SOME SURNAMES COME to represent more than the man. They represent an idea. Like Ford, Benz and Lamborghini in automobiles; McDonald’s in fast food; Hershey and Cadbury in chocolates; Bose in premium audio equipment and so on.
The names Muivah, Isak and Khaplang carried that weight in the long struggle for Nagalim. With Isak Chishi Swu and S.S. Khaplang gone, Thuingaleng Muivah remains the sole surviving face of the movement’s founding generation. Chief of Bureau (Delhi) Namrata Biji Ahuja and Photo Editor Bhanu Prakash Chandra met the nonagenarian at his home in Dimapur, a two-hour drive from Hebron, the headquarters of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah).
Namrata brings you a beautiful article that weaves together history, personal accounts from Muivah himself and his family, and the story of a tired, much-patched pair of jeans. Then there are the interviews with Muivah himself and Rh. Raising, the special emissary of the collective leadership of the NSCN(IM). In a separate article, she also looks at the NSCN(IM) links to Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Our coverage of the FIFA World Cup continues, and my morning was made special by Lionel Messi’s hat-trick. Chief Subeditor Karthik Ravindranath writes about the six teams managed by Argentine coaches, right from the US’s Mauricio Pochettino to Argentina’s own Lionel Scaloni.
In @leisure, Special Correspondent Anjuly Mathai reviews railway medic Dr Kumar Nirbhay’s anecdotal volume, The Great Indian Medico Masala. From the glimpses that Anjuly offers, the book is a laugh riot.
I chuckled reading Dr Nirbhay’s description of the Super Babas in medical colleges. Super Babas are “ultra seniors who had flunked so many times that no one knew which year they officially belonged to”.
A Chennai college famous for its halls of residence has residents, non-residents, resident residents and resident non-residents. The resident resident only leaves his room to go to class, the mess and the loo. The resident non-resident has relatives in town and spends almost every night of the week with them, leaving his hall room unoccupied.
Coming back to the cover, it is not possible to wish away the Nagas and their aspirations. We can only hope for sincerity on both sides, as Muivah stresses. To wish it all away would be like trying to wash off king chilli sauce, as Bhanu found out.
After enjoying a sumptuous meal of Naga fried rice loaded with ginger, bamboo shoots and the mouthwatering chilli sauce, THE WEEK team picked up three bottles of king chilli pickle for family and friends. En route to the airport, a bottle started leaking king chilli oil everywhere. Bhanu’s attempt to contain the lava flow failed. He eventually ‘gifted’ the leaking bottle to the auto driver and the team split the remaining two among themselves.
Hooked by the smell of the chilli oil, Bhanu licked his fingers absentmindedly before entering the airport, and that made his first trip to the northeast unforgettable. His mouth was on fire, so was every patch of skin touched by chilli oil. Water and soap brought some relief, but the burn stayed with him all the way back to Bengaluru.
