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E-Pao! Opinion - Don't blame us

Don't blame us

By: Nongmaithem Meghanath *



My attention at the moment is to express the fear that we have about being in Manipur. I am not even sure if I would be able to say the reason for the fear out of fear.

The above line doesn't sound too good for a Man to utter it, but the fact is everyone has been going through this long enough to embrace it as a package of being a Manipuri. I would have been able to take my heart out had I been sharing this with a close friend of mine but my intent of sharing is with the public.

It took me more than 10 minutes to start this line wondering what would be the best way to write without bruising someone's ego. The initial attempt seems to have been diverted slightly due to the emphasis given to self-security in those 10 minutes thought.

I have freedom of expression, yet it is as good as being naked in winter. I don't find much of a use of taking out frustration, as a normal human being would do.

How often do you think about your death?

I think, we generally do more often than any others. Camouflage dress is an index to the thought of death for us whereas it should have been an assurance of security.

You have no hope for assuring security of life to your family above their daily bread. It is so humiliating and frustrating to live yet you love yourself for being here. It is neither emotions nor patriotism but a generic humane feeling.

Why should I go through so much of insecurity trauma when I haven't done anything wrong for the society or myself? If the intention is to create fear, it has been done more than required.

It is needless to mention what is happening and "why" doesn't help you much. This is not all, we still have an old movement, which started with a belief that we are the water, and they are the fish. I wonder if that motive is being respected till now. Things change with time and time usually has its charms to set things right with the changing things but it seems things have driven the time.

We are torn off between a movement of liberation and a control/suppression mechanism of the liberation. To make the matter worse we have sub liberation movement headed by conflicting ideas and a control process that sweeps through the general people with inhuman strokes.

We are attempting to liberate ourselves from the current agony and pain with no one to help but people to drag you to institutions where they teach you to liberate yourself by giving illicit short term remedies. We have become objects functioned by instincts and seem to only react on visible threat to life. We need fresh mindset and a free peaceful environment to think like a human not a beastly environment.

It doesn't make any sense to keep pointing on people for what we are because there are a huge number of people within the people who are not responsible for what we are going through. It is not a fair deal for the innocence to give convenience to the culprits by blaming the entire society and making him feel safe.

We were born and brought up in a corrupt society, with each move of life accompany by dirty social teachings threatening the creativity of childhood. We grew up with an education where the system is complete only when you have people polluting it.

We believed our elders and followed their advice. We learnt from books with our heart not to do wrong things but the practical aspects were demonstrated against what we have learnt by our elders. This is where our elders have guided us.

I don't intend to blame anyone for the bad things as the skill developed for identifying the bad things have been also inherited from the elders. Our elders have given enough for us to learn and we seem to have learnt a lot only to go their way. It is in the best interest of our generation to unwind the inappropriate learning's and rescrub the society framed by our forefathers.

The most acute problem is, we have a distinctive gap between our mentality and the mentalities of a civilised society. We are talking about people not individuals who have attained both.

WAIT!!!! Did I say "exercising mentality of a civilised as well as ours at the same time"? As a matter of fact, they are the ones leading us. Its time you take the responsibility of welfare of your family and yours in all the area that the society has skipped to look at.

You wouldn't be able to blame anyone when your children points at your short sightedness.


Nongmaithem Meghanath contributes regularly to e-pao.net . The writer can be contacted at [email protected] . This article was webcasted on December 26th, 2006.


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