Places of Common Interest

United we f*** up
Divided we get f***ed up

Getting fed up of a redundant gab that we are never united, I tried a few experiments to show it is wrong. It is wrong, very wrong, to say that there is no common ground between us, amongst our folks. The disunity might be unclear. This is about some groups of people, my folks and I, who make up the diverse ethnic groups that are residing in the present Northeast region of India. Despite the political and economical chaotic order, we have found unity. Never say we never get along.

For the sake of repetition, one thing that we always whine is about the extremely fractured societies in the few parts of insurgency-ridden and violence-torn states in the region. We are fighting for an identity, which we have created to serve our interest and there are varying identities. You will not even believe that each one of us has unique histories with no room for mutuality. In the most extreme pain in the derrière, the rumour is that we are not united. We don’t want to be—either between us, or with the union government of India, with which we have existed as a federation for the last six decades or so. That’s the word.

The reasons are so complex, so say the scholars and experts and spokespeople but here we are concerned about the integrity issues. We are concerned about the myth of disunity and identity. We are also concerned about the inference which has been drawn out from the experiments. It was incredible as I found a few more interesting conclusions.

The experiment started in Moreh, a border town located nearly 205 kilometer from the capital of Manipur, Imphal. Different people, different races, different ethnic groups live in this border town—which shares boundary with Tamu, a quiet business district of Myanmar. Unsurprisingly, almost all the people suck big time as usual. Find one prick who is not annoying and I will withheld all the results of my experiments. So what are the elements of oneness?

EXPERIMENT ONE 

NATURAL ASSETS AND LIABILITIES  

The border gates close at 1600 IST in Moreh. A half an hour later, the time gets conducive for continuing my test. In this little town, essentially there is only one big market flanked by residential quarters and localities at the foothills. If you know the way, it is as easy as pie to reach the important landmarks and reconfirm the result. So there is one particular street corner between the quarters.

In that locality, like-minded people carefully tread around the pavements, living and enjoying life and sharing a common life of habituation. It is no issue, as long as the government or the rebels would not kill the people. Unlike a corny religious place with sex-starved priests or annoyingly useless places for democratic craps like assembly buildings, in this area all the people are by themselves. They share a thing, the ultimate thing. People are united with heroin. The users share the same kick, have to pay the same amount and have the same identity. The only thing they don’t share is the needle. Every day they share their listless life together. Would you care for the unity?

Animal instincts

In many aspects, the place is much better than those seemingly government-administered areas. The highly incompetent law-enforcers of the legal authority and the outlawed decision makers alike, they call the shots, sometimes contradicting each other. What’s worse is that they have no ‘unity’ in their dictionary, howsoever legal they are. But not anymore, in this case we will see more.

Who says there is no unity in that corner in Moreh? Heroin comes from the Golden Triangle that comprises Myanmar, Laos and Thailand. Moreh is a strategic location for distribution and trafficking. It is interesting the road passes through a national highway that connects to Kohima in Nagaland located on the opposite end of the highway. The stretch is a trouble-free path. A chunk of the junk would leak at Thoubal and Lilong, which are set along the highway. It further moves westward and reaches Imphal with more leakage at the notorious Awang BOC and some amount at a few localities around this shanty capital district. This place is again where more people fly together and more people get high together. It is located conveniently at the heart of the town.

For the sake of inclusiveness, let us start from the origin. There are people who share the same business in the three countries that make up the lusterless Golden Triangle. They are united by the power of powder. There is no power of the barrel. The unity extends to Moreh, mentioned in the above paragraph. More people, more unity. Then we can count those people along the national highway. Amazingly they share not only a substance of choice but the same addictive mentality as well. How are they lower in social status, when in the society, hostilities and destruction shape the historical narrative of the people? Political unity is as useless as water cooler in the winter. Besides, the users don’t have any hostility but the same love for a substance. They don’t destroy except themselves, unlike the parasitic government and business-minded militants, who are hell bent on spreading misery all around us. Pity on their families. The unity is blatant at Awang BOC. The users even share a few interests with the cops, who spend their working time bullying the users and the prostitutes. Nothing can be more united, can’t it be?

EXPERIMENT TWO
EARN AND LEARN AND LOOT

No matter how much we are stupid, we can always find the sophisticated device for earning. A couple of perfect example includes the guns and demand letters and for the civilians, the scarce government jobs. We can include the government officials just to keep them in the game. After all we are so united, and we can include all the natives. We share this noble quality of material greediness. This is reason-defying unity that other people will be envious of.

Our poster-boy

Even if the world falls apart, even if a family member is on the deathbed, nothing is more important than finding an ingenuous way of earning. The learning curve is simply fantastic for the mercenaries and worshipers in galore. As long as we have some courage we can earn from the most unlikely sources.

The government employees are so lazy and useless, so deduct 10% from the salary of each one of them. We can share the 2% of this bounty with our ministers, the elected representatives of the people. Imagine how happy would be their wives to save the spend 1% and save the balance of 1% for the bastards they have given birth to. Add to that their undeserved salaries. But it does not end at the ministerial level. The root of shared love grows deep down to the level of a peon. Simply put, there is an inflexible bond between us.

Never say we are never united. If the amount of loot sounds lacking, kill a person and blow it out as a JACiable issue; better if it is made loud and clear that the victim and the killer belong to different ethnic groups. (JAC stands for joint action committee; and its formation is a hobby for many of us.)

We will be on the street together, shouting and screaming to kill the culprits; no matter how quickly we forget about the issue and find a new JACiable issue on a newspaper’s front page. It does not matter as long as we are united. Our unity for street politics cannot be compromised. Our unity for vengeance is beyond questions. We have been observing this vicious cycle that never ends. We share amnesia. We share the same JAC. We share the same space for defecation. We defecate the same shit. No one can say we are not united. Never say never.

Inference

Through the grapevine we are not united and many of us like to believe it. It is true only as far as the political unity is concerned. There are facts that prove that we are not only united but we share so many things as well. For example, the shared love for narcotics, shared possession of slavish attitude and shared fetish for materialistic gains and so on. The shared love for disagreements. The same love for territories. The same love for clinging onto tribal instincts. Now, to fit us more, we have altered the wisdom of unity as well: united we f*** up, divided we get f****d up.

Momoco

     STOP PRESS       As I write this piece all hell breaks loose in Imphal. Curfews and bandhs are imposed and the situation is tense. A cameraman was reportedly killed in the afternoon today (Dec 23). It started a few days back when an NSCN-IM cadre sexually harassed an actress (Momoco); and the issue got out of control. It is now snowballing into an ugly clash with a communal overtone. Fortunately so far there has been no untoward incident between the people of the different groups; except the public are protesting and the police, despite their impotency, are trying to control the imbroglio with force as usual. The world didn't end on December 21 as many of us had loved so stupidly, but the end is impending in my hometown. While in Delhi, there have been protests and clashes over a gangrape case. The newspapers are also full of reports on sex crime across the country; and they are devoting multiple full pages on debates, fillers and views on the issue.

Image courtesy:
1 Clkr.com
2 https://www.facebook.com/momoco.khangembam.9