Before the tree falls

By Nameirakpam Bobo Meitei *

If one were to look for a self-defeated people, there wouldn't be need to look beyond our own in which we all have been in a state of decay and soon to be transformed to decomposed stuff which a person in wellingtons boots , nose and mouth covered ,with a shovel in his hands to throw us away just like we all do in our own backyards.

Despite being a self-defeated people, we also have made ourselves a people who are capable to churn out senseless excuses to counter the practical reasoning, which is vital to the development of a society, and much more desperately in a condition like ours, we are incapable of.

What gives us a grim picture is the sheer indifference of which we all are collectively capable of and the resolute-like state of ours to live inside it and playing out our little mischievous games, and yet living like an accomplished people, suggesting all is utter vanity and it will soon, very soon, will fizzle out only to leave behind a world fit only for lackeys.

You have to be someone who was schooled and then sent out to some major city for further studies to become an employed person, but these are very few while the rest end up as a confused lot wanting to linger since they have known the difference between the bizarre and gruesome life and the world of glamour and unlimited freedom. They also happen to be a people who can't insert themselves in since the manner in which they were groomed at homes and at schools flitted between hurrying through school curricula and dodging the macabre setting.

Out there we have a lot scattered all over the mainland fed by money from home ,and a world at home where everyone is out with a machete to slice off his piece from what is ours without understanding the fact that they are hacking the very trunk of the tree in which we all are living.

Dignity is a long gone thing; vanity is what possesses us ; vice is abundant and it grips all of us; mischief is the game we all have been playing. What do we have to look forward to; revolution: started with a bang, spangled the our sky for quite sometimes and by now an ubiquitous parasite which grows monstrous and dreadful each day; education: for which we all have to get out of this place; governance: a private club for few and the members are the ruthlessly selfish kind; politics: it is effective as far as lynch mobs and communal polarization go; law and order: leave that to AFSPA-empowered Indian army and the bestial police personnel who are drawn from the same house and have grown more nastier than outsiders.

Isn't time that we all sat down to listen as others also have things to say and see what should be done to salvage ourselves from this quagmire, instead of pretending that we are going to march till New Delhi brandishing those Russian-made Khmer Rogue-abandoned rifles?

Isn't it time for us to look in each other's face to see what we have done to ourselves, instead of pretending that we all are alright in duplicate Thai clothes bought in Burma?

Isn't it time that we set up educational institutions to train our young people so that they grow up as competent competitors, and even if they leave to work outside, at least they won't have to wait on tables in some momo restaurant or work in a beauty spa?

If there is no room for different opinions and those who can actually decide are not willing to face the music then what future we should expect and what world we should be leaving behind? Perhaps a place cut up into villages along communal lines, yet entirely depending on the claws of outside traders and New Delhi?

This calls for greater sacrifices, a revived-pride, tolerance of different opinions and display of pragmatism, so that can we determine sooner or later in what direction we should be headed.

Nameirakpam Bobo Meitei

* Nameirakpam Bobo Meitei contributes to e-pao.net regularly.
The writer can be contacted at bobomeitei(at)hotmail(dot)com
This article was webcasted on August 22 2011.