Welcome to the jungle of urbanizing Manipur.

Do toast to the new breed of yuppies and their parameters for ascension. The short cut method. Pretty much like M Tyra’s Quicker Maths.

Theirs also is a convenient haste. It’s basically a design for living. With pronounced fittingness. This alternative is like a double edged saber- one becomes both the police and taxman sans Appointment letters.

If Kiran Karnik has NASSCOM, Bill Gayes Microsoft and Basu Communism, the Manipuri Yuppies too prided in their Kalashnikovs. In the terminal prognosis, it’s the Kalashnikovification of Manipur. Complete and whole.

Celebrate organized crime. For they rounded up life in Manipur. Hail them Dadas who call the shots at whom, where and when. Election last I got a memo from one. Dispatch from the ‘ofis’ of a certain ‘mility’ council.

Handwritten with a ballpoint pen on a crumpled foolscap paper. Fake as the Armani belts sold around Thangal Bazar, I mused. But measure their audacity and the ease with which some dare to live off your pocket.

Let’s face it. Our so called underground movement has us on our wits end now. Every goddamned one of us. The press says terrorism and how apt. frighteners at their level best.

Even if it were a nationalism movement, it had become ill-regulated. Much worse than we wanted it to be. Had it been ever wanted in the first place.

Too many groups, too many times are walloping the civil. By flexing their perverted form of heroism. And how. From your average paan dukanders to the great O can testify to that. This economic subjugation of civilians is the new face of imperialism imposed upon us.

The bulk of times, ‘the army of the nation’ resembles extortion racket. Ran by gifted deviant souls. We have come to a point where some group of parasites arbitrates how much a law abiding citizen must earn.

It’s the ugliest curse when you see a no gooder riding his four-wheeler past you, and it hits you that you’d contributed 10 per cent of the price of his car. Ours is a sob story which for them is to make and make.

Too bad, underground groups and economic harassment are inseparable now. Like the sides of a coin. To hell with their ceasefire crap.

Mind you, in their ever involving timetable to dispatch ‘demand letters’ and collecting the same, they’ve forgotten their purported mission. To fight. If the Army harasses, the UGs torments. They fare no better. They are as trigger happy if not happier.

Their hallow cause appears invisible in the face of basic human rights un-friendly conducts. In the desperation for fiefdoms, they have literally balkanize Manipur and execution is their stamp of sovereignty. UGs have illegally superseded the civil bodies.

More precisely, they have superannuated the latter. Village councils, tribe bodies and community organizations are rendered redundant. And the bullsh*t smudges on all of us.

Operation All Clear they said. But the dandruff only worsens.

Crybaby O only talks tough occasionally. Period.

Some in the know cites optimism ala Punjab. But Manipur Police is nowhere near its counterpart in Punjab.

In fact, it’s a wonder why the Thanas are still superintended at all here. The potential and vitality of local inputs cannot be undervalued in any CI operation.

But our police only watch us being fleece and maim in broad daylight. When they themselves don’t engage in the act.

A news report post the discovery of the remains of Hubert and Martin concluded with a note that the NSCN-IM has x suspect, the KRA x and UNLF another x.

Where are the police? At this, the Vidhyan Mantri was heard humming to himself...

Second time around
Home’s under me
The bucks still stops here
Should shed more beads
One here, a couple there
Gunners still run
Craze with fun
Can I beat them? Who cares?
Can’t beat them
Better join them
Aur kya?