The Dark Days Should End or Else ...

Omila Thounaojam *

Patriots' Day Observation at Thangal General Temple complex on 13th August 2012 :: Pix - Banti Phurailatpam

All we care for today is playing the role of a MOCKING BIRD who has no sense of having a life defined by an authentic identity of one's own but instead keep on living a life of an ESCAPIST.

Incense sticks were burnt, patriotic songs also sung, poems praising our patriots echoed all over the places in Manipur on the day of our Patriots that is on the 13th of August.

Indeed we, Manipuris remembered THEM and offered THEM our tributes and ironically thought "yes" we've done what we could by celebrating a day only dedicated to them. All over again the definition of patriotism, being patriotic and a patriot were the talk of the town.

For one more time, we thought we understood THEM and their SACRIFICES only meant for us. So far all we've done is living a self-satisfied life with no complaints raised whenever things were all happening wrong.

Oh! The victim is not related to us….is the mentality we all bore and we just move on doing NOTHING but uttering a line or two that somehow sounds like that of an EXPERT.

The current trend of our society seems to be working on this line of thought that says that we are born to live, so we live to just eat and die a silent death when time comes. Amazing indeed but we're true SURVIVERS and the way we adapt to things all misguided and mismatched is highly commendable.

Ask one about what their take is on 13th of August and the frank answer we'll get is Bir Tikendrajit, Paona Brajabasi and Thangal General and then finished. This is the answer to the question of what should be our responses when the question of BONDAGE, FREEDOM and PATRIOT-ISM are offered to us.

Strange us but stranger are the ways nowadays where every critical aspect of social and cultural ideological ideals are already diluted or dissolved in a kind of self-adopted mental state guided by IGNORANCE.

That's why our state today are occupied less by common man but in majority by self-acclaimed so called PATRIOTS who have no clue about IT or its -ISMS derivations.

Every nook and corners of our state are occupied by patriots in uniforms with their heads held up high with great pride not because they are all set and willing to even follow the footsteps of our Great leaders of the PAST- our ANCESTORS but because they got power in the form of machines and guns.

What a paradox indeed when we sit back and think about HOW patriots in the past made its fellow countrymen all secured by fighting anything that represented TERROR and NOW when the table is turned around and forms of conflicts that call for some to come forward and sacrifice have no relevance or meaning anymore.

THOSE were the great souls, who are true epitome of what true leadership and responsibility stand for and hence are mortal beings immortalized through their selfless deeds.

All one mourns for when one sincerely remembers about the lives of the great spirits of the Meiteis in the past is the irreparable and disastrous fashions in which the idea of TRUE SPIRIT today finds no significant place of importance in our hearts and minds.

All we care for today is playing the role of a MOCKING BIRD who has no sense of having a life defined by an authentic identity of one's own but instead keep on living a life of an ESCAPIST.

Somehow at the core of things, we all know that DARK DAYS in our homeland should END and newer improvised systems should dawn or ELSE we should start seeing Manipur parallel to the image of A DESERTED VILLAGE in few years to come.