The Painted We
- Part 2 -

By Nameirakpam Bobo Meitei *

The chief died after he had witnessed everything. It must have been painful for him. The son was reduced to a mere puppet. He couldn't hang his father's portrait in the new building, instead the white man's was hung above the entrance door to remind each and every one that he was the foreign messiah who had come to redeem us. So, this man was now regarded more important than own father.

I watched understanding the certainty that all was defined for us and now we could only struggle hard to be just like what they wanted us to be. What was to define us came not from the next village, but from some unknown place, probably a place where everything monstrous and wise always was issued from a spring.

One misty morning we heard a voice hollering through the black boxes which every young one admired ,for they had been brought from the "US." We rushed towards the origin of the noise and milled about the entrance of the big white building. The boy who was taken and put through some foreign education to succeed the white messiah was at the door wearing the same long cloth his predecessor wore.

I know him, the grandson of our dead chief. He didn't address us in our dialect; it was done in the white man's language. It sounded nice and I know he tried very very hard to sound just like him; the harder he tried the more artificial he sounded, like a dog trying to show that it could really bleat just like a sheep. He bleated in that language. Whatever it was and whatever it meant , it sounded very smart.

The crowd disintegrated and I came home walking. Since it sounded very smart I was eager to find out from someone what he had said. From the gate I veered toward my best friend's house; his son could speak the civilised language. When I asked the boy to explain what the man at the white building had said, he laughed at my ignorance.

I felt very stupid to be treated like that just because I couldn't understand someone else's language, not that I had done or said something stupid. I kept that to myself and proceeded with my curiosity; the successor of the white man wanted all of us to wear some decent clothes while we entered his white building. And if we didn't then those armed people would show us how to do.

So, no more striped wool shawls, wrapper-on and slippers. There again was a gathering in front of the white building to figure out how we could get the people who could stitch our new clothes. I was anxious, and began to imagine myself how I would look in those neat and shiny clothes, just the dead chief's son. I never hated anything in my life, but I was always afraid of doing anything new. Soon the excited all of us concluded that we should speak to the dead chief's son to arrange. He said he would be happy to assist us in our broken dialect. Good education had done that to his language.

Few days later he brought to the village some Indians in a big truck. We were told to stand in one line, so we lined up the entire day till our sizes were measured and they left in the same truck chattering away with the man assisting us talking in another strange language. If I could ever talk just like him to all kinds of people ,then I knew I would be the king of the universe. The dead chief's son announced we all would have to pay few thousand bucks. Few thousand! Baffled though we were, we huddled about to figure out how we could raise the money, but that huddling only led us to banging our heads against each other.

We had enough to eat, enough to last for several months, but we never had money. There was no way that we could get hold of a thousand note. That was associated with the kind of dead chief's son. Since we had no means we approached him one more time to seek his advice; he said we would have to give our cattle and some shares of our harvests. That moment I asked myself if it was really necessary for us to lose our hard-earned food and cattle for few pieces of clothes. I was the exception, and people there saw me as a turncoat.

Their sneer subdued my anger, and soon I allowed myself to be incorporated into the swelling crowd. So, we exchanged our cattle and shares of harvests with new clothes which we wore once a week. On that particular day we walked feeling like a new people. All men ventured out ,while our ladies followed us in our traditional outfits; if the men were doing good that meant the whole place was doing well.

In three piece-suits worn with dirt-covered black boots we milled about the building; it was nice that we were looked at ,and there was something for us to look forward to in our village. Since we were a new people we expressed our willingness to try more and this was noticed by the man in long white cloth.

He said while walking we should thrust our heads, hands in pockets and when opened mouths the words should be what we had been hearing inside the white building. They just wanted us to practice.

We hymned and hymned till we had memorised each and every word. By the time we perfected our memorisation we were herded out by the dead chief's son and his man to some place beyond our village, they insisted it should be called 'hamlet'; we were to mingle with others who also had groomed themselves in the same manner ,and had been herded out by the same few.

They had a bigger white building and their white man was still alive. That moment I realised why we had been herded out of the village like cattle. The gathered crowd couldn't be accommodated in their white building, so in the last minutes they abruptly designed a bamboo stage for the white messiah in their village football field.

The frail old man sauntered about the stage while his every step was watched by everyone and there were tens of them who waited on him for any gesture. After a long wait he was on stage behind a microphone atop a wooden stand. We all were excited, to calm us down he raised his hand ,and when it didn't prove effective he pressed his forefinger against his pressed lips. He was ,I guess ,holy angry and his unspoken command was seen in the armed people running about the crowd to pick out those who defied him.

Even the dogs remained silent, the mist disappeared, the gushing biting winds re-routed. It was the power of that and we submitted that very instant to him. The powerful speakers thundered and every word resembled the words that we had been memorising; it was just that he spoke in a natural way. After he had spoken the white man's successor from our village was seen on stage and announced something; nothing happened. He was embarrassed, then the leader of the armed group ran up to him with a bowed head, the man came down and passed on the words: he wanted us to stand up , but he said it in the new language.

Finally we stood up and we were instructed again through the armed people that we were to repeat after the white man. He looked tired, but we saw in him a power that convinced us that the world would certainly be better off with him. Loud and clear we repeated after him for an hour. Only when the throats were dry and stomach was empty we stopped.

This event soon became a regular exercise. We went because we were told and through that arranged interaction and public declaration that we sat in one field repeating the same words more things were to unfold. In the next gathering we were given a name. Since we all had a given name, we were told to take care of it and everything should be done to make it sound stronger. How could we not try; it was after all a name given to us by the white man.

We would smile and talk only to those had showed up, but those who we hadn't seen could be considered our own. We were now elevated and civilised and our words and our style should now be admired. Words were thick in the air that very soon we all would be flown into some western countries and there we could live or come back, if we wished.

Concluded .....

Nameirakpam Bobo Meitei

* Nameirakpam Bobo Meitei contributes to e-pao.net regularly. The writer can be contacted at bobomeitei(at)hotmail(dot)com
This article was webcasted on January 05 2012.