From (ancient) Manipuri martial arts (Thang-Ta) (above)

To modern warfare Indian Army & Air Force officers (below)

Lt Gen K Himalaya WC Toilet Irengbam Basanta Irengbam must

Lt Col Irengbam Babudhon Major Naorem Deepak Pilot 0fficer G Rumi

The Yumjao always faced east and had a big front door with a window on each side. Other windows may or may not have been fitted on both sides of the house. At the back end of the house and on the northern side, a door was fitted called ‘awangthong’ (north door).

There was an open veranda (Mangol) in the front part of the yumjao – a sort of lounge where visitors were received; on the southern side was a mat made of reeds on which the eldest of the family, usually the father, sat. The mat was usually thin but could be thick and expensive for the more prosperous family.

Inside the centre of the house, there was a small hearth (phunga) on which the paddy husks were burned, with a metal tripod over it, for heating water, making tea and for heating the room in winter. At the southern back-end corner of the house was an altar for the Meitei household god, Sanamahi, known as Lainingthou (king of the gods). The kitchen was traditionally situated at the far north-end back corner, beyond the north side door.

Usually a dry bamboo jar was hung up on the front end of the southern wall of the house in which the ‘toothbrushes’ were kept. These toothbrushes were flat, thin sliced bamboosticks; 150 x 5 x 2 mm. One end had to be chewed first to turn it into a fine brush to clean the teeth and the edge of the length of the stick was used for scraping the tongue before rinsing the mouth with water from a metal jug.

The kitchen was fashioned with clay. Fire logs, or straw for the poor, were burned for cooking. Alloy metal – bell metal or brass pots were used for cooking rice. Bell metal plates and bowls were used for eating and jugs made of the same metal were used for drinking water.

Vegetables were cooked in unglazed terracotta earthenware pots made by the ‘Loi’ people (non-Hinduised Meiteis) in the villages. Wrought iron pans were used for frying.

These earthen pots were sold at the Khwairamband Bazaar along with salt and alkali extracted by these Loi people from salt wells at Ningel and other places. They were quite sufficient for the people of Manipur, but the mining was discontinued after the British introduced commercial salt from outside of Manipur.

All the Yumjaos were built in an enclosure called an ‘Ingkhol’ – homestead. The word has no English equivalent and each small homestead was registered as an Ingkhol during the British time and continues to be used as such.

The Ingkhol had a courtyard in front of the house and there was always a tulsi plant – Indian basil, which is sacred to Hindus. Further east near the boundary there was a rectangular barn-like building, the narrower sides facing north to south, roofed and walled on three sides but open on the west side facing the courtyard. It was known as ‘mamang shangoi’ (front barn). It was also built with bamboo, mud walls and thatched roof. It was used for social functions and gatherings. Some big houses had a similar barn on the north side, known as awang shangoi (north barn).

Every Ingkhol was loosely fenced with sliced bamboo strips in the north and the south. The back was bounded with a four-foot tall earth mound on which bamboos were planted. The front had a gate with three or four slim bamboo poles pushed from side to side either through holes bored in the two bamboo or wood uprights, or through metal brackets fastened to the uprights.

Now, it is very rare to find such a house since Imphal became a city, filled with modern concrete buildings. Such a house which my father built nearly a century ago, though on its last legs, is still standing and lived in. It was a vernacular architecture with indigenous engineering that has stood the ravages of time apart from needing replacement of the thatch on the roof now and again. The thatch is not readily available anymore.

There was usually a small pond in the Ingkhol if it was big enough, to store water for washing and cleaning. It was traditional to plant sweet scented white gardenia flowers (kaboklei) by its edge.

A few years later, tall free-standing kerosene lanterns known as laltel in Meiteilon, were introduced. They had a flat oil-lit wick inside, surrounded by chimney-like glass with a perforated metal lid on top as the exhaust. Each had a metal wire handle on top. They were of the type used by the cowboys in America’s Wild West, 100-150 years earlier. Even then every family could not afford them.

Much later, medium sized freestanding pressure-type kerosene lamps called half-lamps, and hanging Petrolmax lamps with a glass globe, became available but they were expensive and were owned by a very few select people. They were used mainly for public functions like weddings. Now Imphal City is awash with electricity with lit up streets and road-side lamps.

There were only three or four cars owned by the public. I vaguely remember an old car before the War, owned by a friend of my father. Sometimes he used to take me and my father for a ride.

The Maharaja had a couple of cars. The political Agents did not have any except the last one – Mr Pearson who owned a small Morris Minor in which my friend Gojendra and I had a ride once from his residence to the Manipur Dramatic Union Hall, when the Shakespearana Theatre Party came to Imphal in 1946.

Now there are so many private cars, coaches, buses, auto-rickshaws and taxis that the traffic in Imphal is as congested as in Delhi, though on a smaller scale, necessitating flyovers and 2-lane carriageways.

Manipur was a cloistered country with hardly any contact with the outside world. They lived happily in the simple lifestyle they were used to. Illiteracy was quite high as the British and the maharajas preferred to keep Manipuris uneducated. They followed the Machiavellian dictum that says, ‘the less the people are educated the easier is the rule’.

The Meiteis were so backward that the only time some old men ventured outside of Manipur was when they made a pilgrimage to Nabadeep in Bengal or Brindaban in UP. It was a big adventure for people from the villages as no one spoke Hindi. They took with them a few belongings wrapped inside a thick cotton sheet called Ngabong. As expected, a few of them did not return home, having succumbed to disease or starvation, having their pockets picked or their belongings stolen.

Before the Marwaris introduced lorries to bring merchandise from Dimapur which was the railhead for Manipur in Assam, now in Nagaland. Manipuris had to walk for three days across the nine hill ranges along the dangerous Tong gei Maril road, now known as the Old Cachar road (NH 150) to reach Cachar or Silchar, from where they caught a train for Calcutta or Mathura (7 miles from Brindaban).

When my father and my elder brother later went to college in Dacca, they would walk along the Old Cachar Road for three days to Silchar and then travel by boat from Silchar to Dacca taking another 3 days.

Much later, some people could afford to go on the back of a Marwari lorry to Dimapur to catch a train, taking six or seven hours. A few people, like my parents, who could afford the fare, travelled to Dimapur, seated on a bench seat behind the driver and handyman in a red mail gari (postal vehicle).

Imphal had a resemblance of a modern town after the War ended in 1945. The bombed-out Marwari buildings were reconstructed by the Meiteis who were allotted new freehold plots. There were a lot of jeeps, trucks, lorries and motorcycles, reassembled from the scrap yards of the War, thanks to the ingenuity of Meitei mechanics.

Imphal now has modern comfortable coaches that take passengers to Guwahati to catch a train for anywhere in India, or direct to Shillong. It has coaches that will take pilgrims to all the Hindu holy places in India and bring them back home.

Many Airlines fly four or five times a day from Imphal to Guwahati, Kolkatta, Delhi, Bangalore etc. A direct flight From Imphal to Kolkatta takes only one hour and Imphal to Delhi four hours. Imphal has a modern medium-sized airport with night-landing facilities. There will soon be a railhead in Imphal. The construction of a rail road has already begun from the Jiri side of Assam.

I once went to Imphal from London by air in two days to see my ill mother. It used to take 14 days by sea from Southampton to Bombay before WWII and another 5 or 6 days from Bombay to Imphal. That shows how advanced the Imphal City is now in terms of transportation facilities.

During my father’s school days, about 150 years ago, there was only one school that taught pupils up to Class VI – to learn enough English to help run the government machinery by turning out clerks and amins. The head of the police force was only an Inspector of Police known as Khomdram IP.

The British administration offered free exercise books and pencils to persuade boys to come to school, which their parents thought unholy as it was teaching the English language.

In those days, there was an English doctor known as the Civil Surgeon at Imphal, followed later, during my time by a Bengali doctor with an LMP (Licentiate Medical Practitioner) diploma.

After WWII, a few Meitei doctors with LMP diplomas came out of colleges. Now Imphal has many specialists in all the disciplines of Medicine and Surgery. There are two medical colleges. There is the Babina Diagnostics with the latest electronic technologies for all pathological investigations; MRI scan and CT scan facilities. There are small private, modern state-of-the-art hospitals, such as the Irengbam Thamacha Devi Nursing and Healthcare Research Institute, the Shija Hospital and Research Institute and few others with all the mod cons.

The sports-loving Meiteis organised the Manipur Olympic Games in Imphal for the first time in 1947. There were regular sporting events for children every year at the time of Yaoshang festival. Imphal now has a large Sports Complex with a modern stadium and indoor and outdoor games facilities.

All kinds of modern sports including the indigenous ones are being played in Imphal. There are regular polo games and tournaments including international ones. Manipur as the origin of the modern polo is now internationally recognised.

The percentage literacy in Manipur is 78 per cent and the majority of the educated people live in Imphal. There are so many private Kindergarten and Montessori schools that primary school children can speak English as they do in any other city of India. One of the finest schools, comparable to any top school in India is the progressive CBSE School – Sishu Nistha Niketan.

Imphal has many good hotels, which cater to the needs of sophisticated tourists. The Manipur Government has begun planning for a modern 5 star hotel in order to attract more tourists, now that the Government of India has begun to relax the Restricted Area Permit that is a scourge for Manipur’s economy.

As the city grows to its adulthood with the Government concentrating on building a good infrastructure, commercial policy and urban planning regimes, with a vigorous tourist department, a further growth of the city is envisaged in the next 10 years, especially with the coming of railways and the opening of a Moreh to Mandalay bus service.

P.O. Imphal has now been consigned to the trash bin of history. Imphal is now a young city and should be addressed as “in Imphal” and not “at Imphal”. Any small thing helps.