When you moored me on that bushy tropical land to be the administrator with majestic air it was beyond my imagination to comprehend the privilege and limit I could exert my power which came in the form of contempt wrapped in greatness. Perhaps I ponder over all the possibilities which could be carried out in sneaky and oblivious fashion. May be the unprecedented power compelled me to try the litmus test with the provided guinea pigs.

The dramatic empowerment left me with contempt coupled with eagerness to exercise my strength to reach out to the ignorant people who had long been deprived from the sluggish competition I had been experiencing , as a pioneer , as a doyen, as a rescuer, etc. The pomposity made me the crowned-master and the unrivalled ruler of that abandoned land which was already depopulated by infightings.

My responsibility being there was to pacify them, firstly, then to instigate any factional conflicts to minimize the load of burdens that I would go through in the near future. As a pre-emptive measure I decided to impose my dictums and those defied were to be punished justly depending on my accreditation. Soon I introduced the draconian law to effectively sanitize the populace; of course, they were very distrustful of the new dictum like any other creature.

Eventually they got a lot into it that even their chiefs got involved in the implementation process , which was rated as another stepping stone to my mission, a stepping stone to be built on the corpses which were presented as prizes of the draconian law. I certainly denounced that bloody and inhuman law when the then British regime imposed that on us. We went to the extent of moaning in front of them to repeal that very bloody law without understanding the usefulness of the inhuman law.

It was a mistake and we were just exhibiting our naivety in the face of the merciless regime. As a belated appreciation of its effectiveness I resolved that the petrified populace should feel the affects that would be showered by the law in the form of bullets , rapes , molestations, custodial killings, fake encounters and any kind of things this post-modern world has legitimized.

My arrival was very dreadful and chaotic with unwelcome air hovering over my head like the aura of the creatures. But that was just a creation of the ignorant creatures vying to unleash its muffled voice which was apparently incoherent to my ears, may be I was not used to their way of protest.

I am being the self-appointed ruler and they being the subjects we always had one-sided understanding to run the place. I allowed them to live in the restricted territories with my set up freedom. The blaring announcement of the newly inducted dictum was announced and it was expected to be heeded by them and those who didn't were to be considered dissidents as well as a threat to the harmony of the chaotic state. Like any mosaic like society I did run into unwanted creatures with rebellious natures with the desire to destabilize the placid place.

Respect was to be shown and my majestic arrival was also to be graciously welcomed and any hindrance to my contemptuous contemplation could be deemed as arrogant nature that was what I precisely mentioned in their audience with me. Any extreme thinking would be equated to any terrorist conduct and anyone who harboured that thinking was to be declared a potential terrorist who would eventually become real terrorist regardless of their deepness in their thinking.

According to the enacted agreement the terrorists were apparently unwanted elements in a paradoxically stable and forcefully harmonized society. They should be denied any human rights and every step of theirs would be hounded so that we could convince the world that we were against the terror network and that would be done by eliminating them like insects. They were to moan, deservedly, as a price for nurturing undesired intention. We had to wipe them out, as a pre-emptive measure, before they could become a potential blot on my democratic painting.

Like creepy-crawly they held clandestine meetings to formulate the tactful conventional guerrilla warfare which could inflict more harm or could hamstring any of my makeshift bunkers which had been functioning as a shield. Their prolonged hit -and -run war had been dragged into traumatic engagement with my men gaining inches in slaughtering the innocent and they poking my hive with sporadic shots while allowing the masses to draw the conclusion that theirs was a state which was rotted away at the bottom an soon to be crumbled and lives it sheltered would be spilled out like my drink when I tripped over something exposing the emptiness and the shallowness of their hopes and future.

We displaced them and they became prone to any artificial calamities and the long endured dreams of theirs became an undying nightmares allowing time to take control of their lives and moored their fates on it. But time is an invention of human ; given shapes, characters, name, value and finally made it responsible for human's mischief . Human meticulously designs everything and it also makes sure there are certain elements which can bear the curse bestow to us from time to time for its conscious mischief.

Every period in the history is deliberately marked and concerned individual outrageously points their allegory fingers at the Earth as if she were to be blamed for conceiving and bearing a troublesome child in her belly. Convinced without remorse time has become the scapegoat and human energetically carries out its passion. She is to forgiven us since she is the victim and human is to repent because he is the sinner. Like a fair game played in its most inaudible manner.

I didn't forget because it was not easy to forget and memoirs stacked up on my troubled mind urging me to bring homogeneity and harmony among my subjects by weeding out the bad elements and this unstoppable and prolonged thoughts had hung on my head too long and I was forced me to retreat for years from any civilized contemplation while my defiled body was becoming a question mark.

In spite my subject's protestation against my regal self-justified and self-righteous present my considerate mind has always been, too, unnecessarily, concerned about their unseen, unforeseeable and undiscovered plights, which I sympathized with my sincere sardonic consideration.

The misconstrued and undermined consideration had weighed down my question mark-shaped body and ultimately forcing me to resort to some undesired but rather inhuman , uncivil conducts to contain their excess, which I had relied on a way to remind them of my selfless and considerate efforts, which was always mingled with exasperation.

How thoughtfully thoughtless of me to be overwhelmingly concerned of my newly-discovered subjects, who were confined in their limited and self-reliant but laid back territories without being exposed to what I had seen during my self-liberated expeditions. I , with deep understanding of the prevailing remoteness and the lurking threat ,felt obliged to expand their horizon and take them to an elevated place so that their ignorant eyes could view the freedom I had seen but never touched.

Long ago I was one of white man's burdens today I was free and didn't have to recall what I had gone through because bitter bygone days bring unpleasant nostalgic trips to my ill-fated days. We had resolutely resolved to remove that like a memory chop. But there I was for chip replacement just to remind others how it was to be colonized with the subsequent guarantee to gain access to the freedom archives we inaugurated. This was the manner to educate and liberate people from the ignorance.

The weeding out had prolonged longer than I planned but was very convinced that their rebellious struggles would surely fatigue since mine was relentless and inexhaustible and at any cost I was to maintain the brownie sovereignty in this alienated island. My iron hammer was unmatched by their wooden hammer so the certainty to win over them was absolute and with that absoluteness I would whack and hammer out everything to pursue my so-called despicable interests.

I also wished to remind them that there was a sea difference between the freedom they were pursuing for and the freedom I had been devouring on my own. Ours was handed down from the white colonialist and they were the only known notorious colonialist history had reckoned.

I was brown and brownie occupation was supposed to be invisible if there was any colonial and sardonic trace in my conducts it was infeasible to reckon since the unilateral west had been engaged in a prolonged tussle with the displaced and petrified Muslims so why we bother about these chinks in the middle of landlocked yearning and aggressively shooting sporadic arrows to propagate their goal. And it was bound to be suppressed and ignored because they had long lived in ignorance owing to lack of western and Aryan education and the freedom they had had before was based on myth and letting them chase their dream in that direction would be another human catastrophe.

I was right because the world had reckoned the fact that I had earned many brownie points with my brownie efforts to exert my brownie freedom to color my subjects brown, which was the way to maintain the imbalanced power. Without a master there could not be subjects and if these words were not to be used every now and then the so-called word "colonization" would halt to exist in dictionaries.

If one were to prove its caliber and find a way to help oneself increase its credential then chopping off human heads and sticking them out to display the bullet-ridden bloodied bodies was the mantra to secure the desired-goal.

While they longed for the too dreamlike dream which had become an undead dead in their lives and they all were dying after their dream was pronounced dead so that they could die without dreaming. I was certainly there giggling over that abandoned dream.

I was also standing by their undead dream and dreamlike dream, which never actually existed, with leash on its neck to remind them I was not only the master of what they saw but also of what you felt.

Yes! That's what I was my burdens.

Nameirakpam Bobo Meitei

* Bobo Meitei contributes regularly to e-pao.net
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This article was webcasted on October 06th, 2006