 "Irom Chanu Sharmila")
As I walk into the restricted ward of Manipur's Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences, I muse that it isn't often that Lunch with BS has taken place in such a milieu. But perhaps, it isn't often either that we have a guest like Irom Chanu Sharmila, an icon of political protestors across the world who ended the world's longest hunger strike on August 9, 2016. This diminutive woman with her signature wavy curls has single-handedly cocked a snook at the all-powerful state apparatus of Manipur with her protest against the draconian Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) levied in the state since 1958.
Looking remarkably fresh for someone who hasn't eaten for the last 16 years, she greets me with a hug and smile in an oversized T-shirt and pink phanek, traditional Manipuri sarong. "What have you brought for me," she asks, looking into the bag of food I'm carrying. After breaking her fast, Sharmila has had to stay under medical observation. I've made her a meal without salt - herbed tomato soup, khichdi and fruit custard - as she is finding salt very sharp on her tongue. Her face falls: "But I don't have milk! Please eat the custard and I'll have everything else," she exclaims. It turns out that Sharmila is vegan, in sharp contrast to the fish-eating Meitei community she belongs to. She drinks the soup with gusto, hands me some local amla candy and sits next to her bed, which is surrounded by stuffed toys and books. "These have been my friends for so many years," she says wistfully. "Now friends and well-wishers are helping pack them up."
This transition is already proving rather stressful for Sharmila, for when she leaves the hospital that has practically been her home for the last 16 years, she faces an uncertain future. Her decision to break her hunger fast has been met with criticism. "People have not been able to adapt to my changed strategy," she says. "But now I feel that for my voice to be heard I need to get into a position of power." She plans to leave for Ukhrul district immediately after her final court appearance on August 23, and make her way across the state. "I want to explain my point of view to my own people before I think of what to do next," she says. Much has been made of her statement about contesting elections, but I sense that Sharmila is still disoriented after her long years in judicial custody (she was booked for attempted suicide for 365 days at a time, throughout the period of her strike) when she met few people and her sole contact with the outside world was through magazines and books.
Although today, she is free and people are constantly in and out of her hospital room, Sharmila still cuts a lonely figure. This makes her desire to connect with her own community especially poignant. "All these years, people thought of me as a saint," she rues. "But nobody tried to understand me as a human being." She tells me how while she was fasting and imprisoned for 16 years, the campaign against AFSPA didn't gain the momentum she had hoped for. "I'd thought that while I persevered with my hunger strike, others in my community would grow the protest in other ways," she says. "Instead, I realised that they were relying on my protest alone to build international and national opinion on AFSPA. I feel like they supported me only in theory."
Sadly, she doesn't have much support from her family either. Sharmila keeps moodily glancing at the day's newspapers, which have gleefully splashed the news that her brother was denied permission to visit her.
"They came, my mother and brother," she says quietly. "My mother is very old now. We held hands and talked together for a long time. Yet my brother tells the press such things."
As she takes tiny sips of soup and stares out of her window, I ask about her state of mind when she began her protest 16 years ago. It had been in response to a senseless shootout in Malom village by Assam Rifles in 2000, where 10 innocent civilians were murdered. "I was shaken by the killing, and thought that by following the principles of Gandhi, I would mark my protest against the government," she recalls. "But contrary to my expectations, they tried to stifle my voice. I'd no sense of living in a democracy."
There is a terrible frustration in her voice, a frustration that makes her long struggle seem that much harder. What does she think will happen to the anti-AFSPA protest now, I ask. "I might be frustrated and fed up," she says. "But my feeling for the cause is strong. Perhaps if I came into a position of power, I could do something about it." It is evident that Sharmila is no longer going to be content with the role of a figurehead, a symbol of the protest. "All these years, I was half living, half dead," she says. "I want to live fully now."
A statement like this seems particularly appropriate, coming from a woman whose room is filled with completed 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles and painstakingly put-together collages. She also loves plants, as is evidenced by the lush greenery she's cultivated inside her room and a money plant that has climbed all across her walls. We nibble on some local candied pineapple as she tells me that she can eat only a little at a time. Her system is still trying to adapt from nasal to oral feeding, and this transition hasn't been easy either. "I'm undergoing complete check-ups, especially of my teeth, as they have not been used for so long," she says. She continues to battle insomnia. "I often pace the hospital's corridors in the middle of the night, unable to sleep," she says. "Many patients have been scared when they've come across a crazy woman with crazy hair here." Once again, I'm struck by this ordinary woman who has made such extraordinary sacrifices for a cause that she is still so passionate about.
Dusk comes very early in the Northeast, and I realise it's time to go. "Don't worry," she says, "I'll eat the khichdi in some time after giving my stomach a break." As I get up to take her leave, she holds my hand in a surprisingly strong grip, laughing as I wince. "See" she jokes. "I'm still very strong." I come away with the sense that although she faces a long road to normalcy as she adjusts to life as an ordinary person - who now needs ordinary things like a passport, voter card, bank account and a job - mentally Irom Sharmila is, and will always be, the one and only Iron Lady of Manipur.
