Voice from the east

Posted on September 29, 2014 0 Comments23
Manipuri author-activist Binalakshmi Nepram is why Bangalore is the city of weapons and why we need pay attention to what’s happening in our “backyard”

At the ongoing Bangalore Literature Festival, Binalakshmi Nepram stands out for her elegance, dressed in typical Manipuri attire, the bright blue complementing her complexion. But her soft-spoken demeanour is misleading. At the media lounge, two elderly ladies walk up hesitatingly to Nepram and extend their hands to her. “You were the only one who spoke from the gut,” says one of them. “We could feel the josh (fire) in you. All the best.”

Nepram is touched. At her first literature festival, the agenda of this writer-cum-activist is clear — to make people understand (“not just tell a story to those who listen to me”) what is going on in the Northeast, or as she says, “in your own backyard”.

What makes Nepram the way she is today? To her credit are books that are considered the go-to references to the region, including South Asia’s Fractured Frontier: Armed Conflict, Narcotics and Small Arms Proliferation in India’s Northeast. But she had started out as a poet, inspired by her home state. “I like the aesthetics of life, not to mistake it with luxury but the simple rhythm of life,” she muses. She chose to be an activist-writer because writing is an art of healing.

Nepram moved to New Delhi in 1997 in order to study physics at Miranda College. With 84 per cent, she was the first on the waitlist. She had enrolled in the Math Honours programme while waiting for the subject she loved. But when the final list was announced, her name was missing. Incited by the injustice, she walked into the principal’s office and told her that by not giving her the seat, India just lost a good physicist. She transferred to Rajdhani College to study physics. “It was a disaster as the facilities were bad, there were hardly any lecturers and reaching the place took me more than an hour,” she says.

One day, while doing a physics experiment, she just walked out and headed to the Vice Chancellor’s office. She told him that her health was failing and deserved to get something closer to her rented home. “He asked what my percentage was. He made a few calls and asked hesitatingly if I would consider a degree in history at IP college.” Since she was loathe to waste a year, Nepram accepted and in three months cleared the exams. After three years, she went on to do her masters and that is when the proverbial penny dropped.

“It flashed to me that there was nothing (in the course) about the Northeast. I went to a historian who was my professor at the Delhi University and asked,” she smiles wryly. His brusque answer stunned her: Those who want to learn the history of Northeast should go there and learn. That became the inspiration for Nepram to complete her MPhil thesis in International Relations with focus on South Asia. This was at the Jawaharlal Nehru University where “the seed that had refused to blossom at DU now had a chance to flourish”. And so began what she terms the “hardcore” writing.

But her stint in Delhi, where for the first time she saw an air conditioner, had done two things. “It killed my writing for there is no muse,” Nepram laughs. And it made her think of home. “When you are away from home, you think about it. And I thought of the conflict and was hell bent to understand why they happen.”

Think about it, she says, to live in a place where curfew is the norm and one gets to see gun-toting army jawans every half a kilometre. “With about 60 insurgent groups and so many army battalions, how can one not call it an army zone?” she asks.

Her thesis set her off to the Northeast where Nepram backpacked for two years going into the hinterland, meeting gun traders and researching about the narco-trafficking syndicate. One of seven siblings, her family was worried. In fact, she jokes, her parents even thought that she had joined the insurgents. Staying in hotels that charged Rs 25 for a room, she travelled with a purpose. “There are 58 types of weapons in the region and I followed each weapon’s journey into the land to understand where they come from,” says Nepram, who is now voluble. “Who profits from the conflict? The arms dealers and the drug traffickers. I chased them.”

Apart from writing on the subject, she started two organisations in 2004 — Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network and Control Arms Foundation of India. The latter is committed to finding solutions to end violence caused by small arms, light weapons and IED proliferation.

Back at the festival, Nepram springs another surprise on the audience. “Bangalore,” she thunders, “is the city of weapons.” Later, she explains that it is in this city that about 600 weapon dealers from all over the world meet every second year. She is fighting as much as she can. But all these issues have made her writing harsh. “Like Delhi,” she says, an impish glint in her eyes.

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