Her humility, generosity and the touch of the old world innocence in her persona keeps her audience enthralled as she blends supernatural metaphors into her personal narrative about the social movements of the state, and her own experience and role in it.

It goes to her credit that Keisham ongbi Taruni has been involved in the middle of it all and today even at sixty-nine years of age, she is still working indefatigably for the cause of the people.

Taruni was born at Kongpal Pandit Leikai of Imphal East District to Lisham Iboton and Angoubi. The eldest among four siblings, she was not only a daughter but also the apple of her grandparents’ eyes.

But amidst all the love, suffering and deprivation too reared their ugly heads in her life from an early age. Her father, a businessman and contractor by profession, actively nurtured his gambling habit – spending days and months away from his house to spend time betting on fights of doves and pigeons.

What worsened the situation was her mother’s illness after the birth of her youngest brother. The illness left Angoubi bedridden for about three years, leaving the responsibility of looking after the house as well as her younger children to her eldest child, Taruni.

She was a diligent and dutiful child, and in keeping with the traditions of the time she soon mastered most of the duties and work that makes up a girl’s education such as cooking, cleaning and weaving clothes, besides other household chores, and religious duties such as searching for flowers and arranging them into garlands and nachom.

Taruni completed only elementary schooling, “ani-suba” as it used to known. “I wanted to study so much, but I was not allowed to go out on my own. Even now sometimes I think how different my life would have been if only I were educated,” she laments.

When Taruni turned around thirteen years, her parents started receiving proposals of marriage on her behalf. At fifteen years, she was married off to Keisham Lalabi, an accountant with Manipur Rifles. His was a well-to-do family with vast paddy fields.

Above that her husband earned about seventy-five rupees a month. However the happiness proved to be only a brief respite. Soon after the family wealth started dwindling as they struggled to send money for her brother-in-law’s prolonged education in Shillong.

The family bore the hardship without complaint even when they were forced to sell off their paddy fields and go hungry, thinking that their sacrifices would be repaid when he returns. However tragedy struck and Taruni’s brother-in-law died soon after he completed his education and got married.

To add to their penury, Taruni’s husband Lalabi soon fell out of work, and so the whole burden of running the family and taking care of their children fell upon her. Lalabi was also a very demanding and traditional husband who would not even allow her to come out and stand face to face in front of his closest friends.

Taruni strove hard to keep him happy without complaints, even when he started bringing in other wives. He had seven other wives besides Taruni. He also started drinking.

When Taruni turned thirty-nine and her youngest child was about six or seven years she was initiated into the nishabandh movement by none other than the legendary Momon and Chaobi of the women movement in the state.

“I had already formed a society of women weavers in the locality. They approached me and said that it was incredible how an illiterate woman like me had formed such a society, and they also said that it would be easier for me to gather the women in the area for the nishabandh movement,” she recalls.

So Taruni wove clothes in morning and sold them in the markets in the afternoon. Evenings were for nishabandh meets, and nights were for vigils in the roads. At more sober times, her husband wouldn’t stop her.

At other times when he returned home drunk he would accuse her of being “immoral” for going out frequently. At time he would mock her calling her “illiterate.” Despite all this, Taruni persisted and went around with Momon to various parts of the state to spread awareness or gather people into their fold.

Taruni firmly believes that the women in Manipur were called upon by God to save the population in face of the chaos that had engulfed the state as the men were either being killed in clashes with the army or were drowning themselves in liquor.

She narrates how a holy person ‘Idhou’ had called upon the ‘seven daughters’ and assigned God’s task of saving the land. However there are several shortcomings in the present day women movement that is hampering the achievement of the goal, she admits. “The present time is the time of books. There is a necessity, a need for education for the kind of work that I am doing,” she asserts.

“You can’t go to a dharna beautified and coy. This is not the alternative. If you go to a war you have to go prepared. You have to be strong and firm. You have to tackle them (the government and army) heads on. Become a fear factor to the government, only shouting and hollering won’t do,” she advices.

Taruni presently lives at Top Khongnang Makhong Mayai Leikai, Porompat Baruni Road, Imphal. She has seven children – three daughters and four sons, twenty five grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.