How can you sing the Lord's Song in a strange land?

     “I was in Class III during the war. It was fought ‘bahar’ (outside of the city) but we saw the planes flying overhead all the time. All day we were made to stay indoors and the adults only talked about the war… I never went to school again. Now I cook and clean for tourists…I am happy to be in India but different people have different thinking…” says Abdul, my new-found elderly friend. We sat sipping hot Kahwa by the Bukhari in the living room, listening to the celebratory fireworks after Pakistan had won against India in the Asian Cup cricket. When I mentioned my surprise at how everyone I’d met that day admitted to cheering for Pakistan, young Shaheer sitting on the floor said he’d been cheering for India. I smiled.

     My father’s often said the measure of our affinity with India lies in the fact that we no longer cheer for Pakistan when they play against India. I've personally partied with the Tiranga in the streets of Delhi when India won the Cricket World Cup, and no one had cared that I was a Chinky that night. And here I found myself among an older generation, in a land far away from mine, cheering for Public Enemy Number One, even before the anger over Delhi's cruelty to my 'kin' had died down. I felt strangely drawn to side with them, and not with the one person among us closer to me in age and experience. I'd never felt mal-adapted in all the years of living away from home, or in my travels. Neither have I ever felt the burden of adjusting to the standards expected of a place by its people-be it dress, food or manners. I was, after all a guest in a land that had standards different from mine.

     Coming to Delhi in the wake of a 'North Eastern' activism, sitting down and talking with those who had been there, who are still there and are determined to be there throughout the process of 'I cant quite say what exactly is expected to happen', I felt strange. All these years we have been taught and have tried to teach others to adapt, to 'adjust' because we are naturally different from our countrymen and our ways appear strange to them as theirs does to us. This time it felt strange because the events and circumstancesances forced my eyes open to the situation where so many still fail to realise the value of adaptability while so many also fail to appreciate the efforts that go into the process. We were, or are, after all, living in a strange land.

     Born and brought up in a world that no longer requires one to sweat over the land to earn a living, the concept of freedom and its association with the land have never been easy to understand. Collecting stories over the years, hearing recollections and recording rememberances, a faint light has been shed on the connection between a man (of both the male and female kind) and his (as a pronoun for the humankind) land. It is this idea of freedom, of feeling the earth, breathing the air and drinking the water of one's own land that has prompted many young women and men to carry guns instead of pens, to choose dislocation over the warmth of the home, hunger over the chance to earn their daily bread. And then there are those who never did have a choice. When War comes home, one cannot just lock the door and jump into bed hoping It will go away on its own. Even if your door was locked, even if you were asleep and never heard It knocking, you cannot run away for It is already upon you. 

      At times you could be so close to where it all started, it could have been your land, your space where it took root, yet you remained unaware.  "I never even thought about politics. When the movement broke out,  we were still very chhangchhia (with small children)...they must have fixed the Zero Hour( for the simultaneous attacks and declaration of independence on February 28/March 1, 1966) long before but I did not know anything about it. He (husband) told me he had a Committee meeting and left the house...but he did not come back that night. The next we heard was there was an accidental bomb blast, Rokima died...firing... They sent a jeep to take me and my children to meet my husband at Lunglei."   

     When War comes home and invades your land, it changes the way you and your people have always lived. The collection of firewood and water for the house was so much the traditional task of a woman that a Mizo girl's chronological age was measured by how many bamboo staves of water she could carry. An alien power which forced itself upon the people in their own land found ways to turn this chore into a tool of oppression. "The army in the camp always told us to fetch water for them, it was our assigned task."  

      When the man of the house could not sleep in his own bed because of fear, of false accusations and very real threats to his life, how was he to provide for the family he had built. Here was the alienation, here the usurpation of the protector and provider, de-manning him who had grown up on stories of warriors who always went where others feared to tread. "The village men did not dare to stay in the house. My husband went to stay the night at the bank of Tamdil lake. At night our dog pounced up and I heard only vai language. Our place was at the edge of the locality. One Sikh man was calling "Ka pu Ka pu"...came again and again...the last time he pulled me forcefully even though I was carrying the baby on my back. So I screamed out hard...he let go and ran out." 

        "My husband could not move out because they might mistake him for "volunteer". So I travelled...with a paper ream to exchange for rice." And what of him who had dreamed of coming home? Those braver souls who'd dared to explore and then answered the call of the land. "my father invested his savings from a lifetime of government employment (in a foreign country) into the opening of a shop in Aizawl. He never recovered after the shop was burnt down by the fire of the bombings on March 5...he died a poor man."   

      The land could not even be kind to its own. Therefore many bid her farewell. It was not that they were abandoning her, but how could they stay alive while she bled. The physical movement did not cut off the fondness and longing of the heart for those who knew the land. For those who never had the chance to, the distance became a given. "we only carried with us as much as we needed, clothes, money, food items, and left the rest in the house. We kept all the money we did not carry in steel boxes in our room...we saw the bombs fall on Aizawl and the city going up in flames...we were very poor when we started living in Shillong...we came back to Aizawl and started from scratch...our children continued their education there."   

    

Riding in a crowded bus on my first day in a strange land, I feel inexplicably safe among a people so different, speaking a tongue I have never heard before. Free from cat calls and racial slurs on the streets, comfortable in the knowledge that I attracted attention because I looked different, not necessarily because I have smaller eyes or a flatter nose. The differences between us were obvious, for they were one of the best looking people I’d ever seen. Its like a joke one of my friends loves to tell- you could almost literally pick one of the many touts trying to sell you a ride, a coffee, anything, dress him up in branded clothes and you’d be proud to walk into a party with him.

       But here was a people who spoke of a place called ‘Azad’ Kashmir, (not AJ& K, but the idea of a ‘free’ Kashmir). Showket, a new friend picked up on the Sumo ride between Srinagar and Tangmarg gave me a poem he’d written on Kashmir, telling me how their stirrings for freedom had been suppressed. “They only want the land, not the people. We have no jobs, its very hard. But this is our land. We have to stay here.” Now Shaheer tells me young people are moving out for employment. If not for tourism, the place has nothing to offer young educated people who want more out of life. Old bearded Manzoor chips in, "we have been blinded by the  powers. Kashmiris know the land is rich but they (the powers) dont want to explore because nobody knows to whom it will finally belong- India, Pakistan, China...?"

        Another Shoket, my friend for the day at Gulmarg says, “We produce so much electricity but it all goes to India. Its very expensive for us…when there were no tourists, I was weaving carpets for very small wages. Some people worked in orchards for rich people.” This he tells me amidst contributions from his friends over a cup of tea in a place created for tourists, a place which had no ‘locals’. So here was a people who admitted to living off their land. And I can understand how this could be, for the land is beautiful. No wonder then that Indira Gandhi's biographer took pages to describe her love for this place, while not a line was written about how she'd dropped 'supplies' to troops in Aizawl from fighter jets. Perhaps she would have said something to Laldenga had they met like they were supposed to, on the day she was killed.

      “Those who live outside come back once a year or twice a year. They send money also.” And they tell me I could learn more about politics of the 'other' Kashmir in England than in Mirpur because the diaspora there is the life force of the land. Then I am reminded of Tibet, of 'Free Tibet' but thats another story, perhaps for another day.

     And they ask me their questions. I answer honestly but consciously. I dont tell them that the Mizo diaspora doesnt actually contribute to the economy. I dont tell them that many young people living outside still either depend or rely on families back home to see them through financially. I dont tell them that online communities and social networks are more public platforms for personal lives, vendettas and veiled messages than tools for constructive identity formations. And no, I dont tell them that for many of us, being away from our land no longer necessarily means being away from home.

        But yes I do tell them we consider ourselves to be a people group, that the Mizo, the Vai and the Sap populate the earth; that we are kinder to the ‘Sap’ probably because of the assumed Christian connection. This time its Bangladesh and Pakistan playing in the Asian Cup and they say their support for both teams is “same same”. I tell them  that Greater Mizoram was a dream to erase virtual political lines that contain us. That the dream that was crushed a lifetime back may never again be resurrected...that it is no phoenix that would rise from its flames. That now we're happy cheering for India because it is our country even though it took a brutal murder and a rape to wake up a sleeping nation to realise that.  And then I say that the brightest among us dream of working for the same government that used bombs against us. Then they smile their wise old smiles and say, "you can be happy but you can dream too, it is hard if young people cannot love your land. Always living in a strange land will kill your land also.

TO BE YOUR KNIGHT

      This will be the last time I wield my pen. My eyes are weak, I can barely see. But I sit myself down at the end of my days because I know I can’t leave without ever having said what I have felt everyday for almost half a decade. And I write this in the hope that in a rare lucid moment, it might catch your eye and speak to you in a way I haven’t been able to. 

     The first time I saw you, you were but a kid- probably in High School with dreams of a brighter future. And I was a fresh young graduate all set to join the Assam Civil Services. Remember those nights we sat in your house- Young ‘educated’ men enthralled by your father’s talk of nationalism and a movement that was brewing? Those nights created dreams of a future where our children would study without discrimination, where library books wouldn’t be passed around just so a “tribal” couldn’t get his hands on them. A future where you and I could walk around without being taunted as beggars and fools just because we looked different. As the dream transformed itself into a vision, I found myself picking a green uniform over the life of a civil servant, wielding a gun instead of a pen- without a shred of regret because I believed I had been called to serve my land and my people.

    Imagine my joy when I saw you again two years later at Boys’ ME School at Aizawl, among the volunteers who had come forward to cook for us greenhorns playing at war. The songs we sang, our stolen looks of promise, all fed by the hope of a better life after the guns were silent. Your happy smile is the last thing I remember before the attack, before the chaos that turned our worlds upside down. In the days and nights that followed while we hid in angst waiting for a chance to right a wrong, I was tortured by thoughts of you and wondered if you lived through that horrible day when the sky rained death upon our happy fellowship. I beat myself up for not having taken you along but then reasoned that was not the life I wanted for you. Days and nights in wild hideouts, a fugitive in my own land, fuelled by the need to chase the usurper out, knowing I needed to be a guerilla against the man with bigger guns. The vision by then had become a cause.

       At Ruallung I said a thousand prayers when I saw you. You were still so beautiful and my cause became so much dearer because you were still a part of it. But you were unhappy; my dear, how your eyes had grown dull. And your smile couldn’t reach them, I know you tried. There was never a time for a guerilla to feed the flame of a romance but my heart had no room for doubts. Seeing you was all that mattered, I never even thought to question why you were so sad. My walk home with our supplies was lighter than my journey out with an empty rucksack, only because I had seen you and knew you were alive, waiting for me. It was only at night, in the cruelty of a watch under a moonless sky that my heart bled, that I felt it squeezed till I could breathe no more. Major Pritam Singh. The name replaced every beat of my heart while all I wished for was to hold you in my arms and blow everything else away.

     March 20, 1968. The dreaded man was dead, we had been planning for days and he was finally dead. Taking the spoils after an attack like we always do, I walked right up to his dead body because I wanted to frame in my head the face of the man who had tortured you and whose name had tormented me for so long. It was then that I saw the little notebook in his pocket. It had your name on it, as it had other names, but yours more often than others, and dates against each written name. Even in death, this devil was to haunt me. I traced each night you were forced to be with him, wishing I had known and that I had come to shield you. But a guerilla could not be your knight in shining armour. Forgive me, my love.

       The next I heard, you were at the Civil Hospital in Aizawl. The kindly doctor there had done his best to heal your wounds they said. But those who had inflicted them could not be more indifferent and no one could tend the hurt inside. I was told you were not yourself anymore, that the trauma of the many invasions had done you in. My love, it would have been too much for even the strongest of us. But your life had been spared and this I felt was in answer to my prayers. The day we said our vows you were happy, you were once again the girl I had loved from so many years ago. When you trembled at my every touch I never blamed you. Each day has been worth it just knowing you are now safe and I could watch you sleep in peace. And on those nights you stayed awake, when fear took over and their faces came back to haunt you, I could finally be that knight you needed and my presence calmed you. But I cannot point a gun against ghosts and memories of tragedies that were all too real. Watching you slip further away from me and from a world that had been cruel, all I could do was pray that it would all end soon.

   Yet here we are today, both invalids. Waiting for salvation and a life of love undisturbed by rememberances of horror; living in a world that shuns us exactly because we had fought for it. It’s hard to understand my love, I know. What felt so right then still feels just as right. If we could go back we would probably do just the same- for what is life worth if not for the struggle of a better one? Even if those we thought we were fighting for do not understand, I still believe in the cause that drove us; and I believe their todays are so much better for the years we spent in anguish. If we could go back, I still wouldn’t have offered to make you the wife of a servant who slogged for a Government that wanted to trample him and his people. It would not have been right to see you in a plush home tending to nothing more important than your flowers or hosting parties for ‘Babus’ who secretly looked down upon us.

      There’s only one thing I would change could we choose to go back, my love. I would take your hand on March 5, 1966 and not let go as I run, to meet whatever fate awaited us, together. Then, perhaps, I could always have been your knight.

March 2, 2013.