Manipur Musings

What follows is a nostalgic recollection of the writer's connection with Manipur, particularly Tripura House, that was replete with royalty, familial bonds, and love despite bittersweet changes ushered in by time

- SIDDHARTH DEV VERMAN

My first glimpse of Manipur more than three decades ago did not instill much confidence. As the short flight from Calcutta taxied to a stop, all that I could see from the plane window were armed soldiers and barbed wire around the perimeter of the small airport. So much for the land of the graceful Manipuri dance, I muttered under my breath!

Last month I once again took a flight, this time to leave Imphal perhaps for the final time after completing a post-retirement assignment. The departing flight offered me a somewhat similar scene from my window seat—high brick walls had replaced the barbed wire but the soldiers were now present in greater numbers.

In the intervening years, I had lived in Manipur, married there and witnessed the birth of our children in Imphal. I had also dug out roots of my past and discovered relatives and traced some of the steps my late father took there as a young army officer.

My nephew Vijay came to see me in the guest house after learning about my arrival. I had never met him before but knew his father, my cousin Sashadhar—a boisterous man whose laugh was as loud as his heart was big. He had passed away a few years back while serving in Manipur and now his widow MK Tamphasana Devi, daughter of Maharaja Boddhachandra, the last ruler of Manipur, lived in a big cottage named Tripura House in the palace compound campus of the Manipuri royal family. Her brother Okenderjit was the reigning titular Maharaja.