Land of Jade

by Bertil Lintner

  Kewezeko came up with an idea. He had some friends who lived on the outskirts of Guwahati. We piled into a scooter taxi and drove over to their place. Wedged in a corner, I hunched myself down behind a newspaper which I pretended to be reading as the three-wheeled taxi sped along the crowded streets.

  Though Kewezeko’s friend was not at home we persuaded the Bengali housekeeper that we needed a rest before catching the night bus to Dimapur.

  “But if there’s any trouble?” he asked Kewezeko with a dubious glance at me.

  “There won’t be any trouble. If you don’t talk,” Kewezeko replied pointedly.

  We spent the whole night inside the room, nervously peeping outside from behind the grubby curtain, constantly expecting to see police marching towards the building. Nobody came. At seven, after dark, Kewezeko went out and came back with a scooter taxi which took us to the bus station. He bought our tickets and we got on. At eight sharp, to our astonishment, the bus pulled out of the station, bound for Dimapur.

  The reaction of the other passengers to my presence was curious. Many were Nagas, judging from their Mongol faces. They knew I should not have been on this bus, but they seemed friendly and smiled gently. The few Indian passengers stared in almost aggressive perplexity. But even they refrained from asking me any questions. Hseng Noung, of course, blended in perfectly. Everyone seemed to take it for granted she was a Naga.

  I felt reasonably safe inside the bus, but I was hesitant to get down when it stopped for meals or for people to relieve themselves. Kewezeko guessed my feelings. He did not talk to us in the bus. But when it stopped, he discreetly slipped food through the window to us.

  This system worked fine until I started feeling a call of nature which grew more urgent with the passing of time. As the need became even more insistent and I moved restlessly in my seat, my foot hit one of the empty coconut shells rolling around on the floor. Kewezeko had bought them for us at the last stop. A hole big enough for a straw had been hacked in the top so one could suck out the milk. Salvation was at hand. I picked up the shell and took out my Swiss army knife. Rapidly, I enlarged the hole, smoothing out the jagged edges. In the dark amongst all the sleeping passengers, covering my action with the field-jacket, I relieved myself. Then I dropped the brimming container out of the window and settled back contentedly to sleep.

  We woke up just before the Assam-Nagaland border. The officials at the Assam checkpoint paid no attention to the bus as it drove across a few hundred metres of no man’s land towards the Nagaland gate, the critical one. But quite extraordinarily, the bus chugged to a halt before we reached the second checkpoint. It had run out of petrol. A bus boy trudged off towards Dimapur, lugging a jerry can. It was almost an hour before he came back. The passengers were getting impatient as everyone was tired after the long journey from Guwahati. The bus started up again—only to slow down once more as we neared the open gate.

  “Don’t stop! We want to get home!” one of the passengers shouted.

  The driver accelerated through the opening without stopping. I glimpsed four policemen having breakfast inside a small concrete booth beside the actual gate. They did not even look up as we passed. Nothing exciting ever happens at Dimapur checkgate.

  3

  TO KOHIMA

  Kewezeko had thought Vemesü and some of his friends would be at the bus station in Dimapur waiting for us. They were not. Instead, there was a line of policemen in khaki uniforms with bamboo lahtis standing right across the length of the walled bus station compound. Feigning nonchalance, I headed towards the terminal building with my backpack through their line. The nearest glanced at me—and each other. But no one made any move to prevent my passing. Presumably, they thought everything was in order since the bus had passed through so many rigorous checks. Kewezeko and Hseng Noung followed a few paces behind.

  We went upstairs to a small cafeteria in the terminal building. I sat down with my back to the entrance and pulled down my big, Indian bush hat low over my eyes. Kewezeko called a waiter and ordered breakfast for us and went out to search for the others. We sat by the table in silence, nervously nibbling our thin omelettes, dry toast and sipping the watery tea to make them last longer. After half an hour Kewezeko re-appeared having found nobody.

  We grabbed our baggage and left the building. The policemen were still there but they ignored me completely. The compound’s rear exit curiously consisted of a rusty iron ladder surmounting both sides of the plastered brick wall. On the other side, we found ourselves in a small open field. Without a word, we followed Kewezeko across it and into the backstreets of Dimapur.

  After a brisk walk along dusty roads, Kewezeko opened a gate and led us through a small garden into a half-timbered bungalow. We entered a sparsely furnished room with a Naga calendar on the wall. An old woman was sweeping the floor. Silently and without hesitation, she opened the door to an even smaller backroom and closed it after us. We took off our backpacks and I went up to the window to check out our surroundings. I saw the old woman wave the children in the garden to her. She stooped and whispered something to them. The children nodded solemnly and returned to their games.

  I wondered how many people on clandestine journeys this old lady had given shelter to since the war in Nagaland broke out in 1956. The nonchalant children playing outside with the neighbours’ kids indicated that even they were veterans of the game.

  By entering this small half-timbered bungalow in Dimapur, we entered a new phase of hiding. From now on, disguise would be automatic whenever I ventured out from any of the safe houses. Through cunning and trickery we had evaded the constrictions of Indian law, but now were forced to surrender our freedom to our Naga contacts.

  As Kewezeko’s friends had not kept their appointment this first hideout was a temporary improvisation. He left us again to look for other of his friends in town. Cross-legged we sat on the wooden floor and cast occasional worried glances towards the window. About half an hour later, we heard a jeep come to a halt outside. It was Kewezeko who had at last found a place for us to stay.

  He and Hseng Noung grabbed our packs and loaded them onto the jeep. I slipped out last wearing my wig from Calcutta’s New Market and dark sunglasses. I jumped into the canvas-covered rear of the jeep. The driver, a Naga boy in his teens, accelerated away.

  As we drove through the town’s dusty streets I glimpsed the usual rickshaws, scooter taxis and Ambassador cars. On the outskirts the jeep abruptly halted at the back of a large brick building. A backdoor was opened and I moved quickly through it. A young Naga couple was sitting there with expectant looks on their faces. The husband near the door closed it after us and waved a hand towards a bed where we all perched in a row.

  “But you look almost Indian! Like a Punjabi or something,” the wife exclaimed.

  With a smile, I whisked off my wig and sunglasses. They gasped in astonishment. The disguise apparently worked. But this broke the ice effectively and we were soon chatting about our adventures so far. After a while, Kewezeko stood up.

  “I must be off now. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve got some news for you.”

  Our host and hostess also left us shortly afterwards, urging us to take a rest. Little did we realise at the time that this room was where we were going to be confined for the next fortnight.

  “Fernandes da Souza”, August 1985.

  We came to know this generous Naga couple well. Though themselves not members of the underground, their ancient tradition of hospitality made the sheltering of needy visitors near instinctive. We also became aware of a religious element. We well knew that most Nagas were Christians—but were astonished by the ardent nature of their beliefs. If strangers like us turned up, against all odds, in Nagaland, they immediately recognised the workings of providence. As we narrated our story, of how we had managed to trick the police on the way from Siliguri to Guwahati, and how the bus had not even stopped at the checkgate just before Dimapur, they became convinced that we were protected by the intervening hand of
God and they insisted that our’s was a divinely ordained mission.

  Such prophetic talk made Hseng Noung and I feel ill at ease, though we could see that such an amazing sequence of events demanded some explanation. After months of worrying about the various permits and checkpoints we too were amazed by the relative ease with which seemingly colossal barriers were surmounted. Hseng Noung and I privately asked each other: Was God condoning our chicanery?

  As the days went by, we left our room only for meals which the Naga couple provided for us. We ate together in the kitchen; it was generally rice and some kind of curry with oranges and pineapple for dessert. Kewezeko had been to see us again before leaving for Kohima where he was going to arrange for a jeep to drive us up to the border.

  But it was too late to even contemplate continuing to the Kachin headquarters near the Sino-Burmese frontier. Hseng Noung was already seven months pregnant and with the monsoon well advanced any jungle trekking, especially in the swampy jungles of the Hukawng Valley and the sharp escarpments of the Kumon Range, which we would have to traverse, would no longer be feasible.

  We talked it over and came to the conclusion that the best we could do, given the circumstances, was to cross the border to Naga headquarters in northwestern Burma as soon as possible. There, we had been told, the NSCN maintained a field hospital where our baby could be born. Alternatively, we could trek for a couple of weeks only to the 2nd Brigade headquarters of the KIA in western Kachin State, not more than 300-400 kms from the Indian border. The KIA, by far the strongest non-communist guerrilla group in Burma, runs several civilian as well as military hospitals all over the 40,000 square kms large territory they control in the north.

  A third possible solution to our dilemma was, once across the border, and having established contacts with the Kachins, to separate. I would take the covert route, the slow trek through the jungle, while Hseng Noung, dressed as a local village girl, could go on ahead by car together with some Kachin women from the underground. After leaving the government-controlled road south of Myitkyina, she would have to walk 20-35 kms up to the Kachin rebel headquarters at Pa Jau in the border mountains. Nobody would suspect a pregnant woman travelling with some friends. And once at Pa Jau, she would be certain to get good medical care.

  Hseng Noung vociferously objected when I suggested this. Though there would be little chance of her being arrested, since she is fluent in both Burmese and Shan, she would not be able to take her camera along, or even see much of the rebel-held areas. Eventually I gave in to her arguments.

  Kewezeko came back after ten days. He had been unable to contact the underground.

  “The most important people we were talking with here in Dimapur were arrested a few days ago. That’s the problem. Everybody’s in hiding now.”

  We felt we had to leave Dimapur. Kohima, the state capital in the hills 70 kms to the east, would be much better from our point of view. There, it would be easier to re-establish contact with the Naga underground as it was inside the Inner Line Area—the hill country of Nagaland. Though Dimapur is closed to foreigners, it is open to any Indian citizen. Plains people, however, need a special Inner Line Permit in order to proceed to the actual hill country. The gate where these permits are supposed to be checked is located on the road to Kohima, just outside Dimapur. Once past that obstacle, we would feel far securer.

  Kewezeko had borrowed a jeep and made the journey up to Kohima a couple of times to survey the situation. He had passed the Inner Line Gate four times without even being stopped. The Nagas are a passionate and sometimes aggressive people, so the wary police generally refrain from checking tribesmen’s vehicles.

  On July 27, twelve days since we arrived in Dimapur, we left. Kewezeko, Vemesü, who had just returned from New Delhi, and Hseng Noung occupied the front seats in the jeep while I sat in the back, under the canvas. I wore my wig and sunglasses and had a colourful Naga shawl wrapped around my shoulders. We drove slowly along the bumpy highway and reached the Inner Line Gate after less than an hour. I spotted a barrier across the road and a nearby guard house. The checkpoint was located near a stream, exactly at the point where the plain ended and the road began its climb up into the hills.

  As we approached it, we could see that the actual gate was open. But four uniformed policemen were standing near the guard house. A rickety Tata passenger bus appeared from the opposite direction. While the policemen were bustling towards the bus, Vemesü pressed down the accelerator and honked the horn. The policemen looked around—but seemed unconcerned when they saw only three Mongol faces in the jeep’s front seat. Vemesü swerved past the bus and accelerated harder, as to gather speed for the uphill climb just beyond the gate.

  “Was that really the Inner Line Gate?” I asked, crouched in the back of the jeep, as we drove up the slope.

  “Yes.” Kewezeko smiled over his shoulder, “That was it.”

  It was hard to grasp that what had been the focus of our worries for months had now suddenly disappeared. There were no further checkpoints before we reached the actual border. Once there, the rugged terrain would work to our advantage as then we would be walking through the forest, not driving along a road.

  High, green peaks with banks of clouds drifting past them soared in all directions. Mountain torrents tumbled in the gorges. We were out of the densely populated plains and now only passed small villages. Naga women trudged along the roadside toting heavy loads of firewood and fruit in baskets on their backs. The fresh mountain air was invigorating; India proper lay behind and below us.

  As the jeep sped along the road to Kohima, places we had read about or seen on maps suddenly came alive. There was a crude, wooden road sign pointing out the turn-off to Khonoma, the mountain-top village where Angami Zapu Phizo, the now exiled founder of the Naga national movement, was born more than 80 years ago. Next came Jotsoma, the site of a major battle between the Naga guerrillas and the Indian Army in 1968.

  We reached Kohima after dark, as intended. Like so many other Indian hill stations, the town consisted of a conglomeration of barracks, office buildings, shops, new concrete structures hidden behind billboard-size State Bank of India signs, half-timbered bungalows and grander villas irregularly dispersed over hillocks and slopes.

  The winding, hilly streets were wet from rain and we arrived at a small Assam-style bungalow on a hillside outside the actual town centre. It belonged to another of Kewezeko’s and Vemesü’s warm, generous friends where the same amazing hospitality was extended.

  “My name is Zanietso,” our new host, a genial man in his late thirties, said with a gentle smile as he shook my hand. He showed us to a secluded room with polished floorboards. It had its own attached bathroom and Zanietso urged us to take a rest after the journey from Dimapur. Kewezeko and Vemesü left after a while and drove off into the darkness. For us, it was a humbling experience. Had we been discovered, we at least could have appealed to the Swedish Embassy in New Delhi to arrange for legal representation in an Indian court. None of our hosts would have been able to call on any authorities for help in a similar way.

  On our second day in Kohima, we made direct contact with the NSCN for the first time. Kewezeko brought a short, bespectacled man in his forties to the house. As he entered the room, he glanced around rapidly and seemed satisfied when he saw the curtains were closed. He sat down on a wooden chair we had placed in front of the bed, where we were sitting. The man looked at me sternly.

  “I am Mr Phatang. I’m not a member of the NSCN. But I help them with underground work here in Nagaland.”

  He went on to tell us he frequently visited the bases across the border in Burma. We understood that he belonged to the Tangkhul tribe of Nagas from northeastern Manipur.

  “Whenever I see Indian soldiers in uniform, I hate them,” Mr Phatang announced with a mixture of bitterness and arrogance in his voice.

  “I remember how in front of us villagers they beat up and humiliated our elders, the very people we children had been taught to respect.
I can never forget that. We must fight on.”

  We listened quietly to him as he kept on talking. Somewhat surprisingly, he also began boasting about his contacts with what he called ‘big shots’ in Kohima and Imphal, the capital of Manipur. He implied some of them were ministers in the respective state governments. When he fell silent for a while, we tried to steer the conversation towards the purpose of our coming to Nagaland. We made it clear we wanted him to inform the NSCN that we were in Kohima and needed help to cross the border as soon as possible.

  To our surprise, he did not seem particularly keen on doing this. We had thought the Naga underground would be delighted to hear that some foreign journalists had made it to their area, the first to do so in 25 years. I handed over our letter of introduction from the KIA. It was written in the Kachin language which he naturally did not understand. But it had all the official rebel seals on it and the signature of Maj.-Gen. Zau Mai, the KIA’s Chief of Staff.

  Phatang glanced over the letter and gave it back to me. He kept on talking about his important friends and contacts in Kohima. We explained that Hseng Noung was pregnant and asked whether there were any trained medical staff at the NSCN’s headquarters.