O DAUGHTERS OF EVE

O daughters of Eve, where did your legs get the power to keep on stepping the very ground where they tormented and defiled you? Did you want to die? Did you beg for a flying bullet to strike you down or the earth to swallow you right there than to live through the greatest nightmare anyone with soft bosom could ever imagine? Did you curse the day your mother pushed you out of her womb? Were you disillusioned thinking that men were meant to protect women like your fathers did?

It took 78 days for the entire country to weep with you. They wouldn't listen to us.. took them your harrowing ordeal to be heard and our suffering to be noticed.

Our oppressors hang their heads in shame, or so they say. Is it in the act or because they've been finally exposed for the world to see? Show us the proof they said, but now your nightmarish ordeal has become the power that ignited the wrath of your billion countrywomen and men.. and tears flow. Manipur has betrayed you, betrayed us.

So let people who know what humanity is fight for your plight. And if it's in the desire of the heavens that governments could be toppled because of your pain, let your tears guide our wrath until justice is delivered and a place for us exists where no woman ever tread in fear of being defiled or violated again.

Footnote: This nightmarish episode shook the nation and broke the barriers of the Meetei controlled news narrative of Imphal during the internet shut down. Their horrific ordeal revealed the brutality and nature of the conflict and the deep-seated animosity with the Meeteis as perpetrators of the ethnic- cleansing against the Kuki-Zos of Manipur.