Jan 9, 2004

"Who could it be?" Biren thought when he saw a familiar looking man sitting on the raised platform around the Lilasing Khongnang. As he drew closer to the spot where ECHEL Van stays every Friday night waiting for the distress call, he remembered the face. Two weeks ago on a Friday night Biren was on such a night duty. At around 8:00 soon after he had parked his van this man who must have been at his late thirties had come to call ECHEL to take his wife to RIMS Hospital.

When they boarded his van, "This patient is a different one," Biren thought but didn't dare ask the man. A scarf covered her head and she was in extreme pain. Biren drove the van slowly towards RIMS but every single jerk gave her an excruciating jolt. The man tried his best to cushion the jolts by holding her tight and kept saying, " Thoi … we are reaching, we are reaching soon."

When they reached the RIMS, the man directed him to park in front of the Radiotherapy ward. As they wheeled the patient on a trolley Biren realized that she had a flat chest and no hair on her head. Now he could sense what she could be suffering from-it had to be cancer, breast cancer.

The staff around seemed to know her and they greeted the lady in pain as she came in. The doctor too called out, "Sister get the vitals and get ready for a metastasis pain regime." The man then ran about for the admission and the medicines. Biren stood there for a moment and felt so bad for the husband and the patient that he came away without taking any fare. He drove back to the spot and waited for the distress call on his radio.

" Ibungo how are you?" the man called out to Biren as he neared him. Biren came out of his van sensing a sad tone on the man's voice and shook his hand. " I am indebted to you. That day I couldn't pay you in time. Its not much," he continued handing out a 500 rupee note. "Tamo, that's too much and we charge 100 for this distance." "No, no," he insisted, "that was her last journey, please take this."

And he broke down. Biren held him and took him inside the van, "Tamo, its cold. Lets sit inside." It must have been around 9 then and 9 in a winter night in Imphal could be really cold and late. Nobody could be seen on the streets and the two leikais on either side slept peacefully. The croaks of the rain-awaiting frogs and the occasional wrong timing cocks' crow disturbed the stillness of the night.

Biren poured out two cups of coffee from the thermos and gave one to him, "Tamo, please have this, Ima made it." The man took the coffee and said, "Thanks, you are a great group. You are doing a good job." The man that day was on a talking mood; the silence after the loss of his wife had just ended and the man just wanted to talk and talk about his wife and he wanted someone who would listen and just listen.

" Her name was Thoibi, two weeks ago she died in the Hospital and that day was ngatangba, the day after Shradha. The mourning was finally over and the friends and family members would suddenly stop coming because for them it's over but this was jut the beginning for Kora, the man who survived Thoibi. Then he remembered how they had met, and then how two weeks ago; suddenly life wasn't the same again.

Six years ago he met her on the Cheiraoba day (the Manipuri New-Year when after lunch people climb nearby hills to pray at the temples usually atop these hills). She must have come to climb Cheiraoba hill, which was a stone's throw away from Kora's home. She must have been in her early twenties and Kora saw her while resting underneath a "Heikha tree". The heikha colored phanek she was wearing matched with the nearby tree at full bloom. The face and the stillness in her face stole his heart.

He watched her from a distance and couldn't just look away. Something was happening inside him. The time of the year-early April, the cool breeze, the sweetness of the air filled with the fragrance of the heikha and chumbrei mapan all around him all added to the strange feeling he was experiencing inside…one can only feel and it was difficult to describe. Kora was lost; he didn't care to reach the top of the ching but instead waited and just waited.

Suddenly she got up and came downhill, past the point where Kora was sitting. The horde of worshippers in the festival mood flowed down with her. Kora had changed his stream and he too flowed down in the human torrent behind her. What was pulling him-was it her face, her hair? Kora was in no position to answer any of these. She just pulled him like a magnet pulling iron pieces towards it. He followed her till the Thau ground, which had been made into a parking lot. She then boarded a Canter; Kora took his bike and then followed the Canter.

The Canter drove along the Thangmeiband road, and crossed the Khoyathong turning and drove along the Kanglapark and then crossed the Sanjenthong Bridge. At each point the Canter stopped to pick up or drop the passengers in festival mood and dress Kora would stop to see if she got out; but she wouldn't. The vehicle then drove till Kongba Bazar, which happened to be the last stop. Here at this point the lady in heikha phanek got out of the bus. Kora saw her walking all alone along the riverbank of Kongba River.

He didn't have the guts to follow her anywhere and so he just looked from the bridge till she went inside a gate. "Ah it must be the house,…" he told himself. The mission was successful, he thought but he wondered at his strange behaviour-otherwise he wouldn't even talk properly to a girl, forget following a stranger. The time must have arrived for him; he was following his heart and not his head.

To be continued…