We are from India

This is the only shot of anything remotely to do with the Armed Forces that I got over the eleven day period we were in Manipur. I had heard so much about the conflict in Manipur and I was eager to see; the conflict tourism factor I suppose. There were far too many moments when I wanted to take pictures of the presence of the army here, but I must admit that they made me nervous, at first, and then increasingly irritated, and I wanted to avoid them as much as possible. It was far too distressing to engage with them.
The Assam Rifles regiment is notorious in Manipur for their excesses, most commonly the rape of women, extortion, violence. None of them wear name-tags. All of them caress their AK 47s the way other men caress their genitals - in public, in full view and quite lovingly. I noticed some differences between the commandoes in the town of Imphal and up here in the hills. The men up here at checkpoints like these look bored. The ones down there look tense.

This was taken on our journey up from Ukhrul to the Changta SHIDO, just before we broke down at Kachai. Just in time before I could shoot anymore the Sergeant in charge came up to us and wanted all our details, looked over everything carefully. Anirban has traveled here extensively so he was quite relaxed and knew that most of these guys are from 'India' so lapsed into Hindi easily. The Sergeant was from Rajasthan, another guy from Ghaziabad, someone else from Indore. They were delighted with these Hindi speaking Indians but gave Tuisam the standard cold vacant stare reserved for locals. The North Indians point out one among them saying he is from the South and cant speak Hindi too well; Tamizh theriyuma Anirban says, the only words of Tamil he knows. Illa, Malayalam, the boy replies. Aah, I say. Malayalee, all the way up here in Ukhrul. You're so far away from home, boy. He shrugs.

So what do you do, the Sergeant wants to know.
Photographer, writer, NGO work, micro-finance, women. The answers are non-threatening, we are considered safe. We are from India. For the rest of that trip it was too alienating, embarrassing to be considered an Indian.

View from the Road

Tuisam, Che and Anirban. Che evoked far too much interest on this trip and I think he was one of the reasons we were looked over quite carefully.

The Next Morning

Kachai was lovely. What came next was not. The replacement jeep actually showed up the next day. Later in the evening, worried that it was getting late, our trusted Mr Tuisem negotiated with a local tourist jeep-ferry service to drop us to the SHIDO (NGO training centre rest-house) in A.Changta where we were to stay. The jeep was open on the sides, its green frame resting on four shaky wheels. That was it. Of course, it was a hill jeep so it could do unbelievable things on those roads, much like hill people can and do.
The SHIDO was not very far away but when you are traveling on non-existent roads, some inclined at 70 degrees, the journey takes very very long. The road is a reality in this part of Ukhrul and Manipur. It is the only access into and out of these areas. Roads here are like dirt furrows carved out of the sides of mountains, sculpted by strong monsoon rains, crisscrossed by roots and strewn in dry leaves and stones. Now, baking in the winter sun, the road throws up a fine yellow dust that gets into every part of you. For eleven days we snorted this dust, it was inescapable.
The journey was endless, it seemed. Oh we're just five kilometres away Tuisem would say. Thirty jolting, nausea-inducing minutes later he'd say oh, we're just 2 kilometres away. Past deep green bamboo forests, teak lining the mountainside, the smells of mysterious plants and herbs and trees, dusk creatures making their strange metronomic music, twisting and turning up and down unending mountainsides ... it was here that my inner compass went into a tailspin. I had no idea where I was. My body felt like it was being battered by this road.
We reached the SHIDO just as night fell and a cold distant moon was making its journey higher into the sky. Ban looks at me in the light of a hurricane lamp and says : now I know what you will look like when you're old. You're covered in dust, your hair looks white! (I quite fancy the idea of being a white-haired ethnographer-type-person)
It got very cold up there, a brittle clear evening. We met warm, friendly strangers in the light of candles. There were no cell phone signals nor electricity nor running water. Everything was heated and cooked on a woodfire; needless to say everything tasted exactly like itself, just infused with woodiness, and bathing in water heated on a woodfire is an altogether unusually sensual experience. We were given metallic pots of coals to keep us warm. We reeked of woodsmoke and coalsmoke. Dinner was pork curry with chillies, more steamed cabbage & mustard leaves and lots of rice. I asked the girl who was cooking what she put in the leaves to make them taste so good. Nothing she replied, its from the garden, I just steamed them. Nothing! I exclaim. Yes, nothing. Right, there is no way I am going to be able to reproduce this at home with my pesticide-ridden city-assaulted leaves.
We chatted with the NGO staff for a while, getting used to their English, trying to catch the cadences to the version of Thangkul they were speaking. We sampled some of the local Ukhrul mountain red chai ... and then it was time for bed. It was 8.30pm. There was nothing else to do but go to bed. Everyone burped and farted steamed cabbage.

People in these mountains begin their day at 4.30am. I was up at 6 and came out to see where I was. It was quite simply beautiful. We stayed in a rough wood house in the middle of a cleanswept yard. The dining room was a few paces away, the outhouses at the back. I loved that everything was made of different types of local wood, mostly varieties of teak; I liked to smell the walls of the dining room, which were just planks of wood nailed together, allowing light to filter in in slim beams. I sat over my chai and biscuits for as long as I could, breathing in the sweet mountain air and feeling entirely at peace with the Whole World. A day full of work and advetures lay ahead.