Without design, a number of stories have landed in my laptop. They centre around the Japanese Invasion of our hills and its aftermath. War is never a quiet thing. It makes its appearance loudly, and leaves behind both the tangible and the intangible. It would be an interesting exercise to collect the stories that people have themselves experienced after the war. It would make an exciting book to read especially drawing from real life. Anyone selling time in a bottle?
Our people always treat the mechanism of war in a reverent manner. That does not mean that people liked being at war. On the other hand, there was a sense of dread at any news of impending war. And that is the natural reaction to any war. At the same time, it was accepted that the spiritual and paranormal would accompany war when it came. So the Japanese invasion was preceded by a prophecy. A prophetess appeared in the village of Kigwema and caught the attention of the population. Viketu Kiso, an eye witness, says:
‘Before all these happened, a woman called Rheikiemeü, a prophetess, came to the village one afternoon. She was dressed fully in white and she carried a spear and a Nepali khukri. She pranced around for some time and then prophesied in a shrill voice: “War is coming to our land very soon!”’
The invasion took place a few months after the prophecy was given. On the 3rd of April, 1944, the southern villages were occupied one after the other by Japanese forces and the INA, the Indian National Army.
A sizeable number of our men were captured to work as coolies carrying heavy ammunitions boxes and other paraphernalia of war. One man was kept with the Japanese over a long period. At night, he was tied to a tree. After some time, they stopped tying him up, and he found the opportunity to escape. By this time, all his mates had managed to escape in the night when they were released. But whenever he tried to take advantage of being temporarily freed, he could do nothing because a cloud would come over his eyes and prevent him from seeing in front of him. This went on for many nights until he gave up trying to escape.
There are too many reports of paranormal activities after the war ended. Here is one from a former classmate that defies explanation:
‘On the 19th October 1977, I had gone to Ministers’ Hill area along with one of my friends from Shillong to attend the birthday of my colleague in her house. After the party was over, we were coming back home from the Ministers’ Hill area by jeep. It was around 11.30 at night that we were crossing the road along the war cemetery area. We were just discussing about the party among ourselves. All of a sudden, my friend stopped the jeep, and asked me to look towards the left side of the road. He was so frightened he could hardly utter ‘Udhar Dekho! (Look at that side). I looked and shouted, ‘Bhoot!’ Let me tell you here that two very tall figures dressed in white were moving slowly between the trees. We could see their bodies but not their legs. We were really scared to cross the area where we had seen them. But somehow we started praying to God and without looking towards their side, we crossed the road and kept praying until we reached home. We were very frightened and we could not sleep. After the incident, we talked about it again and found out many other people had also seen the tall figures in white. Can you imagine, we never went that side again after 8 pm. We were so scared.’
Decades before my classmate and his friend were introduced to the paranormal, reports were already existent that the Garrison hill area was nightly visited by marching bands of soldiers during the midnight hours. One report mentioned a nocturnal visitation of these soldier bands whistling the theme song from the film, ‘Bridge on the River Kwai.’ Not very surprising when we know that the song, originally composed during the First World War became a popular marching song in the Second World War. My bestie in university said her grandfather who was an officer in the army during WWII had a visitation where he was instructed to get all his soldiers shaved in the morning. He followed the unusual instructions and when they were attacked in the dark, they avoided killing their own troops because they could distinguish the ones with shaved heads. However, this story was met with some scepticism by an uncle. ‘In the heat of battle, who will bother to feel the scalp of his enemy to find out if he is shaved or not?’ Even so, I still maintain that there are many things in life that are stranger than fiction.
