The Enemy Within Us

When the winter of this generation dies its natural death,
Let the coldness of these days be as well gone forever.
When the cruelty of the season is no more,
Let everything jolly good be our own.
When the Sun dawns on Nongpokthong
On, in and to that day may our life eternally belong.

The enemies do not wear any uniform. The enemies do not have a name. The enemies do not have an address. The enemies do not have identification marks. But they live amongst us. The enemies live amongst us. They come out when there are strikes in the valley and blockades in the hills. They do not come out to support the strikes and blockades but to sell petrol and commodities at inflated prices. They come out to rip apart the littlest of humanity that has been left with us amidst the senseless living.

The enemies do have sticks and microphones. The enemies arrive when there are mobs. The enemies will not come individually but in numbers unrestrained, which will give the army and police a run for their money. The enemies will not speak a word on their own but they will dismantle the house of those, who in local parlance, have ‘matoosonba’; of those people who have neither ‘connection’ nor any sort of money or muscle power and the real enemy within us would unleash the proverbial beastly power. The enemy is the friend of our real enemies—those who kill us, loot us, dupe us and rule us.

The enemies do not come with bombs and bullets. The enemies do come, with us, by our side, anywhere, anytime and have anything but the unusual.  The enemies come out to show their false pride of having the bastardly privilege of belonging to a nation not by choice but merely by virtue of becoming a lucky zygote from a hundred million possibilities of a billion un-predetermined parents. The enemies within us do not come with a warning but they come they do..

The enemies do not have a code. The enemies do not have a special language. They use the same words and they use the same expressions just as we would do in times good and bad, happy and sad, in real and in dreams. The enemies share the feelings we have while listening to a melody and the enemies would also react in the same way that people would do when other enemies thrive on intimidation.

The enemies would also pee by the roadside; the male enemies do—the females have decorum to maintain and it is not a women-thing to pee by the roadside. Leave the male-female craps when everybody is an animal. Still it is no wonder then that it is never an issue when it is unclear [1] whether we have potholes on a road or a road through potholes; [2] whether we elect the representatives or the representatives represent us; [3] whether we should enjoy the free drinks in the pre-election days or keep up with a reckless free-for-all in the post-election days; [4] whether we should care about the dust in the summer or the mud in the rainy season.

But the enemies have a face. The face of deception. The face of metaphorical prostitution. The face of naïveté—yet all of these are disguised in complicated ways and this is why it seems the enemies are invisible. None of the enemies will admit s/he is an enemy. None of the enemies will want to admit s/he is an enemy. Because none of us want to be bad or be called bad. All of us, in our own eyes, are good people. Even Hitler was a good German. Santidas Gosai was a good Hindu. Pol Pot was a good revolutionary. Donald Trump is a good American. The Assam Rifles is a good friend of the hills. So on and so forth.

The enemies do not live in foreign lands. The enemies do not come from Mars. The enemies are not from Andromeda. The enemies do not have a different race or religion. The enemies do not belong to India or China. The enemies belong to each leikai and every leirak. The enemies do NOT, my friend, but we DO. And the enemies are the not the peddlers and the small fish whose houses we can dismantle at the slightest pretext. The enemies are the rich people; those who deal in ephredine-less opiates ready to be processed into heroin in metric tonnes and not, never those nobody-kinds who grow the poppies nor who live by milligrams and grams in the streets—albeit none of them is a lesser arse. Nevertheless, who can be a bigger arse than this enemy we are referring to?

Check The Enemy’s Manifesto