Saratchand Thiyam's 'Nungshibi Greece' has been chosen for the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award 2006 in Manipuri langauge.

On the surface, the book may be summed up as a travelogue, an eyewitness account of the writer's experience when the visited Greece on a week long tour to attend world peace conference held at Athens from May 10 to 14, 2000.

But from the first page upto the last, when a reader goes down deep among the words, then the book clearly emerges as not just a travelogue or a memoir but one of the most significiant books of its genre, a great piece of Art in the last fifty years of Manipuri literature.

The book has gained an ascending over other travelogue in Manipuri literature, even better than the writer's earlier travelogue 'Hajilakpa Eeshingee Manakta'. What makes this book different from other travelogue is that it is a book on man's search for ideal and beauty.

Through the reading of the book a reader can feel not only the beauty of Greece but also shuttles back his mind with pangs of sorrow and helplessness to a society where there is no light but only shadows.

Saratchand belongs to the group of modern poet of post eighties in Manipuri literature who are labelled as angry, dejected and rebellious. But Thiyam stands apart from among his contemporaries. He has written five books of poetry.

His poems do not confine only to the soil and society of Manipur ravaged by insurgency movement, attrocities of the security forces and corruptions in the society. He sees the sufferings of the whole of the world through the sufferings of his people and tries to paint them in a larger canvas, in a larger frame that is the suffereings of mankind.

In most of his poems in 'Africa' Yumlingda- bahsingee yum' and 'Tsunami' he reconciles to a subject, the love of human beings'. It is in these poems that Saratchand fully acts upon the mission to which he has consecreated himself fully that is the suffering of man irrespective of different geographical boundaries. The poet receives shapes of his poetry from the happenings of this restless world.

As a messenger of peace he got the chance to visit Greece. When he sees with his own eyes, the beauty, the society and the centre of civilization of the world he is elated and lost himself in the midst. But at the same time he cannot forget the 'fever and fret' of the society to which he belongs.

So from the moment when we first open the pages of his 'Nungshibi Greece' we find Saratchand a man torn by psychological conflicts in his mind. He becomes a man thrown into a situation where there is a tension between two selves - one that responds to the world of beauty, a world of sense and civilization - and the other which responds to a society where there is chaos, turmoil and restlessness.

The poet stands in a dual plane on which his book 'Nungshibee Greece' operates. For Saratchand is at once looking Greece as an object of ideal in front of him and at the same time also gets behind to look at his own native place, which means he has his one foot in the world of beauty and the other in the world of reality where in the words of Keats 'youth grow pale and dies young'.

A striking feature of 'Nungshibi Greece' is the fact that two ends of two different societies are quite distinctly tied together by a theme of pathos that run throughout the whole pages of the book. The yearning for what is seemingly unattainable, the consequent better realization of contrasting world of the two societies culminate at the point of extreme sorrow.

To Saratchand Athens is a city of God where radiant people meet and Imphal is a dolorous town, a noisy market where mourners held procession every where every minute.

So when he sees Greece and its people, when he narrates the society, the way of life of the people there, it becomes a beauty that suggests to the reader's imagination, a superior world of greater beauty to which every human being aspires.

Saratchand in his travelogue attempts to communicate the contrast between his benumbed sensation which is often shot through with pain and the serenity and joyousness of Greece, its cities, roads farms, ancient monuments and hills.

The underlying emotion of the book is the grief highlighted by the often plantive cries of the writer to attain the immortal glory of the ancient Greece. The moods of elation experienced and expressed by the writer do not seem to be able to exist when divorced from the theme of pathos.

The writer knows too well that the happiness he feels while in treading in the city of Athens cannot be last forever for he has to return to the place where bullets are floated on the flood of blood. And the reader by now realizes why does the writer has been correct in attributing his depression - because Greece is very different from Manipur.

Saratchand really suspends his joy of the moment while in Greece.

While he sees stars, the Great Bears, the little bears from the windows of his Hotel Stanley, his minds is often disturbed by the thought of his home state, Manipur, about its load shedding, about the polluted Nambul river etc. then he suspends his joy of the moment to carry it home as one take sweets and eatables from the religious ceremonies reserved to carry it for his young children waiting for him.

So Saratchand brings back a package of sweet of peace from Greece and at the same time a handful of tragic incidents that happens in Japan in the World War II is also not forgotten to bring home.

The temporal Sadako in the body of a young Japanese girl died along ago due to the radiation of man-made Atom bomb. The eternal Sadoko lives in the heart of many Japanese as well as in the hearts of many who knows her tragic end.

Sadako becomes a permanent symbol of peace in Japan now. This permanency is made to reach us and permanent through Saratchand's meeting of Japanese delegate Kazasi.

From the reading of the Sadako episode we cannot seperate the temporal from the eternity for it is by vitue of her fight, her grief, her exposure to accidental circumstances long time passed away but she remains alive and Saratchand does not fail to bring home the message that 'Let's stop war and peace be prevailed in the world'.

'Nungshibi Greece' is a rare book in Manipuri Literature. It is not a mere book of travelogue but a book which tells something different, about beauty truth, ideal and moral.