{"id":9553,"date":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","date_gmt":"1999-11-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:feeds.feedburner.com:\/\/a8694cbe81e7702f652226fd39de110d"},"modified":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","modified_gmt":"1999-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"reminiscences-and-longing-after-nguyen-quang-thieu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/1999\/11\/29\/reminiscences-and-longing-after-nguyen-quang-thieu\/","title":{"rendered":"Reminiscences and Longing (after Nguyen Quang Thieu)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>  <script type=\"text\/javascript\">var addthis_product='wpp-252';var addthis_options=\"Google+1\"<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/js\/250\/addthis_widget.js#pubid=kanglaonline\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>By Robin S Ngangom<br \/> &ldquo;The yellow mustard&rsquo;s in bloom<br \/> Krishna&rsquo;s got a wife<br \/> Radha has given birth to a child<br \/> Krishna is starving.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Once again it is the season that smells of Yaosang.<\/p>\n<p>The yellow mustard departs, peas ripen, and<br \/> Boys revisiting the year, steal from vegetable patches at night<br \/> For Yaosang&rsquo;s neighbourhood feast.<\/p>\n<p>We cursed the Brahmin priest when he refused to bring the god<br \/> To our reed and straw hut on the river bank<br \/> Ready to be razed to mark the new season.<\/p>\n<p>As the months warmed up to her<br \/> My grandmother pulled out, one by one,<br \/> From the caches in her sunny room<br \/> Dry sweetmeat she brought from her endless pilgrimages.<br \/> In winter, she could only give me wizened fruits<br \/> That looked like her fingers.<\/p>\n<p>And then the courtyard plays, the touring cinemas,<br \/> The khongjom parba phaibok, arrived in droves,<br \/> Growing in clamour as a boy&rsquo;s nights grew very late<br \/> And he didn&rsquo;t know that his father had gone looking for him.<\/p>\n<p>For the boy, though, in the twinkling festive nights<br \/> Every girl was a fairy or a goddess<br \/> Smelling of lotuses and dreams.<\/p>\n<p>And having abandoned his grandmother<br \/> While chasing his kite he felt guilty<br \/> And went to her now &ldquo;dark and mouldy&rdquo; room.<\/p>\n<p>He found her tied with a rope to her bedpost and<br \/> Hobbling around her bed. She said,<br \/> &ldquo;I&rsquo;m mad now, don&rsquo;t come near me.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The boy ran onto the street behind his house.<br \/> But while running on the street he did not realise that<br \/> He was growing taller with patches of hair under his arms and belly<br \/> As the life of the streets claimed him.<\/p>\n<p>It could be his blooming heart<br \/> Or his wet dreams, he mustered up courage to ask a girl out<br \/> After writing fifteen perfumed letters<br \/> And they went cycling past the returning mustard fields on river banks,<br \/> Past his almost happy boyhood.<\/p>\n<p>So many years he waited in vain for them to return<br \/> The pena shakpa,the laiharaoba, the chalees of kang,<br \/> Thehalf-remembered pass khelas.<\/p>\n<p>But they&rsquo;ve disappeared in the folds of his reveries<br \/> Like the fairies and the goddesses.<\/p>\n<p>One day in his middle years<br \/> They all returned suddenly as spectacle<br \/> Watched eagerly by wives and boys<br \/> Before they became victims<br \/> Of the killers who have stepped out<br \/> Of the courtyard plays and created widows<br \/> And made boys disappear into endlessly waiting days.<\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/Kanglaonline\/~4\/r2rUP4laCjw\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">Read more \/ Original news source: <a href=\"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/Kanglaonline\/~3\/r2rUP4laCjw\/\">http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/Kanglaonline\/~3\/r2rUP4laCjw\/<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Robin S Ngangom &#8220;The yellow mustard&#8217;s in bloom Krishna&#8217;s got a wife Radha has given birth to a child Krishna is starving.&#8221; Once again it is the season that&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/kanglaonline.com\/2011\/06\/reminiscences-and-longing-after-nguyen-quang-thieu\/\">Read more <span>&#187;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[330,41],"class_list":["post-9553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kanglaonline","category-news","tag-kanglaonline-2","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9553"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10172,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9553\/revisions\/10172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}