Diaries From Everywhere (Cultural Mapping -I)

-David Buhril “Cultural mapping is a valuable tool for identifying a community’s strengths and its resources. This process can help as communities move into the planning and implementation phase by identifying early the resources, efficiencies and links between arts and cultural groups, as well as their common aspirations and values.”  -Stan Hagen                 Our big talk to rediscover, understand and interlink the lost roots; to rethink history and to identify the missing links by inculcating new and acceptable perspectives to better realise ourselves, was  never an easy process. It involves more than a dream-talk from a distant corner, which was costly in every possible way. After my interview for a researcher and writer with a renowned research institute in Delhi, L. Keivom and I bought the earliest convenient time and headed for Churachandpur. Like two young lovers, we were more than happy to leave behind everything that has caught up with the heat of the ancient city, and to be able to chase our dream talk. A man is a man only when he can walk the talk.             On reaching Tuithraphai (Churachandpur), we took few days tuning our weary system with the multi-colured sky; the fine weather that unpredictably changes with the hesitant rain; hiding and seeking sun; and the newly chrome like Royal Enfield oil-tank indulgent moon that suddenly surface from a black highway. The Providence is more than merciful in welcoming sinners like us. Beautiful than the royal wedding. The Paparazzis  just missed out everything for the greater loser community. Our first destination for cultural mapping was Sagang constituency. One fine morning we headed out early (L.Keivom, Vanlalhlun Traite and I) and took a round trip through Moirang. Our plan was to lunch and and see around Moirang. We did more than that. It was like an angelic plunder, sans robbing and harming anyone. We had beef in a Meitei hotel, Singju made of healthy water plants, rice, which were unmistakably flushed by an unnamed spirit. I realised that many beautiful things still does not have a name. We did not give them a name. We aren't of the Columbus tribe. On reaching Tuiring, we spent some time at the Reformed Presbyterian run school. We were introduced to Akhup, the headmaster of the school, who was also our guide during our stay. The small school is doing great. It actually shook me as I imagine how we are still trying to catch-up with the big race in this big game with little ounce of education sowed by the lagging, run-down system. The Constitutional reservation justly acknowledged the great gap that divides everyone of us. It would be wise to understand the starking evidence that represents  our    reality than merely toeing the big debate that eludes the  unrepresented-deprived republic. Sometimes everything is ahead of us. Too fast. Too far.  We met old Kom people. Royal blooded. Prince's and Chiefs. Magicians changed by Christianity. They speak of Khurpui. Sinlung. Ruonglevaisuo. That's how they remember their roots and routes. Kom's have superior knowledege of magic and all those super-powers, which we have paganise. They are a big storehouse of undocumented cultural memories. There is still a collective memory of the things past. However, it is in a very vulnerable state. It is dying fast as the flesh and memory that holds them stood a mere mortals before hungry graves. The Kom people remember their heroes not as fighters or warriors. But as magicians. Many still remember the magic battle performed in public. In such battle, the fate of the entire community was put at stake. The person with a superior magic knowledge would save the entire community from becoming a slave. The Kom magicians fought many such battle and save their people from slavery. Without raiding. Without bloodshed and loss of lives. However, they dare not practise the art after the Gospel came. Their art was turned into black.  Too black that it was shelved to rot.  Today the art is considered as unchristian. They did not even want to remember their  celebrated heroes anymore. They said that they did not even want the term “magic” to slip and spill out of their tongues. They now believed that their cutting edge art is a sin. Worse than the apple that Eve and Adam bited. They believed that their  practise of magic has deprived them of God's blessing. Some of them have burned the papers that contain their art. They dare not be inheritors anymore. Every forces seems to stand against their cultural resources. There is an urgent need to shed a different light to, atleast, inject the need to remember and document our losing game. We halted at Canaanphai for the night. At the Chief's house. The setting evening was beautiful. Surreal. Running meadows softly squeezing ploughed rice field that spreads and lost between endless chain of hills and mountain. We sit and watched speechlessly the nature's pageant. All that we could afford was a contented smile. What a mite we are. If there was some sheep running around, the place could be mistaken for a paradise. As we sat, mesmerised by the Creator's masterpiece, a group of hunters suddenly appeared, not far from where we sat. Armed in battle fatigues. For some time I though they were revolutionaries. Militants. Rebels. Underground. Fortunately, they were hunters. They must have combed the hills and mountain for a deer or stag. They must have spotted a royal stag from afar. They came too close. They must have realised that it was a royal stag. Sorry, not a hunter's stag.

 [DT 26/6]