The Shadows of the Khaki and the Black Law

You are always there

In groups on sun-scorched roadsides,

On rain-beaten days too

And late at night when the city sleeps.

You point your guns at us menfolk.

But your eyes turn towards the womenfolk

And I know you prefer the younger lot.

I can’t help but ask you:

“Are we men too ugly for your eyes?”

Worry not, I never asked you to be gay.

Do look at us with your eyes for once

And not always with your guns, please;

Because guns don’t wink or smile at us!

Or you can teach them that too if you think 

you can.

One Meitei kavi¹ once wrote:

“In this present Manipur,

To be dressed in phanek only saves life.

What do you say, my friend peace keepers?

Let all the men wear phanek?!”²

I’m a student.

A teenager.

A hard working farmer.

An innocent citizen.

A father.

A son, a brother.

I’m a human just like you.

Or, if I may ask, are you not one?

I try to breathe and smile a bit

And I know it’s my right to live.

While you snuff out my life,

Tears are falling from the sky 

as if they would drown the valley.

My mother is still waiting for me

And my father is searching 

for bits of my clothing everywhere 

like a mad man.

You take me to dark alleys 

and you shoot me in the head

And throw over my dead body a gun 

I didn’t even buy.

Why do you love to make me 

your target practice?

Is the Government too poor 

to buy you some cardboard sheets to 

shoot at?

You could’ve asked before you shot me 

as I have so many in my

backyard.

Or, maybe, was it necessary for you to punish me 

for not committing any crime?

Yes, in Kangleipak, people must commit a crime to live 

or else, they would 

end up dead.

O gods and goddesses,

where have you gone?

Are you, too, afraid to live in this land

like me,

now that you have run away?

But I heard that you are bullet-proof and super powerful.

Or is everything a lie, a deception,

a betrayal, a joke?

Yet the shadow keeps on following me…

Maybe it is the only truth!

© Rajkumar Panthoiren

References:-

    1. The Meitei kavi is Thangjam Ibopishak.

        2. (the translated piece in quote) Jiten Nongthombam. The Mind of the Middle Class and Modern Manipur Literature in Post-colonial period. In the Rise of Middle Classes in Manipur, ed. Gangmumei Kamei, 2002. p. 162, New Delhi: Akansha Publishing House