Tired, after the day long toil
Under the big fat sun,
She brings only pains
To the empty bellies of her children.
An old grey Fanek
Covers her rough ageing skin.
Under the smoke colored mosquito net,
She lay half naked.

I kissed her and whispered in her ears
"I have to go before the dawn breaks again"
She bade farewell with a smile.
I covered her with my warm cotton cloth.
"Come back home soon" she said.
I headed for the streets of Imphal
To join the the masked men
And the community of the hooded brotherhood.

On the streets of Imphal
Where mountains, walls or prisons are the end.
To the four corners I take them,
My cramped legs do not seem to know
That I am a full timer.
I can hear folks talking
Like the poets from Sahara desert
Who prophesized the snowfall in Moscow.

I learnt to hear every good and evil
I learnt to survive with the masks
I learnt to breath with one meal
I learnt to bear the taunts of men-in-uniform
I learnt not to speak what I have learnt
I learnt to pull the three-wheeler
To make me talk someday like any of you
In this market or on the streets of Imphal.

I do this twenty-four hours a day,
To enable me buy a cow
That can happily graze
On the landlord's green fields.

I am the masked man
On the streets of Imphal
Where mountains, walls or prisons are the end.
My anger and hunger, you will not notice,
Because I am the masked man.
Do not take my mask off
Do not disturb my way of life
Leave me alone.

I know no science and literature
I am just a creature under the fat sun.
I know you are wrong
You better stop blowing your horn
I know no socialism or capitalism,
I am not a surrealist,
I do not wait for a working class hero,
I do not go to pray over the well-carved rocks,
I have no hymns to hum.

I am just one of the masked men
On these streets of Imphal.
And I know you are wrong,
You better stop blowing your horn.

Or you talk to me when I am unmasked
I will tell you what flows over the Imphal River.
I will tell you when does dawn break
And how will it wipe the sweats off my brow
And have a look at the valley
From the tops of the mountains
That blocked you from the rest of the civilizations.
It is getting late and I can not narrate my blues.
I am heading home for a sweet night
With my grey Fanek clad wife.
Under my thatched roof home,
I have to help my crawling children
To make them walk.....