Dear children of Manipur

Dr Leima Chanu Shakti Yambem *

Visit to relief camps by Manipur Meitei Association, Bangalore :: September 10 to 15, 2023:: Pix - Waari Singbul Network

At first, an apology. We have failed you so terribly as a society. What should have been on your lips were the latest Disney tunes of Frozen as Elsa danced, yet you already have rhymes of the opposing community and know what being killed means in your little mind.

As you go to sleep, the sky would be filled with smoke from the tear gas and your dreams would have lullabies of rally, tears, anger and protest, punctuated often by sounds of gunfire and bomb blasts. You should be dreaming of fireflies, barbies and cartoon network, little one.

I received a phone call from an old intern who had scored amazingly well in the recent NEET exam where you can choose your specialty after MBBS. She was worried that due to the internet ban, she might not be able to complete her choice filling of seats.

She told me she studied in Coimbatore the last six months because she was getting suffocated hearing the ongoing news and for a Nationwide exam, she needed clarity and peace. I guess Coimbatore offered her what Imphal could not. She briefly spoke of wanting to go abroad after her post-graduation because it was getting too painful to stay back in Manipur.

These are just normal conversations of everyday people in the State. They talk of brain drain but every section of the economy is suffering. From the vegetable vendor who do not have the transport, to the failing business where customers are afraid to come out, to the price hike due to connecting roads being blocked, yet vegetables will continue to decay and it will soon be the time of the month to pay rent. The cycle continues.

The market takes one step forward for it only to be dragged by the collar, two step backwards.

They say you are the sum of five people you spend most of the time with and your conversations, internal and external shape your reality. I wished our conversations would be of Elon Musk’s recent entry into American politics, how X became liberated, the G20 summit and the way floods are swarming in across the globe, how Artificial Intelligence would seep into our veins tomorrow, how technology is rapidly sprinting at a pace that we have to evolve as human beings to catch up, yet here we are talking of onions being priced at 150 Rs per kg, in Manipur.

When internet is becoming a basic right, and the leading companies are interested in Starlink to provide internet access to remote areas that the present fibres cannot reach, here we have queue at Keishampat junction for electric recharge. When the basic is not available, how can we even dream of the far fetched, though we lack nothing in cerebral intelligence nor physical attributes.

Academics do not shape everything but excelling in academics teaches you that you have to do things you do not like sometimes and through the process, you begin to see that chapters in history are not different from the ones written today, the civil right movements make you grateful to have equal footing in the society, the theorem of Physics make you realize just how incredibly beautiful frequencies, wavelengths are and with stars shining at you light years away.

But here, I see girls and boys in uniform sleeping on the streets of Ema Keithel market, protesting, facing bullets and lathis to restore normalcy in this broken warfare.

I wonder when they go back home in bruised bodies, what scripts or lecture will go inside their system or if these will shape their careers as they combat with their peers locked in AC libraries, going for mock up trials, exploring stock markets.

How many light years of gap are we widening between the State and the rest of the Nation. Shillong just hosted a music concert with the biggest names of the industry yet here we have echoes of screams and rushing ambulances of twinkling blue green alarms.

A certain twenty-year-old boy who hails from Heirok and works part time to afford his rent in Imphal, goes to a reputed college in Imphal. He said that he is not familiar with online submission of forms and he was trying for a scholarship. But now, he could not get the signatures in time since colleges are closed.

Another young girl in an only girl’s college said her exams were postponed four times since the war happened. Students who had assembled to discuss completion of syllabus are often politicized with no concrete plan of action for their education.

Academic calendar remains a fact only on spreadsheets and an illusion in reality. Youngsters stayed at home during Covid to avoid death in 2020. Youngsters still stay at home in 2024 to avoid death, amidst curfew for an altogether different reason. I am too weak tospeak of the children in relief camps because education is a luxury they cannot afford. Their reality is a daily survival of having rice on their plates.

The anxiety that slowly comes in through the windows into the minds of people is overwhelming and care of metal health is becoming too expensive a ticket to pay. We saw trucks of armed militants across the street in Uripok when we were five. For almost two decades, the images had been erased. Yet they resurface in different outfits now and gun culture became the new normal. Children’s early exposure to guns is becoming as frequent the arrival of new fruit flavors of candy.

When deaths become simply bytes in the computer system, when rapes become a part of the everyday vocabulary, when bodies floating down Barak river are accepted, when infants who should have been breast feeding, have their skull broken, how many appeals or memorandum does it take to say enough is enough.

Are we simply going to look away because it is Manipur. There have always been trouble here and there will always be. Is this the price that the children have to pay for being born in Manipur ?