Yet another Ningol Chakkouba is upon us and while we go ahead and celebrate the day perhaps the time has come for us all to go beyond the obvious meaning of the day and delve a little deeper to give a deeper meaning to the celebration.

It is obvious that Ningol Chakkouba is essentially about the love and ties between sisters and brothers but there is something more than just the love between siblings and this all that more important today given the fact that there is an increasing need to assess the social and economic positions of women in the Manipuri society.

Down the years, women have been socially conditioned and made to realise that their parental home is not their final place of residence and one day they have to move out to a new place to be with their husband and raise their children.

This is something which is socially accepted and which has worked well for society and women have come to acknowledge that they will one day have to move out.

This is what makes the life of a woman all that more poignant and meaningful.

It is never easy to move and stay in a completely new environment, away from one's parents and siblings, and many men today, who once had to spend their days in boarding schools and college hostels will realise this.

The only difference here is that while the boys know that their days at the boarding school or college hostel is a temporary arrangement, the women here have to accept that moving out from their parental home is final and they have to begin a new life in a new house and make it into a Home.

There is something exquisitely moving about this social practice and reality and a little study along this line will make us to appreciate the qualities of womanhood.

Indeed to make Ningol Chakkouba all that more meaningful, we need to realise the efforts that women have put in to fit into a new environment once they get married and realising this point will make all men appreciate the role of women, including the efforts of their mothers and their wives as well as their daughters.

A sincere effort to understand this point will make us or rather society as a whole to appreciate the role of women and this will in turn lead to an improvement in the social status of women.

Manipur is a proud inheritor of the Nupi Lans and the meira paibi movement is something unique to the place.

However we still have to grapple with the question of where women actually stand in society.

What is the position of women in the social structure ? Why is it that women continue to be discriminated against ?

These questions can be tackled positively and effectively if we care to understand the life of women in general, from the time they are born to the time they are married off to the time they raise their children and make their new house a Home.

Ningol Chakkouba should be a day about cementing the ties of love and bond between brothers and sisters and at the same time it should also be about a day to understand what it is to be a woman in the Manipuri society.

Celebrating the day along this line will make Ningol Chakkouba more meaningful.

A very happy Ningol Chakkouba to all our readers.