Memories of Nagaland

When it comes to really old memories, I am never sure whether it is the memories themselves I remember, or a memory of me remembering the events of that memory. If that sounds complicated, let me explain. You may have this memory of something you did as a three year old. However your parents would have described it over and over to you, you may have seen photographs of that time, and you recollect that as an eight year old you absolutely remembered what it was like to be a three year old doing that particular thing. However, now, as an adult, that actual memory becomes hazier and hazier and what other people told you your recollection of having had that memory is most of what your memory of that particular event is. Memories of before I was 5 and a half years old are slowly fading or becoming memories where I know I was at a certain place and doing something but it’s as if its someone else’s memory . I don’t remember much of what I used to think about. Like everything that happened before we moved from Nagaland to Bikaner (it sounds great right!) , every memory of that is stored in a different part of my brain.

And it was the most significant change in my young life. We lived in villages, actually spent some months in a house made of mud, I changed schools every three months. Every post that my father went to, we followed him, to the aforementioned mud houses, to places where I walked down from a hill to go to school. Then in the holidays I’d go to Dehradun, Chandigarh, Delhi, places as different from rural Nagaland as they could be. I remember wanting to buy one of those portable video games you could play tetris on, and I wanted to know why it wasn’t available in the place I lived in. It was all very confusing for a young kid. We lived in a place called Ghaspani, named because it used be a place for horses to get ghas and pani (grass and water). I’ve lived in places called Medziphema, Peren, Newland, Diphu etc. I didn’t even know how they are properly spelt but the trusty internet was there to help! My most vivid memories are those of walking to school. In Peren I went down a hill to get to school and then went up the winding road on the hill to get back. In Diphu, it was a relatively flat walk where I used to eat Jamuns on the way. In Newland, the walk was all right but I remember the day a helicopter with some local dignitary landed and my parents were meeting him. During recess the whole class was looking wistfully at the helicopter while I ran all the way to my parents who were sitting in chairs with whoever it was had come and back. I also knew some of the language as a child. In retrospect, I never knew the extent of the insurgency at the time we were there. I knew my father was in the Assam Rifles and have hazy memories of hearing about some women being caught as an informer, but never knew about people dying all around us, both on our side and the rebels. These memories are real and at the same time stories heard later, bit by bit so I don’t know what I actually remember and how much I’ve created in my mind, it’s a hodgepodge really.

The village of Peren

One think I’m sure about remembering, and not something ever discussed and dissected with my parents was a visit to Kohima, where we went to a really interesting Naga Museum and the Kohima War Cemetery. The War Cemetery was beautiful and serene and it contains a memorial to all the Allied Soldiers(which includes Indians) who fought against the Japanese in World War II in the Battle of Kohima. It contains the famous epitaph,

When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For your Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today.

A part of the Kohima War Cemetery

And yes, my earliest memory, I was a little less than three years old when my sister was born in Dimapur, Nagaland.

Visits to Churches, being told by distant relatives who live in Nagaland not to visit them as we came in an Assam Rifles gypsy, hearing that the convoy we were travelling in could be ambushed, stories of the strange food (to us), the awesome Army parties with the bands, the torrential rain and occasional earthquakes, and the incredible beauty of the places we lived in. My memories of that place are like a James Joyce style stream of consciousness flow in his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. There is no chronology in my head, it is just a striking assortment of images, sounds and smells coupled with explanations by people who experienced these places as adults. For some reason, I remember a lot of snails… and scrumptious pineapples. Nagaland was different, dangerous(though I didn’t know it then), exotic and beautiful. The place, and the constant moving surely affected me. I was a shy child for a long time, maybe coming from the way things were around me then. But I’m amazingly lucky to have those memories. It changed my parents too, who saw a completely different culture, experienced living in perpetual personal danger and realized the apathy the rest of the country has towards the northeast. I would love to go there again just to see if there’s anything I recognize from the mosaic of memories in my head!