The Forgotten Sandrembi....

Omila Thounaojam *

Sandrembi chaishra : Prize winning entries in painting competition held in 2007 by International Manipuri Progressive Forum (IMPFO, UK)
Pix Courtesy - Dr Krishnananda Samurailatpam

How can I ever forget ema's voice modulations when she tried genuinely hard to dramatize each major segment of Sandrembi's tale. It was fascinating every time when Sandrembi suffered and her inner strength was tested.

My eyes won't even blink and my mother would stop narrating in the mid and will remind me to close my mouth. Out of excitement I along with my siblings would become stone still whenever episodes of Sandrembi were told to us.

We did our home works dutifully on time so that we could jointly convince ema to retell the tale of light and darkness reflected in the narration.

Whether it was this particular segment when Sandrembi's mother was killed by an evil plot underlined with deceit, or the charming prince all captured by the beauty of plain Sandrembi, this tale never stopped letting us journey into the best imaginary world of wisdom.

My heart would sink deep always when dark sides represented by Cheisa and her crooked hearted mother weave plots one after the other to torture the kind Sandrembi and my mother would interrupt that time in between and say that a good twist is on the way in order to uplift our moods.

All in all the best part of every Sandrembi session was that the good triumphs over the evil and the qualities of perseverance and good will never fail to light the best in one's spirit.

What do I reflect on now when the beauty of that tale seems to slowly fade away in a kind of abyss? It's heartbreaking when today's younger generations are losing so much of the treasure like indigenous tales of our land.

Sandrembi... has become a forgotten local tale. How many of such tales go missing like a bubble disappearing in the thin air would be hard to assess. But I do surely know that the missing link must be studied.

Our ancestors and their celebrated tales had moral messages inscribed carefully. Just like the Cinderella tale – celebrated forever, Sandrembi's tale also contains the supreme plot features that make it no lesser a grander tale to be told ceaselessly.

The magical power of "sanabun pubi pamde, pun pubi pammi" or the moving episode where Sandrembi feeds her young baby brother by taking the edge of her thin innafi soaked up in the water in the late hour of the silent night – a homely tale as this has never failed in supervising us about the philosophical wisdoms related to life principles.

The higher planes of thought that this tale provoked is too immense to be elucidated here convincingly. But critical questions related to the definition of "beauty, "personality," "virtues," and most predominantly, the old saying about good winning over the evil undertakings in life is holed up beautifully by this story.

The simple message of this writes today is just this the forgotten tales must be remembered let the old and the new be merged the flow should be continuous the Vision – the Light should be The Light that guides ... The choice is ours, the light in us is fading away making the crucial pathways of life more dark and vast.

We lack the brighter visions to life and the way each episodic representations of it has some special messages one or the other way. May be historically some of the flows to the continuity of our traditional flow was interrupted in the middle.

Let us revive those almost forgotten aspects of our culture and bridge them up. Let the meaningful elements of our past be merged with the present so that it recreates the best cultural patterns to be carried forward to the future.

Hope this endeavor makes perfect sense to many and the remembering of the forgotten starts up speedily for the best.