North Easterlies - 3

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.