we to go now?
Who are we to look to for our deliverance from this hell?
How many more innocents, and culprits will bite the dust before we are assured of peace and tranquility?

All at the same time, it is us, we the people, who are trying to bridge the gap in our evolutionary process that has to pay the price. If all is fine and well, then it will be the turn of the feared demand letters of various organizations which is sure to ruin our hard - earned sleep and money too.

There is justification to that, strangely. We dare not raise our voice against them, or else our peace loving brothers with arms will silence us and ensure peace for themselves. I have only heard of the devil and the deep sea.

Now, it is a fact of life for me and many others like me in our pristinely beautiful motherland spilled with blood of innocents and otherwise. Not all those killed are innocents and not all innocents are killed, a kind of pendulum of right and wrong here. We have to accept that the devil and the deep sea are both in our midst today and we have no choice but balance ourselves with it.

Acceptance is done with rationalizations that might sound ridiculous to the outside world. But, we are forced to dish it out anyway. The present imbroglio will definitely go down as another series of agitations, bandhs, vociferous protests, pitched street battles between the administration and the people, condemnations and the like.

We can expect to be in the thick of action on the streets again for the length of the duration of a conclusion to this fresh scandal that will overcome us in the days to come. However, will the battles lead to a natural and accepted conclusion for all of us?

Will it bring in a semblance of order and respectability back to our lives, which is non - existent now anyway? There is no respite for those of us who believe in pacifist perspectives. We will have to live with violence I guess and deal with it in our own ways.

Most often that means looking the other way when we encounter unpleasant and menacing situations in our lives. The way things are at the moment, it looks like we will be progressing along the path of violence and bloody skirmishes for a long time to come in this century.

Till the time comes for it, we will live like suspended balloons, staring down at molten lava from a close range. God help us! The fact however, will remain that Manipur will burn once more as it has in the past.

Anger will find a way to vent itself and release its pressure from the collective psyche of an unfortunate people.