Just got back from a eye-opener of a trip to Nagaland and Manipur.The North-East in so many ways seems to be isolated from the rest of India.We arrived on a Sunday afternoon in Kohima and found ourselves stuck in a sleepy little hill-town with none of the colonial charm of Darjeeling and Shillong.In a heavily Christian state where the army has a strong presence, nothing much really happens on a Sunday.People go for evening mass at 3.oo in the afternoon,have dinnerwith family at 5.oo and go to bed by 7.oo.How exciting!But we did get to see something out of the ordinary that night.There party lights flashing from a minister's residence on another hill and we were suddenly greeted with blaring rock-n-roll music.We could hear the words clearly and nobody seemed to have any objections.(The Nagas have no need of the radio.They believe in live music and strongly believe in the saying-"Live and let live!").I also managed to catch the IPL final.I had already "warne"d some of my friends that Royals would win so the ending did not come as much of a surprise.
Thankfully there was a lot more activity over the next few days.We made trips to the countryside,visited war cemetries and beautiful churches,sampled spicy Naga food,saw frogs and snakes being sold as food at the market places,did minor anthropological studies of the Naga tribes,witnessed army-men having a merry time at their wet canteens in an otherwise "dry state".....and saw some amazing road signs("Be patient or become a patient","Safety means safe tea at home", "Left is right and right is wrong","Don't rally and race/But drive with grace").
