Me and my E-Pao!
- a 10th Anniversary collection -

By: Arkay *

Having a home away from home is not an easy task. It has been nearly 13 years now since I have been working and living outside of Manipur. With the situation still volatile in my good old homeland and with most of my near and dear ones still there, it becomes inevitable that whenever something untoward happens, we want to know what is happening, whether all my near and dear ones are safe and sound. But with utmost apathy from the media while covering the forsaken area called the northeast, and Manipur being no exception, more often than not, there is no coverage in the media. And although the increased penetration of telephones, especially mobile phones have reduced some of the problems, however, if one has tried to ring up a relative during an emergency, he would have most probably heard the "all lines in this route are busy..." tone rather than the voice of a loved one. It is against this backdrop that I realize how much "E-pao" has become a part of life during the last few years....did I say a few years? E-pao is going to hit 10 years!! It’s amazing. It seems like only yesterday when my wife asked, when would be the best time to go home as we have to carry out the "Nahutpa" of our elder son. She had phoned home and asked her grandmother to do a "kuthi yengba" and inevitably the advised she get from her grandma was, "ebemma, panji nadi shajibugi mangani panbadagi eenga gi nini panba foubadi numit phei haine..."
(loosely translated as: the auspicious dates, as per the astrologer falls between the 5th of shajibu and the 2nd of eenga).
Now "shajibu".."eenga" are like greek and latin to us though we know they are months of the Manipuri calendar based on the lunar movements rather than on the solar movements on which the Gregorian calendar is based. So we searched for the Manipuri calendar that we brought from our last trip home, but in vain. Our domestic help, who was watching us curiously asked, "saab, aap yeh toh nahin dhoon rahe ho?" and out came the crumpled calendar, with some pages missing from among the old dump of newspapers.
With a huge sigh I flopped in front of my laptop and typed "Manipuri calendar?" in google and out came E-pao! From that day, e-pao calendar has always been on my desktop. Also, whenever we plan a trip home, even for a holiday, we have to consult e-pao first...

E-pao has evolved a lot through the years with many unique applications like e-ming....I mean such an innovative idea and the nomenclature, more hilarious than appropriate, but all the same very refreshing and nostalgic especially to expats like me. I still relish old classic songs of khun joy, aheibam shyam, sanaton... and I have a huge collection, but god only knows how I built that collection. Whenever I go home, I scout for the songs and wish there were mp3 CDs, but not to be. Even today with so much technology around, it is a shame that we still do not have these gems readily available in the market. Anyway, I bought cassettes from shops behind kangjeibung, near friends mini, from the non-manipuri who has a pan-dukan near blue moon restaurant, who surprisingly has a good collection. The cassettes are then played, captured in my laptop and converted to mp3. And now-a-days, I need not go to all the trouble I simply turn on Manipur radio on e-pao! My younger son has the habit of going to sleep only after a story has been read to him...naturally, the stories had to run out one fine day and herein the "phunga waries" on e-pao comes as a life saver with a bit of personal touch.

And reading "local" news in e-pao first thing in the morning along with your morning tea has its inherent social advantage as well. After a bomb blast in nambol bazar I rang up my maternal aunt and asked, "ene, ngarang bomb pokhai haido mamma hoi angangshing ashok-apan yaodeko?" to which she almost broke down and replied, "Ibungo, karishu toude, adubu nangna chinglon lanna leikhrabashu nanne hoi ningshinglakpashe yamna nungshi...eigi echa nupi malom da ongba dudi hoijikphou karimta hangbirakte!!"

This is why, even though work has taken me to many parts of the world, wherever I am, the first news I read is on e-pao.
Thank you e-pao, for keeping me in touch with my roots.