Wearing an oversized checked shirt over a T-shirt, denims and sneakers, Khailalthang feels better off now. Unassuming, the young man would not reveal himself easily.
On June 14, he managed to leave Manipur in slippers, half pants and a T-shirt, travelled 370 kms to Mizoram, thanks to a truck driver who gave him a free ride. He still feels lucky that he was just able to grab his Aadhar card and some certificates before his house was burnt down by a Meitei mob at around 3 a.m. on May 4.
“On May 3, we returned from the hospital after my mother’s dialysis. By 11 p.m., when information spread that a mob was approaching the village, we moved the women, the children and the elderly from the 160 houses into the hills and the jungle. They had sticks and weapons, we used slingshots,” he recollects.
Mr. Khailalthang, among the 130 people from Manipur, is now living in Hyderabad and trying to make a living away from the trauma and violence at his birthplace. By 2 a.m., the crying villagers, hiding in the hillside bushes, saw their homes being burnt. In the early morning, they rushed to their destroyed houses to retrieve whatever valuables they could.
“It was at around 6 p.m., while we all were gathering supplies on the hillside, a crying woman in torn clothes with bruises all over her body walked towards the village,” he recalled. “She is a relative, one of the women, in the viral video, paraded naked and molested by the mob,” the 23-year-old said.
The woman, the villagers, including the newborn and toddlers, lived in the jungle for the next two days, climbed hills and walked long till the Kuki Students’ Organisation (KSO) of the Machi Block rescued and transported them in a truck to refugee camps in Kangpokpi and Lamka districts.
With ₹7000 borrowed from his father’s friend, he travelled from Mizoram to Halflong (Assam) and to Hyderabad by Agartala-Secunderabad special train on July 3. Mr. Khailalthang now living in a shared accommodation in Jubilee Hills wakes up to see big buildings after difficult sleeping.
“Like my friends, I could not afford education or go touring places. I discontinued graduation, lifted wood and stones as a daily labourer and earned ₹500 for it. This is the first time I am travelling out of Manipur,” he says with a plain smile.
Working in customer support at a financial services company in Hitech City, he hopes to support his parents who are ill, and also make sure that his younger brother does not quit high school.
But for the young couple, Nu Chinchin and Pa Luna, ‘high school’ is no longer a choice. Loving what they did, teaching English and Mathematics to primary and high school students, even at a low salary of ₹5000 and ₹6, 500 respectively, they are now refugees because of the conflict. The Keithelmanbi Government High School, where they were outsourced teachers, is now a refugee camp. After leaving home with ₹45,000 of the savings that was spent on tickets, travel and renting a 1BHK at Banjara Hills, they now have a debt of ₹52, 000 borrowed at an exorbitant rate of 5% per month.
Ms. Chinchin will join her job at an e-commerce company next week. And Mr. Luna is yet to get his confirmation from a services firm in Secunderabad.
For retired honorary Subedar Major of the Assam Regiment Letkhothang Kuki of Bongbal Khullen village, the skrimish on May 5 was nothing short of a battle. Using his double-barrel weapon, along with some 30 elders, he fought off the mob of marauders.
“But when the armed activists in uniform came in eight Gypsies and fired at the village, we were outnumbered. We covered the women, children, elders and shifted to the hills, we all spent two nights in the jungle,” he said.
It was a distress call, via Hyderabad, by Mr. Letkhothang’s daughter, a software engineer at a multinational corporation here, that prompted the Gorkha Regiment’s quick response team for rescue and transport of the displaced to the refugee camps.
Mr. Letkhothang shows the cellphone he carried to the lucky hilltop position to call his daughter here. The cellphone cover reads: “Bring your family to work 2023”.
The Subedar Major is worried that his ₹40-lakh house in Bongbal Khullen, constructed from his savings and retirement benefits, is vandalised. But he says he is happy that he was able to save his villagers, and now reunite with his family here in a gated community in West Hyderabad.
According to Hyderabad Unau Tribal Forum, 19 internally displaced families, a total of 130 persons, from Manipur are in Hyderabad. While some managed to reunite with their relatives here, most of them are finding host families, admissions to schools and colleges, and suitable jobs, through Kuki Student Organisation, Kuki Worship Service, Telangana United Christians and Pastors Association, and other voluntary organisations.
On August 6, the first Sunday, Mr. Khailalthang remembers it is Friendship Day. He posted two updates on his WhatsApp account: a link to a video song on the Day, followed by a Saturday-picture of Langol, a Kuki village enveloped by lush green hills and paddy fields in Imphal West, burning and shooting plumes of smoke.
