If you were the youngest in a pack of cousins, summer holidays were the best of times and the worst of times. Till you discovered a library of old books.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince first came to me on the summer after I turned eight. We were, of course, at our grandparents’ sprawling home in Tezpur that July. What is it about summer and grandparents and sprawling homes? One must find out. The house my grandfather built was large. It had books whose owners they had long parted with. It had a chimney and a fireplace, by which potatoes were roasted, toes were warmed and one too many whiskies drunk on winter nights. It had a creaky old billiards table, old hunting guns and a staircase with a banister its younger inhabitants had slid down at least once in their lives. Over the years, it got larger. Rooms were added. Balconies were extended. Two people could be living in it, or 20 – you wouldn’t know the difference.
There we were that summer of 1998 -10 cousins, the best of friends, up to the worst of shenanigans. At eight, I was the youngest of the lot, and the rest of the pack – some angsty teenagers, some wise adults – were busy growing up. Being the youngest meant being loved, bullied, left out and included, all at the same time. In the Dickensian scheme of things, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
On more than one occasion, when I was deemed too young for the wolf-pack, I’d walk down the stairs with my father, blinking back tears, leaving the nine of them to do whatever kids growing up did. I would wonder, tossing and turning in bed for hours. What did they do? Were secrets the only thing passed around? Or were there cigarettes too? The god-fearing, morally correct eight-year-old in me certainly hoped not.
But the night was young, the doors were closed, and the rest of the rambling house was asleep. It was then that I found Exupéry. Or should I say Exupéry found me? I obsessed over the thin novel for weeks, examining each yellowing page with curious attention. Never quite grasping its intricate dimensions, but trying very hard to. Often, on yet another re-read, I’d trace my finger across a note written in a scrawling hand on the first page, not by Exupéry, not by my father who it belonged to, but by a friend who gifted it to him back in 1969, when he was a young student in America, then in the throes of a hippie counterculture. I tried to decipher the note for weeks, and years later, too. Much cajoling would never make my father speak – he has this frustrating habit of underplaying anything which could be remotely exciting.
On a later read, I realised The Little Prince was really not meant for a child. Re-reading it as an adult told me a different story altogether. But Exupéry’s fine-lined drawings (of the elephant inside the boa which was obviously not just an old hat) reassured an eight-year-old that being grown up – what I wanted most right then – was stupid.
A couple of summers later, a prince of another kind dominated my dreams. I read my first Harry Potter book when I was 10: mild interest turned into a serious love into a fanatic obsession. When I was 16, I knew this was no ordinary love, and it had to be immortalised. And for reasons best known to my 16-year-old self, I chose my shoulder to do so. Today, the first question strangers ask me, pointing at a blue bolt of lighting and a scatter of scars on my left shoulder, is: “So, what does your tattoo signify?” I usually laugh and look away. But there’s a lot left unsaid – a four poster bed to lie down in when you had a pathetic day at school, a few pints of warm butterbeer when you’re nursing your first heartbreak, and an urge to conquer a noseless Dark Lord, when you feel the world needed more good than evil. Today, I wear my tattoo like a badge of honour – it’s discoloured, faded and old but so are the best books in the world. Yet, we still display them high up on our bookshelves, with old airline boarding passes pressed as bookmarks between the pages. A book has two stories to tell – its own and yours.
Books read are like lives lived, lives you care not to remember now. It’s been eight years since I moved away from home. And on every visit, I examine my floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, and phases of my life come rushing back to me. The embarrassing teen romance book phase when I was 13. I devoured all the Princess Diaries and Babysitter’s Clubs, scratching out names of the protagonists’ love interests with mine. During that time, my Secret Sevens and Famous Fives were stowed away – in any case, I never was a fan of their perfect picnic wicker baskets, overflowing larders, and patterned eiderdowns. But then Princess Mia (Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis) Renaldo’s rants weren’t much progress, were they? I snapped out of giddy romances soon enough, when I realised chick-lits are best watched, not read.
It was then that I moved on to Indian fiction. These were closer home, literally and metaphorically. Names like Gyan and Sai replaced George and Susan. The rains didn’t mean carrying a patterned umbrella, putting on your mackintosh and hopping over puddles in your moccasins. The rains meant floods – a loss of a school day for me, a loss of a home for someone else. I had to read The God of Small Things twice to understand that it ended in incest, and The Namesake told me that maybe, just maybe, moving to America isn’t as wondrous as it seems to be.
I read sparingly these days. Earlier it was a book a week, today it’s a book in six. And many times, it’s a book I’ve read before. Revisiting a book is like revisiting an older self: an independent 20-year-old living alone meeting a shy 10-year-old staying at home. You meet your old allies, characters who kept you company on rainy days and summer holidays. Comrades-in-arms, who had great life lessons to offer. On days I feel extremely spunky, I go to the seven-year-old Scout Finch at her rebellious best when she asks so boldly to “Pass the damn ham, please?” Yet on others, I leaf through the book Salman Rushdie wrote for his young son – a glossy illustrated hardback edition of Haroun and the Sea of Stories takes me back to yet another summer at my grandparents in Tezpur. This time around, I was older, cooler and included. And, oh yes, many cigarettes were passed around.
Last month, I read a column where the author insisted that the only reason we were reading fewer (books) was because we were reading more (internet). I disagree – what I am reading online are a bunch of clickbait headlines. What I read earlier were stories, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Stories which I associated with certain events in my life. I remember Rohinton Mistry giving me a raging fever. Gerald Durrell and his quirky family, so much like mine, made me laugh myself silly. And Donna Tartt saw me through a very long illness.
The last book I read was Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom. And even a month later, the book still revisits me in waves. Set in Bombay, Pinto’s book is a deeply touching narrative about his manic-depressive mother. In one line, the author casually mentions the sea, wondering why people love to sit by it. “What is it about the sea? Is it because it’s there?”
I am going to Bombay very soon. And I am waiting to sit on Marine Drive and watch the sea – its waves threatening to soak me. Just like Pinto’s book had. And just because it’s there.
In the homogenous world of Mizo television, everyone from Prerna in Ekta Kapoor’s Kasautii Zindagii Kay to Elsa in Disney’s Frozen speaks fluent Mizo. But behind this vernacular crossover is a network of people: translators, dubbing artistes and editors. This is how they do it
In 2003, when Sente was a schoolgirl in Aizawl, her gang of friends would eagerly await the latest edition of Lengzem, a popular Mizo monthly magazine. The 60-paged publication had a mix of features and fiction but the girls would straight skip to “the only section that mattered” — it was the Mizo script of a full episode of Ekta Kapoor’s hit TV series Kasautii Zindagii Kay, back then a rage in Mizoram. “We would read aloud and take turns to deliver the dialogue. It was all everyone would talk about back then,” says Sente, now a 25-year-old mother of three.
Years later — in any conversation about the dubbed shows that thrive on Mizo TV — it is still what everyone talks about. In Kasautii lies the genesis of the dubbed television industry of Mizoram.
What started as a trial for one show is now a small-scale industry. Over the last decade, Korean, Thai, English, Hindi, Turkish and Japanese movies and TV shows (all translated) dominate television viewership in Mizoram — apart from news, reality TV shows (the most popular being Mizo Idol and Youth Icon, fashioned onAmerican Idol) and of course, sports (football premiere league, basketball league etc).
“For the longest time, Mizos would watch Bangladeshi TV channels. There was absolutely no Mizo content. Only during Christmas — in the late 80s — some Mizos in Delhi would sing carols, and that would be aired on Doordarshan,” say Lalsawmliana Pachuau.
In 1993, Pachuau started LPS — Mizoram’s first cable TV network, with 11 channels (which aired music, sports, news and movies). “We started by airing local Mizo content: news, gospel songs and the like. I wanted to do something for the people of Mizoram,” he says.
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in December 2019. Full article here.
The 72-year-old, ostracised and branded a witch, devoted her life, and, through her organisation Mission Birubala, has been behind the state’s law to check the practice
Sometime in 2010, Birubala Rabha thought she was going to die. Afloat the Brahmaputra, with a film crew who was interviewing her, the wooden boat suddenly capsized, throwing overboard the camera, a crew member and Rabha, 61 at the time.
Gasping for breath, she somehow managed to swim to safety. “The water was very deep and I told myself, ‘Okay, today is the day I am going to die’,” Rabha chuckles at the memory more than a decade later. “But then again, I have never been afraid of death. And that is probably why I managed to live.”
It is this fortitude that has guided Rabha, Assam’s plucky crusader against witch-hunting, through a remarkable life. A life that was honoured with one of India’s highest civilian awards, the Padma Shri, last week. “I think this one is more special than the others,” Rabha says, at her home in Goalpara district, lined with mementos of different shapes and sizes. “I’m getting double the phone calls I usually do. But I am telling them, awards are well and good, but the point is for humans to help other humans, for us to be brave and unafraid.”
Just like Rabha has been through her 72 years of life. She wasn’t afraid when she travelled to a village in Meghalaya, in the dead of night, responding to a call of a woman accused of being a “daini” or witch by her neighbours, she wasn’t afraid when a mob surrounded her with daos (a flat-blade sword) and sticks, threatening to beat her up at the entrance of the village, and she wasn’t afraid when in 2000, in a public village meeting held to decide the fate of five women who were branded witches near Lakhipur in Assam, she stood up before hundreds and boldly announced: “There are no witches, witchcraft does not exist.”
The very next day, hundreds of villagers surrounded her house, to compel Rabha to sign a disclaimer that she was wrong to say what she did, and that, in fact, dainis do exist. But Rabha remained resolute, refusing to sign the document, and thus began a life devoted to fighting the malaise of witch-hunting in the state. “After that incident, they ostracised me and branded me a witch too, but instead, I used the time to work towards eradicating the practice,” she says. Since Rabha was already an active member of her village’s local Mahila Samiti (women’s self-help group) fighting social evils like alcoholism and domestic violence, her new avatar as a voice against witch-hunting came to her all too naturally.
“At one point, even I believed that there was a truth to all this, that witches do exist,” says Rabha, who has studied up till Class V. “But then my son, Dharmeshwar, who has a mental problem, fell ill in 1985, and a local quack said that he was possessed by a fairy, and would die in three days.” He did not. For Rabha, the incident was nothing short of an awakening. “I realised that innocent villagers were being duped,” she says.
In the years that followed, with the Samiti’s support, Rabha went from village to village whenever she heard there was a case of witch-hunting. “Raneshwari, Padumi, Anjali, Sanabala, Lakshmi…,” she reads out the names of those she and her team have rehabilitated over the years, a list of around a hundred.
In Assam, where witch-hunting is rampant, most causes of witch-hunt murders are prima facie based on superstitious beliefs that the “witch” — often a single woman, a widow, or, sometimes, a man, too — has magical powers to bring about death and disease in the community. But a deeper dive into most of the cases shows they are usually a means to settle personal scores — jealousy, property conflicts or familial strife — in the name of superstition.
While states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Odisha and Rajasthan have already criminalised the practice, the Assam Witch Hunting (Prohibition, Protection and Prevention) Act, 2015 came into effect only in 2018. Rabha’s work and the organisation formed in 2011 under her name, Mission Birubala, played a key role in bringing about this law. “We began to look at underlying causes of why these incidents happen,” says Dr Natyabir Das, a Goalpara-based physician, who has long been associated with Rabha’s work. “Biru baideo (sister), being a villager, may be a little superstitious herself, but over the years, she has understood that the root cause of all this can be traced back to the lack of education and healthcare facilities, and the general lack of development,” he adds.
Today, in villages across Assam, Mission Birubala — which is a network of social activists, witch-hunt survivors, lawyers — holds awareness meetings, where Rabha, dressed in a patani (the traditional attire of the Rabha tribe, found across Assam’s Goalpara and Kamrup districts, and parts of Meghalaya, West Bengal and Bangladesh), hair tied back in a tight bun, delivers long rousing speeches about her life, to the roaring applause of the crowds. “She may be small and unassuming, but when she speaks, everyone just listens,” says Usha Rabha, a close aide. In 2005, Usha saw a photo of Rabha delivering a speech in the local paper. “Everything about the picture was so inspiring that I went seeking her,” says Usha, 55, “Now I am her shadow.”
Together, Usha says, they have walked — and sometimes run — long hours to meet women in remote villages through scorching sunshine and raging thunderstorms, climbing hills, navigating through cemeteries, swimming across rivulets. “The thing about her is that she never gets tired,” says Usha, “On several occasions, we have met people who have threatened to kill us, brandishing sticks and knives. But Biru baideo says, “Katile kaat, maarile maar, moi norokhu (kill me if you have to, I won’t stop).” Over the years, Rabha has maintained a diary where she records the incidents of her life in case her memory fails her ahead of an interview.
When we visited her, two interviews had already happened, and there is another in the queue. After they leave, Rabha says she will feed her chickens, fetch water, and if there is time, finish weaving a half-done pajar, a traditional Rabha scarf, she is working on. And if, in the midst of it, she gets a call from a woman in distress, she will leave it all, and run.
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in January 2021. Full article here.
From November 2017 to August 2018, the tigress has killed 39 animals. But for reasons best known to the villagers of Borobazar, she still roams, unscathed and free.
When the tigress made her first kill — a cow, bound near the yard of one Forhan Daimari — the villagers of Borobazar in Kalaigaon in Assam’s Udalguri district were not particularly alarmed. A wandering tiger in this particular vicinity, located as it is so close to the Orang National Park, is a guest who usually doesn’t overstay its welcome. Or so they thought. Over the course of that November, apart from partaking of Daimari’s cow, the tiger made seven more kills: four pigs, two cows, and a goat. And then the hamlet of Borobazar began to panic.
By day, they kept a watchful eye over their cattle which nervously grazed on a stretch of forest grassland, near which the tiger was perhaps lurking. By evening, they may well have imagined a pair of red eyes and shadowy shape skulking around Borobazar twilight roads. Come night and they were too scared to sleep. “As soon as it got dark, we would be back inside our huts. No ‘up and down’ in the streets. No going out, not even to pee,” says Marnek Daimari, a villager. Two weeks back, close to a year after the tigress first strayed into their village, Daimari lost his lone cow to the apex predator.
From November 2017 to August 2018, the tigress has killed 39 animals. But for reasons best known to the villagers of Borobazar, she still roams, unscathed and free. If this was a regular man-animal conflict story, the tigress would have met her fate long back. Like, the other Royal Bengal tigress who had wandered into the midst of Borobazar in January 2016. A week later, she was found poisoned and dead. “No one in the village likes to acknowledge that incident — to kill a tiger is a sin, and they very well know that,” says Dipen Boro, the vice-president of the Assam Bodo Students Union (ABSU). The organisation, active in the Bodo Territorial Autonomous Districts, has been holding awareness camps and meetings to sensitise villagers about social issues, including wildlife conservation for years now. “To kill a tiger is not a difficult job. And yet, Borobazar has showed amazing tenacity in the past year — they have dealt with crops being ruined, animals being stolen and killed, and practically tip-toed around in their own home,” says Boro.
***
Contrary to popular belief, tigers living alongside men isn’t an unusual phenomenon in India. According Janaki Lenin, Tamil Nadu -based wildlife writer, “There are large wild animals living across India outside of protected areas. We just don’t know about it. In Gujarat, there are people living with crocodiles in their backyard; in Karnataka, with king cobras in their gardens. And even tigers, in Bhopal, Indore and Dudhwa,” she says, adding: “It is hard to say why people are tolerant. Very often, it is religion. Very often, it is tradition too. But sometimes it is a change in attitude.”
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in August 2018. Full article here.
In a particularly devastating flood in Assam this year, 49 children have died, accounting for 44.5 per cent of the total deaths reported
On June 1, a 13-year-old in Assam’s Nagaon district drowned while chasing ducks in a flooded river near his house. A month later, on July 1, a six-year-old slipped and fell into the slushy waters of the Champabati river, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, in Dhubri district while making her way home. Her sister tried to rescue her but it was too late. On July 24, a two-year-old toddler rolled over in his sleep and fell from his bed into the waters in his inundated house in Barpeta district.
The 13-year-old, six-year-old and two-year-old are among the 49 children (below the age of 18) who have died in the Assam floods this year, accounting for 44.5 per cent of the total deaths reported till August 3, according to data analysed by The Indian Express.
Since May 22, floods in Assam have affected more than 56 lakh people in 30 out of 33 districts of the state, claiming 110 lives, according to figures from Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA). Twenty six people — including at least nine children — have died in landslides caused by rain.
More than 2.6 lakh hectares of total crop area has been affected, 231 embankments, 200 bridges and 2,027 roads have been damaged in what experts have described as a particularly destructive flood this year.
Since August 1, with the rains letting up, the Brahmaputra and its tributaries have started showing a receding trend, though 7,000 people are still in relief camps, and nearly four lakh people in 19 districts remain affected.
“The figures are most concerning,” said M S Manivannan, ASDMA Chief Executive Officer. “More children have died this year, and we will be forming a special committee to look into the causes.” In the 2019 floods, 32 out of the 102 deaths in Assam were those of children.
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in August 2020. Full article here.
Considered the most beautiful duck in the world, the Mandarin duck made an appearance in Assam’s Tinsukia last week after more than a century.
Floating in the Maguri-Motapung beel (or wetland) in Assam’s Tinsukia district for over a week is the spectacular and rare Mandarin duck. First spotted on February 8 by Madhab Gogoi, a Tinsukia-based birder and tour guide, the duck has since become the star of the wetland — an area affected by a blowout and fire at a natural gas well located close by in May 2020.
“When I heard that Madhab had spotted the duck, I did not believe him,” said Binanda Hatiboruah, a bird guide, also based in Tinsukia, “But when I saw it myself, I hugged him [Madhab] and almost lifted him up. I was that excited.” The bird was last sighted in this part of Assam more than a century ago, in 1902.
What is the Mandarin duck and why is it exciting?
Considered the most beautiful duck in the world, the Mandarin duck, or the (Aix galericulata) was first identified by Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist Carl Linnaeus in 1758. The eBird website, a platform that documents birds world over, describes it as a “small-exotic looking bird” native to East Asia. “It’s very beautiful, with majestic colours and can be spotted from a distance,” said Deborshee Gogoi, a Digboi-based professor of marketing, and a birder, who also spotted the duck last week, “It was a male — we could tell because in this species, the males are more colourful than the females.”
The eBird website describes the male as “very ornate with big orangey ‘sail fins’ on the back, streaked orangey cheeks, and a small red bill with a whitish tip” and the female with “narrow white spectacles on a shaggy grey head, bold pale dappled spots along flanks, and pale bill tip.”
The migratory duck breeds in Russia, Korea, Japan and northeastern parts of China, explained Gogoi. It now has established populations in Western Europe and America too. In 2018, when a Mandarin duck was spotted in a pond in New York City’s Central Park, it created a flutter among local residents.
The duck, however, rarely visits India as it does not fall in its usual migratory route. There are only a handful of recorded sightings here. “It was recorded in 1902 in Dibru river in the Rongagora area in Tinsukia,” said Hatiboruah, “More recently, it was sighted in Manipur’s Loktak Lake in 2013, and in Saatvoini Beel in Manas National Park and Tiger Reserve in Assam’s Baksa district 2014.”
According to ornithologist Dr Anwaruddin Choudhury, a former joint secretary of the forest department, while the duck is not a globally threatened species, spotting one is always considered significant because they only make “rare appearances.” Hatiboruah said it was a “historical sighting, especially because no one can say when we will see it again.”
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in August 2018. Full article here.
Temperatures have been high, at least 5 to 6 degrees above normal for this time of the year
On a sunny Saturday afternoon, in the heart of Shillong’s iconic Police Bazaar, customers rummaged through mounds of clothes piled next to Biolin Pyrtuh.
For 15 years now, Pyrtuh has conducted her business in this fashion: out in the open in her ‘shop’ — essentially a few tarpaulin-covered boxes heaped with clothes — at the exact spot, the first among the many that line the crowded streets of Police Bazaar. But never, she said, has she felt “so hot” while doing so.
“There have been warm days before, but this April has been very bad,” Pyrtuh said.
Her 20-year-old daughter Krishamari, added, “Even an umbrella doesn’t help, the sun burns our skin.”
Last week, the mother–daughter duo, for the first time in their lives, bought a pair of floppy hats: white, with a string that can be fastened around your chin, a new addition to their traditional jainsem attire, to “fight the sun”.
Across the street, in the 90-year-old sweetshop, Delhi Mistan Bhandar, another Shillong icon, 76-year-old jalebi-maker Sukhdeb Rai, got a small fan installed in his corner of the store. “I came to Shillong in 1968. It was never like this… we would wear jackets throughout the year, but now it is not the case.”
As the first proper spell of rain beat down in Shillong on Sunday, after nearly 10 days, it spelt a reprieve for its residents, who have been dealing with temperatures hovering between 27 and 29.1 degrees Celsius in the past week.
“Shillong used to be the combined hill station for the entire north-east … an escape with just the right climate for people coming from the plains for their holidays,” said Shillong Times editor Patricia Mukhim. “April came and suddenly the mercury went into a tailspin. Earlier, we never used to require fans — but now we do.”
The north-eastern region is not used to prolonged hot spells. In fact, Arunachal Pradesh is the only north-eastern state to figure among the 23 states that are known to be prone to heatwaves. This year, however, has been slightly different. Many places in the region have been facing an unusually hot April. It is not the same as what eastern and central India are facing, but there is a deviation from the normal conditions nonetheless.
In other parts of Meghalaya, in the Garo Hills, which are at a lower elevation and consist of plain areas too, temperatures had hit 36 degrees Celsius. The government responded by issuing advisories and, in a first, in several districts of the Garo Hills, ordering closure of schools.
A scientist at the Meteorological Centre Shillong, Meghalaya, said these temperatures were a “distinct departure from normal”.
“For example Resubelpara in Garo Hills, it was crossing 37-38 degrees. Even by conservative standards, it is high… in the hilly areas, it was touching 29, causing great discomfort,” the scientist said.
But it is not Meghalaya alone, across the north-east, capital cities faced “near heatwave” conditions in the last week, officials said. Since Sunday, with the India Meteorological Centre (IMD) forecasting a wet spell across the region, temperatures have dropped.
“But the past one week has been particularly hot,” said an official from the Regional Meteorological Centre, Guwahati. “It was officially not a ‘heatwave’, but we can say it was near a heatwave.”
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in April 2023. Full article here.
The legendary Naga Club was revived after a century. Then its new members demolished its office in the dead of the night.
The office of the iconic century-old Naga Club, which was “revived” in 2017, was vandalised and partly demolished on May 27. The destruction of the colonial-era heritage building — located in the heart of Nagaland’s capital Kohima — led to widespread condemnation and the constitution of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the matter. Three people were promptly arrested.
Only for it to later turn out that the members who revived the club were behind the midnight demolition operation – because they could not get the incumbent occupants to move out. But this is no ordinary civil dispute. Linked to it is the claim to the legacy of the Naga Club, known to have planted the first seeds of Naga nationalism.
The Naga Club 1918: the ground for Naga nationalism
Often described as the first Naga organisation with representation from all the sub-tribes of the community, the Naga Club was formed in 1918 with the objective to “unite all Nagas”.
The accounts of its genesis vary. Some say the club was formed when a group of men from different Naga sub-tribes — part of the Labour Corps during World War I — returned home from France. They felt the need for a common platform to “unite” different Naga tribes and thus, formed the Naga Club. Yet others say that it was formed by the staff of the British Deputy Commissioner in Kohima to provide free accommodation for Nagas who came from remote areas.
Either way, the consensus is that the Naga Club paved the path for the Naga struggle for self-determination. This is rooted in an incident in 1929, when the Simon Commission was visiting India. The club members submitted a memorandum to the Commission, asking them to leave the Nagas out of the “reformed scheme of administration” that the British were planning to introduce for India.
Many describe this request to “leave the Nagas alone” as the first recorded articulation of Naga political aspirations on which stands the Naga quest for self-determination. In the 1950s, the Naga National Council, founded by the legendary Angami Z Phizo, gave Naga nationalism a more defined objective: a sovereign homeland. An armed struggle — independent India’s longest running insurgency — ensued. Several Naga groups are currently in talks with the Union government, but resolution remains elusive.
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in June 2023. Full article here.
50 years after they were set up, Sainik Schools have opened doors to girls. We meet the six 12-year-olds making history in a Mizoram village, dreaming to be soldiers, sailors and pilots, and barely sweating about it. The boys, they are catching up.
6:154 is a number Zonunpuii Lalnunpuia barely understands. Ten per cent is something the chirpy 12-year-old can comprehend better. But it’s not being 6 in 160, or 1 in 10, that she wants to talk about.
Ever since she was 6, says Zonunpuii, she would put on her father’s cap, pick up his stick and walk around her neighbourhood in Aizawl. Every night, she would go to sleep saying a simple prayer. To anybody who asked, she replied, “I want to be like papa.”
Like papa, Havilder Billy Lalnunpuia, become an Army officer, like papa wear khaki, like papa, be deputed to the frontier, and like papa, “save the country” from “the enemy (Pakistan)”.
For a long time, they told her, it’s a job “only men do”.
Then, last November, when she came home from her school, Kendriya Vidyalaya in Aizawl, her mother Lalmalsawmi read out a WhatsApp forward. It said Sainik Schools will start taking in girls. As her mother explained what that meant, she “jumped and shouted with joy”, recalls Zonunpuii. Immediately, the mother and daughter called up Billy, at the time posted in Lebanon as part of the UN Peacekeeping Force.
In the weeks that followed, Zonunpuii brushed up her general knowledge, mathematics and grammar, and in January, joined 30 other girls from Mizoram to write the All India Sainik School Entrance Exam in Aizawl. In March, she appeared for the interview where, she says, she rattled off the names of governors and chief ministers of the country to a very impressed interviewer.
In June, Zonunpuii — the elder of two siblings — walked into the halls of Sainik School, Chhingchhip, in Mizoram’s Serchhip district, creating history. Together, 11-year-olds Zonunpuii, Jurisa Chakma and Malsawmthari Khiangte, and Alicia Lalmuanpuii, Lalhminghlui Lallianzuala and Elizabeth Malsawmtluangi (all 12) became the first girl ‘cadets’ of a Sainik School in India, a strictly all-boys institution since it was set up in 1961.
***
While the Indian Armed Forces have had women officers since 1992, women are generally inducted into the supporting arms (education, engineering, medicine), and it was only in 2016 that the IAF inducted three women fighter pilots. The National Defence Academy (NDA) in Pune, the country’s foremost institution of military education, set up in 1955, also remains a male bastion.
This August, in his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the decision to grant women officers permanent commission, citing it since as another example of his government’s commitment to gender parity.
Almost a year earlier, a smaller, quieter step was taken at Sainik Schools.
Ever since the Central government set up the first Sainik School, in Satara, Maharashtra, in 1961, the “primary aim” of the public residential institutions — most of them with classes from 6 to 12 — has been “preparing boys academically, physically and ‘mentally’ for entry into the National Defence Academy”.
There are 28 Sainik Schools, run by the Sainik School Society under the Defence Ministry, plus one in Lucknow under the state administration. In April this year, the Lucknow school admitted 17 girls in Class 9. But it’s the Sainik School Chhingchhip, the country’s 26th, the Northeast’s fourth, which came up just in May 2017, that was selected as a pilot school to include girls into Sainik Schools.
In August 2017, the administration of the Chhingchhip school received a letter informing them of same, and asking them to reserve “10% of the total class strength for girls”.
At an All India Sainik School Principals’ Conference held in Haryana last week, Union Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre called the opening up of these schools to girls a “revolutionary” and “historic” step for their empowerment, and promised that it would be done in all Sainik Schools.
Lt Colonel Inderjeet Singh, who was the principal of the Chhingchhip school when the notification came and is now posted in Pune, says his responsibility was “huge”. “For us, 10 per cent of the total class strength meant six girls. Since we were a new school, we had only two batches: Class 6 (with 60 students) and Class 7 (100 students). Imagine six girls among 154 boys!” says Colonel Singh, over the phone.
Within three weeks of the school putting out advertisements and making announcements over loudspeakers, they had received applications from 31 girls. Excited parents sent letters asking for tips. “Dear Sir/Madam, My daughter was born on 30th April, 2008 and she was jumping with joy when she heard that Sainik Schools have started giving admission to girls. Please provide us with tips in order to get admission asap,” said one.
The 31 girl applicants, along with the boys, sat for written examinations, held in early January at Aizawl, Lunglei, and Chhingchhip in Mizoram. They were tested on mathematics, general knowledge, language and ‘intelligence’, and 21 made it to the interview round. “Then we picked six,” says Colonel Singh. “We knew this was history in the making but we tried hard not to make a big deal of it.”
In the months leading up to the girls’ entry, the seven-member faculty (five men and two women, some of them serving Army officers), the principal and administration held several meetings. “The first thing we did was beef up security for the building designated to be the girls’ hostel,” says Colonel Singh. The school’s 212-acre campus comprises five buildings, out of which the smallest belongs to the girls. “We had two sets of wired fencing. We then readied the indoors… set up a game room. The point was to make the girls feel at home.”
As an added security measure, the school will soon install CCTV cameras near the girls’ hostel.
The six girls — one from Chhingchhip, four from Aizawl, and one from the Chakma Autonomous District Council (CADC) — arrived on June 4. Zonunpuii says she realised what a “big deal” it was only from the welcome they received, and the photos that were clicked.
“We had a small orientation ceremony. A few banners had been put up welcoming the girls,” says Colonel Singh.
Lalruatkima, a Class 7 boy cadet, also remembers the moment clearly. The boys knew the girls were joining, but were unable to disguise their shock, he admits. “They came during our tea break… The only girls we were used to seeing were our teachers. It was odd.”
***
Four months later, the girls have got used to the routine — getting up at dawn for the 5.30 am PT/drill, attending classes, games and exercising, and ending the day with dinner at 7 pm. The cadets follow a curriculum affiliated to the CBSE.
In the corner row of Class 6B, sit the six girls in pairs, studying English, Maths, Hindi, Social Studies, Science and Computer Science. For the third language, they can pick Mizo or Sanskrit. The co-curricular activities include elocution, extempore, etc, and recently they had a joint basketball tournament with the boys. “The girls are coping really well, participating equally,” says Zirsangpuii, who teaches English.
“We saw no reason to separate them in sports or class,” says Lt Colonel U P S Rathore, the current principal. “There is an opportunity for them to talk, interact etc. If you cordon them off, what is the use?”
Teachers have been entrusted to keep a vigilant eye but not to mollycoddle the girls or give them preferential treatment, adds Esther Lalchhanchhuahi, the Mizo teacher. “The point is to prove that girls and boys are equal.”
Jurisa Chakma says she couldn’t sleep for a month, night-time always reminding her of home, where she slept cocooned between her parents. “I cried and cried, but now I am used to it,” she says. Soon after moving into the hostel, Jurisa also started menstruating. Mother Angela could only talk to her on the phone from their home in the CADC, 350 km away. Children are allowed 4-minute calls every Wednesday. Jurisa, Angela says, didn’t sound scared.
The 11-year-old recalls what her father told her on the day of the interview: “Sit straight, look into the interviewer’s eyes, and don’t be scared. He is just like you. So what if he’s an officer? You can be an officer too one day.”
Elizabeth Malsawmtluangi’s case is just the opposite. The daughter of a Chhingchhip local, the 12-year-old’s home is 5-odd km away. From the Mess of the school, located at its highest point, Elizabeth can see the same tower she can from home. “It helps me sleep,” she says.
When her father, mother and aunt come visiting every second Saturday of the month — the designated day for parents’ visit, when they can spend up to five hours with their children — she tells them to bring home food.
Jurisa’s parents don’t miss any visit day too, travelling from the CADC to Aizawl, spending a night there, and then heading to Chhingchhip.
Despite only five women figures of authority at the school right now — the English and Mizo teachers, one administrative member, a nurse, and the girls’ hostel matron — the girls say they don’t feel out of place. “They know they can come to us with any problem. And they do,” says Esther Lalchhanchhuahi.
About the boys, Elizabeth admits she was scared at first when she heard that there were going to be “so many of them and only six girls”.
For the most outspoken of the gang, Malsawmthari, or “MSE” as everyone calls her, the 154:6 sex ratio is fine, but “sometimes gets a bit annoying”. “I don’t like that we have to wait for them before we start eating in the Mess (since they are more in number, the food is only served after the boys arrive). If we reach late, it’s not like that they wait,” says the 11-year-old.
As for the boys, while those in the same grade as the girls are “still shy”, the seniors do talk to the girls sometimes. As a group around him sniggers, K Vanlalrohlua of Class 7B says, “It’s a good thing they have come.”
His bench-mate T C Lalhruaitluanga adds, “I agree that it is good that they get the same education as us, but what is bad is that they don’t quite have the same physical properties.”
It is 9.25 pm on a nippy October evening, five minutes to bedtime. In their night suits, the girls are busy making greeting cards for a classmate’s birthday the next day. And talking about, sometimes boys, but mostly their dreams, to fly aeroplanes, become doctors, steer ships — all of which, they believe, have got new wings with the Sainik School. They all say they have wanted to join the Army “as long as we can remember”.
“I want to save people,” says Elizabeth. “And that requires discipline, which we are learning at Sainik School. Now we know how to live away from our parents and be independent.”
Alicia, the quietest of the lot, wants to become the Air Chief Marshal and finds the boys “too talkative”.
Lalhminghlui, who wants to join the Navy because she “loves ships and the ocean”, adds, “The senior boys talk to us more. The boys in my class… I don’t gel with them.”
Jurisa looks up from her colouring, and giggles, “They sometimes call me Jurassica. Sometimes they tease Zonunpuii because she is so tiny! But it is okay, boys will be boys and the six of us are like family.”
***
While there is no official statement as to why Mizoram was chosen for the “pilot” school, many believe it is because women are perceived to be on a par with men in the state. Around Mizoram, women are the most visible members of society, as shopkeepers, teachers, officers, though they remain absent in the two spheres with the most influence — politics and Church. While Mizoram’s overall literacy rate is 91.3 per cent, women’s stands at 89.27 per cent.
According to Sunil Pathak, who teaches Social Studies at the Sainik School Chhingchhip, bringing in girls is “possible only because it is the Northeast”. “When I met other teachers at workshops in Delhi, they would say, ‘Girls Sainik School mein aane se bohot zyada ho jayega (Girls coming in would be too much)’,” says Pathak, adding they were worried about losing “control”. “They would say why not make a separate school for the girls. But the Northeast mindset is different. Also, this is the only school where the villagers donated land to the government for the school.”
“We really wanted a Sainik School. We thought it would help us progress,” says Lalthaikma, Secretary, Land Donor Association, Chhingchhip. The small village has about 800 households, subsists on farming, and has seen more shops, better roads since the school came up.
Most Sainik Schools, in fact, are situated in rural areas, with the aim of “bringing public school education within the reach of the common man”. While the students are charged a relatively steep Rs 1.6 lakh a year at Chhingchhip — to be paid in two instalments — the state government awards scholarships based on parents’ income.
Says Squadron Leader Pankaj Rawat, Administrative Officer of the school, “Mizoram gives 50 per cent for STs if their parents’ salary is below 1 lakh, and for general category if their salary is Rs 25,000-Rs 50,000. Considering this is a majority tribal state, most students are eligible.”
Most parents admit it is difficult for them to pay 70 per cent of the fee upfront, even if it is reimbursed later. Says a parent, requesting anonymity, “Government schools normally have annual fees of Rs 6,000. But since this is such a respectable school, we source the funds or take loans to make it work.”
Pointing out what a Sainik School admission means for them, Jurisa’s father Priya Ranjan Chakma talks about how the Chakmas, mainly Buddhists, are considered “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh in Christian-dominated Mizoram. “Jurisa has set an example for our community. Neighbours come to me and say, ‘Aapka to life ban gaya (Your life is made)’.”
Lalthaikma, whose family is among the 61 who donated land for the school, says they want more seats for their children. “The government had promised seats for us. We want more of our children to join the forces.”
This indicates a change in attitude in the state towards the forces, which has long been perceived with suspicion in Mizoram due to a long insurgency. During the Mizo National Front uprising of 1966, the IAF had bombed Aizawl — the only time the force has ever raided civilian territory in India.
“That is the past. When I joined the Army, there were no negative comments,” says Captain Babie Laldhunsangi, one of the two women Army officers from Mizoram currently. The 28-year-old joined the Army after a course at the Officers Training Academy (OTA) in Chennai, the only military training institute for women in the country.
At home in Aizawl now on maternity leave, she adds, “The OTA course is heavily focused on physical training, warfare, tactics, outdoor camps etc. We practically have the same training as the men.”
Sixteen years the junior of Captain Laldhunsangi, Malsawmthari echoes her. “Girls or boys — we can do the same things,” she says, adding in a whisper, “Except one. I think girls are tougher than boys. When the term started, many boys called the nurse crying because they were homesick. We did not.”
In 1979, five teenagers from Nagaon formed a music band. Four decades later, a documentary tells the story of their quiet rebellion, one that led to the making of Assam’s first all-girl band.
The year was 1979 and Assam was on the brink of a movement that would come to change the course of its contemporary history. In this season of protest, five teenage girls met in a room in Nagaon, their mandolin, guitar and a pair of bongos in tow. They locked the doors, bolted the windows and drew the blinds to keep the music they made a secret from the world outside.
A few months after their first practice session, the girls — all between the ages of 15 and 16 — found themselves on stage in front of a boisterous crowd at a Puja pandal. “Girls are playing”, an incredulous member of the audience said. In the cacophony that ensued, the band members were certain no one heard their music. But it gave them enough confidence to give themselves an identity and a name: Sur Samalaya, or a medley of melodies.
Four decades later — Anjali Mahanta, the one who had got them together — chuckles at the memory. “We were young, rebellious and we wanted to do something different, something no one else was doing,” she says.
And they did. Today, Mahanta, her sister Arati, and their three friends, Kabita Nath, Sewali Lekharu and Nazma Ahmed, are the subject of Breaking The Silence, a 30-minute documentary on Assam’s first all-women modern music band.
This article was originally published in The Indian Express in December 2020. Full article here.
