UNDER SIEGE: Members of Amar Yumnam’s family; CRPF forces on patrol (below)

Jayabati Devi offers black tea to her guests, for there is little milk at home. The 47-year-old nurse rustles up her own snacks these days ? a simple besan bhujia called Watin. “Bandhs, general strike and economic blockades have become a way of life,” she says. “As Manipur burns, you have no choice but to learn to live.”

It’s not easy, though. The All Naga Students’ Association of Manipur (ANSAM) has imposed an economic blockade on Manipur, virtually severing it from the rest of the country. For over a month now, the supply of essentials has been erratic. petrol is scarce, as is food.

The troubled times remind Jayabati Devi of a day last year when all of Manipur was in flames. Jayabati was home for the third day in a row, because the streets of the capital, Imphal, were like war zones. She knew that her place was in her wards in the unit hospital of the Manipur Rifles. But protestors were fighting a pitched battle with the administration, and Jayabati knew she couldn’t step out of her house.

That was soon after Thangjam Manorama was killed by troops of the Assam Rifles. People were out on the streets, facing bullets, lathis and tear-gas shells, to protest the death of the 32-year-old Manipuri woman.

Jayabati was warned that if she didn’t report for work her services would be terminated. She recalls how senior officials collected a fine from her colleagues who had been forced to stay home during the strike. “I used to argue with them that if they provided security escorts I would come. But they couldn’t do so. So I never paid any fine either,” Jayabati Devi says.

For Jayabati Devi and her family, blockades are not new. This time, the Naga students are demanding a roll back of a government declaration of a general holiday on June 18 as “state integrity day”. But the blockade, which started on June 19, goes beyond that ? for it actually revolves around an old demand for the unification of Naga- inhabited areas of the northeast under one administrative unit.

Imphal stayed shut for two months during the 2001 summer uprising against the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isaac-Muivah)’s agreement to extend a ceasefire without territorial restrictions. The death of Manorama triggered a series of agitations that led to the closure of the city for three months last year. “But like other families coping with the troubled times, we managed to sustain ourselves,” says Jayabati’s husband, Amar Yumnam.

Even now, the Yumnams are coping. They live in a joint family, where the senior-most is 83 years old and the youngest is still to go to school. Jayabati is the eldest daughter-in-law in the 16-member Meitei family living in Malom, just eight kms from the Imphal marketplace.

The market is not a busy place any more. Food shortages have forced people like the Yumnams to make do with home-grown plants. Nobody, for instance, uses the now-scarce onions and garlic in their food anymore. Instead, the Yumnams use a pungent plant locally known as maroi. “One should learn to live on home-grown items,” says Amar, a professor of economics at Manipur University.

Months of blockades have forced the Yumnams to change their food habits. Potatoes and oil have disappeared from the market, and from theYumnams’s kitchen as well. But there is enough rice stocked at home to keep them going.

The family budget has been severely slashed, and the members are doing away with comforts they were once used to. Amar and Jayabati don’t drive the family car anymore, for fuel is scarce and expensive. Petrol ? which comes mostly from Churachandpur district, smuggled in from neighbouring Mizoram ? is not available in the open market. And in the black market, a litre of petrol costs Rs 70.

But the Yumnams are unfazed. “We are now using our old and reliable scooter,” says Amar. “The only problem is that it often breaks down because of the adulterated petrol bought from the black market.”

There is trouble outside the Yumnams’s cosy home, too. Amar and Jayabati worry about the growing divide between the Nagas and the Meiteis as the blockade continues.

The blockade has the support of groups such as the Naga Hoho and Naga Students Federation, which, the Yumnams believe, jumped into the fray because it was perceived that the ANSAM blockade had failed to paralyse life. But the development, the family fears, has widened the ethnic divide.

In Jayabati’s hospital, for instance, the Meiteis and Nagas make it a point not to discuss issues such as Manipur’s territorial integrity or the Naga peace talks. “We are still on friendly terms and talk to each other. But something ? and I can’t explain what it is ? stops us from discussing these issues openly with our Naga friends. These days we only talk about our work and personal problems, which are not related to the blockade,” Jayabati says.

But what worries the family more is the future of the children. Schools are often shut, and the children’s education is in such a state that Amar and Jayabati have sent their daughter, Joshila ? the eldest of their three school-going children ? to faraway Gurgaon on the outskirts of New Delhi for her studies. “The prevailing situation has greatly disturbed the academic atmosphere of Imphal. With schools shut, not a single academic year has completed its course,” says Jayabati.

Joshila is back home now for the summer, and wonders at the “sea of difference” between schools in Imphal and Delhi and its suburbs. “Here in Imphal you do not know whether you are learning anything or not. I realised what an academic atmosphere meant only after I joined my school in Gurgaon,” says the class XII student.

The Yumnams may be coping with the difficulties posed by a besieged Imphal, but there is a growing sense of foreboding. And, worse still, is the unpredictable present. A child weeping late at night wakes up the neighbours. “If we hear a child cry, we think something has happened to that family,” says Jayabati. Her brother-in-law, Surchandra, says he starts sweating every time a security man visits the small shop that he runs, to buy something.

“I may get killed in a cross-fire between militants and the security forces while walking or driving on the road,” he says. “Whenever I see security men frisking civilians, I tremble, because they can do anything to us. I could be the target of some angry security personnel if a bomb planted by militants explodes where I happen to be,” says Surchandra.

The fear is not misplaced, for it was close to their home that Assam Rifles troops gunned down 10 civilians at a bus-stand five years ago. The firing, in retaliation to a rebel ambush, provoked Irom Sharmila to go on a fast unto death. Sharmila is still on a fast, though she is being tube-fed in Imphal’s Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital.

Not surprisingly, young people such as Joshila are already making plans to leave Manipur. “I don’t see any future here,” she says. “There is no opportunity for us, and no hope.”

Changes are happening all around them ? and like spectators, the Yumnams watch the transformation of Manipur. Amar is convinced that the Manipuris’ resilience and patience have been strengthened by the ongoing strikes. But, on the other hand, as Manipur reels under political movements, regional development is forgotten.

Within the movement, too, there have been changes. Amar believes that the support base of militant groups ? and there are at least 15 such bodies ? is getting eroded with a growing resistance to militant activities. Social crimes are on the rise, and the armed groups have not been able to control such activities, which, many think, is a reason militants are losing support.

But, as far as the Yumnams are concerned, the Central government’s role is “unpardonable”. Says Jayabati: “The Nagas have their right to make any demand, as do the Kukis or the Meiteis. But it is the responsibility of the government of the day to find an amicable solution to the problems and redress the grievances.”

And, to start with, the Yumnams stress that the blockade should be called off, for it affects every community. “Let’s live peacefully,” the family says. “The government should keep all its people happy. People will survive blockades, but it will retard progress.”

Jayabati leaves for her hospital ? two hours late for work. “Don’t worry,” she says before leaving. “I know how to deal with situations.”