Filled with anticipation, Hseng Noung and I hurried down the narrow back lane, with its open sewers, past old plaster cracked houses, reached the familiar building, which houses Frontier’s office, and climbed the ramshackle flight of stairs up to the first floor. The door was open and we saw the assistant editor, tall, skinny and bearded and dressed in a white shirt and a brown cardigan.
“Oh! The Lintners! So nice to see you again. Come in. What brings you to Calcutta this time?”
He smiled warmly as we entered his office and sat down on a pair of wooden chairs opposite his desk. An office boy was immediately sent down to order Indian tea with buffalo milk from one of the vendors in the narrow lane outside. Without revealing our real mission we talked vaguely of the Punjab and Assam.
“Ah! These groups are getting so militant. And they have good arms. Not like the pocket armies of revolutionary peasants in the Indian countryside.”
Trying to sound as casual as possible while I sipped my tea I brought the discussion round to the Nagas. The editor picked up on my lead.
“They’re also revolutionaries, not just separatists. The problem from our point of view is that they’re strong nationalists and they often view migrants from our overpopulated plains, mainly Bengal, as targets for their attacks.”
“Yes, that’s horrible. But I’d like to meet and interview some people from the NSCN. Do you think that’s possible?”
“If you manage to get in touch with them, please let me know. I’d like to talk to them myself.”
To our surprise, India’s northeast seemed as remote and alien to him as it was to us. Foolishly I had overlooked the racial element. The Frontier editor was considerably more interested in discussing the CPB.
“One of its founders, H.N. Ghoshal, was a Bengali. It was here the revolutionary movement in the East was born. Later, it spread all over India and South-East Asia,” he said with evident pride.
But he had no direct contacts with the CPB. He only knew that Ghoshal’s ageing sister lived somewhere in Calcutta. That was not much of a help since Ghoshal himself had been executed by the extremely radical CPB in 1967, accused of being a ‘revisionist’.
We left the office after a stimulating enough discussion but with a sense of frustration at our lack of progress. All we had were a few addresses of Indian journalists who just might have some information on the Naga underground. But they all lived in New Delhi, not in Calcutta.
A trip out to Calcutta’s university quarter, the legendary College Street with all its bookshops and coffee houses, proved equally unsuccessful. There were only Bengalis, no Nagas. The Naga students, we were told, shunned crowded Calcutta and preferred studying in New Delhi.
Our next stop was the Assam House in Russell Street where we hoped to get more information on the legal possibilities of getting closer to the Burmese frontier. Putting on our best innocent tourist look, we entered the office to be confronted by a middle-aged woman, dressed in a sari, who, shaking her head, greeted us with:
“If you’re wanting to go to Assam I’m telling you that’s impossible.”
We explained that we wanted to visit Kaziranga, the national park, to see the rhinoceroses and had been directed here by the Indian tourist office in Bangkok.
“Permits are not being issued to individual travellers. Only groups. And there are no groups going to Kaziranga at this time.”
Realising we were not going to get any assistance from her, we went next door to the Meghalaya House, the representative office of another of the restricted northeastern states. We were met by a soft-spoken official who, judging from his East Asian looks, was a Khasi tribesman from the hills. He was considerably more helpful and better informed than the women at the Assam House.
“Individual visits can be approved. But applications take time and can only be processed by the Home Ministry in New Delhi,” he said and presented us with a useful tourist map of Meghalaya and its capital Shillong.
This made us optimistic, even if the screening of the applicants was strict and the permit would be valid only for Shillong. But once there, we could sneak into the more restricted area to the east, Nagaland or Manipur. At least so we thought.
We returned to our shabby room at the Salvation Army feeling downhearted. Calcutta, after all, was maybe not the right place. So we decided to try some of our journalist contacts in New Delhi.
On March 8 we packed our bags, took a taxi from Sudder Street across the Hooghly Bridge to the station in Howrah and, feeling affluent, departed on the Rajdhani Express, a superfast train which covers the 1,445 kilometres to New Delhi in eighteen hours. The train left on time, at 4.40 pm; it picked up speed as we passed through the western slums of the city, and crossed the vast countryside. When daylight faded, I turned to some books about the Nagas which I had bought in a second-hand bookshop in Calcutta. I read them as the train rushed through the dark, Indian night. I must have fallen asleep somewhere in Bihar.
In Delhi, with the help of an old friend, Roger, a bright, amiable New Zealander who had married an Indian girl from Rajasthan, we managed to find a small room near New Delhi’s Bengali Market, not far from the city centre at Connaught Circus. In fact, he lived upstairs in the same whitewashed stone house which belonged to a stout, elderly Marwari landlady who had the flat on the ground floor.
She seemed a living parody of the stereotype Marwari as enshrined in the prejudices of other Indian communities; she was incredibly stingy but at the same time reputed to be extremely rich and Roger had had endless arguments with her about overpriced water and electricity bills. But the place was conveniently located and it provided us with the privacy we needed to negotiate with our local contacts.
We could even sit in the dark with only one candle and study our maps of the border areas without attracting our landlady’s suspicions. If anything, this only made us go up in her esteem as economical tenants. If we had more than one light-bulb on, she would rush out of her flat downstairs and shout:
“Bertil and Hseng Noung! You aren’t wasting electricity, are you? You know it’s included in your rent and you aren’t paying extra for it!”
Our search for the Nagas continued and we were far more fortunate this time. One of our Indian contacts said he would try to put us in touch with someone he knew. A few days later, he phoned us:
“Bertil? This is Dinesh speaking. Can you come to that small coffee shop behind Ashok’s bookstall on Jan Path at 2 pm? There’s a friend who wants to see you.”
Such studied vagueness was a positive sign. Hseng Noung and I caught a scooter rickshaw, a small three-wheeled taxi, and went to central New Delhi. When we arrived at the coffee shop Dinesh was sitting at a table in a corner beside a young man who looked more like a tough, sturdy Tibetan than an Indian. They gesticulated to us to sit down.
“Well, this is Vemesü. He’s a Naga student at Delhi University.”
As we exchanged greetings, it became clear that the young Naga was not entirely at ease. He looked slightly sceptical. As we began to reveal our plans, he seemed taken aback.
“How are you going to get up there? There are checkpoints everywhere. For Hseng Noung, it’s no problem. She can pass as a Naga. Even if you disguised yourself as an Indian, it wouldn’t work. Even Indian citizens need permits to enter Nagaland.”
I argued that nobody should see me. I was willing to pay for a jeep and hide in the back of it—if someone could drive us up to the border.
“Well, I’ve actually got some contacts with the underground,” Vemesü said, looking even more apprehensive. “I’ll let them know that you’re here with a letter from the Kachins.” And he promised to contact us again after a week or so. Realising that this was clearly as far as we could go for the present, we thanked him and parted.
The tension in the restricted area had been further aggravated by a series of recent bank robberies in Nagaland, obviously the work of the NSCN. Then, in February, the NSCN’s gunmen struck again: thirteen Indian soldiers had been killed in an am
bush on a lonely road in the Naga-inhabited areas of Manipur. As a consequence, army patrols were out combing the area. It was not a propitious moment for an illegitimate journey.
The Indian press for weeks carried stories about the unrest in Nagaland. The only picture they had of Thuingaleng Muivah, the de facto head of the NSCN, was a twenty years old photograph of him, dressed in a Mao suit during a visit to China. Despite his youth at that time and the broad smile he had in the picture, qualities of intelligence, shrewdness and ruthlessness could clearly be detected. It was probably this combination of traits that had enabled him to survive and prosper throughout the turbulent decades of civil war. A shrewd man, but with a chilling cut to his charm.
Since we also wanted to try the legal possibilities, we went to the Home Ministry and submitted an application to visit Kaziranga and Shillong. We claimed we were wildlife photographers, collecting material for a book about national parks in India. To apply for Nagaland and Manipur was out of the question; we would only have attracted unnecessary suspicion if we had mentioned those states.
A secretary received us with the surly insolence typical of Indian bureaucracy. Usually it is annoying. In this case, we appreciated his minimal attention and that no more questions were asked than those directly concerning our answers in triplicate on the application forms.
“You’ll be having an answer in three weeks,” he mumbled as he tossed our file on a stack of other applications.
But we doubted that it would be that fast. Even the helpful Khasi officer in Calcutta had recommended our paying a visit to the ministry at least once a week to make sure the forms were actually being processed.
For one thing, the Home Ministry was overloaded with applications for the Punjab. There were also lots of overseas Punjabis applying for permits to visit their relatives and this made for total confusion. This suited us perfectly since an innocent looking application for Assam and Meghalaya would be mere rubber stamp routine, all the attention being focused on the trouble in the Punjab.
As the days passed by in New Delhi and we were reduced to killing time while waiting for news from Vemesü—and paying weekly visits to the Home Ministry. Gruff watchmen with bamboo sticks outside the gate attempted to keep a token order in the mixed queue of tourists and Indian expatriates, all of whom where trying to elbow their way to the front to save time.
Because of that, it never took less than an hour to reach the reception desk, where we had to register our names and were allotted a queue number scribbled on a paper slip which, in any case, was never announced in the crammed, smelly waiting room outside the actual office upstairs.
“No, I’m sorry, Sir. Your application is still being processed,” was the standard answer when we had at last fought our way through the crowds into the office.
The officer would bring out our applications, neatly tied up with a cotton string inside a pink file cover. It was obvious nothing was happening; the file always appeared from the same place in the wooden cupboard behind the official, doing little more than gathering dust along with stacks of other application files. But we kept our calm, tried to look disappointed but not annoyed when the answer invariably was in the negative. Muttering curses in assorted languages, we returned by scooter rickshaw to our rented room near Bengali Market.
The hanging around was beginning to get us down. Although I did file some stories for some Scandinavian newspapers, at the same time we tried to keep a low profile. We spent most of our time strolling around Connaught Circus, browsing through bookshops in search of anything on the Nagas and India’s northeast.
The days became weeks and the weeks became a month and still nothing new. We met Vemesü at the coffee shop on Jan Path a couple of times. But it was our impression that he was uncertain about helping us. Though most likely aware that the Naga underground needed media attention, the only thing we could offer them in return for helping us across the Burmese border, Vemesü had been through the disturbing experience of arrest before.
When we had heard nothing from him for more than two weeks, we took a bus out to his hostel near Delhi University. It was a large, shabby red brick building divided into cubicles which were shared by pairs of students. On the wall in the lobby, we spotted a list of room numbers and occupants. Vemesü was on the first floor in room 46.
We went upstairs and found his door open. He was not in but another young man with Mongol features was sitting in a chair reading a newspaper. On enquiring if this was Vemesü’s room he lowered his newspaper and waved towards a couple of chairs.
“Yes, he’ll be back soon. Would you like to come in and wait?”
“Are you Naga, too?” I asked.
“Yes, I am. You know about us Nagas, do you?”
“Yes, I’m interested in your culture.” Not knowing who he was I was as non-committal as possible.
Vemesü got back ten minutes later looking dismayed to see us and uncomfortable. He enquired if we had trouble finding the place, then turned to his friend and there followed a rapid exchange of information in their own tribal language. Then Vemesü began to look relieved:
“Bertil and Hseng Noung. I’m sorry. I should have introduced you. This is my friend Kewezeko. He may be able to help you more than I because his cousin recently joined the NSCN in the jungle.”
Kewezeko was beaming.
“It would be wonderful if you could get up there and report what’s really going on. Nobody reads anything about the Naga struggle except what’s in the Indian press. And that’s heavily biased.”
“That’s exactly what we thought. Do you know where your cousin is right now?”
“Yes. He’s in a base camp in northwestern Burma. He’s staying with Muivah himself.”
“Can you contact him? And let Muivah know we want to come?”
“Yes, I can send a letter. But it might take some time to get an answer.”
We instantly took a liking to Kewezeko. He came from Nagaland’s state capital, Kohima, and was young and lively with a mordant wit; one of the favourite targets for his jibes was, inevitably, the Indians.
We stayed in the hostel for a couple of hours and finally left in high spirits. We had made a contact which showed real promise.
We got on well with Roger and his wife Amala, although we never confided our plans to them. If things went wrong, we did not want them to get into trouble for having helped us. They had a little baby boy and Amala shared her experiences from her pregnancy with Hseng Noung. Since Amala knew a little yoga, she taught Hseng Noung how to do breathing and other useful exercises. We also got the name of a good local gynaecologist and Hseng Noung went there for a check-up in mid-April when she was four months pregnant.
The gynaecologist assured us all was well; she gave Hseng Noung a stethoscope and told her to put its head to her stomach.
“Listen! Heartbeats!” Hseng Noung said with sparkling eyes. Indeed it was; the rapid tapping of a tiny heart.
But this also made us even more eager to leave. One night at the end of April, we invited Kewezeko, Vemesü and some other Naga friends for a talk about our journey. Despite the initial enthusiasm, we were no farther forward. We knew the maps, the roads in the area, the border crossing points and even the timings of the trains and buses in the northeast by heart—but there had not as yet been any response to the letter Kewezeko had sent to his cousin.
Since we by now knew that most Nagas disliked Indian food, or at least claimed to, we invited all of them out that night to Ginza, a Chinese restaurant on Connaught Circus. I ordered Cantonese chicken, fried bamboo shoots, bean curd soup and other delicacies. Our friends seemed to enjoy it tremendously as taciturn Chinese waiters in the dimly lit restaurant placed one plate after another on the white table-cloth. While we were eating, I presented the proposal Hseng Noung and I had worked out whereby we would fund one of them to fly up to Dimapur, make contact with the underground and then return.
An animated discussion broke out in one of the Naga dialects. Hseng Noung and I gla
nced at each other. Using chopsticks, I helped myself to a piece of chicken. When they seemed to have reached a consensus, Vemesü turned to us:
“There’s one problem you ought to be aware of. There are two factions in the Naga underground. Apart from the NSCN, there’s also the original NNC, the Naga National Council. But we all agree it’s better if you go with the NSCN. They’re stronger and, anyway, Kewezeko’s cousin is with them. So we have decided to send Kewezeko to Dimapur and also Kohima, if necessary.”
Kewezeko nodded, looking proud to have been chosen for this mission. We were pleased too, since we trusted Kewezeko and by now felt we knew him well. The NSCN was also the most interesting Naga faction from our point of view. The old NNC had virtually ceased to exist following a peace accord made with the Indian government at Shillong in 1975.
“I’ll fly to Dimapur, meet the NSCN people there and send another letter to my cousin. I’ll tell them about your letter of introduction from the KIA. Then I’ll come back. I’m sure we’ll get a positive response.”
We felt confident, too. After saying goodnight to our Naga friends, we strolled back to our lodgings.
On the following day, the unbelievable happened. I made a routine visit to the Home Ministry—and our applications had been processed! We were not allowed to go to Kaziranga, but had been granted a week’s stay at Shillong. That was, actually, all we needed to get into the forbidden area in the northeast and then disappear with the help of the Naga underground.
Finally, we were all set. It was already the end of April and New Delhi’s summer had arrived. The temperature rose to more than 40 degrees Celsius, it was intolerably dry and we almost lived on cold drinks and ice cream. As the more affluent Indians often do during the hot season, we decided to escape to one of the old hill stations the British had built in the Himalayas. We left money for the air tickets with Kewezeko and agreed to meet him at our place near Bengali Market on May 7, by which time he expected to be back from Nagaland. Then we caught a bus to Mussoorie in the hills 240 kms north of New Delhi.
Land of Jade Page 4
