From Oting killings to AFSPA shadow, verse gives voice to anger in Nagaland

Keditsu called it “Recipe For Peace”, and the 40-year-old’s poem went viral on social media. “One of the ways I have been processing my reaction to the Oting incident has been by writing poems,” she says.

Keditsu is not alone. Across Nagaland, in the aftermath of the Oting incident that claimed 14 civilian lives in all, there has been an outpouring of grief through the written word. Since December 5, poems, stories and songs dot social media timelines, with Nagas across age groups and tribes finding a common language to grieve a collective loss.

“There are many sensitively written poems that mirror our grief,” says Sahitya Akademi-winning poet and author, Easterine Kire.

“We are in deep grief. We call the young ones that were murdered, our sons. We take death very seriously and when it concerns death by unjust measures, national memory is seared by it and elegies, poems, prose writings as well as paintings, sculptures of the incident become some of the channels for people to express their grief,” Kire says.

For many in Nagaland, the incident has brought back the bitter taste of living under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA).

Riathung Ngullie, 36, who grew up in Kohima, recalls in a Facebook post how a tyre bursting on a road in 1995 had led forces to open fire in Kohima in panic. “We packed our bags, utensils and rations to escape into the jungle. I was a child but I could smell and sense fear that feeling never left me,” he writes.

Like Ngullie, various accounts and memories of living under the shadow of AFSPA are being retold and shared. “But as much as these memories of a palpable sense of insecurity from my childhood stir up, I realise how much forgetting I have done deliberately, to the point of denial — just to make living under AFSPA bearable,” says Keditsu, the professor.

The deliberate ‘normalising’ is reflected in “Sometimes”, a poem by Emisenla Jamir, a 34-year-old who teaches literature in Kohima. She writes: “Sometimes, when I pass the faded greens with/ guns in their hands,/ I forget…that this land, wrapped/ in festivals and songs/ is still tied with/ ribbons of barbed wire.”

Looking back, Jamir says: “I had written this poem when I was stuck in traffic, behind an army truck. It struck me how much we had normalised the presence of the military here.”

Some others turned to writing on an instinct. Kohima-based poet Beni Sumer Yanthan said she “impulsively” put a “bunch of sentences on Twitter”. Her poem “Oting” has now even been translated to Tamil. “When people started sharing it, I realised that so many were thinking like me,” she says.

So overwhelming is the sense of anger and despondency that Dreamz Unlimited, arguably Nagaland’s most famous YouTube channel, known for parodies on social and political issues, registered their protest through a biting three-minute film about living in a militarised society. The YouTubers end with a message: “Repeal AFSPA.”

“What happened is no laughing matter and we were in no mood to joke,” says Tiakumzuk Aier, a member of the group.

For those even younger, sheltered from the violence as relative peace had emerged in Nagaland, Oting is a harsh reminder of the lived realities of their parents and grandparents. Zacukho Tetseo (25) from Pfütsero in Phek district and H Kemya Yanlem (23) from Mon district, where Oting is situated, had grandfathers who were involved in the Naga freedom movement.

Tetseo says he grew up hearing tales from his grandfather about the men who died and the homes they lost. It led him to write the lyrics of “Holding on”, a tribute rap song in 12 hours. Kemya, on the other hand, never met her grandfather but had heard how he was an “unsung hero of his time”.

In fact, Kemya accompanied her parents to the funeral of the 14 who died, and later came up with a poem on it. “I guess age doesn’t really matter here. We are all grief-stricken and are all trying to find a way to let it out and heal,” she says.