Childhood...

Can I please have my Childhood back!

Dr. Yashesh Anantani

I am pretty sure most of us in grihasthashram, in our old age today, remember fondly, desire or even yearn for our childhood to return – turn the clock backwards like in those Hollywood films. How I wish I could do that!

What is it that makes the nostalgia so precious, so powerful? Could it be the circumstances around the present day children, I wonder – you know, overindulging them materially and financially, availability of everything a child desires for, soft-on-discipline parentage, the terrible schooling, rote education that suppresses development of facultative and cognitive skills, lack of spatial development, of being bright without the brilliance of enabling environment for personality development…the list could be endless. In a sense, any comparison probably makes us feel as being underprivileged during our upbringing way back in 1950s.

Did I say ‘underprivileged’? Well, maybe, maybe not. It could be a perception borne out of sheer envy. However, here is a rather improbable thought – maybe we as children were BETTER privileged in that techno-less era!! Shall we find out how? Let me take you traveling back in time ... to my childhood in Africa! 

Revisiting Childhood Dar-es-Salaam, 2010 (all photos)

British East Africa; Dar-es-Salaam, to be precise, the Capital city of (then) Tanganyika! That by itself was the first and foremost privilege, and that of learning from the British, not only governance, management and discipline but also the education system. We had co-education up to Grade VI in primary school. We had Indian teachers, characters and personalities that alas, have been lost in time and history, never ever replicated in modern day education. The young impressionable minds, when exposed to the aura of great teachers, can get turned on towards excellence! Talking of impressions, the girls in my class were cute. But conservatism ruled the Indian families then and being brought up with strict discipline, we remained innocent – and ignorant.

The British administration was very clever! Just as we sensed having inklings of budding romance in primary school, the address and the teachers changed in the secondary school! The girls went separately to a neighbouring school, with its fencing resembling wartime PoW camp! We had huge open grounds then and were told in no uncertain terms that we were not to go towards the girls’ school fencing. That was the end of the very concept of a childhood romance! And if there was any proof of the ‘divide & rule’ politics of the British killjoys, this was it!! So praise some brave souls I know who had the courage to cross the line…sorry, fence!!

Anyway, this also meant we got quality time for studies in the secondary school. Always numbering 30 in a class, some of us have been canned between the fingers by none other than the Principal himself for wrong-doings. Not understanding anything akin to mathematics was my genetic disorder! I remember standing on the bench with a rather sheepish look for 45 minutes for not answering a simple (must have been very difficult) question about Book-keeping coming from a handsome Maharashtrian teacher; it is a different matter that the same married gentleman was also a subject of our very adult gossip during many a recess. That was in 1957 in Grade VII.

The Cambridge system of education was such that an average student like me could be motivated and be promoted to Grade X-Royal that was made up of a select few who would then go straight to Grade XII, skipping one year in the process. I finally got First Class in my Cambridge School Certificate exams in December, 1963, getting super-distinction in English and Gujarati languages and distinction in Science. Oral English was an optional subject that I passed too. The system also allowed me to exit the exam hall giving back a blank History paper – this, for the subject that I hated most, could be pre-planned. There was no such thing as ‘objective’ questions! The question papers tested skills and even innovative bent of mind.

After school-hours, it was a quick homework time. The old, valve-based radio with a tuner was used rarely by the family. It would be either AIR-Overseas news, BBC news or a half-hour of Hindi film songs on the local broadcasting station. We also had His Master’s Voice Gramophone that today fetches a hefty sum in the antique market. Television was unheard of then. But we had some really exquisite movie theaters and I cannot forget the wide-eyed thrill I experienced every time the beautiful curtain rose upwards in folds, slowly and majestically; the technology never failed to amaze the child in me.

Seeing movies was a family affair, and the long interval, a social event. Despite strict discipline at home including table manners and eating styles, and in spite of the fact that I was the sixth and final child with a 14-year gap between me and the previous male, the elders have always taken me along to see almost all the Hindi and English classics, dance ballets and concerts (Gopi Krishna, Sitara Devi, Uday & Amala Shanker, Asha Parekh and Jyutika Roy to name a few). Sunday evenings would mean walking down to the white sand beaches with friends, anxiously looking out for girls because for once, they would not be in that boring uniform. Did they look pretty!!

While on films, how can I ever forget the music in Hindi classics! The lyrics, the composition, the orchestra arrangement and accordingly, the acting, in that order, were all borne out of time consuming labour of love in trying to match with the film script and the ethos therein. As a result, not only could we immediately memorize the songs, even school children and youngsters today actually sing those songs. Also, the orchestra was full of violins, a harmonium, an accordion and an occasional mouth organ - nothing artificially electronic. In fact many children those days played mouth organs (and tysocoters) as hobby. As we celebrate 100 years of Indian cinema today, those sound tracks with lilting melodies, mellifluous voices and the chocolate heroes and make-up-less-yet-beautiful heroines are being terribly missed.

Coming back to my memory track, a study of religious scriptures at the pathshala was compulsory for me, daily 4-5pm. The vyayamshala was next door, 5-6pm; unlike modern gyms, there was no fancy equipment. It was no-tech ‘aerobics’, a term unheard of those days. Again, latecomers were punished by going round the campus with heavy magdals (hand-held teak wood weights for body building) on both the shoulders – one possible reason why I remained stunted at 4ft in height till age seventeen! We always volunteered for event management at the temples or for our community organizations for various festivals. I can proudly say that I played the Indian percussion drum set, nobat, fluently for 45 minutes at the temple every Monday of the auspicious shravan month, every year.

Apart from cricket, we had our own terrific innovations of street games that required no sports gear. Why, the girls/boys even played ‘housie’ (ghar-ghar); we will actually engineer a small hut in the backyard and role-play husband, wife, brother, sister, even father, and bring in pre-cooked food to be served by the ‘wife’! Pure home science education if nothing else! 

Outings to Uluguru mountains, Ruvu river always in spate, and safaris to Mikumi game reserve and Moshi-Arusha region in our family cars were frequent. The safaris to Serengeti National Park stand out in memory - and so also swimming at the nearby beaches almost every other day. The occasional rail travel was beautiful. 

The best moments however were on board the big white ships in cabin class, twelve days of sheer magic, each way to and from Bombay, each year - and that too via the quaint towns of Zanzibar Island, Mombasa in Kenya and the most exotic of all, the Seychelles islands. Approaching this tropical coral archipelago, one could see from the ship deck, the refractively raised floor of a crystal-clear blue ocean with big, colourful marine fish of all varieties, sizes and shapes. We did fly occasionally in those four-engine Comets but that meant 24 hrs of flying time plus two changes of flights.

One thing I am not sure about is whether I had ever had ‘parental guidance’ the way modern counsellors mean (and make business out of it). The very sight of father’s imposing, strict  personality, the fear of a ringing slap or that of a flying steel saucer coming straight at you if entering home after 7pm sharp – may be these are attributes that when assimilated together, can be loosely paraphrased as ‘parental guidance’! Whatever it was, it worked…very effectively! 

And so, once upon a time, life was a song. We, girls and boys together, grew up to be nice, simplistic, eco-friendly children with a growth potential that was built out of unintended character building activities, accepted disciplined approach to life, and motivated desire for culture, innovation and adventure. It was a fancy-free age, absolutely pure and divine. We never had toys or computers to ‘develop our mind’. Yet, we were exposed to an atmosphere and circumstances that somehow made us what we are today. Today, we have also undergone change in attitudes to keep pace with first, modernization and then, globalization, and with the ever-evolving gen-next. It is an extremely fast, hurtling process of evolution that just cannot be stopped. In contrast, ours was a laid back era with no peer pressures; and yet, that was the childhood when there really was no free time! Instead, what we had was quality time, something that is possibly being denied to a child in today’s hectic world. It could be a matter of opinion but perhaps, this very spatial dimension to character engineering is missing today, a dimension that we as children were so privileged to experience.

So here is an ode to our childhood - a cuddly sweet little package wrapped with the rainbow hues of unintended character-building attributes; acceptance of discipline as a way of life; of education and learning in totality; of innocence, of everlasting bonds of genuine love and of sustainable friendships so created. Oh! How sorely I miss it! Unfortunately, the childhood era of yours and mine just cannot be brought back. It can only be played out, and replayed, with deliberate regularity in our psyche - with a reminiscent smile; with joy and with gratitude for all the privileges we got…gratitude to that intangible, inexplicable entity – Destiny!

Footfalls in Nagaland

Footfalls in Nagaland

Dr. Yashesh Anantani

PROLOGUE

Nagaland borders the states of Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, and across an international frontier, the Union of Myanmar (formerly Burma). It is home to some two million people from some sixteen Tibetan-Mongol-Burmese tribes and several sub-tribes who have been fighting a remote and rarely reported war for independence from India, on and off, since early 1950s. What Naga independence movements and guerilla armies have been fighting for over several decades is the dream of ‘Nagalim’ or a Greater Nagaland, an independent country that would unite all the tribes in a land of their own.

Dimapur is where most travelers to Nagaland enter the state. A question that anyone arriving at Dimapur may innocently ask is, “Where are the Nagas?” They are here. They just happen to look more or less like anyone in Dimapur, a town that, superficially, nods more to the world outside than to the mist enshrouded hills that rise high and far beyond its municipal borders. Dimapur is not Nagaland. Nagaland is still some way off, up roads bustling with 4x4s, minibuses and military convoys lumbering onwards and upwards to ever more remote villages, most of them out of bounds to foreigners and Indians alike[1].

4-4-44 is an amazing date line for Kohima in the history of Second World War. The Japanese army having crossed the Burma border suddenly appeared at Kohima! Recalls Lhusi Haralu, “The first sudden burst of gunfire at Kohima started around 4pm that evening. One could hear the whine of the shells as they came screaming towards you. We would all crouch down, scared and holding to our heads… One thing strikes me as I recall the war – the absolute loyalty of our people to British administration which tended to make them adopt a hostile attitude towards the invading Japanese in a war that was not ours. Come to think of it, the Japanese were never our enemies”[2]. The battle to recover Kohima and the reopening of the Imphal Road lasted 3 months until June 22, 1944. The War Cemetery in Kohima continues to witness many a tearful reunion, even between the families of ‘enemies’.

Historians have called the Kohima event as ‘one of the most bitterly fought battles of the Second World War”. Earl Mountbatten, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, described it as ‘one of the greatest battles in history…naked, unparalleled heroism”. And Field Marshall Wavell called it ‘the turning point of the war when the Japanese were routed and their downfall really began’.[3]

In fact, the Japanese had hoped to reach (then) Calcutta and Delhi through the Naga Hills but were beaten back by Naga warriors loyal to British. Had the Japanese succeeded, they would have broken the back of colonial India and of the British Empire itself[4].

And so the land as in Nagaland has had a bloody history, trampled upon by the armies of the British and the Japanese, and the Indian army now. Today[5], the fighting continues sporadically, the skirmishes between rival independence (politico-tribal) movements and against the Indian armed forces (thus) undermining fragile treaties.

Amidst all this, and in what could be a moment of tragic-comic irony, there appeared on a Naga hill, an oddity from, of all the places, the land of one gentleman who gave his life preaching non-violence!!

Present Day, April 2012

“You must be Dr. Livingstone!” exclaimed the first African native to greet the Englishman when he discovered the ‘Dark Continent’ ages ago. For this Gujaratibhai hailing from aapnu amdavad however, there were no natives to receive him at Kohima in Nagaland where he landed, err, drove down actually, to take up a one-year residency for a project in urban sector. But, I was no less thrilled than Dr. Livingstone! I must admit that despite being a self-professed ‘international’ traveler, this was one Indian State, tucked into a corner that I had missed, in fact, never even planned to visit. This attitude in general has remained the bane of the north-eastern region, and I would unabashedly agree that I was a part of this attitude-syndicate – until now that is.

And thanks to the opportunity, the British and Japanese are no longer the only footfalls in Nagaland!

Delving into the past, and beginning in the 1840s, the British, while colonizing India, made several attempts to encroach onto the Naga territory. They were met with stiff resistance from the Nagas who had never been conquered by any ‘empire’ before. The stiffness of the resistance can be gauged by the fact that it took nearly four decades for the British to conquer a territory that is less than 10,000 square kilometres! Kohima was the first seat of modern administration as the Headquarters of Naga Hills District (then under Assam) with the appointment of Political Officer in 1879. When Nagaland became a full-fledged state on 1^st December 1963, Kohima was declared as the state capital.

Sheltered on the hem of eastern Himalayan range, Kohima is noted for its unhurried pace of life, calm and serene environs and fresh, unpolluted air. A picturesque township, it forms a cradle on a high ridge amidst lush green wealth of the nature, with panoramic views of the rugged Naga Hills. This could be a great marketing jargon for tourism but to a discerning eye, it could have been much more breathtaking; for, during the two hour, 75 km drive climbing slowly away from Dimapur airport on the Assam border to Kohima at appx. 3500 feet above sea level, I came across rampant destruction of coniferous forests and stark denuded scenario. Painful it might be but the tradition of jhum cultivation (slash-burn-shift) continues to devour the natural beauty and biological life of Naga Hills.

Anyway, a few April days later, and away from the heat of Ahmedabad at 42 degrees, the 13-18 degrees at Kohima hit me like the very real, massive hailstorm and pre-monsoon showers that surprised me no end. Quite expectedly, the news was greeted with a lot of envy from back home!

A Monsoon Morning!

Realization! I have to remind myself that I am NOT in Bihar or Nepal! Where are the Nagas, the famed warriors?? Most of them could be working in the government offices 10am to 4pm.; the rest, Biharis and Nepalis, are businessmen, shop owners or taxi owner-drivers. And, of course, cooks! Sometimes, a Naga could be seen manning (or wo-maning) a pan shop. Yes. Kolkata mithi patti with a sprinkling of zarda and a small bit of roasted coconut is a favourite pass time with men and women alike, several times a day. One sees more of beautiful globalised Naga women and lovely, petite girls on the roads and in the markets, much more than the men. If the sex ratio in Kohima is 50:50, then pray, where are the 50% men? Talking of rest of the species, there are no cows on the roads, no crows, not even pigeons…but lots of house sparrows!

The biggest shock to this Gujarati who has come here seeking solace in Bacchus is the fact that Nagaland has remained a dry state since long. Unlike Gujarat rightly or wrongly, a visitor fails to understand the logic here. Well, some logic is discussed in whispers! Whatever may be the case, liquor is available freely in any corner shop thank you!

Drinking water is scarce, particularly in winter when the far away river source almost dries up. Since power is generated from the hydel project on this same river, its supply is also erratic, particularly in the 2-5 degree cold winter when heating demand zooms up. And so, it is a double whammy! 70-80% of the piped water supply is in the hands of unorganized private sector, of those lucky few to have wells or streams on this rugged terrain; the water however needs boiling to make it safe for drinking. There are no lakes in Kohima, more because of urbanization process; in fact, the district was once known as the ‘city of seven lakes!’

A room with a View

The angamis and migrant Nepalis constitute the majority in a population of one lakh in Kohima. ‘Headhunters’ must be a misnomer as Nagas are polite and humble, not aggressive. They speak English well. In fact, it is the state language, Nagaland being the largest Baptist Christian state.

The food habits are very, very interesting as indicated by a visit to markets. Nagas consume a lot of biodiversity! Apart from vegetables and pulses, the list includes all meats, fish (the state consumes 24000 kgs per day!)[6], frogs, eels, snakes, grubby larvae and insects. Dog meat is a delicacy; both, child-lifters and dog-lifters alike, get the same punishment from the irate public!

Downtown in Clouds

Sunrise these April days is at 4.30am. Daily routine at Kohima in general begins at 4am and it is lunchtime at 8am, to office by 10am and back home at 4pm. The markets open by 8am and close down by 7pm. Security from unwanted elements could be one reason but it is quite assuredly, a safe, peaceful state, in fact the most peaceful among the ‘seven sisters’ of the North-Eastern region of India. My upscale neighborhood high up on the highest hill overlooking a brightly lit up Kohima, wears a deserted look by 8 pm. Post-dinner walk in total silence and solitude, occasionally interrupted by a swish or a whoosh of cold, blowing wind, is an absolutely delightful experience; it also means not venturing too far out for the fear of being alone if for no other reason akin to violence, and always with a flashlight as load-shedding is a frequent feature.

As for tourism, there is the exquisite alpine landscape of Dzuku valley, a visit to Khonoma and Jotsoma village s and of course, the world famous Hornbill Festival every first week of December.

A final word! A nice town, so tranquil and so scenic, with a salubrious English weather; however, for a first-time visitor, Nagaland may remain a mystery, an enigma actually! Kohima could be a great place to retire to, not for youngsters seeking entertainment joints; there are no movie theatres. However, if you are a rock band enthusiast, you must come to this land of rock music! For those with an adventurous streak, there is a lot to trek, explore and learn keeping in mind that transportation could be expensive with poor roads and long hours of travel – apart from security of course.  

All of this and yet, Nagaland could be the most exciting discovery of your life time!

2012's largest full moon over nga Hills

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[1] “Nagaland - A Journey to India’s Forgotten Frontier” by Jonathan Glancey, Pub. Faber & Faber, 2011

[2] “Heralding Hope – 125 Kohima”  Pub: Bhabani Offset & Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, 2004

[3] “Heralding Hope – 125 Kohima”  Pub: Bhabani Offset & Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, 2004

[4] “Nagaland - A Journey to India’s Forgotten Frontier” by Jonathan Glancey, Pub. Faber & Faber, 2011

[5] “Nagaland - A Journey to India’s Forgotten Frontier” by Jonathan Glancey, Pub. Faber & Faber, 2011

[6]  The Nagaland Post, April 2012