"Kill us, yes: but in the light of the day."
- Ajax in Iliad
When the gods wrapped the battlefield in mist.

I just cannot imagine the first or the last day when we celebrate the honeymoon of freedom with dignity and pride. A couple of weeks ago our folks from Tipaimukh (Ruonglevaisuo) slips inside Mizoram to be called ‘refugee.’

It was not merely a flight for refuge. There is change in image and identity. Change in lives. The self-reliant folks were suddenly reduced to a position and situation where they are compelled to live the harsh days and nights at the mercy of strangers and others.

One I knew, he was a man in Manipur. But now, in Mizoram, he is a refugee. This is one time when they started questioning the blessing of birth and life. The bliss of sweet seventeen and eighteen becomes a distant memory.

The wreaths that were once ripen with youth and beauty was only a momentary lapse of vanity. While the wish is for a place with no fear and shame. Sanaleibak, where art thou?

After the Chinese discovery of the gunpowder, there have been unwanted celebrations in Manipur too. The gunpowder has been weaponised. We seem to have acquired the knowledge very long time ago.

I remember T.C.Hodson (late political agent in Manipur and superintendent of the state) mentioned in his book, The Meitheis , that the Manipuris learnt the art of manufacturing gunpowder from the Chinese merchants who visited the state during the reign of Khagenba,circa 1630.

Peaceful coexistence was at its peak then. Unfortunately the acquired knowledge is already a Frankenstein monster today. It not only kills, but also divides and worst it displaces the sons of soil. This has robbed our biggest resource – peace.

The possession of gunpowder have been pushing us to an extent where we rise early and fast to communalise and ethnicised the others. Our reasons are dimmed .Our reaction is no more to say that the bad men kills the good men. The sad fact is that we have become too sensitive and less wise to say that it is between the Meitei and Hmar.

It will be better to die in the dark of the night than oil ourselves to become disciples to such beliefs. Will the next generations stand up to claim us man, if today we successfully convert a trigger’s happy blunder into Meitei Vs Hmar issue. Vain mortals if we do.

I cannot be, but an alarmist when I think of the forces at work here and now. We have been feeding ourselves with the miseries we breed. The fabric of centuries of peaceful coexistence is gnawed. If these stories are what we afford to generate for our materials, history will remember us with shame. We fail, then.

Unfortunaetly, no voices of sympathy and apathy are raised from the Meitei civil society when the bearers of Hmar culture and identity were being forcibly displaced from their hearths and homes. It would have been a big console if the big brother,Meitei, with its experience of rich history and culture step inside to respond to the voices in distress.

The spirit of Khagenba must be in mourning to see the flight without fancy. The chapters of miseries have been flipping page after page before our eyes. We read them in silence. We have been living with them for too long. Sadly, we have become comfortably numb. Their loud painful voices have been muted.

But silence, on our part, is no alternative. The need of the hour is talking about engagement. Big brother coming to help small brother. And small brother helping the big brother too. Our problems are not that big and complicated, as it seems to be.

In its failure to understand the diversity, the Government of India or whosoever is has only make it worst. It believes in fighting the problem by sending thousands of armed men with their gunpowder. While we need to talk it out.

Understanding the values of every big and small culture ought to be the filter towards understanding us. We can afford this. In this front, we are like kings and gods. If we still count on the Leviathan to govern and rule us in blurry ignorance, our amazing strength will hide forever.

When the tides of discontentment rise to higher level, the alternative should come from within us. The bigger chunk of any solution can only come out of us. Be it peace. Be it welfare or development. Be it political development or any development.

We are the key. The biggest problem today is that we have been cancelling ourselves out. Our problems have been multiplying after we started negating one another and ourselves.

Meanwhile, our brother bleeds here and there. But it has only been a case of other suffering.

Can we walk out from here? If we dare to allow, conflict have inbuilt temper to last long enough to make it clear that neither side could win. The prediction is not difficult. We are just going to exhaust ourselves with bigger burden of untold miseries.

The big brother, whosoever is, must move. It must be now or never.

Otherwise the flight is in the dark of the dead night with the wish to die in the light of the day.

The quest remains.