New Year Ideas | Explore the North-East

Loktak lake, it is said, reflects life in Manipur. As a small fishing boat navigates the grassy floating islands on the lake, its placid waters mirroring the boat’s meandering, life in the North-Eastern state would seem utterly serene to any visitor.

The sight of the lake from atop a hill is enough to draw out a whistle. Spread across the vast expanse of the largest freshwater lake in North-East India are many floating islands, locally known as phumdi. The phumdis are not easily discernable if one doesn’t follow the narrow water channels separating them. The thatched huts of fishermen are built on some and newly-formed floating islands are known to get unmoored on particularly windy days, when the fisherfolk might wake up a little farther from where they went to sleep.

Closer to the viewing hill, large circular foliage formations on the lake are like Olympic rings floating separate from each other. Unlike the phumdis, these are man-made patterns used to round up schools of fish, and are often cited as ecologically untenable. Nevertheless, the spectacle of a 286sq. km lake, fringed by low hills, and the astounding display of floating islands is idyllic—arguably, a sight unmatched in India.

Yet Manipur, a state raked by secessionist and ethnic conflicts, lives with its multiple realities. From a tin shed next to the viewing area atop the hill, a gunman keeps guard. There is an Assam Rifles camp at the bottom of the hill with its paraphernalia of sandbags, checkposts and a general state of gun-toting, red-light readiness. The Assam Rifles soldier on duty, his stern eyes grazing the lake’s horizon while we admire the view, informs us that the phumdis are often used as a base by rebels. Therefore the watch. Some 48km from Imphal, the Loktak beat is possibly a job hazard for the soldier—a modest count pegs the number of active underground outfits in Manipur at well over a dozen, with some being no more than extortionists.

In the rest of Manipur, whose people were referred to in an ancient Chinese text as the sons of the wide lake, the Loktak is venerated and is often the inspiration behind Manipur’s rich cultural life.

We were there for the music. This was my third visit to the state and on this occasion I was part of a documentary film team led by veteran film-maker Ranjan Palit researching—or, at any rate, trying to—the North-East’s penchant for Western music. At every bend, Manipur was taking us back to its roots.

The roots are visible again when we visit the hard rocking band Kanglasha. Accompanied by a robust guitar riff and in between singing about a mythical hero returning to resuscitate Manipur, the lady vocalist makes her anger known against the Union government’s indifference to rights activist Irom Sharmila—who has been fasting for over a decade while demanding the repeal of The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act from Manipur. The guitarist maintains a heavy metal grimness against the vocalist’s outburst; summer sweat melts the Vaishnavite markings on her forehead.

We seek out Tapta—a maverick Manipuri singer popular for his bawdy but hard-hitting satirical songwriting and drunken spirit. Tapta is absent from his ancestral home, but a huge crowd has gathered; there’s been a death in the family the previous night. The camera and sound recording equipment are embarrassing in the circumstances, but we are earnestly requested to wait. Tapta returns, punch-drunk, having completed the rituals at the waterfront. His speech is slurry, but he makes it clear that Manipuri tradition disapproves of guests leaving without a bite.

On the way back, we stop at a village temple near the old town of Moirang bordering the lake. There’s music. Overseen by women priests, men and women move around to the loopy plucking of a string instrument, the steady rhythm of a hand drum and exquisite high-pitched singing.

Much of the state’s rich cultural life draws from Loktak lake, the eminent Manipuri theatre personality and scholar Lokendra Arambam had told me once in Kolkata. On an earlier visit to Imphal I had tried to get in touch with Arambam on two consecutive evenings. He had dissuaded me—there had been a bomb blast and evening outings were risky. In Kolkata, over a drink, he was effusive about the symbolic imprint of Loktak on Manipuri literature, music, classical dance and theatre as the origin of all things simple and pure.

Author and journalist Sudeep Chakravarti, writing in his non-fiction book Highway 39 on life around the North-Eastern lifeline, describes watching a play in Imphal where Loktak is mentioned. “There is a hush in the audience. The area around the lake has for long been known for both real and fake encounters.” Chakravarti too is struck by the “mind-numbing beauty” of Loktak.

At the lake, I remember a Manipur Tourism brochure with a photograph of the sangai—the brow-antlered deer with benign eyes endemic to Manipur. With Loktak its prime habitat, for many years the sangai was thought to be extinct, though it remained alive as a cultural icon. Luckily, a few of them were spotted on a phumdi and a conservation drive was launched. Looking past the soldier’s gun facing Loktak lake and its phumdis, I dwell on hope.