A Generation Wiped Out

Tarun Nongthombam *

It was in early eighties, as a young boy our world was enjoyable with the little we had. We had no idea of what was striking us, something so big that it left a permanent scare in our soul. All my elders who helped me tie my shoe laces, who balanced my first bicycle ride, who shielded me from school bully are all gone. A deadly combination of heroin and AIDS has plucked all of them from life in their prime.

My first knowledge of a person who suffered from AIDS was a leikei tamo. I would call him RK. RK happened to be a very lively person; he even set up a small leikai music band. I can recall how proud he felt after participating in an A.I.R. children's program. As a young adult, he started travelling to far places like Moreh with the band and that is where, I assume, he contacted AIDS. His case was the first in leikai. This was the time when nobody knew what AIDS was.

When his symptoms were full blown, he would remain confined in his house. He was alone as his parents died a year before and neighbors took turns to feed him. As a kid I heard stories of him being reduced to skin and bones but never had the courage to see him in that condition. People would feed him from far fearing that they would contact the disease if it was communicable. Finally, he succumbed to the disease.

This was the time when our society could have woken up and comprehended that something very wrong was happening. Precious crucial time was lost and by the time we realized, the disease had spread far and wide with its tentacles all around. I then started seeing many young people not coming out for months from their homes and finally bodies would come out instead!

Family would not talk about the cause of death, fearing the social stigma it carried. In a cremation I attended as a young boy, I could see the pain, in the death body, which the decease could have undergone in his final hours. These were the days when medical intervention was minimal.

I would call my elders' generation as the most unlucky and most unfortunate in modern Manipur. It was as if chahi taret khuntakpa had struck again. It was a generation when Manipur Government started having no jobs. My elders were left to fend for themselves and with nowhere to go many took to drugs.

There was no way of going outside Manipur; studying like the present generation. Families had one member who earned, which was too little with many hungry mouths to feed. It was a generation when first wave of smuggled heroin started coming into Manipur, It was a generation when helicopters dropped leaflets in Imphal to communicate to its citizens. It was a generation which had only district hospital as the main medical centers.

We all behaved like an ostrich burying head in sand, hoping that bad things would go away. The mistake we made was too costly and we will be suffering for our inaction for many years to come. One former Manipur governor said, "Manipuri society has become indifferent society and has repeatedly failed to raise its voice in many crucial challenges it is facing".

I wish our political leaders had shown some providence, statesmanship and perceived the danger that was looming large.
I wish our society had woken up in time, stopped staying aloof and understood youth's dilemma and distress of that time.
I wish our police had done its duty and had come hard on the drug peddlers.
I wish our medical community had abided by their Hippocratic Oath, when Manipur was crying for help.

This is what Robert F. Kennedy said, "Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

Manipuri society miserably failed its youth during those difficult days, a proper shardanjali or homage which we can give to the departed souls is not to let this happen ever again!