Draft

MY MEMORIES OF IMPHAL

DR MOHENDRA IRENGBAM

First page with my photo

Dedication

Acknowledgement

Prologue

Contents

Engelei

(Part 1) Rendezvous pologround Kangjeibung thoknaba

Author in October 2020 during the Pandemic “I see friends shaking hands, saying ‘How do you do?’, and I think to myself what a wonderful world,” crooned Louis Armstrong in 1968, two years after I came to London. The world has suddenly become more beautiful for me because of my vulnerable age to the Covid-19, with which I may me pushing up daisies any day.

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When I set out on this journey to write about my experiences in pristine Imphal as a little and big boy, ending with the extraordinary story of political intrigue and forced integration of Manipur to India in 1949, I was wondering whether I would last the first phase of the Covid pandemic.

As I am 85 with my age-related memory decline, my efforts in tracking down the names of some of those people who were involved in the events I am writing about, are becoming a challenge.

I am glad that my repressed memories are coming back with some trepidation. I am able to piece them together and put them into some sort of order so that I can share them with young people. They are factual records of actual events and real people. Because I was there.

Before I hone in on the topic I must tell you a secret, with enormous thanks to my deceased parents, who lived till early 90s of their age. It is about longevity, which is partly hereditary. Old age is wonderful. It’s great fun. I was young once, and so I know the difference.

In the grand philosophical overview of ageing, Helen Small, an Oxford don, wrote in her book, “The Long Life” (2007) that our lives accrue meaning over time, and therefore the story of the self is not complete until it experiences old age – the stage of life that helps us grasp who we are and what our life has meant.

Most people dread getting old. We must remember there are many plus sides to getting old, such as you don’t have to be right all the time. You no longer sweat the small stuff. Your emotions bounce around much less.

You don’t have to keep up with the Joneses anymore.

Life improves in many ways with old age. Old age connotes respect. No more nuisance from the common cold. Our immune system remembers the old enemy virus of common cold. For some, you can follow your hobby in full as I am doing now. I am writing my memoir. I have written five books and got them published. I have written over 700 articles in 10 years.

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In the West where people are now living longer, old age is now considered to be at the age of 70-71 for men and 73 for women. It used to be 65 for men and 60 for women, the official retirement age. On average globally, women survive their husbands by at least 3 years.

In my grand old age I am luckier than many. I have a younger wife. We are hidebound by marriage. A Manipuri man with an English woman. My wife does everything for me. From housekeeping to cashiering and from chauffeuring to banking.

All that glitters is not gold. There are problems of old age. And I do have one now. The Covid virus mostly kills people with a limited number of years ahead of them. And octogenarians like me, are likely to kick the bucket in only a few days after its invasion as it crunches the lungs to bits.

The WHO declared an outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic on March 11 2020 with so many old and middle-aged people dropping like flies. It has struck fear into the hearts of everybody. No one enjoys the fear of a quick death. For many, fear drives faith. But I am not one of them. The virus has turned the world upside down for everybody, including children. It has taken away social liberties with its potentially high death toll from crowding.

Still, it was good to know that the darkest hour of the night is just before dawn. As the grief strafed my heart, a new emotion surged into my conscious. The emotion was hope. A chance for survival.

It was the knowledge that a new dawn was breaking in the Covid-laden dark sky with a crepuscular ray of hope. It was the news about the marketing of an immune-vaccine against this Covid-19 virus. Hope was confidence. Old age was not an excuse for giving up.

Based on the forensic value, the Covid-19 virus, now known as SARS-CoV-2 virus, has presented an unprecedented challenge to human existence.

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It has brought trepidation and frustration globally. Many people’s dreams have all but disappeared into a morass of platitude.

During this pandemic, like most people, my wife and I remained isolated with no visitors. That included our children and grandchildren. We have been wedged for months with the trapped air, sagging with human mental fatigue and despair. While most people sought solace glued to television with cans of beer, my wife and I have been on the wagon, despite being wrapped in boredom. We are not in the habit of seeking anodyne in the bottle.

During the past three months I have been bored out of my mind. My normal pastime of writing has been suspended as my mind began ‘to wander lonely as a cloud that floats on high over vales and hills’. With the arrival of the summer months I was trying to have a hold on my dormancy by doing some yardwork in my fecund garden. This summer was screaming hot for many years.

At this time of the year, as September is drawing to a close with the temperature dropping with chilly and dank air, I am like the sparrows that, in autumn, will stop gathering and twittering on the roof top. Instead they will start picking their potential partners and cosily settle their winter in nesting spots.

Now, in my second childhood (some old people behave like small children), I am stymied with only one thought. The apprehension that as my age is at the tipping point and there are restrictions to world travel, I might not have a chance to see my home town of Imphal again. The thought often leaves my gut pulled into a tight skein of despondency.

I am not giving up. I remain positive while waiting for the D-day. My days passed quickly to nights, weeks to months. And before I knew, the old year rang out and the New Year rang in.

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One of the downsides of being old is that time appears to go much faster.

Perhaps because, the perception of time is much shorter to physical stimuli.

While scientists are searching for a vaccine and an antidote to the virus at break neck speed, and people like me in the UK, are snapping and cracking the bonds of our society by distancing from each other, a WhatsApp message arrived out of the blue.

It was from Shantikumar Moirangthem from Uripok, asking me to write my memoir with all the events and experiences of my childhood just before and after the Japan Lan. Shanti, who died since, was a retired IGP of Manipur Police Force. I have known him from his birth as his father Moirangthem Gojendra Singh was my best friend. Shanti like me, had an avid interest in writing articles. He loved reading books.

Shanti suggested that a memoir of my youth would be of immense interest to the people of his generation and generations after him, as there are hardly any written accounts of those exotic days.

He was joined in his effort to twist my arm, by his friend, RK Dilip, a retired Director of CCDU in Manipur. Frankly, I was not very keen to write a memoir of my life and career indexing my foibles and achievements. It would be disservice to the readers. Received wisdom holds it that I have no pearls of wisdom to print and there is nothing to pass on to benefit the future generations.

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Shantikumar Singh

RK Dilip Singh

However, their cajolery and my altruism eventually prevailed. Fortune favours the bold. With equal parts of determination and foreboding, I consented to put on record some historical events as I observed them.

While writing these accounts from memory, every effort is made to put them in the correct perspective and right chronological order. I would also like to use this opportunity to share a bit of my salad days when I was green in judgement. I regret the inevitable boredom.

As my memory is stretched 80 years like an old elastic band, and for the sake of expediency, I need to find a convenient starting grid, from which I can go back in time or move forward. And for this, I have chosen the date of my first arrival in London from Imphal.

I arrived in London on a damp and foggy morning of February 10 1966.

I came here to do my post-graduate studies in medicine and then return home to open a nursing home in Imphal.

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In fond anticipation, my father and the eldest brother Gokulchandra began to construct a building for this explicit purpose, at Sadar Bazaar (Makha Dukan) in Imphal.

But things did not work out as planned. Strangely enough, after all the girlfriends I had in India, during the first three months of my arrival in the UK, I met a girl, Margaret, who is now my wife. It was a sort of the proverbial ‘love at first sight’. An intense desire to be with her. Actually, I don’t really know what love is.

Once I got my professional post-graduate degrees for which I came here in the first place, and married Margaret in 1970, she desired that we settled here. I had a hard decision to make. I took her to my home in Imphal in 1972 for her to have a look around. She was not keen.

In the end, I decided to settle here as the thought of leaving her was unthinkable. I was also determined to find out whether I was egging on fate or whether fate was dogging me. It was gracious of my parents that they did not say anything about it. They left it to me.

I came straight to London from Churachandpur where I was posted for just over a year, beginning in 1965. Previously, I worked as a physician at the Civil Hospital in Imphal. There was nothing much to do at Churachandpur. Most patients did not have time to be ill.

There were no social participations or interpersonal interactions for me.

There was naught to engage my mental or physical energy. My social take-off for which I chose to become a doctor, was beginning to look like a cold start.

It had dawned on me then, that the only way to fulfil my life’s ambition and to remain unruffled in high Imphal society, was to get a post-graduate degree in medicine. But I was not making any effort towards that goal.

I was in a state of ‘suspended animation’. There were a few reasons which I kept to myself. Like the mills of God it was grinding slowly. I could not 7

make my mind up. I was in the doldrums.

Life at Churachandpur on the other hand, was one of the best times of my life. Being my own boss at the Hospital. I also had a great pleasure in revamping the hospital which had only one unisex ward of 30 beds.

It was dreary and dilapidated. There was not even a small room to run an outpatient clinic. Doctors, who had been posted there before my time, had just bided their time until the next order came for another transfer elsewhere.

I decided to do something to improve the hospital and provide a better care of health. To begin with, I smartened the nurses and their uniforms.

As they were trained at Mission hospitals in Assam,they were very good and efficient. They were all local. Kukis, Paites and Mars. A good pharmacist was attached to the hoispital.

It is great that I can still remember the names of two Staff nurses, Chingnu and Mannu among others. Chingnu often acted as an anaesthetist when I did some minor and major operations, such as Caesarean section.

While trying to give a face-lift to the hospital, I was fortunate in that I had a lot of connections at government offices in Imphal. That made my task to improve the hospital much easier.

I had a separate outpatients’ room constructed and various utility facilities renovated. I got the ward redecorated and electric lighting installed. I had the open ground of the hospital fenced off.

The Director of Medical department in Imphal at that time, was Mr Malhotra. He treated me with respect as he knew I was influential. I could get hold of many things that were essential for the hospital. I had a new X-ray machine installed and organised for the posting of an X-ray technician.

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I had also liaised with the Health Minister for a new purpose-built hospital.

I managed to get the foundation stone of a new hospital laid one month before I left for London.

With Nurses at Churachandpur District Hospital.On my right, Staff Nurse Chingnu and Left, Staff Nurse Mannu While in Churachandpur, I became quite friendly with the Commanding Officer of the “7 Guards’ Battalion”, Lt Col Jagdish. His battalion of Biharis was deployed at Churachandpur for counterinsurgency measures. Every evening, I was invited to the officers’ Mess for drinks, followed by a meal.

I soon settled down to the rhythm of drinking free officer-quality dark rum before dinner. With a lot of drinks I often ate very little. As a result I lost quite a bit of weight by the time I left Churachandpur for London.

Partying was easy as I used a jeep or a Vespa scooter for travel.

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It was great that I was able to revisit Churachandpur after about 20 years.

Shanti took me there with his vast police escort when the Insurgency was still active. I found the landscape of the town completely unrecognisable.

The hospital that I arranged to be built, was discarded and a bigger one was constructed. I was told that Chingnu retired as a matron from this hospital. Shanti and I had the pleasure of visiting her and her husband at their sumptuous house in Pearson Village in Churachandpur.

Talking of emaciation. I must get it out of my system while I am on this topic. In England, with a better and rich diet prepared by my wife, and the traditional British beer, I began to put on weight gradually.

As I grew older, I developed a beer belly, very unusual for a Meitei. The British environment seemed to have mutated my ancestral gene of a lean physique. It has not escaped my understanding that ‘the bigger the belly the faster you go to see your maker’. A lot of food for thought.

All is not lost. I had a breather. During this lockdown as food and a lcohol were rationed, my wife and I stopped drinking alcohol completely. We were on half the portion of our usual meals and desserts.

I was thus able to bring my weight down to the right average weight and BMI (Body Mass Index) for my height and age. My paunch completely disappeared. What a beauty! A thing of right weight is a joy for the remainder of my life.

Thanks to the upside of Covid virus. I can now wear all my old suits. My wife nearly donated them to charity. They have survived. So have I from the deadly virus. I am now able to travel back in time, to Imphal town of my childhood and retrieve some of my long-forgotten memories.

After my settlement in England, I used to visit Imphal almost every year with my wife Margaret, and sometimes with my son and daughter. For the past few years, my wife, son Neil and I have been visiting Imphal in the month of November, to coincide with the International polo tournament, which we have enjoyed watching.

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Things end but memories last forever. “Tis in my memory lock’d, and you yourself shall keep the key of it.” said Shakespeare. I am glad that I have the key to open some of my locked memories.

Talking of which, I would like to cut the first turf with the most unforgettable personal memory of my youth. It is the unpleasant and frequent street brawls I had as a school boy and the tendency to scrap anywhere, anytime.

We know many Meiteis had a tendency to punch up sometime or the other. And that was as normal for Meiteis as if they were going to the flicks. In my case, it was the intensity and the frequency that still puzzle me.

I crave to indulge in this for a bit, as a form of anthropological study about the core of Meitei national character, putting myself as a stereotype.

By national character, I am referring to shared beliefs and values, and personality structures, common to the Meitei nation.

I have brought up the subject here as I have now a chance to look at it from a scientific angle, so as to form an educated guess as to why it is so.

This is a hypothesis of the origin of the main indomitable Meitei national character of narcissism and prowess, about which I wrote in my book, The origin of Meiteis & Meitelon is not a Tibeto-Burman language. Even negative results should be informative for me.

My hypothesis is that Meiteis living in a small community had to fend for themselves against neighbours, such as the Burmese, the Assamese, the Tripuris, the Lushais and so on. For their survival, not only did they keep themselves physically fit to fight/fighting fit, but they had to have a psychological make-up that, they were better than any of these ethnic peoples.

Over the centuries, that mental attitude had become an acquired trait for Meitei men. That really helped them to become better at fighting and win battles and wars over the opponents, except the Burmese in the ‘Seven Years’ Devastation’.

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The loss was mostly because of intrigue and internecine fighting among the Meitei princes. After the in evitable British subjugation the trait became redundant and the gene began to mutate. But it took time. The modern generation has almost lost this trait.

During the intervening years before WWII we hung on to this particular national trait. During the 70 years of my life, this character became a very big nuisance for me. I thank my lucky stars that I did not end up behind bars. They were three or four near-misses from being locked up. Any one of them could have tipped me right over the edge.

There was such was an incidence in Delhi when I was a trainee doctor. I was so miffed about an insult that I took drastic action in order to avenge it. But I escaped by the skin of my teeth.

Only good fortune and a reasonably high IQ, saved me from ruining my entire life. Even at that age of my schooling, I knew it was cause-oriented and thus kept my focus on study and career. I have to thank my mother for this. She kept pummelling me about my higher education, often s tressing that she would sell her jewellery for it.

It took me years to realise how incredibly influential a surfeit of this centuries-old egoistic and narcissistic Meitei national character was on my behaviour, particularly in the years just after WWII or the Japanlan in Manipuri. I was not alone. But there were not so many like me.

To recap. In general, Meiteis are narcissists at heart. A narcissist is one who has an inflated sense of his or her own importance. Feeling like, nangna eingondagi kari henna khangdana? What do you know that I don’t know? Our nature of self-importance would not allow us to lose an argument with anybody.

Having lost in a verbal argument, we would try to win it with a physical fight or thought of such a fight, saying like, mamaida kinna kok shujilaga loire – the problem will be solved with a punch on his face. We usually try to turn a conventional argument on its head by a fracas.

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It was many years later, that I began to figure out that my comportment was only a part of certain informal regularities of behaviour which characterised the Meitei nation as a whole. It was not individualistic.

It was not that I was brave. I was not a coward either. It was an ineluctable genetic trait, like a dog with a bone.

I fought everywhere. This defiant character followed me all my life, even in the UK. It put my entire well-being and career in jeopardy at different times of my life. It was like a terrier. It would not let me go.

While I was at St Joseph’s in Darjeeling, the School Rector, a Canadian Father (Catholic priest), a no-nonsense guy, sent me home for two weeks for fighting a class fellow Punjabi, whose name was Grover. I used to call him Gober (In public schools, surnames are used). He took umbrage with this.

I was not aware that Gober means cow dung in Hindi. I did not know Hindi very well at the time. I knew only few words, good enough to converse with coolies at Railway stations and the like. I knew a bit of Nepalese language – the language of Darjeeling. One day we had a fight in the Dining room. Actually he initiated it. But I was the fall guy because of my reputation.

I always had a superiority complex as I grew up in an affluent and respected family. That was an acquired trait. As my good luck would have it, I had inherited my father’s high IQ. But, I had also inherited his gene that encoded: Ei meena utsitaba yade, meaning ‘I will not be slighted’.

I don’t know how he grew up as a teenager. But I do know that he went to Dacca to study civil engineering, in those days when he had to walk Tonjei Maril all the way to Cachar and then by boat to Dacca. Indeed, he invariably kept his perspective and dignity intact all the time I knew him.

In school, as I was a student of biology, I assumed I was born with this truculent disposition as I developed this defiant attitude very early in my 13

boyhood, when I was 13 or 14 years old. It all began when a few boys tried to intimidate me in my middle school. I then decided to be as tough as woodpecker’s lips. And I did, but not tough enough to take destiny by the throat.

I also had an unpleasant and enduring memory of being bullied in primary school (see later). My scuffles were so fairly frequent that only a certain degree of upbringing and intelligence saved my bacon. I was among the top two in my class in school. I always passed my examinations in First division.

It was only in the medical college that I came across this concept of superiority and inferiority complex in human behaviour. That people with inferiority complex often overassert themselves as superior. That however, was not part of my character, I thought. It was years later in my postgraduate studies in the UK, that I read about the famous German medical psychologist Alfred Adler, who propounded this theory in early 20th century.

Alfred Adler theorised that an individual’s unconscious self ideally works to convert feeling of inferiority to superiority and in that they often become aggressive. People with inferiority complex, often develop superiority complex as physical compensation. The two complexes are often tied together. I began to think. I believed him.

It was great that I had a chance meeting in Imphal, with the ex-Principal of St Anthony’s College in Shillong. I met him after I beat up a professor black and blue from nearby St Edmund’s College, who impugned my character and thus deprived me of my hostel accommodation. I escaped imprisonment by a hair’s breadth.

I remembered this kind European Catholic priest who talked sense to me at that time of my need. It was ten years ago. He did not know me at this time that I was the one who had beaten the professor. I did not tell him either.

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This ageing Father was now the Principal of Don Bosco’s School at Chingmeirong in Imphal. I recognised him when I went to attend to him as a government doctor. Excitement thrummed the air. I was curious to know what he thought of Meitei students’ disreputable tendency for brawling in Shillong in those days.

The priest said, ‘having come out of sheltered Manipur into the wide open world, they (the boys) had self-importance that they were not inferior to anybody. When that self-esteem was challenged, it led to violence and aggression.

I felt his assessment might have a grain of truth in it. It was also probable that he was just adumbrating the view of Alfred Adler. I withheld my identity for a later meeting to talk some more. To my disappointment he was sent somewhere, out of Manipur. Probably related to his illness.

Looking back, I do agree in some respect that I had an inferiority complex about my spare build with a flat chest. And I suspected those sturdy boys thought of me as a weakling and a wimp. Perhaps, I tried to compensate for it. But that was not all the answer. I never had a complete answer.

Because of my combative attitude during my High school days in Imphal, I earned some kind of notoriety, which gave me stress at times.

I did not often feel comfortable in my own skin. The anxiety of meeting someone with whom I would probably get into a fight, became such a fixation that whenever I went out for socialising at weekends or during holidays, I had to wear an outfit like army fatigue pants and shirts. I also had a waist belt made of cycle chain that was linked double one on top of the other, as a convenient weapon to defend myself.

The fights more often than not, followed when some boys stared at me. I was always obsessed with the negative notion that the guy had a loathing for me. It did not occur to me then, that he might be gawking because I was smart or something. I was indeed stylish and quite well-dressed, with silver spoon written all over me. I did feel I was one of the smartest boys 15

in town.

It was never in my consciousness that they could also be staring at me because I was staring at them. Anyhow, such eye confrontation always captured my imagination that it was a challenge – ‘how dare you’? It hardly mattered whether they were real or perceived.

The glowering with a particular person would remain embedded in my memory. It would repeat whenever we would chance meet again.

Eventually, I would ask him (never the other person) why he had been staring at me? I thought that was what the alpha man did.

That would always result in a fight then and there, and with follow-ups.

And if the environment was not suitable for such an outburst, we would make a date and time for Kangjeibung thoknaba – an appointment to have a fight at Mapal Kangjeibung (Outer Polo ground). I will come to this later.

I was also prone to such punch-ups entirely from another angle. It was a sporting event. I used to cycle as fast as I could in the Town centre. I had a boys’ bicycle, a green Raleigh with all the mod cons. It was known as ‘bice’ ie 22 inches tall, in Hindi. The adult ones were called ‘choubish ie 24 inches tall.

At the 11th International Polo Tournament in Imphal in November 2017. From l-R. Sitting - author as guest of honour, 3rd H Dillip as President. Standing - Col H Ranjit, as Vice president.

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As I always cycled at such a fast speed, I was often involved in a collision with another cyclist, when both of us misjudged the direction we were taking. More often than not it ended with a fight when the other person would gaffe, saying like, gari thoubada Namit udra? Are you a blind cyclist?

Then, I would give him an apt reply: Ei mit na una una thaoina touribani. I can see alright, but I am doing it on purpose.

This bit is historical. Most fistfights I had, were either random ‘street fights’ on the spot. Or, they were challenge fights as mentioned above, at dusk at an agreed rendezvous place in Mapal Kangjeibung. The later was known in local parlance as kangjeibung thoknaba, since time before I was born. This was a tradition.

This rendezvous place was in an area at the southern end of kangjeibung, far from the madding crowd of Khwairamband Bazaar and from the glare of street lamps. It was by the northern boundary of Boro Shahib’s (Political Agent’s) garden.

The idea was to allow us to fight out until we had enough. It was meant to be a fair fistfight with no weapons. Each fighter would bring a few friends with him to oversee fair play. After such a fight traditionally, there was no more animus between the two belligerents.

There was a narrow and raised footpath between the Political Agent’s garden and the polo ground, which linked makha dukan (Sadar Bazaar) with the main Indo-Burma Road (now Asian Highway) as a shortcut.

It connected the main road by the side of a lone building of British Treasury, which was guarded day and night by one Gurkha sentry from the 4th Assam Rifles. We could arrive at the rendezvous by the footpath or traipse across the ground from the main Kangla to Kangchup road.

This shortcut walkway was separated from the garden of the Political Agent by tall chicken wire fencing. Inside the garden, we could see a medium-sized lake with a central island and vegetation. There were wild ducks and pleasure boating facilities on it.

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Legend had it that Thangal General had a bone to pick with the unfortunate Mr Grimwood, the Political Agent, who was the first of the five British officers, who were hacked to death by irate Manipuris, He was followed immediately by Lt Walter Simpson of the 43rd Gurkha Rifles. The other three were the bungling James Quinton, Chief Commissioner of Assam, Lt Col Charles Skene, Commandant of the 42nd Gurkha Rifles and Mr W Cossins, Assistant secretary to the Chief Commissioner.

Apparently, Grimwood was often seen having a boat ride in the lake with Thangal’s 20-year old pretty daughter who could speak a few languages, while Mrs Ethel Grimwood was away on a holiday in Shillong.

It was rumoured that Ethel had an affair with her half-brother, Capt Boisragon who was posted in Shillong at that time.

It was also speculated among the British officers that, Thangal hated Grimwood for keeping his daughter as mistress and also sharing her with Lt Walter Simpson (cf. Manipuri Mischief, 2018, pp 205, 209, 248). Simson used to come to Imphal to play polo every Thursday. Ethel Grimwood if she was there, welcomed him and other British officers by laying on ‘at home’ informal receptions.

Incidentally, both JW Grimwood and Walter Simson were the first to be killed in front of the Durbar Hall (Uttara) near the western gate of Kangla in 1891, on the orders of Thangal General.

More interestingly, I quote here an extract from a ‘SECRET’ report by Col John Ardagh (National Archives – Ardagh Papers PRO/30/40/12/3) as the likely cause of Prince Tikendrajit’s revolution. Tikendrajit was quite friendly with Mr and Mrs Grimwood. He would often come to the Residency with a group of Royal girls. The extract reads: “The moral to be drawn from this part of the story is – that if Mrs Grimwood had lived with her husband at Manipur, he would not have desired to console himself with Manipuri girls and this occasion or scandal which resulted in a quarrel between him and the ruling party viz., the 18

Maharajah and Pucca Sanna:- that if he had not taken Tikendrajit into his friendship, as the companion in his orgies, the latter would never have dared to oust his brother, nor would have relied on Grimwood’s support for the revolution.”

Well, I have discovered so much that I have never known, including the enigma about myself. Of which I have silently tried to divine its implicit genetics. After all, the effort to unearth the solution to my time-hallowed conundrum is not like trying to get radio-signal from the other side of the moon.

Old British Residence at Imphal

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British Residency before the Anglo-Manipuri war of March 31 1891 – April 27 1891

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(Part 2) Growing-up postwar in Imphal

Engelei

Author in scout uniform 1946 One of the ancient characteristics of pre and immediate post WWII Meiteis, was the ‘feel-good’ factor – a quality in them that made them feel happy and positive about their lives. He might be impecunious but would deny it, saying like, Ay,peisagidi kari amata wabiriganu. - Please don’t worry about the cost. It must be admired that despite their impoverished circumstances, they always dressed sharp in Meitei national dress of pristine white pheijom (dhoti) and pumyat (shirt).

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As part of Meitei national character that sometimes, was streaked with foolhardiness, their mental schemata or psychological equilibrium, which was their ability to maintain a balanced understanding, often missed the point of view definition that, with reflection and rumination impulsive mistakes could be avoided, and bold strokes could be formulated.

A characteristic catch phrase was, hekta phujilaga loire. Meaning the problem will end by thrashing him.

They did not understand the outside world, having no contact with it at all. They viewed non-Manipuris with a mixture of curiosity and politeness.

With their distinct social, economic, political system, culture and beliefs, they regarded Mayangs (Indians outside of Manipur) as foreigners. It was a kind of nationalism. It was like India’s promotion of India as a Hindu nation.

Only in the postwar period after 1947, with established de novo legal nationality as Indians, and delimitation of boundaries between states, did they accept to be Indians at heart. There are still many Meitei nationalists who had become insurgents as they had refused to be citizens of India.

Nationalism is an ideology, an attitude. Nationalism is also a feature of movements for freedom and sovereignty (self-rule).

On the other, there were a few excellent national characteristics of Meiteis.

One of them was their capacity to adapt to horrific changes in circumstances and environment. They were very adaptable and good survivors, by virtue of their inherited trait. They survived the ‘Seven years’ Devastation’ in their medieval history and the Japan Lan in modern history. They will endure the present Covid pandemic, which has altered every aspect of their life in ways that take them out of their comfort zone.

As an evolutionist I believe, adaptation to the environment is the only chance for survival. Meiteis are very capable of it. Not that everybody will succeed. There will be a lot of casualties as everybody cannot adapt to the change. This is because of the process, known as ‘Natural Selection’ and the ‘survival of the fittest’ that were theorised by Charles Darwin.

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Survival in general, depends a lot on life chances, which are individual’s ability to improve his or her quality of life. Paulo Coelho, in his famous short book The Alchemist, describes that, it is “The Principle of Favourability” or a stroke of luck that starts a person’s legend. One needs favourable circumstances to be triumphant in life.

Many boys and girls from poor families will not make it to universities as they lack financial security and incentives. Moreover, various studies point out that children from poor families have poorer cognitive skills than those brought up in rich families. As there will always be people as haves and have-nots, disparity will exist for ever. There is no absolute panacea. It is also dependent on many factors, such as gender, age, ethnicity, disability and so on.

On a personal level and in my own little world, my survival as I am now, has been due to many life chances. Intoxicated with youth on the cusp of infinite possibilities, I was happy riding that kind of luck. In the present pandemic I am trying to change certain ways of my life that are favourable, such as isolating myself and my wife from social gatherings, in order to be triumphant in the rest of my remaining life. The Phoenix must burn to emerge.

Those of you, who have read my waffle in Part 1, must be wondering who in good Heavens, I am? Now, I would like to introduce myself in the style that I have adopted since my arrival in the UK. It is for clarity. I took the inspiration from watching the first James Bond film, Dr No in 1962, the year I qualified as a doctor.

James Bond (played by Sean Connery, a nationalist Scot in real life) in the film, introduced himself to Sylvia Trench at the baccarat gambling table, while stylishly lighting a cigarette in the left corner of his mouth: “The name is Bond, James Bond”. Likewise, when asked my name, I will say: ‘My name is Singh, Dr Mohendra Singh”.

I adopted this style as I had certain discomfitures in the past. It all started in Bombay when I was a student at St Xavier’s College in 1952-53.

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One day a professor asked my name in the class. I replied: IM Singh. He then said, “I know you are Singh. But what is your name?” Then I spelled out: I full stop, M full stop, Singh. It was hilarious. But, if I had said, Irengbam Mohendra Singh, that would have put the wind up him. They are long winded and mouthful words. This current style was an adaptation for getting along in the British society, now that I come to think of it.

Having introduced myself, here is a bit of caveat and an apology in writing my memories of long past. I am aware that a story loses something with each telling. My story is no exception. My story is 80 years old and I have told it a few times during my long process of ageing. The good thing about ageing is that some of the distant memories of my young days still linger on in my brain. It takes just a bit longer to recall, about 5 minutes.

We are familiar with the catchphrase of old people, ‘I know it. It is just on the tip of my tongue’.

Not everybody remembers all their early childhood and experience. I remember a bit of mine. The best part of my childhood memory in Imphal, was walking to the Primary school as a 6-year old and alone, barefoot, slogging on rough, dusty and potholed Uripok road, which today’s children will never know.

Looking back at my childhood, it turns out that those halcyon days were just plain fun with a jostle of interesting and sometimes agonising experiences, as those of anyone of my age must have been. I could not wear shoes as I would have been bullied as no one was wearing shoes.

I remember how difficult it was to peddle my first tricycle. There was no such thing as a baby tricycle in Imphal town in those days. My tricycle was very old. It was left to my father by an outgoing British family. Another unforgettable memory I wish to cherish for life, is the game of hide and seek that I played with my elder sister Modhu as darkness fell and the daylight eked out. How scintillating it was to chase fireflies in the twilight in our courtyard.

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I wonder if there is some truth in the findings of American psychologists that, people who have fond memories of childhood, specifically their relationships with their parents, tend to have better health, less depression and fewer chronic illnesses as older adults.

Author in 1947 During this Covid lockdown with nothing else to do, my mental trip back in time, had covered a lot of ground. Though a bit nebulous and piecemeal, I could remember as far back as when I was five years old. It was the occasion of my ear piercing ceremony. One cannot remember things before the age of 4. It is called childhood amnesia.

Time is a one-way street and physical time travel back in time as in science fiction, is not scientifically possible (Stephen Hawking, 1942-2018). But 27

the mental time travel is (Sudenfof & Coballis, 1997).

This human capacity to remember their past lives, known as chronesthesia in psychology, is fairly recent in evolutionary years. It was possible only about 70,000 years ago when the human brain developed working memories that allowed the brain to retrieve, process and hold in mind several chunks of information at one time. This was a selective advantage in evolution – the basis of for evolution by natural selection.

Reliving past events mentally, is known as ‘episodic memory’. The key feature of this mental time travel is to enable people to anticipate the future, to prepare for what is to come. This allows us to influence the earth itself in extraordinary but not always benevolent ways (Dawkins 2000). With this in mind, I am now beginning to dust through my brain to get rid of almost all the gauzy cobwebs that hang around on my way back in time, in order that I can see what the past has done for Meiteis in the postwar period.

To be a Meitei was so easy in those days of my youth and before. Nobody in the world knew about us. Nor did we care a damn about anybody in the world outside of Manipur. Ignorance was bliss for Meiteis. That kept them closer to real life problems which mattered most in their day to day life.

But they were far from being primitive. They were in possession of ‘conscious-egocentric biases’. The ‘Ghost in the machine’ (The Concept of mind, Gilbert Ryle, 1949). They could be identified by their trademark like a school blazer, by the speed with which they rolled up their sleeves for a brawl in trivial matters.

It was great to be a Meitei despite our certain hitches. I would not change it for the world. But it is not easy to be a genuine Meitei now. The modern civilisation has changed Meitei social structure significantly with urbanisation, professional stratification, democratic government, secularism in religion, modern literature and arts, as well as modern technologies in various fields.

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The tiny Imphal town has changed to a big sprawling city and beyond recognition. We need to adapt to our changing environment. As someone who has lived in the immediate prewar and postwar Imphal, I find it very exhilarating to see sea change that has come over to the Imphalites.

Seldom can there have been such a culture change among Meiteis, beginning from the conservative and religious prewar Meiteis to the secular and worldly postwar Meiteis in such a short amplitude of time.

That is looking from the nature of evolutionary change in heritable characteristics. The arrival of the Japanlan or WWII, had hastened in revolutionising Meitei ethos. Sophistication rather than naivety had become part of Meitei culture. The switch was from a cultural revolution to the more complex socio-cultural evolution of Meitei behaviour as a whole.

The revolution or sudden acculturation, rather than a slow evolution, in which Meiteis while maintaining the original culture, adopted new ones, had accrued from cultural transmutation of values and beliefs from their extended contact and exchange with different cultures from outside Manipur, as well as with the tribal peoples in Manipur in the postwar years.

Many institutional changes, such as a transition from a feudal to a democratic way of life had played their part. By institution I mean large organisations, such as a society or a foundation or an establishment, with new rules, customs and practices. In a more academic term, an institutional change is a centralized process in which rules are framed by a collective political entity, such as the state or the community.

I happened to be growing up in this time scale when new institutions were coming up. My historical episodic memories of Imphal go back to 1941 when I was just old enough to understand some things in life events. They would not however, be a nicely linear tale of my childhood. Only a few events that I could remember.

I remember the coming of Japanlan with the first Japanese bombing of Imphal town centre on Sunday, May 10 1942. During the war I saw many 29

people of different races, black, white, yellow and brown.

I have also seen many changes in the general attitude to life, political outlook, their points of view and economic development policies, among Meiteis. The most obvious break with the past was in the decline of religion as the chief determinant of Meitei identity. The postwar outcrop of Meitei Sanamahists, Christians and even Buddhist, had their part in creating a new Meitei society. The mainstay of Meitei identity as Vaishnavite Hindus however, had been steadfast since the Meitei conversion into Hinduism in the early 18th century (1717 CE).

Remarkably, Meiteis after WWII, have improved their worldview, which is their attitude to life, religion, philosophy, ethics and scientific beliefs about the world around them, as well as in how to approach life, and certain boundaries they should not cross. They were just as keen as mustard to go on with it.

The war has visibly brought new experiences and fresh ideas. It has instilled among the Meiteis new swans of purpose and self-esteem, working tirelessly and steadily to get to the objective. Meitei society has settled down to creating ventures like building bridges among the various communities, and working for economic and intellectual developments as a whole.

In this postwar period, for the first time in Meitei history, boys and girls from the valley and the hills would meet without strict racial prejudices.

I was one of the pioneers who, as a young school boy fell in love with a beautiful girl from the Tangkhul community. There have been quite a few intermarriages across the religious and ethnic divide. Such intimate social relationships did augur well for the chance to narrow the gap between the past and the present among the commonality.

Meiteis began to think on their feet about modern civilisation. They began to reposition their culture with a new concept of society and human interactions. There was spontaneous increase in the impulse towards rebuilding a new Manipur. They modified the social geography of Manipur with 30

racial tolerance.

There was a development in market economy though only in cottage industry. New consumer goods, such as Amul butter, Brooke Bond tea, Parker fountain pens, modern Swiss watches and radios became available in Imphal. I remember when my father bought a small radio set for fifty rupees in 1949. Novelties began to arrive in Imphal.

Intellectual innovations in the fields of literary works, new songs (called adhunic songs), and dramatic performances became very popular. Barriers to girls’ education suddenly disappeared, without any underlying thought that it would alleviate poverty in the family. Higher education for children became a priority. Parents worked their fingers to the bone to educate their sons. Sons were the only security in old age for parents, who had no old age pensions or state security benefits. Things were shaping up.

Resurrecting old history at my age is like walking the dead. Aside, the separation of the trivia from the meaningful is quite hard when some of my recollections are hazy and uncertain. And turning memories into a story with lateral thinking, is brainstorming especially in a new and modern perspective.

WWII ended on September 2 1945 when the Japanese Supreme Commander Gen Mamora Shigemitsu surrendered to American Gen Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, aboard the battleship, USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Despite the official end of the war, Imphal still remained a war zone till 1946, as a few sapper units of the British Indian Army, were still there to tidy things up. As a result, many families from the central Imphal area, including ours, did not return home from the outlying villages as their houses were still occupied by army personnel. Our house was lived in by a British Army Captain with whom my father had a cordial rapport. He kept our home intact.

I was born and brought up in an affluent family at Uripok Khoisnam 31

Leikai in Imphal, about a quarter of a kilometre from the Maharani Thong (Queen’s Bridge) over the Naga River that connected Uripok Road with Khwairamband Keithel.

During my school days, there used to be an annual pageant of boat race, every year on a stretch of this Naga Turel, the finishing line being on the northern side of the Maharani Thong. Imphal was never short of festivals. Meiteis were very fond of high-spirited celebrations. All classes, high and low, were indulgent in religious festivals, the principals of which were Durga Puja (Hinduism) and Lai Harouba (Sanamahism). I will come to them later.

I had a very strict upbringing and parenting. No swear words would ever escape my mouth. My father, Irengbam Gulamjat Singh could be very affectionate at times, but he was emotionally unavailable. He had high integrity and fortitude. He was no-nonsense guy – a character that I inherited. My tough-guy image thus, emerged in my formative years as a result of genetics and my upbringing.

As my father was the Chief Electrical Engineer, we had a very comfortable life. I was pampered and privileged, being the youngest son with two elder brothers, Gokulchandra and Yaima, and three elder sisters, Binodini, Pishak and Madhu. I have a younger sister. Rupobati Devi.

It was unusual for Meiteis to have a country house as we had at Iroishemba. My father was very good at landscaping and gardening. After the war, he bought an open virgin field at Iroishemba. He completely changed the topography of this bit of land. He planted a variety of flowering plants. It was studded with fruit trees and sweeps of gently rolling lawns set against the groves of flowering shrubs.

This acreage backed onto the Iroishemba River and had its own pond. A long tree-lined gravel driveway connected the country house (bungalow) with the main Kangla to Kangchup Road, past an iron gate with the family emblem, IGS & SONS. 32

Our country house with brother Gokulchandra in the foreground Affluence had also its downside. Imphal had not been without a history of human violence, robbery and murder. They were unlike the more recent use of violence using guns and hand grenades to intimidate people to part with their money by groups of people or insurgent organisations.

One early morning, there was a scribbled note on a piece of paper that was pasted on the wall of a hut that stood at the entrance of our slip road of Irengbam Leirak from the main Uripok Road. It was a threat to my father’s life, scrolled in red ink. No reason was given.

My father seemed undaunted. He was quite resilient. It had a great deal to do with his personality and his ability to manage negative emotions.

Approach-oriented people are more resilient in the face of stress.

That day, my father calmly arranged with the Prison Superintendent, to see some of the dangerous criminals lodged in the Imphal Jail.

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He saw them and thought nothing of them. He came home and arranged for a low bed to be brought out to the mangol (verandah). There in the open, he slept in this bed every night for three months with a sword by his side. Nothing happened. So he resumed his normal sleep indoors.

A more sinister scare came again a few years later. I was then a bit grown up. He was a bit older. He then obtained a shot gun under license and fortified our main doors and windows with wooden bars on iron brackets at nights. He also gave me a short sword to keep under my mattress while I slept in a room in a separate but adjoining house. Like my father, I don’t remember being frightened. My father’s nonchalant attitude gave us no cause for worry.

Only once just before the War, I felt a bit edgy. As a small boy I used to sleep in the same bed with my father. Once, he and my mother along with the baby sister Rupobati left Imphal for pilgrimage to Brindavan. I had two elder brothers. Still, he hired a retired Gurkha soldier who came at night and walked around our house all night with his Kukri, shouting intermittently, ‘Ayo Gorkhalis’- Gurkha is coming.

Irengbam Gulamjat Singh 34

My father died at the age of 96, on Saturday, March 14 1992. He was physically well built and emained healthy until he died of old age. He had his mental faculties intact. He was looked after by his large extended family.

When I was a young boy, I resented my father for being so aloof to me but not to my sisters. It was many years later, that I learnt it was because he, like any other Indian Hindu father, was following the Sanskrit verse for parenting: Lalyet pancha varshani [Up to the age of 5, love him] Taryet dash varshani [Up to the age of 10, be strict with him] Prapte tu shodashe putra mitra vadacharet [After the age of 16, treat him as a friend].

When I finished schooling, he treated me like a grown-up with empathy.

Not a single irksome word ever passed between us.

I have nothing much worth-writing about my boyhood except that I grew up, well-endowed with the genuine Meitei National trait of narcissism, of which I wrote about in Episode 1. I am merely repeating it so as to give me a chance for self-analysis as to whether it was an inherited trait as a genetic contribution to Meitei national character from our environmental.

And why this personality trait was more accentuated in me than an average boy I knew.

Research studies find that though genetic inheritance may play a part in the development of a certain personality, others point out that it is difficult to know whether similarities in temperament and behaviour have been handed down the generations genetically, or whether the behaviour in children were modelled as they grew up. I am still no wiser.

As I got older, this impulsive personality began to fade, but I could not get rid of it completely, how hard I tried. My only consolation for this dodgy behaviour came from reading Shakespeare in school. He wrote, revenge is as normal as the sun rising in the morning: “If you prick us do we not 35

bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die?

And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?” (The Merchant of Venice).

One other flurry of excitement of my childhood that lingers on in my memory is about flash floods, caused by the Nambul River in spate. It was quite a thrill. The Sagolband part of west Imphal, was connected with Khwairamband Bazaar by the ancient bridge called ‘Thong Nambonbi’ (hunch-back Bridge). The bridge is a sort of monument for Meitei vernacular architecture.

Thong Nambonbi (Hunch back bridge) Because the bridge was low underneath for the passage of water, and Sagolband Road was raised higher than the Uripok settlement, the later bore the brunt of the flash flood, caused by the high water level from the Nambul River, every 2-3 years. During these high-rise floods, all the families living between the Nambul River and Uripok Road, would make temporary rafts to transport themselves on to the elevated top of Uripok Road, where we would stay for 2-3 days until the water level subsided.

The Nambul River during the rainy season was deep and wide enough for transporting merchandise such as thatch grass, glazed earthenware pots, dry logs, in long dug-out canoes from far-off villages like Chairen, in the 36

southernmost point of Imphal valley. They would row them up north all the way to Khwairamband Bazaar. They were ‘anchored’ by the river bank of Wahengbam Leikai just south of Thong Nambonbi.

Whenever the Nambul River swelled in the rainy season and when I was about 13/14 years old, I would climb up and stand on the slag middle of the thick twisted suspension wire rope of the swing bridge and dive in to the muddy river water and swim ashore. I was fearless. That was how I learnt swimming and board diving.

While many memories are shuffling like a deck of playing cards through my brain, a recent newspaper report of the celebration of Krishna Janma, Krishna’s birthday at Mahabali grove on August 15, this year of 2020, has triggered another childhood memory. It is about my visit to the Mahabali Grove with my two elder sisters, Pishak and Madhu on this particular day when I was 7or 8 years old. On our way back home, we called at the Thakurbari Marwari Hindu Temple at Khwairamband Bazaar and threw a couple of paisa at the feet of the Krishna idol.

Thakurbari reminds me about my mother’s stall at Ima Keithel (Mothers’ Bazaar). I remember the stall. It was in the front row of all the tin-roofed open market sheds. It was one of the plots, reserved for top government officers, facing the street in Maxwell Bazaar. They sold only expensive phanek Mapal Naiba, the formal dress for Meitei women, and only in the evenings in style. Not in the morning or after dark.

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My mother Mani Devi One of the fondest memories of my mother dates back to such evenings.

As the evening spread its wings and darkness began to engulf the town, I would wait anxiously like a cat on a hot tin roof, for her to come home with chanapot (treats) and sometimes sanapot (toys). They were all homemade.

My mother, after the closing time every evening, had an arrangement to store her wares in the large Thakurbari building for a fee. Then, she did the shopping for the family meal before returning home. I would sit with my father on the traditional thick mat made of reeds, on the southern side of our mangol. In summer, we had the coiled green kanghidak (mosquito repeller) burning. In winter, we had the Meiphoo (charcoal burner stove), around which my father and I would warm ourselves while waiting for mother to arrive.

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Some memories are so etched into my brain that it is impossible not to think about them. We have faculties to remember what we had learnt and experienced in the past. Our brain has a little portion to store memories (Hippocampus).

One of these relates to a naushum Ishei (Lullaby). Many an evening in the summer, as the sun tipped the horizon in the west, behind the Kangchup hill, and the inky dark night began to swallow the surroundings, I often looked up at the round moon in the cloudless cerulean sky, surrounded by stars shining like crystallised fireflies. I often wondered if the tree-like impression in it, was really a heibong pambi (fig tree) as I heard about it from the naushum Ishei.

Some young mothers would sing the song to hush their crying babies to sleep. They would amble about in the courtyard, with their babies rucked on their back in ngabong slings knotted across a shoulder (angang poba). A few lines from this old song ran through my head.

Another haunting memory is about a crow, perched on the branch of a tall mango tree at the back of our garden. It would craw every morning at the break of dawn, like a wake-up call at a five star hotel. My father would wake me up to take puppies out for toileting. I would then hear waking sparrows chatter in the half-light of the morning as the ebony sky turned to ash grey. I often wondered what they were talking about.

I can still feel the soothing afternoon breeze that wafted from the west, gently caressing my face, as I sat with my father on some sunny afternoons. It was on the lawn of our Khoisnam Leikai Lairembi lampak 39

(Khoisnam Leikai deity ground). We usually sat on a spread of ngabong under the large and majestic kadampambi - Kadam tree. We children would play until the large crimson sun gingerly moved behind the western horizon, on its way to other parts of the world.

We all enjoyed the moderate climate in Imphal in those days. The climate of Imphal in the summer months from March to June was mostly mild and pleasant, never exceeding 80F (26.7C). It could be quite hot at times, about noon and after, needing a ceiling fan that my father had installed inside the Yumjao (large dwelling house).

The winter months from October to February were always freezing cold with fog hanging over Uripok Road in early morning as we walked to school. The rainy season with the early arrival of the Monsoon from mid-June to September, always had intermittent heavy downpours, non-stop for a week or so. During the rainy season, many lanes and bylanes in the Leikais, would be ankle deep in mud. Wearing of footwear was out of the question.

In winter, people were not much into wearing jackets or coats. Woollen sweaters with or without sleeves were available. Most people, men and women warmed themselves with light-weight woollen wrappers. Children and young people had child-size thick cotton shawls. Dense quilts filled with cotton wool were used in bed.

Before the war, trousers for men were not in fashion. People were a bit shy to wear them. Only some government officers donned them.

Pheijom (dhoti) for formal occasions, and Khudei (narrow dhoti) for everyday casual wear, were the fashion.

Imphal was cluttered with seasonal festivities during my childhood. The most popular among them of them was the Yaoshang Thabal Chongba.

“Unforgettable. That’s what you are…” – serenaded Nat King Cole. It is unimaginable not to revoke my childhood memories of Yaoshang (Holi) festival.

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Author at the Birth place of Chaitanya in Navadeep Yaoshang was the most exciting time for children and youngsters in Manipur. Yaoshang was traditionally, the only time when boys and girls were allowed to meet openly for playing with coloured powder and liquid, outings during the day and for dancing at night in the courtyard awash with moonlight (Thabal chongba). It became an element of cultural identity for Meiteis like other aesthetic markers, such as Meiteis’ ever present feeling of contentment and hope.

No Meiteis of those days, can ever forget Yaoshang mei thaba numit, the evening when the thatched Yaoshang hut was set ablaze. It is an enduring festival. The function always took place on the full Moon day of March every year. It coincided with the birthday of Chaitanya, the founder of Vaishnavite Hinduism. He was born on the full moon night of February 18 1486 in the ancient town of Navadeep in Nadia district of West Bengal.

In the evening of Yaoshang meithaba (the first day of holy festival), a puja (devotional worship) with offerings of fruits and flowers to the idol of Chaitanya was performed. Chaitanya, believed to be an incarnation of 41

of Lord Krishna, replaced Krishna for Meitei Holi. The hut was then set on fire in Meitei tradition.

Yaoshang is Meitei word for a temporary thatched hut used for the birth of a baby, which was later burnt as unholy. Chaitanya is an honorific title, meaning ‘Conscious self ’. It is like ‘Christ’ (anointed) for Jesus. He is also called Gouranga (fair complexion) by his mother, and Nimai (born underneath a neem tree). His name at birth was Vishvambhar Mishra.

Those were the exciting days of my emotionally charged teenage years in Imphal before I moved slowly towards adulthood for a happy future and wellbeing.

“Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end. We’d sing and dance for ever and a day.” (Mary Hopkins).

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Engelei

(Part 3) Bullying in Primary School in Imphal

Author in Johnstone High English School 1948 The above photograph was taken in Imphal when I decided to toughen myself up as hard as nails to build up my self-respect. It was partly due to my memory of being bullied at my Primary School. That was in 1941.

I remembered the feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. It was also due to the contemporaneous intimidating behaviour of a few physically stronger boys, who saw me as a foppish dandy.

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I was quick to build my mental strength with confidence. That was mainly due to my ability to believe in myself that I had the strength to face challenging situations and not to avoid them out of fear. And that, I had the confidence to reach my full potential.

This nostalgic mental trip to my childhood came about as I got lost in a daydream this morning.

This is the month of September 2020. I was sitting in my swivel chair alone in the study of our house while my wife was busy somewhere upstairs.

It was a late chilly morning. In the deafening silence I was looking out through the double-glazed glass window as an egg-wash of sunshine from the majestic autumn sun was finally spreading its warm rays and gently stroking everything in our garden. The freshness of the scene evoked the memory of my childhood home of Yumjao and my daily trip to and back from my infant school of Ibotonsana LP School at Uripok.

This month of the year has been a glorious Indian late summer finish with our garden dappled in sunlight on most days. Many beautiful flowers with vibrant colours have brightened up the garden. There were Begonias, Fuchsias, Azaleas and rhododendrons, Clematis, Lavender and Roses. My favourite Honeysuckle (Madhumati) with its pink, red and white tubular flowers, which usually gave a heady fragrance about this time, took me closer to home in Imphal.

Nostalgia for my hometown further deepened with the sight of Singarei (the night-blooming jasmine) that I knew, would release a soft sweet and light citrus fragrance that would waft in the warm breeze with the sunshine. As I sat quietly in the chair I saw through the window, a variety of familiar birds that came every day to peck on the grains from the bird feeders that my wife replenished every morning.

They were house sparrows, yellow-breasted blue tits, red-breasted robins, blackbirds, starlings, green parakeets and colourful jay birds. The indulgence broke the tedium of isolation and groundhog life of Covid 46

lockdown. Watching the sparrows brought me back the reminiscence of my childhood in sharp focus. I remembered many sparrows that used to flock on the thatch roof of our Yumjao in Imphal every day.

New scientific studies find that, as an evolutionary concept, bad memories come back more vividly than happy ones. This seems probable as an emotionally charged incidence while I was little, has become more memorable. It was how a senior boy used to bully me every day in my primary school.

Author’s garden by the study window While writing my witness statement of those yonder years, with dodgy knees and grey receding hair, the recollection of my Ibotonsana Lower Primary School (LP) at Uripok, comes vividly in my mind. I was 5 years old when I began schooling like everybody else in Imphal.

In those days, we had no play schools or infant schools. In this primary school that was dusty, mud-walled, clay-floored and freezing cold in winter, I began to learn language and literacy, mathematics and numeracy. This very old fashioned school was a model school of the time.

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It had dedicated teachers who imparted to us, basic literacy skills, such as reading and writing, and words and numbers. Because of them I have become what I am today.

The boys’ school was located in a field by the Uripok/Kangchup Road, about half a kilometre from Khwairamband Bazaar. It was a long hall, facing north and was partitioned into 5 different classrooms with 5 front doors, and windows. It had a door in each partition wall. It was roofed with corrugated iron sheets and the walls were plastered with soil and cow dung. It had an elevated earth foundation, fronted by an unkempt lawn, where sometimes, classes were held in the morning winter sunshine.

At this school in winter, twice every year, a Drill Master would visit. He would pick a few well-built senior boys and give them PE instruction for one morning. To the rest of us it was an entertainment for one morning.

There were no regular PE lessons for us. Nor was there any lesson on any game or sport.

We were very happy when the School Inspector also came twice a year. He was a very important man as he would declare the rest of the day as holiday. The teachers seemed to be quite wary of him. Children’s schooling at these Lower Primary Schools (LPS) began at age 5 and ended at 10.

In this school, I had a petrifying experience of being bullied by a senior boy. It was not for long though. I cannot forget the intense feeling of humiliation and helplessness that I had at that time as a little boy. I was about 7 or 8 years of age when this happened. An older and senior boy with his friend, would threaten to beat me up unless I gave him a pai (quarter of a paisa) every day at the end of the school day.

I can still see his face though a bit blurred. His name was Shyamkishore (The name has just come out of the crypt of my mind). He would waylay me with his friend on my way home from school at noon. A sense of power swirled around him that scared me to death. I would not go to school in the morning unless my mother gave me a pai.

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My mother was usually in her bed at this time of the morning. Only when she got out of her bed and gave me a pai, I went to school. She asked me why but I did not tell her as I was ashamed of myself being a coward. She was curious but she did not tell my father lest he was annoyed with me.

One day, a High School friend of my elder sister Modhu, who lived near the school, saw my timidity when this boy was intimidating me by the roadside. She told my sister, who told my mother, who then extracted the truth from me. I still pretended that I was fearless. Anyway, my mother sent my second elder brother Yaima with me to this bully’s house at Uripok.

Brother Yaima He warned his parents. That was the end of my torment. As I was better dressed and better-off than most of the boys in my class, as well as being a wimp, that boy would pick on me to get his pocket money. It left a bad taste in my mouth forever.

In the present day, bullying in secondary schools in Britain, has been

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epidemic. Many children have been too scared to attend school. It is said, one of the major difficulties in tackling the issue has been a growing wider culture of seeing ‘banter’ and mockery as entertainment.

Apart from the scare of bullying boys, the teachers in this primary school were equally frightening. We were often caned by teachers on our two open palms for failure to learn something or the other, or for being naughty. He would call us to the table where he was sitting. He would then tell us to stretch our right arm with the open palm turned upwards. He would cane it four or five times and repeat the same thing on the left palm.

It was quite painful.

Sometimes, we would be stood up for a while, individually or the whole bunch, on the bench that we sat on. The teacher would then, cane our legs on the back. Some teacher would pull our ears or the sideburn of our head hair. Going to a primary school was a very terrifying daily chore, unlike the present playful school system.

We had black slates of different sizes for writing, depending on the parents’ economic circumstances. They were framed in wood like photo frames. We could write on both sides with a slate pencil that was fastened to a string while the other end was attached to the wooden frame of the slate. We would rub off the writing on the slate with our fingers after blowing our warm and moist breath on it. I took great care that the slate was not broken.

It was a great excitement when I was promoted to Mangashuba class (5th class). The slates were replaced by commercial, bound paper copy books.

They were lined. I had an inkpot and a wooden pen with a metal nib to write. It was great fun to make ink in an inkpot with a few grains of ink powder in water. It always stained my fingers.

My father would bring sheets of white paper, which I would fold into four squares and stitch it in the spine with a large needle and white thread.

I would separate the folded sheets of paper with a kitchen knife (Meitei thang) made in Manipur. I would then write my name and address on the 50

the front page with due care. I would draw horizontal lines with a ruler and a pencil. They were used for rough writing exercises.

The collapsing of time through anecdotal recollections is an exhilarating time. This is one of them. In summer every year, our Uripok Road was repaired with earth dug up from both sides. It was then surfaced with stone chips and sand. Meitei labourers would break river stones into chips at different places along the road.

The chips were then pressed down and compacted with sand by a heavy road drum roller from the Public Works Department (PWD), while Kabui women from the town, would spread buckets of water ahead of the roller. There was always water by the roadside collected from rainfall in the dugout spaces along the road.

Uripok Road like the Sagolband Road, became rough and uneven during the rainy season as the downpour washed away the soil and sand, exposing rough bits of sharp naked stone. As these roads were not made all-weather carriageways, they did not sustain the weight of fully loaded bullock carts in winter.

Those creaky wooden carts were drawn by pairs of oxen hauled with a wooden yoke. They brought the harvest - paddies in gunny bags from villages to townspeople, who owned the paddy fields in which the villagers grew paddies.

These carts made furrowed wheel tracks on both sides of the road, turning soil into fine grey dust every winter. The sunken tracks would soon fill up with dust. Eventually the whole surface of the road would be awash with fine grey dust, which would be blown about with the winter gales, covering people by the roadside with dust.

Uripok road was dustier than any other main road as many cows and calves walked on it every morning in dribs and drabs to graze at Lamphel Pat, after we children had gone to school. They would return home at dusk en masse on the road and then to their respective homes at Uripok, 51

like human beings.

These cows were kept for milk by those who could afford to own and feed them. We had 2 or 3 cows in a cowshed, near the gate of our house.

They had to be fed with dry straw in the evening. My father used to store bundles of them, hung up from the rafters of the cowshed roof.

There was hardly any motor vehicle plying about. One lorry was owned by a Kangabam family in our neighbourhood. I remember an old convertible open-top car owned by a friend of my father at Uripok. Sometimes, he used to take my father and me for a short ride to the countryside in the evening in summer. It was like flying in the sky as the light summer breeze teased my hair and brushed back.

Even Political Agents did not have cars except one Mr FF Pearson, who was the last President of Manipur State Durbar (PMSD), and who became the first Chief Minister of Manipur in Independent India in 1947, one minute past midnight of August 15. To commemorate his office in Manipur, there is an area in Churachandpur, named after him, known as Pearson village.

Talking of which, I take great pride in writing this. Once I rode in Mr Pearson’s car along with Ta-Gojen. It is a great history for me. It was in 1947, just before Independence on 15th August. We went to seek tickets to see Macbeth, performed by the Shakespeareana Dramatic group that came to Imphal.

They performed many shows at the Manipur Dramatic Union (MDU) Hall at Yaiskul. I found it rather unpleasant when a Congress party led by the young social activist, RK Maipaksana, was shouting slogans like “Go back home you English people. We don’t need you.”

By the time Moirangthem Ta-Gojen (father of Shantikumar Moirangthem, ex-IGP, Manipur) and I, decided to see a performance of Macbeth, all the tickets had been sold out. So, on that day, two of us dared go and see the Political Agent, Mr Pearson at his Residence, for two 52

tickets. It might sound strange that, the Residency, now Raj Bhavan, had no security guards. The two gates were always open all day and night.

The semicircular driveway from one gate to the other was surfaced with fine red brick chips and bordered on both sides with manicured lawns of green grass. Ta-Gojen and I entered through the left gate and ambled along the long drive. We met Mr Pearson in the company of another Sahib. They were having a chat at the foot of the high-rise Bungalow steps. Once Ta-Gojen explained the purpose of our visit, Mr Pearson was kind enough to immediately drive us in his car to MDU, along with his companion. We got the tickets.

Now, from the sublime to the ridiculous. I am back on the rough, pitted and dusty Uripok Road, on which I used to walk twice a day to school and back. What a deja vous! Nothing was more enlivening than my walk to the primary school as the low morning sun dawned to the east behind Nongmaicheeng. I walked barefoot like everybody else in the freezing winter and very hot summer. It was a nightmare when I went to school once, wearing some sort of shoes.

Very often, my right second toe which was slightly more bent downwards, would knock on a stone chip and it would bleed from the split skin. When it happened the first time I came back home without attending school. I got a thump from my father when he came home for lunch at noon from his office. It was for skiving. I got the message and I did not come back again, bleed or no bleed.

In winter, we boys wore short trousers called half-pants, and shirts. We would wrap ourselves with a small ngabong - a medium-weight cotton shawl, woven on a handloom. All children from the age of 5, walked to this school unaccompanied by adults. It was partly because the road was safe with hardly any traffic. Partly it was an open and straight road.

There was a girls’ Primary School at the back of the Boys’ School. It was a bit smaller but on a higher foundation. The Ibotonsana LP School had been changed to an exclusive Ibotonsana Girls’ Higher Secondary School 53

School in a pukka building in 1948. It is this school where the hunger-striker Irom Sharmila Chanu (Iron Lady of Manipur) did her high schooling.

As a matter of interest, I am happy to write here that I went to see Sharmila with my wife on August 9 2016 at the JNIMS in Imphal. She was confined there judicially and was fed measured optimum calories of liquidised food daily, meticulously prepared by dieticians and religiously fed via a stomach tube by nurses.

I talked to her about the advisability of ending her 16-year old ‘Hunger Strike’. To me, the efforts of this ‘Iron Lady’ were becoming self-destructive. I explained to her how she had become old hat after so many years. It was shame that she would disappear like ‘cheeng da satpi Engelei’.She gave it up a few days after I have been to see her. She now lives happily married to Desmond Anthony Bellarnine Coultinho with two twin girls.

Walking to school on Uripok Road brings me memories of Kangchingba festival. In those days just before the Japan Lan, the peaceful Imphal town with its guileless people, had its own sensuous annual festival of Kang chingba, known as Rath Yatra in the rest of India.

Irom Sharmila Chanu 54

As I walked to Ibotonsana School in the mornings and back at noon in the hot summer month of July, I was very excited at seeing rows of kangs (carts), parked along the verge of Uripok Road for many days. They were there in preparation for the celebration or Kangchingba Numit – a day in the month of July when the decorated kangs will be pulled along the road.

Kang was a square box on four wheels, big or small. It had three tall walls with an open front. It was pitch-roofed with white fabric. The three walls had canvas on which many stories from Ramayana and Purana were painted in bold vivid colours, such as the giant Garuda bird fighting the many-headed snake Kaliyah, and Lakshmana cutting off the nose of Shurpanakha.

Each painting told a thrilling Hindu mythological narrative about gods and supernatural creatures. It was a huge learning curve for me. I learnt a lot about the enchanting Hindu mythological stories, which I believed to be true at that time. They made unforgettable impressions on my childhood mind, which according to John Locke, an English philosopher and physician, was a “clean slate” at birth. He called it by the Latin name Tabula Rasa (scraped tablet).

On the day of kangchingba, as the late afternoon sun began to slant westward, casting a golden shadow, devotees would pull the kang along Uripok road in a razzmatazz, braying conch shells, accompanied by clashing of cymbals and beating of Manipuri drums (poong).

They would pull the cart by two long thick ropes, one on each side, up and down the rutted and pocked Uripok Road until dusk. The cart would stop opposite a leirak, a slip road, when the three gods (Jagannath and his siblings Balbhadra, and Subhadra) inside the kang with a Bamon pujari, sitting on the ledge, would be offered fruits and flowers for propitiation.

Lotus was the main flower that was offered. It is the favourite of Lord Krishna or his another form Lord Jagannath. July is also the season for lotus blooms in Manipur. The Brahmin would perform an Aarti, an 55

offering of fire on a revolving small metal disc that has flames from burning a bunch of butti - thin strips of bamboo, six inch long ( 15cm), wrapped in cotton wool and dipped in ghee (clarified butter).

During this festival, every temple mandab in the evenings, laid out a feast of traditional Khichri on banana leaves with an array of dishes, such as Hawai mangal ooti (mushy dry peas) with bamboo shoots, and various other items. They were free for anybody to eat. My father used to have a special Khichri with pieces of coconut and things, as well other vegetarian dishes, delivered daily at home. He also made a generous contribution to the local temple for the festival.

The eating spree was followed by a traditional open show of Khubak Ishei (songs with clapping of hands) performed by pretty girls at various mandabs. The songs were Vaishnavite narratives about Krishna’s various passionate romantic escapades with his paramour Radha, and Gopis.

Kang chingba festival had its origin as Rath Yatra at Jagannath Kshetra in Puri in Odisha. There is a huge temple for three idols - Jagannath, his elder brother Balbhadra and younger sister Subhadra. They do not have the usual human face that Hindu gods have. They do not have ears, hands and legs. The mythology of Jagannath is that it is a Narasimha avatar of Vishnu in the form of a wooden pillar.

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Maharaja of Puri, Gajpati Dibya Singh, Jubarani Rajshree Debi, Margaret Leah Singh (Author’s wife) at his palace About 18 years ago, my son Neil and I went inside the Jagannath temple as guests of the Maharaja of Puri. His younger sister Rajshree Debi Jubarani of Khariar, Odisha, is a very good friend of ours. But they would not let in my wife Margaret as she is English. The tourist pamphlet about the Temple, cites Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who was refused entry to the temple as she was married to a Parsee husband.

During this visit to Puri, we stayed at the Toshali Sands Hotel at Marine Drive, not far from the Temple. It was booked in advance by Jubarani Rajshree. A comical event sent our spine tingling. One evening while we were having dinner with Rajshree, the staff recognised her. Because of her association, the staff took me for royalty. They probably thought I was the King of Sikkim, who had an American wife. They began to address me as ‘Your Highness’. And I played the part, not to disappoint them.

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Dining With Jubarani One evening at dusk, as the evening sun was dipping into the sea, inch by inch, rather reluctantly, we finished walking barefoot on the golden sandy beach where tiny black crabs scuttled sideways from one little hole to the other. We felt like murdering a bottle of ice chilled Kingfisher beer. We returned to the hotel and at my request, the pool was lit up and a waiter was at my beck and call at the poolside bar. Nobody was around.

Since the bar at the swimming pool was open just for us, we drank more ice cold beer from chilled frosted glasses than we would have done normally before dinner. It was so refreshing while a gentle sun-baked ocean wind was stroking our faces. And I left a huge tip worthy of a king.

As we sauntered back to the dining hall for dinner, the Head waiter informed me that someone from Delhi rang, wanting to speak to me, but the hotel staff told him that “His Highness couldn’t be disturbed”, and that there was no telephone by the pool side. He had to ring back in half an hour or so or leave his telephone number. The caller was a friend of mine.

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Among such tongue-in-cheek, side-splitting incidents, I might share one more with you for the sheer serendipity of it. Once, I went to see a friend who was staying with a Manipuri MP at South Avenue, the Residential quarters for MPs in Delhi. I was traveling in the back seat of a chauffeur-driven Mercedes car that belonged to my friend Dev Puri, who was the owner of a sugar mill in Jamuna Nagar in Haryana. The chauffeur wore a uniform with a white topped peak cap, like the one worn by naval officers.

Mercedes cars were extremely rare in Delhi in those days. And equally uncommon also was a Gurkha looking man at the back of such a posh car.

On the way back, my driver was driving through the Rashtrapati Bhavan complex to Nehru Place, the residence of my friend. The complex had many military guard posts. That day, the sentries were Gurkhas in twos.

As my car passed the first post, the highly disciplined Gurkhas gave me a salute, coming to attention with their rifles. I looked behind to see who the VIP was. There was none and I thought nothing of it. By the second post when the Gurkhas came to attention, I realised why. From that post and onwards I just gave a little wave with my right hand so as not to hurt their feelings. It was just uncomfortably amusing. My life is full of amusing stories.

After these jolly interludes I am back to Imphal townspeople and write a bit of how they made progress against their economic disadvantages, while some of them were still living near the higher poverty line. It took a long time before the Central government were politically inspired that Manipur as well as the other six states in the Northeast of India, needed a lot of financial input to develop their socio-economic infra-structure to help boost economic growth.

It has been great to see the ongoing modernisation of Imphal town. By modernity, I mean the state of keeping up with the times, like owning a smart phone or being able to own a car. More notably, I am referring to improvements in the general aspects of life, such as the lower infant mortality rate, scientific approach to problems and pursuit of economic 59

wealth and not entirely in terms of vast technological innovations and socio-economic uplift that are high water marks of modernity.

The rudimentary physical changes in Imphal town centre immediately after the War, went along with a vast change in worldview of town’s people. They began to consider in their own small ways, their place in the changing world. It was like a paradigm shift in its stark contrast to the prewar Meitei thinking. They were then laid back and without any incentive for progress, Japanlan changed all that. Manipuris have now caught up with what George Bernard Shaw once said, “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

Imphal Town Centre (2019) Imphal is now a sprawling city, fulfilling my boyhood dream. “We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

– DH Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s lover.

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Engelei

(Part 4) Postwar Renaissance in Imphal

St Joseph’s, North Point, Darjeeling Imphal may not be the most poetic place in the world. It may not be as captivating as the five snow-capped peaks with jagged edges of Kanchenjunga that turn fiery orange in the glow of the rising sun. I used to see it in the morning from the dormitory of St Joseph’s at North Point in Darjeeling.

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Kanchenjunga as seen from St Joseph’s, Northpoint, Darjeeling To my way of thinking, it is true that ‘All that glistens is not gold’ – am aphorism popularised by Shakespeare in the Merchant of Venice. A book cannot be judged by its cover. Nor a sausage by its skin. Manipur cannot be appreciated from its appearance alone. It is the people and their culture that are important.

Imphal town with its enchanting tree lined blue-ridge mountains, some of their peaks dipping in the motionless fluffy cloud, remains a poet’s dream.

Imphal Valley is an amphitheatre created by nature with its massive Loktak Lake that nestles by the Moirang valley. It is the biggest fresh water lake in India. It remains tranquil and wonderfully clear, wind-swept and unsheltered at times or calm and halcyon at others. On certain days, the lake with a calmness from the core ripples and dances, reflecting the blue sky.

Manipur never ceases to live up to its reputation. Lord Irwin, the Governor General and the Viceroy of India, when he visited Manipur in 1931, called it “The Switzerland of India”. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru described it as “The Jewel of India” when he came to Imphal in 1953. I was there during my summer holiday. Nehru gave a speech at the Polo Ground in the company of the Burmese Prime Minister U Nu when 62

he gifted the Kabaw Valley to U Nu.

Nehru & U Nu at the Polo ground in Imphal 1953 with Bodhchandra Maharaj The Imperial Japanese Army, after its defeat at the ‘Battle of Imphal” in 1944, called Imphal Takane No Hana (A Flower on Lofty Heights).

Meaning a flower too sublime to reach. An English Matron in 1942, described Imphal as “A little Paradise on earth”.

Writing about old Imphal town, untouched and unpolluted by modern civilisation but resilient and sustainable, and never holding more than a few hundred thousand complacent inhabitants, fills me with ecstatic pleasure. I am frustrated that I am lost for words to describe such a beautiful flower on lofty heights. But I do try. Imphal is not all water under the bridge. Nor is all cloud without silver lining.

Basically, I write books because I have a passion for writing. I also write as it provides me an opportunity to write and publish something that is important to me.

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Then, I take to heart what Ernest Hemingway, one of the greatest American writers, once said: “Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done.”

I am a great fan of Ernest Hemingway since I read his book, For whom the bell tolls while at college in Bombay in 1952. He borrowed the phrase from the 17th century English poet John Dunne, who answered to the question himself. Because none of us stands alone in the world, each human affects us all. Every funeral bell, therefore, “tolls for thee.” The phrase has become world famous since the publication of Hemingway’s book in 1940 and its adaptation for a film in 1943, which I saw in 1953.

Dunne wrote it in Olde English: No man is an Iland [island], intire [entire] of itselfe [itself]; every man is a peece [piece] of the Continent, a part of the maine [main]; … And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee [the].

For sure, the bell will toll for me one day. Keeping this philosophy in my mind, I have written and published six books, and over the years I have published more than 700 articles in the daily newspapers in Imphal. They were my great effort to connect to people in Manipur and inspire creativity and critical thinking while I was living so far away.

Presently, I am indulging in positive-construction daydreaming, allowing my mind to wander aimlessly back in time to Imphal. The practice has become a privileged paradigm of progress like the curving meandering of a Chandra Nadi River in Canchipur as described by Dr Kamal in his Madhabi. This exercise has become an emotional pastime and a recreational mental activity for me.

It has not escaped my observation that Meiteis were happy-go-lucky people, living in Manipur where they created a self-sufficient and self-reliant society in the face of various economic obstacles. Imphal townspeople lived contentedly for centuries in a paragon of idyllic small-town life.

There was no need for them to be adventurous and go out of Manipur to seek their fortune as they were quite happy with what they had. Nobody 64

starved. Nobody was homeless. There were no beggars in town.

There were no idiosyncratic rhythms and palpable absurd images of Meiteis of yonder years. They lived in their own little world, and as individuals controlled their own lives. They nourished their peculiar ideas and values, unconcerned with the people outside of Manipur. They lived their life with equanimity and satisfaction.

Time however, does not stand still. Change is the law of life, known as entropy in Thermodynamics. And by this year of 2020, a great many things have changed, though not everything. The world has changed and so has Manipur. Manipur has had its share of progress, especially in the fields of political freedom, literacy and economic development. The standard of living has improved with the rise of per capita income. Imphal town has morphed into a rambling city.

The roads of Imphal are jostled with rows of vehicular traffic. There is electricity and piped water in almost all houses. And the best of all, is the coming of flush toilets that were popular as far back as the Indus valley Civilisation, about 2,000 BCE. And Pompeii in Italy 2,000 years ago.

Another great transmogrification for Meiteis is in the Meitei national character. A profound outcome of WWII or the Japanlan in Manipur.

There is no more need of the Meitei national trait of narcissism, the stereotyped aggressive character that was moulded long years ago by geographical, historical and social factors.

By the second half of the 20th century, the Meitei bellicose behaviour did seem to have changed to a more pacific disposition. There has been a general realisation that small acts of courtesy was the answer to the miasma of assertive manners.

Even I in my late age, have become a near-pacifist like a cracked mirror that reflects my soul. This transformation began among the plebs and students alike in postwar Imphal in the 1960s.

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An advanced state of Meitei society was the beginning of the decline of this acquired temperament. It was like the moulting of a self-conscious butterfly from its chrysalis.

My feeling is that this newly adapted trait – an allele of our inherited gene, could not have become actual without the modern environmental contribution that had arrived in Imphal. Let me repeat my caveat, that the rationality of my argument is based on character evolution. The Lamarckian theory of acquired character, the process by which a trait or character evolves with changes in environment.

As examples, we may look at the alteration of the old British national character, such as their reserve in manners, dress, speech, self-discipline and politeness to the present flippant average character of Tom, Dick and Harry that you find anywhere in the UK as in Manipur.

Among the old British Empire Builders, I cite Cecil Rhodes as an example of their narcissistic and arrogant character that made them invulnerable.

Cecil Rhodes was a ‘hero’, who founded Rhodesia in 1890 (Zimbabwe, since in 1980). He said: “We happen to be the best people in the world, with the highest ideas of decency and justice and liberty and peace.” It therefore follows logically that, “the empire is the greatest secular agency for good the world has seen.”

The British people are no more openly narcissistic now. But they do have an inner current of narcissism, according to Open Science, Jan 26 2018: “The contemporary Western societies promote narcissistic culture.” It is something the Meiteis had for many years.

In retrospect, I can see that in Imphal in the 1950s, with higher rates of education and corresponding greater incomes and more opportunities, people were beginning to prosper economically with basic luxuries like running water and electricity though limited. There was a sense of openness with the arrival of new technologies such as radios, transistors, electrical appliances and other gadgets. There was more contact with the cultures of other communities, outside of Manipur, to 66

further their horizon.

Modern lifestyle became popular in Imphal but progress was slow because of financial issues. Modern utility goods had to be brought to Imphal from outside by a few Mayangs who settled in the Town centre. Meiteis were basically inept in commercial activities that were intended for exchange in the market to earn an economic profit. Besides, lack of effective communication in their local language of outsiders in business transaction was a stumbling block. There was no bonhomie.

But Meiteis were getting there. The Hindi films from Bombay did help the youth in learning Hindi and modernising their viewpoint. They did for me.

We tried to imitate their sartorial fashion and hairstyle. Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor were favourite icons.

Modernity had entered Meitei souls. As the souls had become enlightened, it took the beautiful shape of the dove (St Gregory of Nyssa).Higher education gave them a wider outlook. They became more inspirational and innovative. Efforts were made for regular bus service daily from Imphal to Dimapur, and daily flights to Calcutta by the private Birla Airlines. The discarded WWII aerodrome at Koirengei situated 9 km from Imphal, became a convenient legacy. Because of it Meiteis had increasing exposure to modern things and lifestyle outside of Manipur. Seeing was believing.

Increasing numbers of Meiteis began to travel to other parts of India, mostly to Calcutta. Air fare from Imphal to Calcutta was only Rs.50 one way. They brought back skills and knowledge, which helped them to boost their creativity. I was also a frequent traveller as a student during those days.

During the past 50 years I have done a lot more travelling all over India and in many countries of the world. I had seen many exquisite places and have met all kinds of ethnic people. But I have not found any place that excited me as much as coming back to Manipur physically. At this moment of time all that I can do is mental travel back in time, to Manipur.

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Such stargazing took me back to the educational system of my childhood. The educational structure in the primary schools was like any Indian town education. We were taught the Bengali alphabet. This part of the story of my childhood might have been a bit rough, but its emotional heft has lingered on.

The basic educational structure in those days, began at the age of 5 at the Primary school, known as Lower Primary (LP) School. In the Primary School, we were taught in our own vernacular of Meiteilon with a book called Lairik Mapi (Beginners’ Book) with rhyming words, such as Ima Ipa; Tada mama; chak chao, mang thau and so on. The book was written by a Meitei from Cachar.

Bengali was the medium of instruction in schools from 1835 till 1902.

Historically, it was in 1872 when Maj Gen Nuthal, the Political Agent in Manipur, opened a first school with English language in Imphal. But it was not popular. So it died.

During my childhood, an LP school had a system of gradation from 1 to 5 classes: ahanba, anishuba, ahumshuba, marishuba and mangashuba class.

The English alphabet and language were introduced in the Mangashuba class like, the cat sat on the mat; I saw the moon and the moon was seen by me. The medium of instruction was still in Manipuri and it continued right through to the middle school and the High School.

At the end of schooling at the Lower primary schools, the children took a common qualifying examination for entry to the Upper Primary Schools (UPS) that taught from Class III to IV. Those pupils from my Ibotonsana School, went to Thangmeiband Upper Primary School. I remember the absolute joy of passing that exam and starting at a new school.

For the next higher class, the pupils from the UP Schools had to sit another qualifying exam for entry to a High School that taught students from class V to X. There were three Boys’ High Schools. Johnstone High English School was the top school and it was a government school.

Churachand High School and Tombisana High School were private.

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There was Tamphasana Girls High school located near Churachand High School.

There was a Bengali High School that taught in Bengali medium, mainly for the children of Bengali civil servants who were posted to Imphal and those who had settled at Babupara in Imphal. It was situated by the main Road, on the way to Yaiskul. Though it was mainly for children of Bengal Babus (gentlemen), a few Meitei boys went to it. My friend, the Late N Nishikanta from Moirangkhom went there. He thus spoke fluent Bengali, which became very convenient while he was studying in Calcutta.

In 1945, the old Johnstone High School near Ima Keithel, was functioning in full swing with its pre-war students. In 1946, I was in the first batch at the common UP School qualifying examination for entry to a High School. There were about 1,000 candidates. The top 100 successful students were selected for Johnstone School. It used to be 50 before the war. The rest spilled out to the other two: the second best was Churachand High School and the third, Tombisana High School. Girls went to Tamphasana Girls’ High School.

Tamphasana Girls’ High School, before it was relocated near Old Lambulane, was situated on the right side of the main road to Nongmeibung, the Palace Road. It was on the same side and near Churachand High School.

Johnstone School before it was shifted to the present location, was next to Ima Keithel in Khwairamband Bazaar, in an area, east of Maxwell Bazaar (Thangal Bazaar), separated only by a tall brick wall. Tombisana High School [previously Your High School] was at Uripok near the Maharani Thong end.

Konjengbam Gouro Singh BA, was the Headmaster of Johnstone, and Chingakham Pishak Singh BA, of Churachand. In those days a person with a BA degree, was regarded as highly educated. I could count them on my fingertips. People with MA degrees, were as rare as hen’s teeth.

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There were a couple of Meiteis with Master’s degree, who I knew.

Hidangmayum Dwijamani Sharma MA from Nagamapal, and Sinam Krishnamohan Singh MA, LB from Keisamthong, Imphal. Krishnamohan married Princess Tamphasana, in whose name Tamphasana Girls’ High School was established.

I never knew what the High school fees were at that time, as I was exempt, being placed in the second position, and Elangbam Kuladhaja in the first, in the UP school leaving exam for High Schools. We both received a scholarship of 2 rupees each in the beginning of every month. The money became handy as we could go to cinema halls to watch matinee shows on Sundays.

A third class seat at a cinema hall was on a wooden bench that seated 7 boys in front, near the cinema screen. It cost 4 annas (a quarter of a rupee). The late Kuladhaja like me, became a doctor (medical). He retired as the Principal of the newly established Regional Medical College in Imphal. Another two who became prominent among the whole batch as far as I know, were RK Dorendra Singh, who became Chief Minister of Manipur and RK Sanatombi Singh who became a Session’s Judge. They are all deceased now.

On completion of class X at these High Schools, students sat the Matriculation examination, initially under Calcutta University, and at my time, under Gauhati University. Those successful students were graded as having passed in First, Second and Third divisions, in descending order of merit. They could go to college outside of Manipur. But there were only a handful.

There was no college in Imphal in the pre-War period. Immediately in the postwar period, a solitary DM College of Arts was established privately by like-minded educated people. Only those who passed the matric exam, were considered ‘educated’ and were eligible for clerical and other government jobs.

In the prewar epoch, higher education for girls was frowned upon.

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Traditionally, once they were able to read and write, they were taken out of school by their parents. By 1941 at least, before the War, as I remember, the tradition had changed. My third elder sister Modhu, who was the class fellow of Arambam Saroj Nalini Devi, a reputed writer, from Meino Leirak in Sagolband (see below), went to Tamphasana Girls’ High School with the ambition of going to college, but was interrupted by the War. She was married off during the war.

Saroj Nalini marvelled by doing her MA from Calcutta and then PhD in Theology from Sydney in Australia. Her father was Arambam Ibungohal Singh. He was known as Arambam ‘Haosahib’ (Sahib for Hao people, Hill dwellers). A prominent government officer. During the British time, he was the administrator for the people of hill areas of Manipur, known as ‘Hao’ in those days. He was a modern radical, while the vast majority of contemporary Meiteis including my father, were orthodox Hindus.

This brings me to the subject of racism and intolerant attitude of Meiteis directed at the hill dwelling people and the Meitei Pangals. I will also look at how WWII helped to stop this nefarious practice prevalent among the Meiteis. Meiteis only became racists after their conversion into Hinduism in 1717. They have been taught so by their Hindu gurus as an essential practice of Hinduism.

The whole world knows that the Hindu social system is represented by the caste system, of which there are four categories that we know. Though Meiteis had no caste system, they were rightly classified as Kshatriya, the warrior caste. That did not mean anything to them as it had not changed their social structure. They simply lived the Hindu way of life that entailed segregation of some other castes and ethnic peoples.

Following conversion to Hinduism most Meiteis became pescatarians - the people who were vegetarians but ate fish. A few became vegetarians. The Hindu religion proscribed cleanliness and regular bathing habits. And thus as a way of life, they thus began to dissociate themselves from meat-eating tribal communities, who also did not practice physical hygiene. As a result, Meiteis looked down on them as unclean people (mangba).

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They could not reconcile Hinduism in favour of communal harmony.

Hinduism is a more way of life than a religion (cf. Author’s Quest Beyond Religion. 2006 p 125).The veneration of cows had nothing to do with Hindu religion. Nor was it because of economics. Vedic Brahmins used sacrifice cows and ate beef. Hindus stopped eating cows only in the medieval period, about the time when Buddhism started flourishing.

About the time of Ashoka.

While the Hindu-turned Buddhists, including the Emperor Ashoka, continued eating beef, Hindus stopped eating beef to outcast Buddhism.

The high priest Hindus brought in the mythical story of Bal Krishna tending cows in Brindaban along with his cowherd friends, and how he saved the cows and friends by lifting the Goberdhan Hillock with the tip of his little finger, to protect the onslaught of a severe hailstorm.

Eventually, Hindus succeeded in pushing Buddhism out of the soil of India. While I was a little boy just before the Japanlan, I used to take a couple tiny cows made of clay, to the neighbouring temple, on the day of Goberdhan Puja once a year, while my mother worshiped a cow that was brought to our courtyard, putting a garland of marigold round her neck.

It was thus only natural that Meiteis avoided social interface with other communities that ate cows. That included the British.

Hinduism teaches physical and mental cleanliness to its followers as one of the divine virtues and as an essential feature of the individual (Bhagavad Gita 16.7: saucum).The emphasis on personal cleanliness in daily living and a prerequisite of a bath to pray to their Hindu gods were essential features of Hindu way of life for Meiteis. Meiteis were always seen spotlessly clean and robust like their idols. They always took a bath and wore freshly washed clothes before partaking the midday fare.

The racial discrimination became more than a fly in the ointment in inter-social relationships with other communities from the hills, and naturally created animosity between them and the Meiteis. As Meiteis were the dominating people they insisted everyone else did things their way.

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Fast rewind 300 years ago, among other things, Meiteis and Haos (Hill people) had inter-community feasting, wining and merrymaking, once a year at the Palace of Meitei kings. It was known as Mera Haochongba. It was discontinued after Meiteis became Hindus.

Part of Mera Haochongba festival Although I am consumed with apologies for our Hinduised ancestors’ racial profiling, I find it hard to blame them. Even during the Japanlan, slaughter of cows in Manipur for the British and American soldiers was banned on the insistence of Bodhchandra Maharaja.

The festival of Mera Haochongba was interrupted during the Japanlan. It is appreciated that the titular king Leishemba Sanajaoba Singh reintroduced it many years after the War. It revived the eons-old affectionate bond between the hill and valley people. This great festival takes place on the 15th day of the Manipuri month of Mera (OctoberNovember) every year.

Mera is also the month in which every Meitei family celebrates mera wayungba and Mera thangmei thanba with verve and piety. This is a ritual in which a tall bamboo is stuck in the centre of shumang (courtyard) near the Tulsi plant. Every evening a lamp of some sort is hoisted for it to burn all night. This rite has been perceived to be a day of remembrance for our ancestors, high up in heaven, with a beacon light from their respective 73

family homes. This tradition still continues today though rather l ackadaisical.

The Japanlan however, changed a lot of Meitei culture and tradition. Many beliefs and behaviours, and shared characteristics began to morph like worms and insects, as avant-gardism began to impinge on the socio-cultural and economic-political dynamics of Meiteis in Imphal.

The postwar Meiteis turned away from isolationism. They began to change the status quo as a paradigm shift like the change of concept from the Ptolemaic (the earth as the centre of the universe) to that of Copernican, system (the sun as the centre of the universe).

Although change is not always a good thing, it can bring a challenging situation to our advantage. Having come out of their cocooned world, Meiteis began to fly like butterflies and sting like bees as said by Muhammad Ali. They started to acculturate modern habits and values of other peoples to their advantage.

There was a change towards more rational, tolerant and participatory habits in the postwar period. While some old traditional values remained persevered, many new cultural shoots began to emerge like the emergence of colourful and edible Yaipal (East Indian arrowroot) that blooms underground in early spring.

The late postwar period was the spring equinox for Meiteis, when the Sun crosses the equator line, heading north. Consumed with a desire to break the mould, to defy conventional wisdom and shake off old prejudices, they laboured to provide education, knowledge and skills to the youth of Manipur as a whole.

The educated, as well as unlettered parents began to rethink about the place of women in society. Many girls began to be educated at the only Tamphasana Girls’ High School. A handful went out of Imphal to study at colleges before and even after DM College was established.

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Catching the rising tide of modernity that has brought about fundamental changes in the nature of Meitei ethnicity, laying emphasis upon rationality and science over tradition and myth, young Meitei girls in Imphal, created their own fashion in dress and hairstyle to complement the postwar modernism.

The girls of Tamphasana Girls High School were the pathfinders. How they got their inspiration is a matter of conjecture. They discarded the old figure-destroying garb of one piece phanek wrapped over their bosoms. They calmly began to hitch the phanek around their waist and wear a blouse, with a thin shawl wrapped around their top.

Another throwback that has had a makeover, was the abandonment of the traditional Leishabi or Moirang Thoibi hairstyle. They have opted for the sleek combing of their hair back, which was the Universal Girls’ hairstyle all over the world.

A new youth culture and fashion had also surfaced among the iconic teenage boys of the ‘50s.They had begun to wear long trousers, rather than shorts. A few college students progressed to wearing suit and tie, which until then, was regarded as pretentious. They adopted the American GI’s crewcut hairstyle and mannerisms, as well as American slang words.

The most welcome change in the postwar Meitei youth behaviour, not only among the students but among the hoi polloi, was liberalism and secularism. There was no longer strict Guru (spiritual master) and Chela (‘to serve’), disciple relationship between Meiteis and Brahmins New generations of Brahmins with Meitei mothers or grandmothers have become Meitei bamons.

Traditionally, soon after the War, when I was a young boy, I was taught by my mother to call a Brahmin as ‘Agya’ (at your service). Whenever a Brahmin came to our house, I had to take a half-kneeling stance with both hands touching the ground. He would then extend his right arm with the palm facing down, to give me his blessings by saying ‘Jay Jay’. Sanskrit words. I did not know what they meant.

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I like others, in the beginning of High school at Johnstone, used to bow and touch the ground, whenever I saw our school teachers who were as old as my father in their 50s, come cycling through Khwairamband Keithel, where only a handful of people were milling about during the day.

That was how we were taught about traditions.

Meiteis became familiar with the Sanskrit word ‘Jay’ from singing the Hindu hymn of Dashavatar (Ten incarnations of Vishnu): ‘Om Jay Jagadish hare’ (‘victory to you the Lord of the Universe) that is recited all over India during any puja performance. While ‘Hari’ is another name of Krishna or Vishnu, the Sanskrit word ‘Hare’ is vague.

Elderly Meitei men used to recite Jayadeva’s version of Dashavatar from his epic Sanskrit poem of Git Govinda. It was translated into English by Edwin Arnold in 1875, among others. My father also translated it into Manipuri in 1982.

I learnt this first verse of Dashavatar by heart, when I was small. My father used to take me to the local mandab during the Kang festival. He used to sing along in unison with others. The first version: Pralaya-payodhita-jale, dhrtvan asi vedam Vihita-vahita-caritram akhedam Keshava dhrta-mina sarira, Jaya jagadish hare When world was water, you became a tireless vessel of the Vedas. You, in Pisces form, Keshava, Conqueror of the world, Hari. [Edwin Arnold’s translation].

Summing up. An array of Meitei traditions and customs changed for the better since the Japanlan. Such changes were universal through diffusion and contact with other cultures and ideas as the Meitei society opened up to set up a brand new society to pursue their interest.

It will take more than the physical limits of the surrounding mountains to imprison the new Meitei spirit of progress. As Richard Lovelace wrote in 76

his famous poem: To Althea, from prison in 1642. “Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor Iron bars a cage.” Manipur may no more be green, but it will still be glam.

Kanglasha before their destruction by the British on July 20 1981

Modern Kanglasha under reconstruction, completed in 2007.

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(Part 5) Chandon Shenkhai – Mangba Shengba

Engelei

My father Irengbam Gulamjat Singh and my mother Irengbam Mani Devi In these wintry days of my life, the fragrant memories of my youth, have become utterly beguiling. As old age dashes events in my life, I feel fortunate to be able to write something of the virgin landscape of Imphal with its historical baggage and its people. It is for the benefit and inspiration of the Generation Alpha (born between 2010-2924) in Manipur, who are born during this Covid Pandemic of 2020. It is said that this Alpha generation in history, will be the most educated with religion going out of the window.

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The lockdown with a dull mist of anxiety over my eyes, has also brought out certain emotions in me. Suddenly, my memories of 80 years leapt off the pages and they came alive. Among them, the recollection of my first entry to my primary school which I mentioned in the previous chapter, came out in the form of a gusty sigh, with an unshakable sense of historical destiny. This has made me aware that there has been a gap in my life, between orotund rhetoric and prosaic achievements.

Countless happy memories of my childhood and youth are embedded in this reminiscence. The bad begins and worse remains behind, says Hamlet to his mother. Perhaps, age is eroding my confidence in the present. While glorifying my past with positive memories I feel chagrined in my present-day living.

I have also become less facetious and much less au fait in the face of the novel corona virus that has taken the world by surprise with its inordinate virulence. To add insult to the injury, the late Shanti had warned me that a couple of my seniors who were prominent figures in Imphal, could not complete their memoirs as they became too disabled due to their advanced age. He was periphrastically coaxing me to hurry with my memoir before anything happened to me.

Mea culpa. I have been trying Shanti. I have been in much worse situations and have survived them. I have begun to look on the sunny side of life. I see the glass half-full, not half-empty.

Writing this memoir has helped me to keep my mind sharp and increase my memory. I also do my daily pranayama or breathing exercises while being positive. This gives me an inner tranquillity with self-composure and serenity. I know now that pranayama slows my heart rate and helps me to relax. My heart rate is on average about 60 per minute like that of a trained athlete due to abdominal breathing that stimulates parasympathetic nerves in the diaphragm.

This knowledge makes me happy.

Psychologists say happiness in life increases in middle age.

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Happiness as I understand it, is an emotional state of satisfaction and fulfilment in life. I cannot quantify any palpable change in my happiness throughout my entire life though there were different types of happiness, such as the joy of passing an exam, love and romance of youth and settled married life of the mature age.

My happiness in this ripe old age, is my ability to recollect many forgotten events of my childhood. Nothing is more delightful than being able to recall certain names and events that have completely disappeared over my mental horizon.

These memories are the treasures of the heart. Among them, nothing is more cherished than the pleasant memories of Imphal and the carefree days of my youth with a mendacious kind of tradition and literalness. I know one cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. But recapturing the memory of my humble childhood and growing up in the raw Imphal town are positive emotional landmarks that increases my ability to hold in my mind a map of a person, place, or thing.

Meiteis just before the Japanlan, continued to live in the backdrop of untrammelled landscape of Manipur, scraping by for a living, amidst scenery of surpassing loveliness. They never lost their edge though they relied on the meagre resources that sustained their living. Their low economic status did not seem to make any deleterious impact on their physical and mental health.

As I remembered, Meiteis in general, had a muscular physique and no one suffered from pathological depression. They were happy-go-lucky people. The ancient Meitei life was aptly described once, by my friend N Brajakishore, who phrased it, speaking metaphorically: eikhiodi khudei ama shetlaga pangnung nungngaiba jatni, meaning, I can be quite happy just wearing a khudei (a medium-wide checked loincloth - informal Meitei men’s garb).

A minimalist lifestyle.

It is truism that we must remember the past in order to avoid its repetition.

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This was the aphorism of the celebrated George Santayana, though not exactly in these words. I think most Meiteis today, venerate the imperative to remember some of our past history in order to forge a better life ahead.

We remember the ‘seven-year devastation’, the farsightedness of Maharaja Gambhir Singh, the bravery of Paona Brajabashi, and the agility of Jubraj Tikendrajit.

On my part, I have discovered two black splodges in our collective history, the nature of which I feel, should be avoided in future. I am referring to the negative educational establishment during the days of our monarchical system and the religious exploitation of Churachand Maharaj in Manipur.

As they were, they have now been moved into the trash bin of history.

Manipur was left in its pristine state, uncorrupted, unspoiled and undeveloped by the British to our own devices as it was under British Paramountcy. Nearly half of India was directly ruled by the British.

The rest, about 600 native states were independent kingdoms, known as Princely States (downgrading their status below the British king).

These princely states were indirectly ruled by the British. Manipur was one of them. They were nominally sovereign but they accepted the principle that the British Raj ruled over them. This was known as ‘Paramountcy’.

In return, the British provided public services like the Railways on their behalf and collected taxes. In Manipur it was a mixture of British colonialism and Meitei feudalism. The British allowed the Maharaja to have control only over the religio-cultural aspects, policing and education.

It was unfortunate that our Chandrakirti Maharaj, as well as Churachand Maharaj who was educated at the Princely School of Mayo College in Ajmer [Eton College of India], had no incentives to educate their subjects.

We should remain ever so thankful to Sir James Johnstone, who introduced English education in Imphal.

We were lucky that Churachand Maharaj fancied having electricity at his Palace and of course, in the British Reserve for British officers. He casually mentioned about it to the Political Agent. And lo and behold.

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There came electricity to Imphal.

It was so easy for him. “The Maharaja having decided that Imphal would benefit from a supply of electricity, the [civil] engineer [Jeffery] sent for a manual on how to erect a hydro-electric plant, of which he had no first-hand experience. He studied the instructions, and then he and his men [My father Gulamjat and others] set to work. (cf. IMPHAL, Evans & Brett-James, 1962, p 22).

I can’t help wondering whether Maharaj Churachand’s lack of creative thinking or convergent thinking had something to do with his poor genetic inheritance and impecunious environment. As the old maxim says: ‘The apple does not fall far from the tree’.

Boy Churachand was picked up from the dirt by Major Horatio St John Maxwell - the first Political Agent, to be the future king of Manipur, rather than from the descendants of the ruling king. He was the great grandson of Nara Singh Maharaja, with no claim to the throne. He was the youngest of five brothers and he was 5 years old.

But, Maxwell knew boy Churachand would make perfect raw material to be schooled in the British ways and elevated to raja (no longer maharaja), with a reduced salute of eleven guns. It was with the view that he could be taught to be a ‘pliant puppet on the throne to the British interest’.

And the British interest was to keep Manipuris to be ‘obedient servants’ and illiterate. Until Independence in 1947, all the public servants in Manipur, had to put their signature in the complimentary close of any letter as ‘Yours most obedient servant’. That was also the custom for students when writing a letter to the Headmaster of the school. I remember when we were taught to change the format immediately after independence, to ‘Yours faithfully’, for formal letters, and if you do not know the name of the person you are writing to, and ‘Yours sincerely’ if you know the person’ name.

This brings me to Niccolo Machiavelli in his thin book (1513 CE) ‘The 83

Prince’ of 88 pages. It is a short political treatise on how to acquire power, create a state and keep it. Machiavelli recommends caution around ambitious non-obligate elite, because they always ruin the ruler in adversity, and care more about themselves. Additionally, he expounds, it is far easier for a ruler to defend himself against a small fraction of elites than against an organized movement of people.

In the selection of boy Churachand as the ruler of Manipur the British had some Machiavelli in it. Here is a quote about what the British thought about boy Churachand. A letter by Major W Hill, commanding 1st/2nd Gurkhas, 17 September 1891. It is extracted from the book: Manipur Mischief by William Wright, 2018, pp 231, 232).

“Yesterday, Maxwell, the Political Officer, went to the village where dwelt the great grand-children of a one-time Raja of Manipur. He was shown a very poor tumbledown hut, in which dwelt in poverty, bordering on starvation, the family he sought. Paraded to his inspection were four dirty villagers, and they were described as the great grandchildren of the late rajah, Mir Singh. Is there not the other, the Benjamin [Sic. the youngest child], the child who was born at the time of his father’s death? A small urchin, beastly dirty, and as naked as truth, was produced, and Maxwell informed the five year old brat that Her gracious Majesty the Queen- Empress had been pleased to command that he be made a king, and then, turning to the proud mother, presented her with a cake of soap (this is no joke, but a solid fact), and bid her wash the king.”

The boy Churachand was not called even by a common noun ‘boy’, but by degrading words like urchin and brat. Their opinion had not changed by the time he died at Navadeep from pulmonary tuberculosis on November 6 1941. ‘A king who had no interest in the administration of Manipur’.

Instead of establishing a college for higher education Churachand Maharaja paid more attention to introducing sports like cricket to peasant Meitei subjects. It was like throwing pearls in front of pigs. They will only trample them. It would have cost him less than a quarter of what he spent for British war efforts, to get his titles of KCSI, CBE. 84

After the defeat at the Battle of Khongjom on April 27 1891, Meitei men’s way of life in the Imphal valley, changed drastically, as the British Administration took over the defence of Manipur. There was no more lalupkaba for able-bodied Meitei men. There was no more soldiering to do. Imphal had no facilities for higher education. University education was necessary to shape their future and to drive innovation and skills. They were in the doldrums.

The new system of governance began when the British Authorities handed over the education and the judiciary sections to Raja Churachand Singh on May 15 1907. He was to be helped by a Durbar with eight members. The Raja was the President, and the Vice President was a British ICS officer.

Churachand Maharaj [photo credit: Public domain] The supreme power rested with the Political Agent, who was answerable to the Chief Commissioner of Assam in Shillong. The British, in the person of the Vice President, was in charge of Hill Tribes, finance, and state revenue.

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An armed police battalion known as The State Military Police (SMP) was first set up under MLF Crawford, the Assistant Political Agent on March 31 1893. EF Hughes was appointed the first Superintendent of the State Military Police (SMP). Later on, the SMP battalion was handed over to Churachand Maharaj as the Commanding Officer until he was relieved of the post on June 1 1941, before he died in November 1941 in Navadeep.

The SMP was established to keep peace in the Imphal Valley. They were armed with single-shot Lee Enfield 303 rifles that hold only a single round of ammunition and must be reloaded manually after each shot. For the hills the British kept their own troops of 4th Assam Rifles. One unit was based at Ukhrul and the other at Tamenglong to fly the British flag.

They were armed with magazine–loading 303 rifles. Each magazine had 5 rounds.

About that time, the state revenue was about 8 lakhs. The annual tribute to be paid to the British was Rs 5,000, which went up to Rs 50,000 in due course. The British style taxation system was introduced. The house tax was Rs 2 per house in the valley and Rs 3 in the hills.

In 1913, Churachand Maharaja ceased to be the President of the Durbar.

He remained immersed in the pursuit of pleasures, such as horse racing in Shillong and other appurtenances of monarchy, while enforcing such supercilious rules, like prohibiting any man from having the adjective of “Ibungo” in front of a name, while his wife Maharani Ngangbi prohibited any woman wearing a certain colour known as Thambal machu (lotus-pink colour) of Phanek Mapalnaiba.

A British man, usually a young ICS officer, became the President, known as PMSD (President of Manipur State Durbar). A permanent bungalow was built for him. The last PMSD, Mr F F Pearson became the first Chief Minister of independent Manipur on July 1 1947.

Following the British rule, life was going on swimmingly for the Meiteis until the economic policy of Maharaj Churachand, unhindered by the Political Agent (non-intervention policy of the British) brought chaos to 86

to the people of the valley. It was also an indirect result of the British economic policy of free trading with other states, whereby, the local Marwaris in Imphal exported rice to Kohima and other Military establishments with licence from the Maharaja.

It was a disaster for Manipur with shortage of rice and famine. This led to a female uprising, known as the Second Nupi Lan (Female Agitation 2) in 1939. Only the Maharaja Churachand who was holidaying in Navadeep at that time, had the power to stop the export of rice by the Marwaris.

It needed his signature to cancel the export licence. Helpless and on the insistence of the female agitators, the Political Agent Gimson pulled the fuses off the Marwari rice mills in Imphal.

History tells us about the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb of the Mughal Sultanate in Agra or Adolf Hitler of the Third Reich in Berlin, who persecuted people with other religions. But in Manipur, we had Churachand Maharaj in Imphal, who persecuted Meiteis with his own religion of Hinduism. An appalling violation of religious freedom, deprivation of civil liberties and a huge increase on ‘poverty burden’.

In cahoots with the Court Brahmins known as Brahma Sabha (Brahmins’ Assembly) at his palace, Churachand promulgated two religious edicts for Hindu Meiteis: (1) Chandon Shenkhai and (2) Mangba Shengba in the 1930s. Those heinous dictates caused profound miseries on Meiteis. They were serious ethical violations, deprivation of civil liberty and an increase on the ‘poverty burden’. He weaponised the Court Brahmins to extort money.

The Chandon-Senkhai was taxation for the privilege of putting Vaishnavite sect mark of Tilak chandlo of sandalwood clay– chandon thinba in Manipuri, on the forehead of Meiteis. These were two vertical lines that connected near the bridge of the nose to form a “U” shape called Urdhva pundra. Some men had extra paint on the bridge and the fleshy apex of the nose as a tear drop in reverse. Older men like my father, had extras with Hare Krishna in Sanskrit Alphabet on their foreheads.

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Another such religious persecution for money was the social outcasting of some men, sometimes the whole village, under the Mangba-shengba (unholy-holy) edict from the Brahma Sabha, which was authorised by Churachand Maharaj. They were designed to obtain money on preposterous charges. It was directed to anyone who, the Brahma Sabha had the ricketiest of excuses to pick on. Its proclamation was the law like the Islamic sharia.

Once declared mangba, the person could only be consecrated (shengdokpa) by payment of a stipulated sum of money to the Brahma Sabha and to the king. Until then, the person and his family would remain social ostracised, excluded from social functions, irrespective of their suffering.

A handful of elite Brahmins at the Palace, who formed the Brahma Sabha, were the wicked perpetrators. They found the victims through informers like spies. The hardships of the marginalised victims as social castaways, while trying to find the money for resurrection, was such sadness that it weighed upon them like a physical pain. It was like being pricked exquisitely with a pin and then being whacked on the head by a mallet.

Some people do find pleasure when others are suffering or demeaned. It was my father’s turn to agonise for the gratification of someone. I have only a vague recollection. I remember how my father was declared mangba in the winter of 1941. It was hardly anything that would be of negative normative significance. He was snitched on by a neighbouring Brahmin who had a row with my father.

The Brahmin had reported to Atombapu Sharma, Head of the Court Brahmins that, my father was patronising a poor Sanskrit-educated Brahmin, Nilamani Sharma, who had been degraded as a low Caste Brahmin by the Brahma Sabha. He and others like him, were not allowed to perform as Hindu priests.

My religious father had Agya Nilamani come to our house, on the first Sunday evening of every month, to read Shrimad Bhagavad in Sanskrit 88

and translate it to Manipuri. Just for him. This jobless Brahmin was very impecunious. My father gave him a rupee each time. That helped him a bit as he had no income. Later on, after the war, my father built a temple and a mandab for him in his own Ingkhol.

When my father was declared ‘mangba’ he was furious. But he was not particularly bothered. As ill luck would have it, a younger brother of mine, named Leihao who was 2 years and 8 months old, died from dysentery during this crisis. Nobody dared to come and help my father with his son’s cremation and other religious functions.

Soon the message filtered through that he could have shengdokpa (purification) on payment of certain sums of money. My father on principle, refused to pay the usual fee of 83 rupees and 3 anas to the Brahma Sabha, and Rs 500.0 to Churachand Maharaj. He was planning to cremate his son himself.

In the meantime, my father being a prominent British employee, Mr McDonald, President of Manipur State Durbar (PMSD), intervened. He persuaded my father to have a compromise. He was to pay the smaller fee to the Brahma Sabha as a token while the large fee for the king was being waived. So he did. That was the end.

This was a time when Lamyanba Irabot defied the edict to help these anguished people. Irabot and his followers helped to cremate these beleaguered dead bodies. They even disinterred corpses and cremated them.

While I am on this subject of mangba-shengba, it might be helpful to explain why Meiteis practised racism against tribal communities in Manipur. It was partly because of Meitei’s ritual purity and hierarchical practice of Hinduism, and partly because these communities ate meat, especially cow’s meat, which was unholy to them.

This ethnic profiling was dead serious among Meiteis. If anyone from the communities of Lois, Chingmees, Pangals, Yaithibies or Europeans had 89

set a profane foot even on a Meitei mangol, the house had to be abandoned as unholy, deconsecrated. The practice was not entirely of Meiteis’ doing. It was among the Hindus all over India.

Some of you who have stayed at or seen the Taj Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur, must be familiar with its history. The Hotel was once the Summer Palace of Maharana Jagat Singh II, built on an island in Lake Pichola.

Lake Palace Hotel, Udaipur 1984 Previously, he built a summer place in the lake nearby, which he had to abandon as it became unhallowed after he once gave sanctuary to a fleeing Muslim Sultan. The ruins of the old palace still exists nearby. It became well-known after the James Bond film “Octopussy” (1983) was filmed on location there.

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Lake Palace Hotel. 2nd visit 1990 Such racial bias took place once, in our own home, following the illness of an elder sister of mine, Pishak Devi. She told me that in 1940, she was seriously ill with typhoid fever. The British doctor, Dr Bower, the Civil Surgeon at the Civil Hospital, at my father’s request, came to see her at our home.

My father who was acquainted with European officers every day in his job, could not allow Dr Bower for fear of ostracisation, to come up on the verandah of our house, let alone come inside the house. My sister had to be brought out, lying in her low bed, to the edge of the verandah, so that the doctor could examine her while he sat on a mora (round stool made of bamboo strips) on the edge of the shumang (courtyard). The British officers knew the custom. So he took no offence.

Until the 1930s, a British Civil Surgeon was posted in Imphal. By the time I met one with my father in 1953, he was a Bengali called Gangesh Babu, the last Civil Surgeon. The civil Hospital had 80 beds. I also associated with the hospital in 1964. There was another small hospital for patients with tuberculosis, near about Koirengei, at the foot of a hillock.

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Author seated front (right) at Old Civil Hospital, Imphal 1964 The British administration also provided facilities of an animal hospital in Imphal. It was called Shal hospital (Veterinary Hospital) and the doctor as shal doctor (Cattle doctor). I remember the Hospital - a longish brick- built building by the main road leading to Nongmeibung and just past the Sanjenthong Bridge.

Following the War, Meiteis turned over a new leaf as a fresh wind of change had wafted into Meitei society. It was an attitude towards accommodating cultural differences. About this period, tea shops known as hotels that were run by bamons (Meitei Brahmins) in the town centre, began to serve tribal people from the hills and Meitei Pangals from the Imphal plain.

I remember one day in 1948, Moirangthem Gojendra, father of Shanti (Ret IGP), and I brought a Meitei Pangal, Helim Choudhury to the famous Agya Pishak’s Hotel after a game of hockey at Mapal Kangjeibung. Helim was a very good hockey player. He later became General Manager of Manipur Transport. Agya Pishak had no problem with him. I remember meeting Helim, when both of us were Guests of Honour at the 8th International Polo Tournament in Imphal in 2014.

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I also grew up to be libertarian as my father was. In my mid-schooling, while studying biology and astronomy, I became more secular.

I believed in evolution as the origin of human beings (cf. Author’s Book, Quest beyond Religion, The Origin of Life. p273).

Over all, Meiteis who changed their culture if not traditions, by conversion into Gauria Vaishnavism, began to relax in terms of their religious orthodoxy. By putting their best foot forward for prosperity, they began to aim for the stars to reach the moon. In Manipuri: Soraren tamna nung hullabadi wapan matondi shoidana yougani. Being less religious does not make them less happy. It is the country’s level of development that affect people’s happiness.

I will end this Part, quoting George Bernard Shaw as food for thought: The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

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(Part 6) Ancient Meiteis in Kangleipak Modern Meiteis in Imphal Town

Swadesh Seva Dal’ Scout group 1947. Standing at the back

(L-R): 2nd author. Standing: 4th M Gojendra Scout leader (Father of Shanti, ex-IGP) & Manilal. Sitting: Surendra & Nodiachand (some of the names I can remember)

I have become a wanderlust. My mind wanders back and forth between conscious thoughts. Mind wandering is ubiquitous to the human experience. My mind is no exception.

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My mind wanders as a default in my brain when I am engaged in writing, which is an attention demanding activity. They are thoughts that are related but not tied down to the subject of my writing. They have awakened many memories that have been buried in the past. They are stray thoughts. Not a prodigious feat of memories.

At times, my mind aimlessly cruises for a while like a school of Japanese Koi carp in a glass tank with no particular destination. It then settles to task-relevant thoughts. I do not daydream anymore, which I used to as a school boy and it was quite pleasurable.

My father built a small cubicle as a study for me. It was situated in the left side of the verandah of the two room house we lived in. It was boarded on three sides by wood panels up to a height of 4 feet. The rest up to the ceiling was finished with chicken wire to ward off mosquitoes. It was always quiet. During my study my mind often wandered, inhabiting a different life for a while.

They were pleasure pursuits, but they took quite a lot of time from my study. However, I believe every cloud has a silver lining. And during my present mind wanderings, I have stumbled on Meitei cosmology that is inexorably and cryptically associated with Lai Harouba festival of the creation and evolution of Meiteis with their reference to erotic imagery that I found quite vulgar.

In Meitei anthropology, Meiteis are people who have been living in Manipur since the dawn of time and up to this date. We know it from its oral history, such as awang Koubru asuppa, leima-laina khunda ahanba – the mighty Koubru in the north where (Meiitei) women and men first settled.

It presages that Meiteis were indigenous In Manipur, with or without other human groups. I avoid using the term ‘indigenous’ to Meiteis as it is synonymous with aborigines or endangered natives of a land. One definition of Indigenous refers to people who lived at a place before colonists or settlers arrived, such as the Negrito tribes of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and the Maoris of New Zealand. They are also called 96

‘First Nations’. It is an awkward definition in India with its ambiguous meaning.

As ‘indigenous’ is poorly defined under international law, I will use it loosely for Meiteis by referring to another definition, which is ‘having a distinct society and culture with collective ancestral ties’ to Kangleipak.

That, our Meitei ancestors were the autochthons or the primordial people, who had been living in Manipur since their arrival after the end of the Last Ice Age, between 20,000-10,000 BCE, has been confirmed by the finding of stone artefacts in the surrounding hill caves in Ukhrul and Tamenglong as well as in excavations at Napaching in Wangoo village of Imphal valley.

Prehistorically, I suspect the Meitei ancestors came down to the Imphal plain when its water dried up, around the end of New Stone Age period, between 2,000 and 1,500 BCE. That was about the time when the Tibeto-Burman people began to inhabit at the foothills of the Himalayas.

They named the valley Kangleipak (Dry land) and their early settlement as Kangla (dry place).

Early humans (Homo erectus) passing through Manipur 97

According to the ‘Out of Africa model’. It was during the final stage of Stone Age (Neolithic Period) that, a part of the group of early human ancestors migrated from Northeast Africabetween 100,000-70,000 years ago, and they expanded to India and beyond, through the Manipur corridor. (cf. Author’s Points to Ponder, 2013, pp 29, 80).

Book launch: Points to Ponder, Nirmala Hotel, Imphal 2013 (L-R): 2nd, Amrita, Rupobati, Margaret, Neil, Naobi & Suranjan

Historically, it was Nongda Lairen Pakhangba (33-153 CE), who started the Meitei kingdom about the time when Jesus Christ began his first ministry. He had an unshakable sense of historical destiny and incredible cultural creativity.

Pakhangba created an autonomous ‘Brave New World’. Not the dystopian ‘Brave New World’ of Aldous Huxley. He had such ingenuity that, having already absorbed a few small tribes like Khaba, Leihao, Chenglei, Lai and Tin, he forged the remaining powerful seven tribes (Salai taret) one after the other into a confederation of Meitei nation. This was a couple of thousand years ago.

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Pakhangba and his tribe were known as Meetei. Once, he became the big chief, the Ningthou (king) of the confederation of seven salais, he started the hereditary Ningthouja dynasty in Manipur. The confederation became known as ‘Meitei’. The whole Kangleipak became known as Meitei Leibak or Meitreibak due to semantic bleaching.

Eventually, it was named Manipur in the early 18th century (1724 CE) after the Meitei conversion into Hinduism in 1717. In the years to come, Meitei kings subdued many tribal villages around Imphal plain, as far as Kohima in the present Nagaland. They extracted tributes from them.

Meiteis ruled the roost. It was a sort of Meitei paramountcy.

The independence of Meitreibak also known as the eponymous Kangleipak and later as Manipur in 1724 CE, came to an end after the crushing defeat of 400 brave Meitei soldiers at the Battle of Khongjom by the invading British column from the east. The British forces occupied Kangla Fort in Imphal on April 27 1891. Following which, the British Governor General Lord Lansdowne decided not to annex Manipur to British India. He restored it to a Princely State and kept Manipur under their policy of ‘Indirect rule’ or Paramountcy.

The Policy of ‘Indirect Rule’ that was framed for all the Princely States of India, was also introduced to Manipur for the Meiteis in the valley, while the tribal peoples in the hills were ruled directly by the Political Agent through the President of Manipur State Durbar (PMSD), under the guise of ‘to protect the hill people from the oppression of the kings of Manipur’.

The British rule in Manipur thus began on April 27 1891, with the promulgation that, “Her Majesty the Queen, Empress of India, has given the Governor General in Council, full authority to choose the Native Ruler and to formulate conditions under which the ruler would be invested with power.”

With the enforcement of British suzerainty and paramountcy, Major HP Maxwell, who was the Political Officer during the transition, was 99

appointed the Political Agent. He was answerable to the Chief Commissioner in Assam. The Meitei king was accountable to him in the first place. Suzerainty meant the right to rule over the state of Manipur, while paramountcy meant the British Crown was superior to the Indian states.

Another proclamation on April 27 1891 affirmed that, “Having declared an end to the sovereign authority of the Regent Kula Chandra Singh of Manipur, the administration of Manipur State was taken over by the General officer commanding Her Majesty’s forces in Manipur.”

A further notification, dated September 18 1891, announced that, “The Governor-General in Council has been pleased to select you [5 year old boy] Chura Chand, son of Chowbi Yaima, to be the Chief of the Manipur State. You are hereby granted the title of Raja of Manipur, and a salute of eleven guns.” (cf. Part 5).

Raja Churachand, when he became an adult, was given the portfolio of education, police, and religio-cultural affairs. His policemen, only a handful, were known as ‘Koyet Anganba’ as they donned red turbans. He was allowed to keep a battalion of armed State Military police (SMP) for internal law keeping. They were armed with outdated muzzle-loading rifles.

By the same order, the Hill people remained segregated and they were thus not involved in the development of a modern state system in Manipur during British Rule. I do not think the division in the administration of the valley and hills was intended as the oft-mentioned ‘Divide and Rule’ (Divide et imperia) icon of British military and political strategy. Manipur as a whole, was too small for the British to worry about.

The Kabui rebellion of 1915 (Rani Gaidinliu) and Kuki rebellion of 1917 were only a headache to the British administration. Meiteis who were disarmed, had only a snowflake’s chance in hell for such an uprising.

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Kabui Rani Gaidinliu, a Great lady

Kuki Khotinthang Sitlhou A great Kuki leader

‘Rani’ title was given by J Nehru in her honour

Before the British occupation, each tribe in the hills had remained fairly independent, usually headed by a chieftain. They had extra-ordinary skills for survival and conservation. They had set out their own rules for the community. They had their own culture and animistic religion. They had managed their livelihood for millennia from their environment. They had remained off-limits to and protected their biodiversity from outsiders.

The use of the word ‘tribe’ as I am doing now, has been in some bother since the late 1950s. Archaeologists and ethnohistorians have been confronting with each other. It seems to be racially charged and offensive to some communities. But the Indian Government uses it freely as “Schedule Tribes” in its Constitution. And the tribes themselves do not mind it. This is in lieu of the term Indigenous people.

WWII ended in 1945. And India got independence in 1947. As the British left Manipur, the Manipuris became suddenly exposed to the outside world. They called the first Indian Administrator as foreigner not outsider. I know, I was there. Until then, Meiteis were living with hopes tucked in their back pocket, believing that, tomorrow may not be a better 101

day, but there will always be a better tomorrow. Now, they had to find their own feet and think on their feet.

A new Meitei nation was being born. A new order was coming into being and the old order was passing away. It was like a new nation of America was being born during 1790-1828 CE.There was a hive of activities.

Meiteis in Imphal, became focussed on building Imphal, bringing higher education, improving theatrical techniques in dramas, and sports performance, among other things. A few educated people began to indulge in political movements. There was palpable spiritual laxity among the Meitei youth with the beginning of secular thought that was associated with modernity.

That is to say, imperceptibly, Meiteis began to think in terms of global modernism that was connected with the concept of time and space and a set of cultural, political and economic relationship that affected the nature of their social life.

In the new social structure, we youngsters graduated from eating fish to eating eggs and chicken curry, which was taboo before the Japanlan.

Whenever we went to picnics we ate chicken curry and we could buy chicken curry at the Kabui settlements of Sahib Manai and Major Khun, for one rupee a plateful. Boiled duck eggs were sold at the south end of Sadar bazaar. A dozen cost one rupee.

Meiteis who were politically naïve until about 1945 because of poverty of education, became seriously embroiled in modern politics. Initially, a few of them joined the roaring Indian Congress freedom movement from the British rule, led by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. As a young boy, I was also politically conscious. I pasted a poster, a group photo of Gandhi, Nehru and Subhas on my bedroom wall. The photograph was taken in 1938 when Subhas Chandra Bose became the President of the Indian National Congress.

Meiteis were learning. It is never too late to learn. Forget Plato, who 102

started political thinking or political philosophy in the 4th century BCE. That we keep as knowledge from history. The Meiteis began to get involved in politics accompanied by a new intellectual temper in the second half of the 20th century.

Two political parties were in the forefront. One was led by Hijam Irabot, a leftist. The other popular one headed by Lalita Madhab Sharma of the Indian National Congress party. There was also a nascent political activity among the tribals, steered by Athiko Daiho Mao in 1946, for a separate Nagas inhabited area. His younger brother Shibboo Mao was my class fellow in Darjeeling.

There was also a great political consciousness about Independence among the school students in Imphal including me, a young boy. It was instilled by college students from Gauhati and Calcutta during their summer holidays. They had picked up the impulse for freedom movements from people out there. There were two student organisations.

The first was the Manipur Students’ Congress. It was followed by the communist Manipur students’ Federation. They organised frequent processions in the town centre. I was too young to know politics, but during the processions, I was also shouting in chorus with the Manipur Students’ Congress, like chhatra congress zindabad, “Bharat Mata ki Jay. Long live Students’ Congress, Victory to Mother India, The communist Students Federation was more motivated as the leaders were ideological. They sang songs like: Hougatlo changshilo bharat machasa, Swadhinnatagi numit thoklakle.

Himalay chingjaona ngakli awangda, Samadruna koiri maikei ahumda.

In English: Wake up, March forward, all Indians. The sun of independence has risen. (We are) defended by the Himalayan ranges in the north and surrounded by the sea all around the three sides.

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They also sang patriotic Manipuri songs like: Sati Thoibi yokpi brabhubahan pokpi Imani nahakti meitei leima-o, Bharata faubi ima nahakni [Manipur].

In English: You are the distinguished mother [Manipur] in India, the royal Meitei woman, who has brought up Sati Thoibi and given birth to Brabubahan. They were ridiculous self-aggrandisement. Nobody has ever heard of Manipur in India except for a little bit at Cachar in the Silchar district of Assam, where there are a few Manipuri villages.

Talking of Brabubahan. Pundit Atombapu Sharma made serious attempts to make us look more ludicrous in the eyes of Indians. He single-handedly, flummoxed Meiteis to believe that we were the descendants of the Vedic (Iron Age, 10th century BCE) king Brabubahan of Manipur.

Brabubahan was supposed to be the son of a non-existent (even in Meitei mythology) Meitei princess Chitrangada. His father was Arjun of the five Pandava brothers. Arjun from the Kuru Kingdom, while roaming the forests of India in his self-exile for breaking the law of polyandry, apparently came to Manipur and met Chitrangada. He had a son by Chitrangada, called Brabubahan.

I used to believe it myself as a boy. It was confirmed after seeing the Hindi film Chitrangada in Imphal in 1948. I knew that the film was based on a fiction novel, Chitra for Chitrangada, written by Rabindranath Tagore.

We were also brainwashed by a fabricated story of how the Hindu god Mahadev made three gullies with his Trisul (Trident) through Chingnunghut in the hills of Tengnoupal, to drain the water from Imphal valley. He did it in order that Krishna could play his Ras Leela with his paramour Radha and milkmaids of Brindaban in Manipur. It sticks in the craw. It is far away for Krishna to come all the way from Brindavan with all the dancing girls.

There is no doubt that Manipur (plateau) was raised from the bottom 104

of the sea as part of the Himalayan ranges, like a cup filled with water, millions of years ago when two tectonic plates collided. (cf. Author’s Points to Ponder The Raising of Kangleipak from the bottom of the sea, pp 44-47).

Gradually the water drained away to the lower elevation of Burma through the three naturally occurring canyons of Chingnunghut in Tengnoupal Hills of Manipur and Chin Hills of Myanmar. Ultimately it emptied into the Chindwin River of Myanmar.

Meiteis have now put away these gobbledygook in the trash bin of history.

It then follows in its historical continuity that, as the Meiteis had settled in the valley, which was accessible, albeit infrequently, by people living beyond the surrounding mountain ranges, they had the opportunity for enculturation of other people’s cultures and habits. This led to their acquiring a more advanced state in social development, which finally led to their formation of a nation-state with an institutional Government at Kangla.

While resurrecting ancient history, which is like walking the dead, I may be as brazen as to saythat, we have established the origin of ancient Meiteis firmly in the soil of composite Manipur. It is now time for me to wander away to see how the modern Meiteis and other communities have been doing in Manipur in the second half of the 20th century. My ambit only encompasses as far back as 1941 in Imphal.

Japanlan came to Manipur in 1942 and ended in 1945. Until then, Meiteis had been living happily in Manipur in their own little ways. They paid little attention to the world outside of their Sana Leibak Manipur. They had been living mollycoddled by the protective British paramountcy from 1891. Meitei men did not have to go anymore to the Palace for Lalupkaba.

There was no more soldiering for the king in skirmishes with the surrounding tribal villagers or for an invasion of the neighbouring countries like Tripura, Assam or Burma.

Following independence in 1947, Meiteis had to become familiar with and confident in the new situation. They had to fillet and rebuild Manipur though not without forebodings. They began to realise they could not live 105

anymore in the same naively optimistic and solipsistic lifestyle, to which they had been used for times out of mind.

They did make efforts in state-building. Naturally, progress was slow as highly educated Meiteis were only a few. I could count them on my fingers.

Meiteis without education, had trouble forging ahead in life. Among those educated in Manipur, politicians were scarcer than hen’s teeth. It was the era of Rock Bottom economics. There could not be education without money.

Jobs were hard to find. Only some of them could open small shops to eke out their living. There were no big or small industries. The only cottage industry of weaving on the handlooms was killed by the Japanlan. They had to start from scratch. What’s more, those who had joined the educated elite, continued to pull the ladder up as part of our Meitei national character.

And to make matters worse, Meitei politicians of the major Manipur State Congress, who had a chip on their shoulders, would not accept Meiteis as ‘tribals’, when the government of India sought their views for categorising Meiteis in the Indian Constitution in 1950s. Their highfaluting posture was partly because of their lack of knowledge as politicians, of the benefits that would accrue from being categorised as ‘tribals’. So they missed out on the goodies which tribals get under the Indian Constitution.

Higher education in Manipur, was started only when Manipur Arts College was founded by a few like-minded educationalists in 1946. Konjengbam Gouro BA, Headmaster of Johnstone High School was the first Principal (officiating) for 4 months until a retired Khasi professor RR Thomas was appointed Principal (9.12.46 to 31.5.47) for a year, to help in setting up the college with his experience.

Classes of the college were held temporarily at the old Johnstone School and later at the New Johnstone School until a new college building was constructed near Thangmeiband. The college was named DM College (Dhanamanjuri College) with a donation of Rupees 10,000 by Maharani 106

Dhanamanjuri, Popularly known as Ngangbi Maharani, on August 6 1946.

DM College soon emerged as one of the most popular colleges of the North East, by way of capturing top academic positions in most disciplines, as well as in sports and other extra-curricular activities. The public interest in education has now brought Manipur at least on par, if no better, with other sister states in the Northeast. Up-to-date of December 28 2021, there are 3 medical colleges, 3 Central universities, 3 State universities and 3 private Universities.

As I look back to the past retrospectively and gleefully, I can see with my mind’s eyes, how peaceful Imphal was, following the end of Japanlan. It was leafy and natural with many urbanised hamlets that wereintersected by rutted and pocked lanes and bylanes, such as, Uripok, Sagolband, Yaiskul, Thangmeiband and others.

Khwairamband Bazaar was usually deserted during the morning and day.

Between 9 and 10 in the mornings, many students, both boys and girls from Imphal West, walked along this main road to Johnstone High school, and farther to Churachand and Tamphasana Girls’ High schools. There were only three or four girls who rode bicycles to Tamphasana School, while many boys rode bicycles to their high schools.

By the early ‘50s, a facial uplift of Imphal Town centre began to take place.

Many brick-built buildings were coming up, mostly owned by Meiteis.

Many shops selling modern goods, came up as many Meiteis became more entrepreneurs. The three cinema Halls in the Sadar Bazaar were always jam-packed in the evenings as whole families would come to see Hindi movies. The Sadar Bazaar in the evenings, became the haunt and meeting place for boys. It was like Hazratganj in Lucknow or Civil Lines in Allahabad, or the erstwhile Chowringhee in Calcutta.

Khwairamband Bazaar was in an area called the British Reserve, which covered about 4.7sq m. It stretched from Thangmeiband in the north to Police Lane in Yaiskul in the south. It was contained in the west by the Naga River, and in the east by the Imphal River.

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British Reserve meant British territory, with its own police force of about five or six men. It was beyond the jurisdiction of the native law. Laisram Manaobi Singh with the rank of ASI (Assistant sub inspector) was in charge. During and after the War, he owned the Friend’s Talkies.

The British Reserve in the Imphal town centre was lit up with street lamps, including the Kangla Fort, which became a cantonment to station a battalion of 4th Gurkha Rifles.

The Ima Keithel, part of Khwairamband Keithel, was the biggest women’s market in Asia. It was on the northern side of the main intersecting Kangla to Kangchup road. There were rows of parallel stalls stretching from south to north. The foundation was earth surrounded by low brick walls. They were roofed with semi-circular corrugated iron sheets and were open on both sides. Women traders sat behind their wares, back to back.

There was a huge statue of Keithel Lairembi (market deity) between the southern ends of Ima market and the main intersecting road. The northern ends of these rows of stalls were separated by a narrow pedestrian path from the rows of two-storey Marwari buildings that lined the street of Maxwell Bazaar along the banks of Nambul River. The Kasturichand building on this side of the street was the most well-known.

It was adjacent to a swing bridge across the Naga River that connected the bazaar with Naga mapal.

At dusk, Khwairamband Bazaar was like a dark sky with twinkling little stars, as tiny lights from the burning of small sticks of pine wood, began to illuminate the stalls one by one, with all the saleswomen (Ima) sitting behind them.

Between the north end of Maxwell Bazaar and the Major Khun, there was an open space that ended at a crossroads. It had a Sunday market called Hao Keithel – Hao market, for hill dwellers. They could buy meat, home-brew alcohol and live stray dogs for food. Many pi-dogs were so wild that they had to be held and led with a rope that passed through a 1.5 m length of bamboo, to prevent them biting the handlers.

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It was mostly Tangkhuls who bought dogs for food. It is a delicacy for them, as it is in Korea.

By mid- 1950’s, for many students including me, and businessmen, having been outside Manipur so often, the world had become our oyster. The big wide world was no more a strange place. We Meitei youth in Manipur, became part of it. We became more liberal-minded and began to long for a common identity for all the ethnic communities in Manipur as Manipuris. Racial profiling of Hill people became old hat.

This is not a statement with tongue in cheek. By the early 1960s, decades of old prejudice against Pangal Muslims by Meiteis was also beginning to ebb away. I knew a young Muslim girl who had a gorgeous face with perfect brown eyes and long eyelashes. She had a full head of medium length wavy hair. She was the heart throb of many contemporary Meitei boys. Pangal boys were not educated then. She was known as Pangal Sanahanbi. Only recently, I came to know her real name is Fazilat Ahmed.

Pangal Sanahanbi 1961

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Following her university education, she became a socialite in high society in Imphal. She was often invited at religious functions, often entering Meitei Kitchens. Her good looks and Meitei name made her fraternity with Meiteis more acceptable, while young Meiteis defied convention and got rid of attitudes that would be deemed prejudiced.

Her father’s name was Bashiruddin Ahmed. He was a Minister of the Manipur State Interim Council in 1947 (cf. Part 8) with MK Priyobrata (ex-Chief Minister) as Chairman. They lived near Babupara. She went to Tamphasana Girls’ High School and matriculated in 1951. She was the first Muslim girl in Manipur to do so. She did her BA from Gauhati and MA from Poona. She now lives in London, having survived her husband with two daughters and a son.

Unfortunately, while the educated Meitei youngsters became more secular and libertarian, the College educated hill-dwelling youth in Manipur, became obsessed with ethnonationalism and breaking up of Manipur into Nagalim, Kukilam and so on (Author’s Book Points to Ponder, pp 147-153).

WC Irengbam Basanta 110

Col Irengbam Devendra

Talking of which. I may be allowed to take liberty to paraphrase the inherent Meitei spirit of fighting, by citing some matter-of-fact paradigm.

That, the Indian Army has more officers fromthis tiny Manipur, mostly Meiteis, as per capita ethnic populations of India. I have five nephews - high ranking Army and Air force officers in my family.

Lt Col Irengbam Babudhon

Major Irengbam Gregory

There are two Meitei brigadiers and two Lt Generals up-to-date, now retired. I know one personally, Lt Gen Konsam Himalay Singh, PVSM, UVSM, AVSM, and YSM. He is highly decorated for his military skills.

He was awarded Youth Seva Medal for his successful mission to dislodge Pakistani troops from Point 5770 during the vicious Kargil war.

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Major Naorem Deepak If certain economy with the truth is what is needed in the context of dovelike Meitei youth, I have no doubt that the present conciliatory Meitei youth will rise like the Phoenix from the ashes, to defend any attempt to break up Manipur Sana Leibak. They would not let go a piece of Manipur’s history without a fight.

A lot of water has run under the Maharani Thong. By this year of 2020, the year of Covid pandemic and the approaching final stage Indo-Naga Peace talks, I feel that the storm of ethnic nationalism in Manipur will pass away like a whiff of malodour, and that we stop dredging the sour Grapes.

To say that perspectives in Manipur have changed by 2020 is not a profound overstatement. The sophisticated new generations with neoliberal thoughts and laissez-faire economics have begun to think of a sustained growth as the measure to achieve their progress.

And, as an old doyen with growing love handles, I am very happy to be able to write these memories. I am looking forward to a brighter and more harmonious future for all Manipuris. I know divisive rhetoric and polarisation hinders progress.

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(Part 7) Meitei Yumjao & Landmarks in Imphal Town Centre

Author’s childhood home, Yumjao.

Underside of the Mangol (verandah) of the Yumjao when it was about 80 years old.

It is a miserable early December morning of 2020. It is dark, chilly and sleeting outside. It was snowing last night. Our garden at the back and in front are all white. The leafy branches laden with frozen snow are struggling to keep their poise.

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With the central heating on at 22C, I am back to open my personalised daily schedule, which is writing memories of Imphal town and its people of my school days.

Author’s modern house During this Covid pandemic, life has taken on a slightly surreal feel. I have often listened to my heart in silence, which was deafening while sitting alone in my computer room. I have remained glued to the computer day in and day out, while my wife has also been engaged in her daily household chores. Most provisions for food and drinks were delivered home with on-line shopping. She still schlepped in the snow wearing snow boots to collect newspaper from the local shop, which was the only contact with outsiders.

Since the Covid lockdown that began in March 2020, I was set in this routine of writing my memories on the computer as soon as I got up at 10 in the morning. While I was washing and refreshing, part of my mind would start the journey back home. I would have two mugs of tea and two plain biscuits. This practice of writing has helped me to speed up my memory’s 116

delayed recall system that comes with aging. Some of my repressed memories have come out like worms from woodwork. The practice is making my mind serviceable.

As an uptick, my life has found a balance. I make time for things I have to do, and I have time for things I want to do. Living life in the present, requires me to remain focused in the present and to live wisely and earnestly, as Gautama Buddha said in his first sermon at Samarth near Varanasi. I also remember the old adage: ‘Yesterday was history, tomorrow is mystery and today is living’ (anonymous writer).

While trying to capture the past events with a blurred lens of nostalgia, I have resorted to one of the fundamental technical devices of historical writing – ‘periodisation’, as much as I can. That is categorising the past into discrete blocks of time. Not the right sequence in my case.

In this Part 7, I have simply chosen to write a bit about the ancient history of Meitei Yumjao (Big House) so that we remember it as our historical relic. There is hardly any yumjao in Imphal mow. It was the greatest landmark of Imphal town. Every Ingkhol or homestead had one Yumjao.

My nostalgic reminiscence of our own Yumjao fills me with inflated pride like Rainbow Hearts Balloons about its elegance and artistic vernacular designs with which I have a fond attachment.

While describing other landmarks of Imphal town centre, including the cinema halls, which are now non-existent, I will also touch lightly on what the Hindi films in these cinema halls, contributed to modernising ideas among the youth of Imphal in the immediate postwar period.

Not only did the Hindi films help the youth in learning the language, it helped them to understand how the different communities in India lived their life. The Hollywood propaganda war films showed how WWII was fought in Europe. Watching Les Misérables taught students about the French Revolution, and Romeo & Juliet about Shakespeare.

In those twilight years just after WWII, a visitor to the town centre, 117

would see many Meitei men who thronged at the Khwairamband Bazaar every evening. They lived in typical dwelling houses, known as Yumjao. A yumjao was the pride of Meitei architecture. Its architectural design had been drawn in indelible ink made of lamp soot, lac etc. on indigenously made Meitei che (paper), and previously on the bark of Agar tree.

The instructions were written in Meitei alphabet in ancient times. It was called Yumpham. Legend had it that the construction of Yumjao had been introduced by a mythical king named Khooi Ningon, and I understand some alterations had been done during the reign of King Khagemba 15971652 CE).

Through the Gate to the town house A yumjao would be built with vernacular design by indigenous engineers after laying the foundation stone (Jatra Hunba) on an auspicious day. All Yumjaos had bamboo pillars or posts and were roofed with thatch grass.

The more affluent people had bigger yumjao with wood pillars, especially for the verandah.

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A Yumjao would last years and years. My father was a modern civil engineer first, but he had to employ a native house builder to get his yumjao built. The house lasted 100 years until it wasdemolished fairly recently, by a family member, to construct a modern house. The old Yumjao needed only its thatch grass replaced once a while. It stood the ravages of earthquakes, gusty wind and raging storm.

The Yumjao was always built facing east, to get the morning sunlight and sunshine. It had a big front door with a window on each side. Usually most houses had no windows on the sides. Our yumjao had 4 windows, two on each side.

At the back of its northern wall, a door was always fitted. It was called awangthong (north door) for access to and from the back. There were no partitions built inside. But some people would have them partitioned with hanging mats made of reeds. Our yumjao was partitioned with custom-made sheets of interwoven reeds.

The southwest corner of the house was the abode of Lai-ningthou (King of lai) Sanamahi. It was called Sanamahi Kachin. He was worshipped every evening with a lamp of some sort. At the centre of the house there was a phunga, a small hearth, in which the paddy husks burned gingerly all day and night. A metal tripod called Yotsubi was kept over it for heating water in a metal or glazed earthenware pot.

This phunga was practical for warming the inside of the Yumjao in winter.

And around it the head or heads of the family would sit with children, while waiting for the evening meal. It was also essential for heating water to wash dirty feet that had been walking all day barefoot, as the last thing before going to bed. It was done in a khudeng (wide shallow circular tub made of hard wood or galvanised zinc.

Just north of phunga was the sacred place of the female deity Leimaren.

She was especially worshipped during the Meitei Cheiraoba (New Year).

Just west of phunga was a hole dug into the floor, called phunga Lairu – another sacred place.

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The bed of the head of the family (usually the father) was placed at Luplenkha in front and by the south wall. Mother’s bed was behind the father’s on the same side. Children slept at various places close to the wall, leaving the central portion unoccupied. Traditionally, there was a big free-standing chest where family valuables were kept. We had ours between the beds of my father and mother, as well as two modern almirah (almoire – French = wardrobe).

The kitchen was traditionally situated in the northwest corner, further west from the awangthong. It had no chimney or window, which made the room a bit smoky. The oven was moulded with clay. Fire logs, or straw for the poor, were burned as fuel for cooking. Alloy bell-metal pots were used for cooking rice. Dinner plates (pukham), bowls (Tangot) for curry dishes, and drinking water jugs (Khujai) were also of bell-metal.

Vegetables were cooked in glazed earthenware or terracotta pots (uyan), made by the ‘Loi’ people, non-Hindu Meiteis in far off villages in the south of Imphal valley. Wrought iron pans or woke (khang) were used for frying fish and vegetables. The kitchen was always kept, clean, tidy and hygienic.

The yumjao invariably, had a large open mangol (veranda) in front, as a lounge and for receiving guests. It was also used by women to weave their handloom fabrics. By custom, on the southern side of the mangol, a mat made of reeds knowns as Phak, was laid every morning for the head of the family, usually the father, to sit on cross-legged. It was a venerated seat.

Nobody was to intrude upon it. The mat was usually thin but could be as thick as 10cm and expensive, for the well-off.

Usually a dry bamboo jar about 14cm tall was hung up on the front end of the southern wall of the house in which the home-made ‘toothbrushes’ were kept. These toothbrushes were flat, thin sliced bamboo sticks; 150 x 5 x 2 mm. One end had to be chewed first to turn it into a fine brush. The long edge of the stick was used for scraping the tongue. They were meant for the father. He would then, rinse his mouth with water from a metal jug that was laid out there by the womenfolk of the family, early in the 120

morning, before he got out of bed.

A Yumjao was located in an Ingkhol (homestead or garden house). The word Ingkhol has no English equivalent. So, during the British Raj, it was registered as such. The Ingkhol had a shumang (courtyard) in front of the house, at the centre of which there was always a Tulsi plant (Indian balsam) with a circular slight raised area around it so as not to be water logged, called Tulsibong. Tulsi is sacred to Hindus. It symbolises purity and represents Tulsi Devi or Laxmi, the consort of Vishnu.

A Meitei ingkhol is his castle. Every ingkhol was fenced on three sides with dry bamboos slats, which grew aplenty in the back of each Ingkhol on 3 or 4 feet high earth mounds. It had a gate made of two upright bamboo poles with 3 or 4 holes through which slimmer bamboo poles passed through, either to close or open the gate.

An average ingkhol had a rectangular barn-like building (outhouse) by its eastern boundary, open on the west side towards the inkhol, known as mamang shangoi (front outhouse). It was meant for holding social functions. It was also built with bamboo, mud walls and thatched roof.

Some rich people with a bigger ingkhol, had another such outhouse on the north side, open on the south side, towards the ingkhol, known as awang shangoi (northern outhouse).

Our awang shangoi and mamang shangoi were built with wooden pillars and roofed with corrugated iron sheets. As my father was an engineer, he kept the earth floor very smooth and level. Because of that, our awang shangoi was often used for playing the indigenous game of Kang sanaba, during the 5 days following Cheiraoba or the Meitei New Year on the 14th April.

The mamang shangoi, was used conveniently for various functions, especially for Tarpon utsav katpa (A Hindu religious feast of offering of food to our dead ancestors). It was an annual event in the Meitei month of Langban (September) when menfolk from the Leikai (block) were invited to a communal midday feast of vegetarian dishes.

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In such Ingkhols, most Meitei families grew a variety of vegetables, such as cabbage, cauliflower, and definitely herbs, such as Maroi napakpi (Hooker Chives), maroi nakuppi (Chinese chives), nungshhidak (mint) and the like. My father grew cabbages in our Ingkhol. In winter the caterpillars of the white butterflies, crawled all over our mangol and I used to have an allergic itch from them. If such an ingkhol was large enough it would have a small tomedium-sized pond, traditionally on the Northeastern side of the Yumjao.

It was customary to plant tall sanarei (giant marigold) plants near the gate and kaboklei (gardenia) by the ponds. Sanarei plants were also grown by the temples whose gardens were always open. Chini champa (Hari champa) shrubs with fabulous fragrance that had three greenish outer petals and three inner lighter petals, were also planted by the ponds.

Leihao (Magnolia champaca) tree with a very dewy orange-yellow flowers with unfurled petals, are favourites among the Meiteis.

The combination of such a few musky flowers in a small bunch, Lei nachom, was a fashionable hair decoration for women. They had it perched between the right or left temple and the pinna of the ear. It was like their signature scent.

Apart from the Yumjao, which is a feature that stood out in Imphal, there were a few other landmarks in the town centre. The best one was the Johnstone High English School in its old building by the Khwairamband Bazaar.

The majestic brick-red Johnstone School survived, untouched by the Japanese bombs. It stood like a proud monument for the people of Imphal town, as Trafalgar Square is for Londoners, and Times Square for New Yorkers.

Johnstone School had a walled enclosure with a quadrangle in front of the main building facing south with a gate, open to the main Kangla-Kangchup road by a short driveway. It was known as school achouba, big school to the hoi polloi. In the centre of the quadrangle there stood a stone bust of 122

of Sir James Johnstone on a tall plinth.

Main Kangla – Kangchup Road passing thru Ima Market (Keithel) The main Kangla-Kangchup Road divided Awang Dukan (north) and Makha Dukan (south) shopping centres of the Khwairamband Bazaar.

Awang Dukan was officially named Maxwell Bazaar, while Makha Dukan as Sadar Bazaar.

There were two rows of wooden cubicles, back to back across the main road, which started opposite the Johnstone School Gate and ended by the slip road to the pavilion of the Polo ground (mapal kangjeibung). They were called Nupa Dukan (Men’s shop). Shopkeepers were all men. They sold readymade clothes, vests, leather and canvass shoes, socks and other items to wear.

The town centre always had a desolate look during the morning hours. In the evening, many women from the outlying villages would come and sell their wares sitting on the ground along the edges of the street in Awang Dukan (Maxwell Bazaar). They sold their home produced goods like 123

vegetables and fruits, and fish and snails they caught from lakes and rivers.

This was the curated customer base where people came to sell or buy daily provisions.

This was also the place where you could go and buy the typical Meitei Khurum- wooden slippers. They were roughly hewn wooden footwear with 3 inch wide straps made of the lining of disused lorry tyres. They were made only at Meino Leirak at Sagolband. A pair cost half a rupee.

In the northeast of Maxwell Bazaar there was one Dharmsala (charitable rest house) that was run by Marwaris. Mayang Marwari and Bihari traders used this area of the town centre. Following the Japanlan, a few Sikh refugees from Burma, who came before the war came to Manipur, and who decided to settle in Imphal, had acquired some buildings in the Maxwell Bazaar, and built a Gurdwara nearby.

Large brick-built two-storey buildings of Marwaris, like those in Awang Dukan, lined both sides of the Sadar Bazaar Street, which was paved with concrete. The buildings extended southwards from the main central road up to the Sahib Manai Kabui settlement on the eastern bank of Nambul River. The buildings on the east side of the street were interposed by two cinema Halls, MNB (Manaobi and Nimai Brothers) and Friends Talkies that was owned by Manaobi.

Between the buildings of Sadar Bazaar Street on the west side, there was another cinema Hall, named Victory Cinema hall. Its owner was Ayekpam Biramangal. Between the cinema Hall and the Nambul River, and close to the Main Road, there was another small bazaar that sold all sorts of things, by both men and women. And nearby, on the bank of Nambul River and by the Maharani thong, there was a tiny mosque, without the muezzin’s calls to the faithful in the evenings. I used to buy Double Roti after the war. Meiteis would not make it as it contained eggs.

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Old Sanjenthong [Bridge] Another landmark of the town centre was the Sanjenthong [Bridge] spanning across Imphal River and on the road to the Konung (Palace) from the town centre. Between the Political Agent’s (Boro Sahib’s) Bungalow located in 16 acres of land, at Nityabai chuthek and Sanjenthong, there were the main Post Office and Telegraph Office by the main Road.

This road bifurcated before Sanjenthong. One continued straight towards the Palace and to Nongmeibung, The main branch led towards south, to Yaiskul and all the way to Moreh. Along this road, before Yaiskul and on the west side, there was a small Imphal Police Station. The man in-charge before and just after the War, was only an Inspector, known as Khomdram IP (Khomdram Dhanachandra) from Terakeithel.

Such a small number of staff of the constabulary, only showed that crime in Manipur was in short supply. But there were enough convicts in the Imphal Central jail for petty crimes. Dressed in prison uniforms of white shirts and shorts with broad black stripes, they provided enough free manpower for such jobs as to pull the heavy reinforced concrete roller on the 125

on the turf of Mapal Kangjeibung.

Opposite to and across from the police station, there were a few other offices, including the office of the DC (Deputy Commissioner). Outside the gates of these offices and by the roadside, sat many professional petition writers on a mat each, in a row, with a small wooden box in front of each of them. They were men who went to school but could not pass the Matriculation exams.

Khwairamband Keithel (Bazaar) was not just a market place, but a meeting place, a rendezvous or an esplanade, a relaxing venue for many Imphal men in the evening. They would come there and stroll about for a bit of ‘window-shopping’, just to look at a variety of vegetables and fresh fish.

And some would hang on for last minute bargaining, especially for fish.

It was usual for the laissez-faire middle-aged Meitei men from the town, to saunter into the market area, just on the cusp of evening light and darkness, dressed in pristine white dhotis and shirts, and wrapped up in woollen shawls in winter. They would meet at Ima Keithel. Usually, they would end up having a sit-down on the lawn in a corner of Mapal Kangjeibung near the bazaar. The Kangjeibung was like a city park where they would indulge in idle talk, known as leipung famba (gathering for idle talk). It was a good way to while away the evenings while their wives were preparing the dinner.

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Vendors at Khwairamband bazaar selling winter blankets Khwairamband Keithel had another attraction. The cinema Halls. Before the Japanlan, the cinema halls screened only Bengali films as Meiteis were fluent in Bengali, which they learnt as medium of instruction in schools.

During the war, Hindi films replaced Bengali because of the Indian soldiers.

Hindi films from Bombay became popular after the war when Raj Kapoor glamorised the Hindi film industry in early 1950, with films like Chori Chori, Awara, Barsat, and others. With the coming of Hindi cinema films, a fresh wind of change began to gust among the Meitei youth, as mentioned elsewhere. It was palpably in the dress code and hair style.

Many school boys began to copy the hair style of Dilip Kumar after watching the film Shaheed that was screened in 1948. We then had American GI crewcut hair style.

I tried his hair style using a load of pomade, but it did not work out as my hair was soft and fine-textured. Instead, I followed Dev Anand in his dress style and mannerisms, with various knitted sweaters and bomber jackets of corduroy and suede leather. I followed his style only after watching him in the film Baazi, starring with Geeta Bali in 1951. Many years later, my hero became a friend in Bombay.

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Author & Margaret with Dev Anand in his Bungalow at Juhu, Bombay Among the Meitei girls, the most innovative and daring fashion change came with the students of Tamphasana Girls’ High School. They opted out of the ancient Moirang Thoibi hair style (cf. elsewhere). They chose the sleek combed back trendy hairstyle as they saw it in Hindi films.

Curiously, with the same bashfulness in speaking English like the boys, those school girls were also shy of wearing shoes. They felt they would be seen as highflying and pretentious. Only those who went to college, wore shoes.

The oldest landmark in Imphal town was the Mapal Kangjeibung (Outer polo ground). It was very ancient. It was bounded by the main Kangla-Kangchup road in the north and was at a lower level of about 60 cm below the road surface. It had no fencing. Manipuri polo has been played on this ground from time beyond memory and to date. This ground was not created by the British. It is a national heritage.

The polo ground was located in the British Reserve, where the British loved playing polo.

Christopher Gimson, the Political Agent during this period I am talking about, kept it well-maintained. He often played golf on the Polo ground.

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He kept the turf in the polo ground in perfect condition. He had the grass regularly mowed, rolled, watered and fed with grass food regularly, using the convicts from the Imphal Central Jail. The ground was free for the people of Imphal to enjoy as a park and for playing games like hockey and football or any indigenous sports.

On Sunday afternoons in winter, mapal Kangjeibung provided entertainment for the men folk of Imphal. There were regular polo games. The matches were played between two Meitei panas (arbitrary districts of Manipur) of which there were four in number: Naharup, Ahallup, Khabam and Laipham.

There were one or two sahibs on each side, wearing breeches and knee-high boots and donning sola hats to protect their heads in case of a fall off the horse. The small pavilion on the west side, was always full with other sahibs and Meitei elite. Sometimes, Mem sahibs and their children (Chota sahibs) were also present. My father was often a guest there.

In the summer months the Polo ground was quiet and desolate. Nobody was around. The pavilion was small. It was walled at the back with two windows, but open on all three sides except for 1 metre high wooden railings, which were interrupted in front to accommodate a few steps down to the ground, and another smaller one on the south side. It was accessed by a slip road paved with earth and brick chips, from the main Kangla-Kangchup road. Between this rough and short road and the Thakurbari buildings in the west side, there were two large ponds that were for exclusive use for these Marwari families.

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Showcasing my neat and organised male ward of Civil Hospital with ceiling fans and all. June 1 1965.

(L-R) Matron Nalini, author, Dr Surchand and Health Union Health Minister Sushila Nayar from Delhi. And Dr Satyabati.

Another prominent feature of Imphal was the Civil Hospital that was located opposite the Polo ground on the north side of the main road. It had 80 beds (cf. Parts 12&13). It used to have a British Civil Surgeon. It had a male ward and a female ward with a small building in the middle, as the operating theatre, known in Manipuri as Thang thabam.

It had a long outpatient department. I remember one compounder Manijao from our Uripok. He was the heart and soul of this department.

Just after the War, I would go to the Out Patients’ Department sometimes, to ask for potassium permanganate. I liked the purple colour it imparted in water.

There were two middle aged Meitei female nurses in white frock uniform and white cap. They were about the age of my mother. One of them was called Kamini. The other escapes my mind. They were like film stars to us.

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