A Sculptor of Parachutes: Naga Diary 1

Nagaland is your classic Churchillian conundrum for most Indians. An exotic land with some tribals still fighting against blindingly shining India for a new nation state. To a relatively better informed set, it is a state where India's

longest running insurgency has refused to go on its knees. But outside the tally-pressured world of geo politics, it is a fantastically fertile region inhabited by some of the best people on earth. For a professional person of modern world, Nagaland's interior is a challenge from the Bible. It is almost like such a person is in the dock, with the onus entirely upon him/her, to explain the various travels of mankind's most powerful ideas since Noah docked his ark.

This short series is as much impressionistic as a trifle dilettantish travelogue in the state that has one of the world's longest running insurgencies. It is also an askance peek into Nagaland's soul. Its history, as much as its geography, in juxtaposition to India is best prophesized by Nirmal Nibedan as "the indomitable in clash with the inevitable."

I have waded right into the subject from point zero as our project of filming a documentary started. I will wrap the series up with a piece that will explain the stakes involved at the end.

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True or otherwise, this story is a metaphor for all the issues that coalesce into what the Naga situation is. Nationalism. Right over land. Guerilla warfare. Army repression. Fight against colonialism.

We reach Kolkata at 7 in the morning of January 18, 2005. We cab it to Raj’s house, I do the washing up, bathing routine while Sunil and Amlan stick to more immediate and minimal morning chores. Leave by 9:30 to catch the 11O’clock Jet Airways flight from Kolkata to Guwahati. We reach and check into the Alankar Hotel in the Chandmari area of the city. By afternoon, I call up Monimoy at The Telegraph office in Kolkata. He is the North East Editor with my former paper. He directs me to Nishit Dholabhai, a Gujarati journalist who is in Nagaland to report on insurgency as the paper’s Kohima correspondent.

Monimoy is first to say he has heard of Shitoba Chang. Nishit says he has not, but will find out. He also says, he cannot meet us in Kohima on the 20th, because he is off to report on the Camp Hebron, the ultra exclusive meet of the top leadership of each and every Naga tribe. That event itself is the fallout of the recent thaw in the Indo-Naga peace process, where Isak Swu and Thuingalong Muivah, the leaders of the most powerful Naga group are trying to seek out a consensus from all the tribes. The idea is both a show of strength, as well as an attempt to seek a more assured moral authenticity to the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah), to mediate with the Indian government on behalf of all Nagas, that is, 64 tribes. Nishit has to attend that NSCN event, a historic one, and cannot make it to meet us in Kohima. Also, he tells us, we cannot imagine being there, because it is extra exclusive, available to only the most seasoned, old, and above all reporters whose credibility as reporters has been proved by their sheer longevity in the area.

But in some time, actually by the time he calls back, he has news. He gives me the number of Chollen Chang. I call up Chollen, and am told a virtual set-up: Chang has a written story of Shitoba Chang. He will give it to us. But, since he is in Dimapur for Camp Hebron, he is unlikely to meet us immediately. However, Chang will be in Tuenchang on January 24. The copy he has is also there. However, there is a caveat: before reaching Tuenchang, he would like to meet me.

I break the news to the team. They are sitting with Kishalya, the NDTV correspondent. He has given us some phone numbers, some interesting cast of characters to tap into. One is an army man, Paul, a man of various interests, and fond of fetching conversation, and also a source of information.

The other is a Malayalee, who is the GaoN Bura, the designated village elder of a Naga village. This Keralite married a Naga woman of the Ao tribe, lives among them with his Naga family.

Then, more tantalising names that resonate with history. The former ADC of Phizo. Alive, and willing to speak. Phizo was, of course, the Jinnah of the Naga movement.

Then, a Naga anthropologist, Dolly Kikon. And, a scholar trying to network the North East into the rest of the plugged in world, Sajib Barua. The entire business of meeting the first set of contacts gets over by about six, by which time we think it is nine in the night. The visitors slowly disperse. Amlan says he has a private engagement and whether we, Sunil and I, can handle the evening by ourselves. Of course, we will.

We start with the obvious things journalists do; start in right earnest to look for a watering hole. We walk around and find the only bar in the area, called Delight. Nicely named, but perhaps symbolic of the scarcity of bars in the city, it is also nicely camouflaged. We walk right past it to a Maruti showroom. We walk back, and finally find a dimly lit entrance to a first floor restaurant.

Sunil and I have our usual high falutin talk on regional literature, Bengali cultural dominance of Eastern India, and ethnic identities. Then we hit the issue at hand, the Search for Shitoba Chang, the documentary on a Naga hero whose tale seems to have enmeshed the visceral strands of the entire struggle of Naga nationalism. Sunil feels that I am bringing only my journalistic skills into the project, not my creative skills.

I make a case saying journalistic skill should drive the current project, while creative skills should be employed in the film. In the postproduction. Especially, since we have no storyboard ready. No director on the job. A bunch of dilettantes fuelled by the power of a story set out to find the His entire talk was an attempt to skip shooting Camp Hebron. However, I prevail upon him to shoot Camp Hebron. He was of the opinion that the camp footage can be had from the NDTV gang. I insist it is too historic to use archival footage, especially when we have a cinematographer with us. There is a man who knows the panoramic scope of a documentary film, and is moored in it, while the two pans and four tilts television news reportage is useless.

Amlan is clued in into the arguments and discussions we had later, and we continue noisy nonsense.

In the meantime, I have called Kraido Chawang, the Deputy Minister of Information, NSCN. He seems okay with the idea of letting us cover Camp Hebron, and says he can send us an invitation, but we must fax him a request and individual details. From talks with Nishit and other journalists we were given to understand that unknown men with a digital camera, claiming to be journalists from Mumbai, did not stand a chance to slip into Camp Hebron.

The next day, I fax him a request, burn 200-300 on my cell negotiating his accent, both in terms of the pronunciation and the tilt of the talk. Will we or won’t we? Nagaland is new. Not renowned for its hospitality to strangers, for one, and a deadly historic reputation for amputation of snoopy ones.

After the fax reaches him, he calls up. Finally, after a set of calls, some eruptions of intimacy. He asks "SCHSARI...reess". I say, yes, Harish. This is your number, yes it is.

There is trouble. He cannot fax invite. He has to send copies to head quarters, make detailed forms. Please call after you reach Dimapur.

I say okay.

Then, we take his Dimapur number.

As we take an auto rickshaw to the Nagaland House for our inner line permit, already filed for by Amlan’s brother on our behalf, my phone rings. Chawang is on the line again. He tells me that we can collect our invites from a hotel in Dimapur. It is in Dimapur Supermarket.

The hotel is severally spelt. But the number of the hotel is a Rosetta’s stone. Numeric data cannot be too different if it is crosschecked thrice on the phone itself.

Inner line permit is issued, we go to Kala Kendra, have a gluttonous Assamese lunch, our second in two days.

Amlan sends me to book railway tickets to Dimapur. No luck, the computers are down at the reservation counter. I go to Palton Bazaar, book three of us into a Network bus to Dimapur for 9:30 pm the same day. In the meantime Amlan seems to be winning, the five O clock appointment with the Naga anthropologist is postponed constantly. Almost as if she were allowing him to take his time with his work in Guwahati. Meanwhile, I meet Abhijeet Dev, a former Free Press Journal staffer. Sunil had worked with him in 1998-99.

The anthropologist might have to do with apologia, looks like. But eventually Amlan lands up, says he had to visit this cousin sister who is getting married next day. Since he had lied sweetly to her even from Kolkata on his cell phone about him being surely there for her marriage, he was feeling guilty. He decided to stay with her for sometime to wash his guilt in advance of the act of betrayal. He would be away in Dimapur shooting The Search for Shitoba Chang.

Sunil, by the way, is getting engrossed with his long lost disciple from the Mumbai paper, now with Sahara television. Some more Sahara guys land up. He is seduced by the gang and their reverent attention, and suggests Amlan and I should do the interview with the Naga anthropologist on our own. We do.

As it turns out, Dolly Kikon is not an anthropologist. She is an activist with the Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights, a lawyer, and a student of history. She has done extensive fieldwork across Nagaland. Was involved in teaching schoolchildren. And she was married to an Assamese academic Sanjay Borbara.

I explained to the couple what we were after.

Sunil first heard the story of Shitoba Chang in 1984. The story goes that Shitoba Chang was a tribal warrior of great courage who joined the Naga underground.

However, in time he was forced by the security forces to be a fugitive. Shitoba took refuge in the jungle, which he knew very well. He remained in the jungle, cut off from the world, for 10-15 years.

In the meantime, the story, as Sunil remembered it, was that Shitoba ventured out of the jungle to steal a woman from a nearby village. Later on, the Indian security forces once again cornered him, but he escaped from their clutches. However, a small boy, probably an eight-year-old, died in that encounter with Shitoba. It is believed that the boy might have been his son.

Many years later, Shitoba was indeed captured by the security forces, and lodged at the Mokokchung jail. He died there, either out of sickness or in custody.

The story is postulated to have taken place some time in the late fifties and the sixties. The geographical location of the story is in the Tuenchang district, between Mukokchung and Tuenchang.

Dolly listened carefully. And then she asked me a question that I was asked very often by many Nagas throughout our journey in search of the story of Shitoba Chang.

“Why do you want to do this story?”

“We want to do this story primarily because, true or otherwise, this story is a metaphor for all the issues that coalesce into what the Naga situation is. Nationalism. Right over land. Guerilla warfare. Army repression. Fight against colonialism.”

“But there are many such stories. Why this one?”

“Because Sunil had heard only this one. He heard it in 1984. He kept it with him since, and today we are here with our own money bankrolling an attempt to fill gaps, investigate, and perhaps find a closure of the tantalising story of Shitoba Chang.”

Sanjay seemed more convinced about our intention than Dolly. I told them that one of the things we were most hopeful about is that somebody from among the village elders might remember the story. Especially in Tuenchang district.

I asked Dolly if she had done some fieldwork in the area of oral history. To my joy she had. Then she told us a most fascinating story of her own grandmother.

It seems that during the World War II some British paratroopers landed in her grandmother’s village. They had blue eyes etc. But her own grandmother’s version was the story of the discovery of her magnificent obsession; the synthetic material that made parachutes.

“She was so thrilled by the touch and feel of the parachute that she kept the entire chute with her for years. Making kerchiefs, pillow covers and other knick knacks with it.”

When Dolly, or one of her sisters, asked their grandmother what the Britisher’s were doing, it seemed the old lady suddenly got up and marched to a particular song she sang from memory. The tune was close, but the words obviously eluded her. But there was one refrain “Kohima shall Shine tonight.” When the sisters did their research, actually checked to confirm their skepticism, they were shocked. That was a line the Britishers used across the world when they landed in new territories for the war.