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Kohima, Nagaland. March 6^th 2010. After about a 3-hour bus journey from Dimapur we reached Hotel Japfu overlooking the imposing Nagaland Police HQ building. To be frank, right throughout the journey I was having a strange feeling that straddled around fear, curiosity, patriotism and anger. The islands of bright forest fires scattered over the Naga hillscape also played their role in creating my emotional collage. It took a good night’s sleep for the feelings to subside. Only the previous week I had read about the NSCN’s Muviah’s talks with the Government of India, in New Delhi. I also knew some basic stuff about a few Naga tribes. I have heard a couple of Nagaland administration and bureaucracy stories from some friends serving in this region. But being in Kohima and seeing and hearing things in first person is quite a different world.

Just like Kerala is God’s own country, Nagaland is The land of festivals. You will come across dozens of banners welcoming you to some festival or the other. We got a chance to be audience to a performance of a spring song by the troupe Three Sisters (as we were told). I was mesmerised. Just like the simple yet lively Arunachal dance we had seen in Bomdilla few days back, the Spring song too had very simple structure – no elaborate lyrics or strong music support or a complex tune. But the exquisite way in which those beautiful voices were blended ensured that you are transferred to a different world. A simple string instrument was used for music. I am sure A R Rahman is yet to come across such Naga songs. Else by now Three Sisters or some other Naga band would have been a common name in mainland India. By the way, I am not very comfortable using “mainland India”. But we are used to such a term. Though the innocuous nature of the term can be easily explained purely on a geographical basis, it is not possible to divorce the political, social and developmental undercurrents from the term. Probably more PHCs, power supply, bandwidth and ATMs, more colleges and universities, a dozen successful industrial complexes, and a tangible amount of private sector participation would have made the term “mainland India” extinct decades back. It is quite peculiar that we live in a “flat world” and yet within our country we have something called as “mainland” and some other thing called “Northeast”. Of course there are many other deeper issues that cannot be wiped off with PHCs and PCOs but a good beginning is the secret of getting ahead. On August 15^th 2009 we celebrated our 63^rd year of Independence.

Apart from the uniformed men the ubiquitous things in the parts of Arunachal we covered are – impressive BRO roads, BSNL and State Bank of India. I was quite happy to see those dinosaurs in the guise of machines trying to broaden the already-fine road leading to Tawang. Two years down the line, if you wish to peek into China across the international border here – just take a jolly drive in this freshly done double lane road. Its as simple as that. Hats off to BRO! When it comes to the ATMs, I had a rare sighting today. In fact this sighting was unimaginably more difficult than sighting a one-horned rhino. You just take a jeep safari or an early morning elephant safari in Kaziranga and you will surely come face to face with these giant animals. In fact herds of rhinos are visible even from the highway. At one place, to my utter surprise, I noticed a herd happily having their evening supper near a neatly sown and irrigated green field. Talk of man-animal conflict! Well, coming to today’s sighting. At last, on the eighth day of our non-stop travels in the region, I had the greatest moment of our trip. It happened in the Kohima market today after noon. I just could not believe my eyes when I spotted a branch of a private bank!! It was an ICICI Bank branch. I just hope that I had missed spotting hundreds of similar other private bank branches/ATMs. I am thoroughly bored of the blue-and-white “SBI Welcomes you” board in every tiny town.

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Early diagnosis and proper medication can cure leprosy. Incentives to pregnant mothers who take Zidovudine(I guess I got the name right). These are some of the huge, high visibility banners that caught my eyes in Kohima. I have never come across such banners anywhere else in the country. These banners say a lot about the broad contours of the challenges in public health here. Looks like much work needs to be done. I am reminded of the Amartya Sen/Jean Dreze’s words in their book - India: Development and Participation. They resist us from jumping to the models in other developed nations and trying to implement them in our country. Rather, they say, within our country itself we have islands of excellence and the others can learn from them. For example there is a Madhya Pradesh that can teach Bihar how to go about improving its literacy; We have got a Himachal that can provide models for socio-economic progress in Orissa.

There was also a banner “Plant tree with your jhum cultivation”. Jhum or slash-and-burn or shifting cultivation is practised in the Nagaland region. Just as the term conveys, stretches of lands are burnt down and then farming is done on the land cleared this way. No modern implements are used for agriculture. After a few crops when the productivity of the land hits the rock bottom, the farming is shifted to another patch of land. Again, the new patch is cleared by setting the forest on fire. Naturally, this causes serious damage to the nature. But its taking really good efforts to stop such a practice as it is not just agricultural, but cultural.

We got another glimpse of the Naga culture when we were presented with a few Naga dances and songs. The first one was a group song by a dozen old women. The song related to the harvest season and was generally sung during the pounding of grains. This song by these dozen grannies too, just like that of Three Sisters (that's how the three young lady performers of the previous dinner were introduced to us) was very simple yet captivating. The overall technique and style is this – very simple tunes/lyrics, one sub-group starts the song and keeps singing, the other sub-group follows it with a time lag. The effect is astounding. Then came the group dance by the young folks, men and women with their cool moves. Along with the dance, there is a surprise bonus waiting for all those ethanol lovers in you.

The evening was topped with a satisfying dinner. The hosts had tried to make some rotis too. This was a significant relief for all those chappati-oriented-people, who had had a real tough time ever since we entered the Northeast a week back. The staple food here is rice. However, this region is a paradise for the non-vegetarians especially the fish-eaters and the pork-lovers. It was about 9PM when I got into my Naga cottage. We stayed in a tourist village called Tuofema about 40KMs from Kohima. Here they try to keep things the traditional way and every cottage was designed like a Naga hut. Interestingly each tribal group had their own style of huts. By the time I was ready to sublime into the world of sleep inside the cozy quilt the breeze outside had turned into a haunting wind. Good night Nagaland!

That feelings-confusion I had on my way up to Kohima had vanished. What remains is the apprehension if I will ever get a chance to be back to Nagaland. I do not know; probably I might not be lucky enough to be at Tuofema again. But given a chance you grab it without fail. This Land of Festivals is for sure going to make you a better person; a more matured Indian.

(Gangtok. March 11, 2010)

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I had just a single point agenda at the start of our 20-day long tour of the Northeast – to sight a rhino in the wild. It would give me Nirvana. The Aircel “Save our tigers” campaign also intensified my ultimate desire to see this beast in the jungles of Kaziranga. I did not know whether it was 1411 or 1511 or whatever number of rhinos left in the wild; All I knew was we were quickly losing all our wild animals and the sooner you get to see them, the better. Along with the elephant, giraffe and hippo, rhino is also in the elite, four-member club of land animals weighing 1000kg plus. Even the grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) is excluded from this league of extra-heavy gentlemen.

Kaziranga was to be covered in the second circuit of our tour. We opened our tour with the Tawang lap. This place is up in the mountains, really up. Apart from the popular locations like Guwahati and Tezpur we also got to spend some nights or stopover for food in Thai menu-like places namely Bomdila, Dzongrila, Jang and Balukpong. But all throughout, the only thing that was in my mind was the Great One-horned Rhinoceros. Even the legendary Ceat-born tough ad was flashing in my mind from time to time.

We were supposed to take some time out in a place called Sela pass. Tawang is in the valley beyond Sela pass that is at an altitude of close to 14,000ft. Apparently the Chinese had come near this point during their intrusion a few decades back. Our Innova was gasping and fuming as we got closer and closer to Sela. Gradually, to my utter surprise I could see patches of half-cooked snow on the both sides of the road. I had never seen snow in my life before. I had missed a great chance during my college days when I stayed back from my group’s trip to Manali. Ever since those days snow has been at the top zone of my to-see list. Our Innova was struggling more.

The surprise was turning into an excitement. The needle leaves of the trees around were sagging with snow. The dark earth was getting transformed into a white earth, snow-white earth, to be precise. The aroma of snow was filling our lungs. We took out our gloves from the backpacks. Upped the window glasses.

With no gender bias and male chauvinism in my heart and mind, I would like to humbly submit that I have observed more members of the female sex using “Wow!!” very liberally. (I hope I have succeeded in saying what I wanted to say without raising feminist eyebrows) Most of the times even the mundane, little things like – neatly laid out salad, a wall poster with a setting sun, aquarium with a few old gold fishes etc – attract this “Wow!!”. Webster's is yet to fit in this term in the “good” hierarchy. Is it good-better-best-wow or wow-good-better-best? The Webster's is as confused as anyone like me. The situation gets murkier when the word “Cuuute” is also thrown in. Anything from an orange-coloured hand kerchief to the modern robotic arms you find in the automobile factories has the potential to attract “Cuuute”. We almost reached Sela.

“Wooooow!!”. This time it was me. I realised there is no other word in the English language to express my excitement. Our Innova had stopped at Sela. We were in the midst of an ocean of white snow; the rocks and the bushes around had taken as much snow as they could; the countless, colourful flags radiating from all the poles around made the place look like heaven; only the chill wind reminded us that we were still very much on the harsh earth.

Sighting a rhino at Kaziranga was only going to be a bonus. Nirvana attained at Sela.

(Darjeeling, March 13, 2010)

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