S VARAH
Drugs or controlled substances abuses and their fatal fangs, as if the death’s cold fingers crawling in almost every house and wailings and screaming for remedy echoing hopelessness along with reverberating bells announcing another overdosed!Frolicsome youth gratifying urges and selling away to lower passions unabated! Insensitive and rapaciousness of authorities or professedly people-based organisations professing and promising change or revolutionizing whole set of the society! Outstandingly unfair and highly unusual distribution of government resources, collapse and corruption-institutionalized state machineries and, above all, hopelessness of people who have tried but have given up trying!These are routines and accepted patterns in the district. This is not ought to be, almost all mothers lament! Unbridled where are we, where to go, who will straighten up all these messes? Who is responsible? Politicians? Church workers? Social workers? Nation workers? Scholars? Or learned and better informed people? No one is accountable, and everyone is responsible. Only the blame is shifting from here to nowhere! Shall we blame Satan? Shall we heap up all of these on God or passing phase of time in vogue?
I am sure of one thing: failure of family unit and its control apparatus abandoned. If society is larger extension of the family or, if family is the total sum of greater social structure, then, the father and the mother are presumed sick, sick all over. If almost all families---of my hundred per cent Christians district, I mean---are regular church-goers, they are worshipping something else other than what they do profess. Because this is never the way where Christ is first, our number one priority. He is last here; or maybe He is away from Ukhrul district most of the time, leaving the whole lot of affairs in the hands of revered church leaders, politicians, underground leaders and social frontal organisations’ heads. And during His sporadic visits or stopovers, He used to find church members aflame with faith and the Holy Spirit consuming all hearts except those huge and palatial structures called places of worship. Maybe it is too hot to go near their hearts lest He be burnt all over. I used to imagine and wonder if He is the same who walked with those four Hebrew friends inside that Babylon furnace.
Imminent scholars who are trying to take stock of what might come to pass with United States of America portent that the down fall of that gigantic world power is already determined by the standard of their families. Brokenness and bleeding white all over! Outrageous women rights movements, complete downto earth moral culture and of course, too many wastrels and idlers, so dependent on state charities, the upshots following total departure from erstwhile work culture. Are we any different from them?
Former deputy commissioner, Ukhrul once said that he would shift the mini-secretariat to Imphal and function there. He said that “Tangkhuls, including underground cadres were purchasable. Frontal organisations can be bought; a matter of few thousand bugs,” so on and so forth. While the community people do not expect such candid and uncultured remark from a respectable person like deputy commissioner, we need to re-examine why and what really prompted the DC to be as blunt and reckless as to keep the whole population as if they are his pocket money. It does sum up the entire spectrum of corruption level; and the deputy commissioner was at the helm of such affairs. Otherwise, what did he mean by ‘purchasable’ if he was not purchasing someone or all of the people there?
In a small state like Manipur we need two governments to run the affairs. The first government asserts legitimate rights because they are people’s elect. The other government’s claim over the people varies on different counts: from the rights to self-determination to the right of secession from ‘a union’ based on historical as well as political merits. But one thing is common:ultimatum for recognition to what each claim as inherent as birth right. The constitutional and legitimate government is not, as we understand, free from the other government(s). Either to run the government together or be totally segregated from one another is a matter of wise management; it involves seriousness and danger as well.However, the entire gamut of the businesses when prudently handled provides benefit: shifting accountability and freedom from law. Here it is never ‘long arm of the law;’ it is very low arm or short leg of the law. Therefore, our responsibility to tidying up the house is very simple: select appropriate mob either broom or brute and it will do the job; the job gets done, and that is the end of the Right to Information. We may account this as one of the factors to decide what berth or portfolio our people’s representatives deserve. The consequence is long forgotten.
Once I spoke to a congregation: “experts say that fossil energy will be exhausted in fifty years’ time; and that the only source of energy will be wind and sunlight, save water. Therefore, we have to advice Union power Minister to create a department under one powerful Minister to be called as Sky and Firmament Minister.” I was a joker; I can be prophetic too. In Ukhrul there is light day and non-light day; power supply alternates between days. There is often total blackout, lasting for a week sometimes. People say we are a technology era. But in the case of my district, it is highly tactical error. Of course, there is that beautiful colour of darkness and blindness: people here are almost free from light bill.
Main source of water supply for Ukhrul district headquarters is that picturesque,renownedShiroiMountain. The source is perennial and profuse the year round. Some households’ water tanks overflow while majority families are not connected with pipeline. During lean season of the year, population in rent houses wait for hours---under such unmerciful cold---swarming a water hole to take turns over the trickles. One night a boy, having been nudged out of sequenceand out of desperation, vehemently spitted down a mouthful of tallab/gutka inside the waterhole. What followed next is understandable: a kongfu contest between one to eight and hospitalization!
Ukhrul is full of striking and beautiful contests the year round. Land grapping contest, headship contest, water contest, work programmes under different packages contests; and with those so many trial courts, and with fair judgements pronounced, there are fights and brawls resulting to grievous Christianlyinjuries and kills. If one from outside happens to be there one Sunday morning, one will surely be privileged to witness the real beauty pageant: the Sunday-clothes-meeting-go. Don’t miss that. Oh, what a wonderful home sweet house!
Something has gone wrong, seriously wrong, down the line. First and the most disturbing, dynamic influence engulfing the entirety is dual government recognized or unrecognized. Under such clout, a lump sum hostage of citizens, short or tall, squats down as unfortunate. Search for recourse or redress becomes hectic and often catches hold of either blunt weapon or correct standard measure accepted. More often than not, the former gets selected and the rule of law runs cul de sac.
Second: a Christian state or society need not come to this. The paint is peeling away revealing the crux. Almost a century and half of sermon and confession has sadly failed to answer the knocking at the door. He is still outside. This Christ Deficiency Syndrome need be administered with the correct Remedy. Namesake will continue to take its toll.
Last: dictates must be pronounced ‘unwanted’ for rationale and, of course, the volume of praying sound must be down to allow reas
oning support (Voice of the people) better heard through practical living example, and not fiery preaching alone.
