The Painted We
- Part 1 -

By Nameirakpam Bobo Meitei *

I couldn't figure out why they had to labour for me. When out of a thousand a thousand came to look at me, and to see if I was overwhelmed with the bestowed name, what else could I think. And there was no way that I could take my mental faculty beyond that little but marked territory. We had never been outside the place. There seemed to be no need for such an adventure: crossing the border of the village only to run into people who looked just like us, but with different dialects.

Here, at least, I could wander about in my wrapper on nodding and smiling at everyone, but beyond our place those people would only give you a kind of bitter stare that makes you feel that you could be lynched, just like we chasing an unknown bird in the thick forest behind our village.

The chief and his family were the only people who had the temerity to go beyond our sacred land; I saw his children when I was growing up, they once appeared in foreign clothes when a tall white man in one long cloth came to our place with his ever-smiling people. No one from the village dared to approach the white man but the chief.

He was on his knees with face seeking the man's attention, but when he turned over his shoulders to look at us the face was stern. Everybody was on the knees, and was constantly looking at the chief so that we could follow his gestures.

When the tall white man approached the chief, whom we never looked in the eyes, he thrust himself forward and hugged the great man's legs. It looked just like a meek wife begging her husband to stay. After the leg-hugging day everything changed for us. A new white building came, we were ordered to be there every week.

Then in the following weeks we were told by the chief, because he was advised, that brewing wine had to be abandoned. How could we? It's an ancestral practice: to brew rice wine and drink from bamboo mugs at nights by the fire.

We silently protested, then those inducted youths from the village came out saying, " anyone caught breaking the law would be ostracised. My parents gave it up, then after few generations people almost forgot that we at some point did that. Here we hardly talked about our past, there was hardly anything. The folklore sung with bamboo musical instruments were now replaced by guitars and bass drums.

Some of the young people even started using more weird-looking instruments with strange shapes, and more young people easily flocked into those new flashy things. How could they like bamboo instruments which they saw everyday. Even though they grew up seeing the bamboo instruments, none knew how to play them. Some of them publicly admitted that the bamboo instruments weren't theirs.

Strange time it was and the air was thick with it. The new air just hung over the village, heard that the same was going on in others as well, then it came down thick as torrential rain, it lingered until in had seeped through the thatch roofs and the colourless clothes and when it was on the skins it entered and soaked us in it.

The chief was now old and he had been talking about handing over the whole affairs to his son in sleek suits and black sunglasses. Though the daughter was the eldest among his children the chief couldn't trust the intelligence of his own daughter; he was convinced that the Mother was born out of the ribs of the Father. In his dying days he seemed to have doubt over what he had done, but it was too late. The son had been in the forefront; he had his own people and his people were connected with people from different areas.

At least in his father's time we were consulted, now his son saw no reason why he should do so. Many weren't happy and what would be do to change his mind. Nothing, in front of this rifles-wielding people who always walked in long line while returning to the chief's house as though they had been to a war. The options were before us: join us or let us tread upon backs. Who would want to be trodden upon!

Young people who would have been busy in paddy fields now followed them, and those who didn't leave were given little respect. This was quite clear when they began asking for food with their rifles on their shoulders as though all those times we had been breaking our backs in the fields for them. When they were not given, they virtually snatched it from us. They always had all the young and beautiful around them. Who wouldn't want to be seen with the famous and powerful, after all. Even my sons ditched me to join them.

When you have something to flaunt, why one wouldn’t? Each day they had different styles: someday they had red bandanas on their foreheads, someday the faces were painted with black lines, months later the happy faces were slightly veiled the brims of newly-issued hats. What didn’t change was number of dark glasses, they seemed to have only two pairs. One pair reserved for the taciturn leader and the another were passed among them in daily rotational wise.

We thought they were just killing their times with those heavy-looking weapons, after few months they began to guard the white man and his white building. The man spent days with the taciturn leader and they were always joined by the new chief. Now it became clear to us that important decisions were to be made inside that building.

Our shamanistic life of worshiping Nature had to be abandoned, for it was rated a "savage practice". With that offerings to our ancestors came to an end. Their literature replaced ours. In two decades it had come a fashion to turn their backs on our dialect and new language was the balloon which every kid was after.

The dialect was still of some use, though; young people would speak to us in deliberately-twisted accent to communicate with us. They just didn't want to upset us. Since everything important was said, discussed and finalised in the new language, there was no way that someone like me could make a remark. We were the pariahs and our own children, speaking someone else's language ,were the future.

One day a pack of Japani people came to visit the war cemetery just down the road from our village. The vehicle which had brought them had broken down, they came to our village to take shelter for one night. After the vehicle was repaired they stayed; they were interested in our village, so we fed their curiosity with our hospitality.

One very old man, too old to walk around with others , sat in our courtyard with a book in his hand. In few hours more men came and sat down with books of different colours, unlike the one and only book. I had never seen an old man reading a book, and they were reading in their language. In sign language I asked what they were reading, the old man squinted his eyes and replied, "A French book." I pressed further, "Did you study their language in order to be too smart?" He said it was a French story but it was in Japani language.

This startled me. Because of the new language we couldn't take part in anything and because of the important attached to it ,now our ideas and wisdom were not considered. It seemed like I would have to be tooo fluent in the new language to express my opinions.

So, we had been claimed by others and ,I feared , it wouldn't reverse.

To be continued.....

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 January 01 2012.