Women Rule Mars

Or They Should. Maxim Travels to Manipur to Live in One of India’s Most Progressive Societies. We Came Back With Legendary Lessons in Living, Food for the Soul and, Most Important, Ideas on How to Run the Rest of Our Lives as Men of the World… A World That Should Be.

- Vaibhav Raghunandan

All the traditional Manipuri folk tales end violently. And, in almost all of them, at the centre is creation of conflict by an external feminine element. This is true of stories everywhere, of course. The damsel in distress is a strong literary symbol for conflict (Draupadi, Sita) creation. Except in Manipur, a state where more women than men have won accolades for the country in sports and garnered headlines for acts of political defiance. Here, this symbol is never in distress. She is the element who uses subterfuge to create the plot.

For instance, one of the oldest legends of Manipur revolves around a rift between two princes. The two are promised the kingdom on the condition that they finish circling creation before the king (their father) opens his eyes. The elder son sets off an a long journey around Earth. The younger son is his mother’s darling and is instructed by her to circle the father before he opens his eyes. By crook he wins the kingdom. A bitter fight follows, one that is finally resolved when the father decides that the younger son can rule the kingdom, but never the common man’s house. Till date, every Meitei house has a statue of the younger brother in the courtyard. Distant relations of the royal family dare not set foot there.

Moral of the story: The younger son is mother’s pet.

“You must be the older son in your family,” Premi Thangjam laughs, when confronted with my incredulity at the injustice. Thangjam is an English news presenter on Impact TV, a local cable network. She is the only female presenter in the whole state, and is widely regarded as the best in the business. “It’s not about creating rifts in families. The way to look at the story is this: Women in Manipur always like to have control over everything that happens around them,” she laughs again.